Karlrobert Kreiten

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Karlrobert Kreiten (born June 26, 1916 in Bonn , † September 7, 1943 in Berlin-Plötzensee ) was a German pianist with Dutch citizenship. He was denounced and executed for making critical statements about the National Socialist regime .

Life

Karlrobert Kreiten grew up in a musical family. His parents were the mezzo-soprano Emmy Kreiten , b. Liebergesell (1894–1985) and the Dutch composer and concert pianist Theo Kreiten (1887–1960). Their first daughter Marie-Therese died in 1914 a few days after the birth. In 1917 the family moved from Bonn to Düsseldorf after Theo Kreiten had accepted a position as a lecturer at the Buths-Neitzel-Conservatory . Karlrobert Kreiten's sister Rosemarie Sofie was born in 1918. The parents often invited to house concerts and song recitals, which soon became a focal point of the musical society in Düsseldorf.

At the age of ten, Karlrobert Kreiten made his debut with a Mozart / Schubert program in the Tonhalle Düsseldorf . From 1929 to 1934 he studied with Peter Dahm at the Cologne University of Music . In 1933, the sixteen-year-old won a silver plaque of honor at the II International Music Competition in Vienna, and in the autumn of the same year the Great Mendelssohn Prize in Berlin, which was held among students at German universities. Kreiten continued his studies with Hedwig Rosenthal-Kanner, the wife of Moriz Rosenthal, from 1935 to 1937 in Vienna.

At the end of 1937 Kreiten moved to Berlin, gave a brilliantly criticized concert in the Beethovensaal and became a master student of Claudio Arrau . This, himself a former child prodigy and educated in Germany, ruled in 1983:

“Kreiten was one of the greatest piano talents I have met personally. If he had not been executed by the Nazi regime shortly before the end of the war, he would, without a doubt, have taken his place as one of the greatest German pianists. He formed the lost generation that would have been able to follow in sequence after Kempff and Gieseking . "

- Claudio Arrau

Kreitens career was highly successful until 1943, especially with works by Beethoven and composers of the Romantic period , but also by contemporary musicians such as Igor Stravinsky and Serge Prokofieff .

When Kreiten made derogatory comments in private about National Socialism and described the war as lost, he was denounced by the National Socialist Ellen Ott-Monecke, a childhood friend of his mother's, and her neighbor Annemarie Windmöller, who worked as a trainer for the National Socialist Women's Association. Soprano Tiny Debüser was also instrumental in the betrayal. On May 3, 1943, he was arrested by the Gestapo in Heidelberg , where he was going to give a concert . After four months of imprisonment, there was a trial before the People's Court , presided over by Roland Freisler , in which Kreiten was sentenced to death on September 3, 1943 for undermining military strength . Several requests for clemency (including from Wilhelm Furtwängler ) came too late. Karlrobert Kreiten was hanged on September 7, 1943 at the beginning of the Plötzensee Blood Nights with other inmates in Plötzensee .

Afterlife

The later television journalist Werner Höfer treated less than two weeks after the execution, on 20 September 1943 in a small article in 12:00 sheet the process and the execution of karlrobert kreiten. He was called u. a. the wrongful judgment and the execution as "severe punishment of a forgotten artist" good. This text was made public to Höfer, who had a steep career on German television, as early as 1962 and 1984 without anyone being particularly interested in the case. That only happened in 1987 and brought Höfer's television career to an end.

Stumbling block Karlrobert Kreiten

Karlrobert Kreiten's mother, who had adopted the stage name Kreiten-Barido - Barido was the family name of her Alsatian mother - appeared again as a singer in numerous concerts after her return from exile in Alsace in 1950. After the Second World War , the parents again invited to music evenings, both of which were also active in memory of their son.

Karlrobert Kreitens sister Rosemarie, who remarried from Studnitz after divorcing her first husband, emigrated to the USA after the second divorce in 1954 , where she a. a. founded a publishing house; she died in Los Angeles in 1975. Theo Kreiten died in Düsseldorf in 1960. Emmy Kreiten performed occasionally at public concerts well into old age and died in Düsseldorf in 1985 at the age of 90.

In Düsseldorf-Pempelfort , Rochusstrasse 7, a stumbling block was laid in his memory as a victim of National Socialism .

Honors

  • The sculptor Rudolf Christian Baisch (1903–1990), a friend of his parents, created a bust in memory of Karlrobert Kreiten, which is now in the Düsseldorf City Museum .
  • In 1964, today's Cologne University of Music donated a piano prize in memory of Kreitens.
  • The pianist Martha Argerich played a memorial concert as part of the Berliner Festwochen 1983 to commemorate Kreiten's 40th anniversary of death.
  • Today streets in Bonn- Poppelsdorf , Düsseldorf- Mörsenbroich , Hilden and Cologne- Ossendorf are named after him.
  • In 1984 Heinrich Riemenschneider's play Der Fall Karlrobert K. premiered,
  • In 1986 the writer Hartmut Lange published his novella Das Konzert . The model for the main character was Kreiten; In 1987 the long play Requiem was written for Karlrobert Kreiten .
  • In 2003 the composition Kreiten's Passion by the Dutchman Rudi Martinus van Dijk was premiered in Düsseldorf , with a text by Heinrich Riemenschneider.
  • In 2008, in memory of Kreiten, a “Concerto Recitativo” compiled by Hans Christian Schmidt-Banse with the title On this unfortunate 3rd May 1943 was performed as part of the Beethoven Festival in Bonn .
  • In June and September 2016, the pianist Florian Heinisch, born in Eisenach in 1990, gave the nationally acclaimed piano recital series “ The Unplayed Concert ”, designed by the Hamburg pediatrician and author Moritz von Bredow , on the occasion of Karlrobert Kreiten's 100th birthday . On 11 evenings (June 2016: Bonn, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Bremen, Heidelberg, Hamburg, Munich and Berlin; September 2016: Lübeck, Hamburg and Karlsruhe) the program was performed that was not shown on the day of his arrest in Heidelberg in May 1943 could play more. The patron of these piano recitals was Gilbert von Studnitz, nephew and closest living relative of Karlrobert Kreiten.

literature

  • Theo Kreiten: Who the gods love ... - memories of Karlrobert Kreiten. Renaissance-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1947. 2., exp. Edition 1950 by Droste-Verlag, Düsseldorf.
  • Karlrobert Kreiten - Who the gods love. Hentrich, Berlin 1983, ISBN 3-88725-057-5 . Repr. D. 2nd edition of the memory book, supplemented by documentation on the 40th anniversary of death.
  • Hartmut Lück: An example is being set - the Karlrobert Kreiten case. In: Music and Music Politics in Fascist Germany. Fischer Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1984, ISBN 3-596-26902-4 .
  • Joachim Dorfmüller : Karl Robert Kreiten (1916–1943). Tragic end of a pianist career. In: Neues Rheinland, 12/1986, p. 14 f.
  • Harald Wieser : death of a pianist. In: Der Spiegel 51/1987 of December 14, 1987.
  • Friedrich Lambart (ed.): Death of a pianist: Karlrobert Kreiten and the case of Werner Höfer. Hentrich, Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-926175-48-6 . (A book about Karlrobert Kreiten, which contains the father's memory book, various articles, original documents as well as the judgment, two plays and Werner Höfer's defense writings .)
  • Helga Schubert : Judas women. Luchterhand, Frankfurt 1990, ISBN 3-630-86725-1 .
  • Victor von Gostomski: The death of Plötzensee: memories, events, documents. Bloch, Frankfurt 1993, ISBN 3-929686-00-7 .
  • The pianist Karlrobert Kreiten and the "Wehrkraftzersetzung". In: The "house prison" of the Gestapo headquarters in Berlin. Topography of Terror, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-9807205-4-3 .
  • Josef Niesen : Bonn Personal Lexicon. Bouvier, Bonn 2007, ISBN 978-3-416-03159-2 .
  • Hans Hinterkeuser: Elly Ney and Karlrobert Kreiten. Two musicians under the swastika. Kid Verlag, Bonn 2016, ISBN 978-3-929386-53-0 .

Audio documents

  • Karlrobert Kreiten in memoriam 1916–1943: historical recordings from 1934–1938. Thorofon ATH 259 (1984) (LP with previously unpublished recordings; compositions by Brahms , Chopin , T. Kreiten, Othmar Schoeck and J. Strauss).
  • Karlrobert Kreiten: Historical Recordings . CAvI (2017) (CD, recordings 1933–1938, works by Johannes Brahms, Frédéric Chopin, Robert Forkhardt, Othmar Schoeck, Theo Kreiten, Johann Strauss Sohn and Maurice Ravel).
  • Kreitens radio recordings are probably lost.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Estates / Collections Directory 4-121. (PDF; 262 kB) City Archives State Capital Düsseldorf, “Kreiten-Documentation” by Heinrich Riemenschneider, p. 22; Retrieved May 2, 2009.
  2. ^ Final report on the II. International Piano Competition 1933 for voice and piano in Vienna. In: Archive of the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna.
  3. ^ Letter to Hartmut Lück 1983. In: Hartmut Lück: An example is made - the Karlrobert Kreiten case. P. 243.
  4. ↑ Harald Wieser: Death of a pianist . In: Der Spiegel . No. 51 , 1987 ( online ).
  5. ↑ Collection 1902–1945 - Karlrobert Kreiten. Information and illustration of the memorial bust on the website of the city of Düsseldorf ; Retrieved May 2, 2009.
  6. ↑ History of the Rheinische Musikschule (PDF; 939 kB), accessed on February 14, 2009.
personal data
SURNAME Kreiten, Karlrobert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German pianist with Dutch citizenship
DATE OF BIRTH June 26, 1916
PLACE OF BIRTH Bonn
DATE OF DEATH September 7, 1943
Place of death Berlin-Plötzensee