Karl Elmendorff

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Karl Elmendorff (born October 25, 1891 in Düsseldorf , † October 21, 1962 in Hofheim am Taunus ) was a German conductor .

Life

Elmendorff was the son of a businessman and attended high school in Düsseldorf. He then studied philology in Freiburg im Breisgau , Munich , Bonn and Münster , as well as musicology at the Cologne University of Music . He also completed a vocal degree. From 1913 to 1916 he was a student of the conductors Hermann Abendroth and Fritz Steinbach at the Cologne Conservatory .

Elmendorff became an active member of the Catholic student association Rheno-Palatia in the KV in Freiburg .

After four years as Kapellmeister in Düsseldorf, he went through similar positions in Mainz , Hagen and Aachen . In 1925, the State Opera in Munich signed him as first conductor. This engagement lasted until 1931. In 1927 he was appointed conductor at the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth , where he worked until 1942. He conducted Tristan und Isolde for the first time in 1927 (with Gunnar Graarud as Tristan and Emmy Krüger as Isolde, staged by Siegfried Wagner ). In 1930 he conducted the Ring des Nibelungen there for the first time . Important Bayreuth performances under his direction were, for example, Tristan and Isolde in 1928, Tannhäuser in 1930 with Erna Berger and Götterdämmerung in 1942.

In the 1930s he moved to Kassel as chief conductor , in 1932 to the Nassau State Theater , and in 1935 he became general music director at the Mannheim National Theater . After being invited as a guest conductor at the Berlin State Opera , Elmendorff joined the NSDAP with effect from May 1, 1937 and was registered under the party number 5,059,744. In 1938 he was appointed Staatskapellmeister. From 1939 to 1942 he was a permanent conductor at the Berlin State Opera. During the Second World War he gave a guest performance in German-occupied Paris with Die Walküre on March 1, 1941.

He reached his career high point in the period from 1942 to 1944, when he succeeded Karl Böhm in Dresden and became director of the Saxon State Orchestra Dresden and the Semperoper . This is where artistically significant recordings such as Hermann Goetz ' The Taming of the Shrew , Hugo Wolf's Der Corregidor , Aubers Fra Diavolo , Luisa Miller by Giuseppe Verdi , Mozart's Don Giovanni and Weber's Freischütz with the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft were made , often with important singers such as Kurt Böhme , Margarete Teschemacher , Hans Hotter or Gottlob Frick . In the final phase of the Second World War , he was included in the list of the most important conductors, approved by Adolf Hitler , in August 1944 , which saved him from being deployed in the war, including on the home front .

After he was exonerated from the Mannheim Chamber of Justice in 1947 , he worked from 1948 to 1951 as the musical director at the Kassel State Theater . After that he was chief conductor at the Staatstheater Wiesbaden until 1955 and then became music advisor to the Wiesbaden city council. In 1956 he was awarded the Goethe plaque from the State of Hesse . In the last years of his life he was a guest conductor. Elmendorff died of a heart condition.

literature

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Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Karl Elmendorff in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)
  2. ^ Siegfried Koß, Wolfgang Löhr (Hrsg.): Biographisches Lexikon des KV. 5th part (= Revocatio historiae. Volume 6). SH-Verlag, Schernfeld 1998, ISBN 3-89498-055-9 , p. 91.
  3. ^ A b c d Fred K. Prieberg : Handbook of German Musicians 1933–1945. CD-Rom-Lexikon, Kiel 2004, pp. 1392-1393.
  4. ^ Ernst Klee: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 119.
  5. ↑ Oliver Rathkolb : Loyal to the Führer and God-Grace. Artist elite in the Third Reich. Österreichischer Bundesverlag, Vienna 1991.
  6. ^ Karl Elmendorff In: Der Spiegel. 45, 1962, p. 130.
personal data
SURNAME Elmendorff, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German conductor
DATE OF BIRTH October 25, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Dusseldorf
DATE OF DEATH October 21, 1962
Place of death Hofheim am Taunus