Karl Blessinger

Karl Michael Blessinger (born September 21, 1888 in Ulm ; † March 13, 1962 in Pullach , Munich ) was a German composer , conductor and musicologist .

Life

Blessinger was the son of a bandagist . After Ernst Klee he was from 1910 "dance bandmaster" in various places. Blessinger, who u. a. Felix Mottl's pupil , completed his studies in musicology in Munich in 1913 with a dissertation on the subject of studies on the history of Ulm music in the 17th century, in particular on the life and works of Sebastian Anton Scherer, and his doctorate as Dr. phil. from.

From 1920 Blessinger taught at the Munich Academy of Music . Since May 1, 1932, he was a member of the NSDAP (membership number 1,117,363) and became district training leader. Since 1936 he was also head of the Nazi lecturers' association at the Academy of Music. In 1939 he was proposed by the cultural and political archive as a music clerk in the German National Education Center in Munich-Upper Bavaria.

During the Nazi era , Blessinger published several anti-Semitic pamphlets to defame Jewish musicians. In his book “Judaism and Music” there is a chapter “The Jew as a Cultural Parasite” and there it says about Gustav Mahler : “One of the most dangerous of these Jewish prophets is Gustav Mahler, who misinterprets German music in his capacity as director of the court opera in Vienna As a symphony orchestra, he had a direct and indirect effect of the greatest extent by disguising himself as a pure idealist and a champion of the finest German art, while in reality he served exclusively the aims of Jewish rule. " (P. 111)

He is therefore also quoted in the Lexicon of Jews in the music of Herbert Gerigk and Theophil Stengel . In 1935 Blessinger was appointed associate professor and in 1936 head of the Nazi lecturers' association . In October 1942 Blessinger was finally promoted to full professor.

After the end of the war, Blessinger's writings Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, Mahler and Judentum und Musik in the Soviet occupation zone were placed on the list of literature to be segregated.

From 1951 Blessinger lived in retirement in Pullach, where he died in 1962.

Publications

Musicological works

• Studies on the history of music in Ulm in the 17th century, especially on the life and works of Sebastian Anton Scherer, in: Ulm-Oberschwaben 19, 1913, pp. 1–79
• Hans Pfitzner ( Benno Filser Verlag, Augsburg 1921, 98 pages)
• Basics of the theory of musical forms (Stuttgart: Engelhorn, 1926; 355 pp.)
• Melody teaching as an introduction to music theory (Stuttgart: Klett, 1930)
• Max Reger and the Orgel, Mitt. MRI 2nd issue (1954), pp. 7-11

Music aesthetic polemics

• The musical problems of the present and their solution (Stuttgart: Filser, 1919)
• Overcoming musical impotence (Stuttgart: Filser, 1920)

Anti-Semitic Publications

• Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, Mahler. 3 chapter Judaism in music as a key z. Music history d. 19th century (Berlin: Hahnefeld 1938. 94 pp. (The cultural and political series.))
• Judaism and Music. A contribution to cultural and racial politics (Berlin: Hahnefeld 1944). 156 S. Extended edition of "Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, Mahler".

Magazine articles

• England's racial decline reflected in its music. In: Die Musik , Volume 37, Volume 1, 1939, pp. 37ff

literature

• Fred K. Prieberg : Handbook of German Musicians 1933–1945 , CD-Rom-Lexikon, Kiel 2004, pp. 492–497.

Web links

• Literature by and about Karl Blessinger in the catalog of the German National Library
• This music was murdered! Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy or a History of Cultural Anti-Semitism in Germany in the 19th and 20th Centuries; An essay by Rainer Hauptmann

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Ernst Klee : The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 57.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Fred K. Prieberg: Handbook of German Musicians 1933–1945 , CD-Rom-Lexikon, Kiel 2004, p. 492
3. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1946-nslit-b.html
4. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1947-nslit-b.html