Jules Siber

Julius (Jules) Thomas Philipp Siber (born October 30, 1871 in Dettelbach , Lower Franconia ; † May 24, 1943 in Berlin ) was a German lawyer , writer , composer and violinist ; he celebrated worldwide success as a “German Paganini ” and “eccentric on the violin”.

Life

Siber grew up as the son of the doctor Oskar Michael Siber († 1914) in Würzburg , studied law and music at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich and was awarded a Dr. jur. PhD . As a musician he was a student of Thompson , the violinist Felix Berber and the composer Max Reger . He must also have studied with the pianist and composer Max Meyer-Olbersleben , because in the commemorative publication on his 70th birthday Siber expresses his thanks: What I owe Meyer-Olbersleben - my system of playing the violin (1920).

As a lawyer, Siber was the district court secretary in Freyung ( Lower Bavaria ) around 1903 , where he made the acquaintance of the art-loving writer Auguste Unertl (1864–1941), wife of the Waldkirchen market secretary. With her he also got to know the poet Hans Carossa , who described Siber as a “doctor from the district court with a violin case” , who “made a second, stronger feeling through this bourgeois existence” . At the turn of the century he appeared publicly as a violinist for the first time under the stage name Jules Siber . and quickly made a world career. He went on tours around the Orient , played in Bucharest in 1908 in front of Prime Minister Dimitrie Sturdza and Minister Petre S. Aurelian and was even supposed to appear in front of the Romanian King Charles I in 1909 , reported the Waldkirchener Anzeiger on December 3, 1908 . The Argentine President José Figueroa Alcorta also invited him to a matinee . He played in front of the royal houses of the world and sent whole crowds into ecstasy. But Siber didn't just make a name for himself as a violin virtuoso. He also became known as a composer of popular pieces such as the witch's dance .

Siber also enjoyed great success as a writer. Even after the first work of the “God-gifted musician” - novels that a minstrel wrote (1904) - a critic attested the 32-year-old writer “extraordinary talent, genuine poetic enthusiasm and creative power” . In France he became friends with the Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun .

From October 1921 the magazine Psyche wrote about him in three parts and saw in him the reincarnation of Paganini, whereby the close connection between demonia and the "sexual intermediate stages" is also discussed. In general he was considered a "resurrected Paganini to the violin"

The very titles of his literary works make clear his strong interest in occultism and the “entanglement of artists in dark forces” . In fact, he later worked in esoteric , especially theosophical, circles and made contributions to the magazine Hain der Isis .

At an early stage (1915) he was a member of the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee , which had been campaigning for the deletion of paragraph 175 and for the "third gender" since 1897 . His book Soul Migration (1914), which is still known in this scene today , also referred to his homosexuality . Siber showed himself throughout his life as "free-thinking" and "sometimes expressed himself in an original and drastic way" . Heiner Dikreiter described him as a “characteristic musician with the tangled strands of hair falling into the forehead and the long, slightly overhanging nose, the narrow-lipped mouth and the raised eyebrows." gave a little shock, ” said Dikreiter. He was "an artist who didn't fit into any template and who had the courage to be his own."

Siber eventually advanced to professor at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin and lived in Berlin-Wilmersdorf . He died there in 1943, but was buried in the family grave in the main cemetery in Würzburg .

Works (selection)

• Paganini, a novel of ancient gods and witch dances . Morawe and Scheffelt, Berlin 1920
• The antichrist . Novel. Morawe and Scheffelt, Berlin 1921
• Satan triumphant. A Dante novel. Schack & Co., Berlin-Wilmersdorf 1922
• Incubus. an occult novel from the Würzburg witch era. Drei-Zinnen-Verlag, Würzburg 1922
• Transmigration of souls . Musician novel. Drescher, 1914 - New edition: Library rosa Winkel, Volume 57. Männerschwarm, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-939542-57-5
• Hofrat Prof. Max Meyer-Olbersleben, commemorative publication on his 70th birthday. In addition to an appendix: What I owe Meyer-Olbersleben - my system of playing the violin , publishing house printer, 1920
• Guide to energetic violin playing. The secret of Paganini in its lighting by the Energetos-Ritte system. Fink, 1920
• The great energetic violin school, with special attention to the paganic problem. Schack, 1920
• Short stories written by a minstrel . Seitz et al. Schauer, Munich 1904
• The feast of the shadows. A Chopin novel. 1937
• Which one never speaks of in the virtuoso world . In: Geigenspiel-Rundschau , trade journal for violinists and violists, No. 24, p. 2832

literature

• Ralph Philipp Ziegler: Energetics and Demonia: Jules Siber (1871-1943) and Freiburg . In: Locus occultus. Healing, popular and scientific occultism in Freiburg 1900 to 1945 , Heidelberg et al. 2017, pp. 129–144, ISBN 978-3-95505-015-3
• Willi Dürrnagel: Devil violinist Jules Siber , detailed biography with photo ( online )
• Willi Dürrnagel: Devil violinist Jules Siber - the "German Paganini" born 140 years ago , detailed biography with photos, in: Meeviertel Anzeiger from June 2011 ( PDF file )
• Ilse Konell (ed.): Jules Siber, Paganinis Wiederkehr; a life for art . Orphil, Niebüll 2003, ISBN 3-934472-04-4

Web links

• Literature by and about Jules Siber in the catalog of the German National Library
• Catalog of works in the online catalog of the Berlin State Library
• Works by Jules Siber in the Gutenberg-DE project
• Works directory on Google books

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Teufelsgeiger Jules Siber - ATTENTION: Even reputable sources wrongly state 1872 as the year of birth.
2. ↑ Musikalisches Wochenblatt , Volume 39, Verlag EW Fritzsch, 1908, p. 91 ( limited preview in the Google book search)
3. ↑ Hans Joachim Moser: The music of the German tribes . E. Wancura, 1947 ( limited preview in Google Book search)
4. ↑ Pension files of the government of Lower Bavaria, Chamber of Finances ( Memento of the original from October 4, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
5. ↑ Hans Carossa: The year of beautiful illusions . Insel, Frankfurt am Main 1962, p. 195 ( limited preview in the Google book search)
6. ↑ Signals for the musical world , Volume 67, issues 1–8, Verlag Bartholf Senff, 1909, p. 256 ( limited preview in the Google book search)
7. ↑ Devil violinist Jules Siber
8. ^ Supplement to Allgemeine Zeitung , Bayerische Druckerei und Verlagsanstalt, 1904, p. 151 ( limited preview in Google book search)
9. ↑ Bernd-Ulrich Hergemöller: man for man, biographical lexicon. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-518-39766-4 , p. 504.
10. ↑ Eva Hölter: The Poet of Hell and Exile , 2002, p. 176 ( limited preview in the Google book search)
11. ↑ Stephan Schmitt: History of the University of Music and Theater Munich from its beginnings to 1945 (= musicological writings of the University of Music and Theater Munich. Volume 1). H. Schneider, Tutzing 2005, ISBN 3-7952-1153-0 .
12. ^ Marita Keilson-Lauritz : The history of one's own history , homosexuality and literature, Volume 11, Verlag rosa Winkel, 1997, ISBN 3-86149-063-3 , p. 139 f. ( limited preview in Google Book search)
13. ↑ Allgemeine Zeitung , Volume 124, Issues 1–26, Bayerische Druckerei und Verlagsanstalt, 1921
14. ^ Dikreiter's obituary for Siber appeared in the Mainfränkische Zeitung on June 4, 1943 .