Klaus Pringsheim senior

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Klaus Pringsheim Sr. (* July 24, 1883 in Feldafing ; † December 7, 1972 in Tokyo , Japan ) was a German conductor , composer , music teacher and music critic .

Life

He came from the German-Jewish Pringsheim merchant family from Silesia . His parents were the mathematician Alfred Pringsheim and Hedwig Pringsheim geb. Dohm, daughter of the women's rights activist Hedwig Dohm . He was the twin brother of Katia Pringsheim , who later became the wife of the writer Thomas Mann .

Unlike his sister and brother Peter , his talent was not in the field of natural sciences and mathematics, but instead devoted himself to music after graduating from high school in 1901 at the Wilhelmsgymnasium in Munich . He had already been taught the piano as a child, and one of his later mentors was Gustav Mahler , with whom he also studied in Vienna. In 1903 his first modern tone poem entitled The Sea was premiered.

Pringsheim's first engagement was as Kapellmeister at the Deutsches Theater in Prague. In 1918 he became musical director of the Reinhardt Theaters in Berlin . Since 1927 he was also active as a music critic for Vorwärts . In his articles, which were not only devoted to musical matters, he had violently attacked the National Socialists. In 1931 he was appointed professor of composition and counterpoint at the Tokyo Conservatory . Pringsheim had taken a leave of absence from Vorwärts for this purpose . He had actually planned to return to Germany after two years, but this was prevented by the "seizure of power" by the National Socialists. At first he managed to extend his contract. In 1937, however, as the Japanese Foreign Ministry later confirmed, he was dismissed following German intervention. In 1944 he was expatriated and in 1945 interned as an "anti-Nazi" at Josef Meisinger's initiative . From 1941 to 1946 he directed the Tokyo Chamber Symphony Orchestra. After the Second World War , he first tried to gain a foothold in the United States , where his twin sister Katia had emigrated with her husband Thomas Mann , but he was not allowed to do so. In 1951 he was appointed professor of composition and ensemble management at the Musashino Academia Musicae , the country's largest music academy in Tokyo.

In 1912 Pringsheim married the Prague dancer Klara "Lala" Koszlerova. With her he had their children Emilie (* 1912) and Hans Erik (* 1915). He is not the biological father of his youngest son Klaus Pringsheim jun. This aspect was removed from Thomas Mann's diaries by Golo Mann (at the request of Klaus Pringsheim jun.).

His students included the composers Komei Abe, Shukichi Mitsukiri , Hisatada Otaka , Kosaburo Hirai and Saburo Takata, as well as the conductors Hiroshi Wakasugi and Taijiro Iimori.

Honors

  • 1956: Cross of Merit 1st Class of the Federal Republic of Germany
  • 1968: Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Annual report from the K. Wilhelms-Gymnasium in Munich. ZDB ID 12448436 , 1900/01
  2. Clemens Jochem: The Foerster case: The German-Japanese machine factory in Tokyo and the Jewish auxiliary committee . Hentrich and Hentrich, Berlin 2017, p. 90 f. and p. 234, note 177 f., ISBN 978-3-95565-225-8 .
  3. Irene Suchy : Art. Klaus Pringsheim . In: Claudia Maurer Zenck , Peter Petersen (Hrsg.): Lexicon of persecuted musicians from the Nazi era . Universität Hamburg, Hamburg, 2007, accessed on October 28, 2017.