Kristian Wegscheider

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Kristian Wegscheider (2016)

Kristian Wegscheider (born January 20, 1954 in Ahrenshoop ) is a German organ builder and restorer. He is the owner of the Wegscheider organ workshop .

Live and act

After graduating from high school in 1972 and doing military service with the NVA , Wegscheider did an apprenticeship at Jehmlich Orgelbau, founded in 1808 in Dresden , from 1975 to 1978 and completed an accompanying distance learning course as a restorer in Leipzig , Berlin and Weimar from 1976 to 1980 . In his training company Jehmlich he became head of the restoration department. During this time he was in charge of the maintenance of the organ by Gottfried Silbermann , consecrated in Freiberg Cathedral in 1714, and the organ in Güstrow Cathedral, built in 1868 by Friedrich Hermann Lütkemüller .

In 1989 he founded his own organ building workshop in Dresden. Since then he has been able to realize around 100 organ building projects, both restorations and new constructions. Wegscheider has had his master craftsman certificate since January 1990 . He is a member of the executive committee of the Gottfried Silbermann Society and a specialist consultant for restorations.

The most important restorations of the Wegscheider company include the organ of the St. Nikolai Church (Stralsund) , the Stellwagen organ in Stralsund's Marienkirche , the Amalienorgel in the church of the good news in Berlin-Karlshorst and the Silbermann organ in the Catholic church Hofkirche Dresden.

In the Dresden organ dispute , Wegscheider advocated a faithful reconstruction of the Silbermann organ from 1736. In 2000, Wegscheider received the Arras Prize for Art and Culture from the Hanna Johannes Arras Foundation in Dresden as an “outstanding organ builder with a high level of craftsmanship, whose qualities and always alert, innovative thinking are rare” .

Wegscheider has a son, the dancer Sonja Zimmermann , who grew up with the painter Eberhard Göschel .

Art happenings

Wegscheider - by his own admission a fanatic for the Baroque and Italy - organized various sensational art happenings in the second half of the 1980s and was therefore under observation by the GDR state security . He was supported by the Permanent Representations of the Federal Republic of Germany (StäV), which gave the activity a political dimension. For this purpose, Elbe steamers of the Saxon Steamship Company were rented for an annual excursion from 1986 to 1988 . The passengers all belonged to a certain bohemian spirit . The template for these “cultural trips” was Fellini's 1983 film The Ship of Dreams , which was not shown in the GDR. These trips had a motto and were peppered with quotes from a liberal and opulent way of life. There were also some top German politicians such as Walter Momper in 1988 .

The first trip on the Elbe took place on April 26, 1986, the day of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster . Members of the StäV have also been taking part since this first trip, including Winfried Sühlo (* 1935) from the second year . The second trip was in 1987 after a trip on the Elbe with the Weißeritztal-Kleinbahn to Kipsdorf , where on arrival a fire brigade band played to dance. The passengers did not need to be asked to participate; everyone was an actor, not a consumer of culture. Before that, after almost seven kilometers in Spechtritzmühle, a piano had been loaded into the van, where boogie-woogie was played from then on , and country music or classical house music in the form of a string quartet was performed in other wagons . The highlight was at Obercarsdorf , where Indians stopped the train and tied the driver. Only after smoking a peace pipe was he ransomed by Wegscheider. This staged insert was approved by the Stasi with the note on the file: “An Indian attack was organized in a Wild West manner. It was about a six to eight-man Indian studies group that was well costumed and corresponded in good Saxon. "The Elbe trip in the third year on June 12, 1988 ran under the motto" Purple - the last attempt "and was owed to Wegscheider's request, to flee to the west within the next few months. With perestroika , which was just blossoming , which allowed more freedom of expression, no more tricks would have been necessary to rent such a large ship and the artistic performances would no longer have been suspect. The Stasi considered the only way to prevent shipping, a technical sabotage of the steamer. This 1988 motto became so unintentionally a reality that a year later, in 1989, the line fell. The musical performances were, for example, a Carmen parody. The singer René Pape and the conductor Rainer Mühlbach were also on board . Since the second trip, the StäV financed and mainly organized the food. In line with the motto, there were purple pause bars that had been launched two years earlier. At the end of the trip, a huge picnic table was set up on which fruit and tropical fruits were offered that were not available in the GDR. According to Wegscheider, the Stasi report is correspondingly euphoric at this point: “The people who had to write there couldn't believe it. They enjoyed it themselves too. When do they get kiwis and mangoes? They were all allowed to eat! "

“We needed these lights in everyday life. At our festivals the 'allies' came from all over the GDR. And vice versa, we packed our bundles and drove to the festivals in Halle or Berlin. We have networked in this way. As a result, things came about that, of course, were not official at all. The festivals were observed critically, sometimes even broken up by the police and were riddled with spies. In the 80s, with the large number of emigrations, an exodus occurred that has already damaged our community. One would not have known how to proceed. Thank goodness the GDR was over and we're celebrating again. "

- Matthias Griebel, Dresden, February 26, 1997

For Wegscheider and his companions, this idea was a kind of "dream trip with all of his friends - a kind of collective escape from the republic into the realm of fantasy". In the eyes of the State Security, however, these were not “activities hostile to the state” . The props came from the Semper Opera House .

reception

While Wegscheider's artistic and political actions were only known to a few fellow citizens apart from the “Stasi”, both the number of enthusiasts through word of mouth and the number of those involved in his art happenings grew from year to year .

After the turning point and the peaceful revolution , many media took up the events on the anniversaries. Not only the local Saxon newspapers, but also the television of the MDR , the Federal Agency for Civic Education and the German Historical Museum point to Wegscheider's contributions to the East German cultural landscape .

Publications

  • Guidelines for the Preservation of Valuable Historic Organs. Michaelstein cultural and research center, Michaelstein near Blankenburg / Harz 1981. (= studies on performance practice and interpretation of 18th century instrumental music , issue 12.)
  • Organ temperature - a contribution to the problem of reconstructing historical types of mood in organ restoration. Michaelstein cultural and research center, Michaelstein near Blankenburg / Harz 1988, ISBN 978-3-89512-064-0 .

Web links

Commons : Kristian Wegscheider  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b The historical Scherer-Bünting organ in Mölln. Ways of reconstruction. Collection of materials for the 2009 Symposium ( Memento from June 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), p. 145. On the website of the Mölln Organ Building Association.
  2. ↑ Vita Kristian Wegscheiders ( memento from June 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) on the website of the Gottfried Silbermann Society.
  3. ↑ Joel H. Kuznik: Kristian Wegscheider: Master Restorer and Organbuilder. In: The Diapason. May 2009, Vol. 100, No. 5. ( Online )
  4. ^ Letters from Wegscheider on the Dresden organ dispute on a website of the proponents of a restoration true to the original, accessed on June 8, 2014.
  5. ↑ Arras Prize in 2000 in the field of music. Accessed June 9, 2014 from the Arras Prize website.
  6. ↑ a b c d e Michael Bartsch: Elbe trip in front of a landscape of memories. Federal Agency for Political Education , April 30, 2013.
  7. ↑ a b http://www.tell-online.de/x-bonusmaterial-tell-tell-4-tschernob-wende.html
  8. ^ Provobis production ( Memento from July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ↑ a b c d e Dolce Vita in the GDR. An Elbe steamer full of exotic species. MDR television, 2014. ( Memento from June 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  10. ^ RBB: Dolce Vita in the GDR. An Elbe steamer full of exotic species ; June 3, 2014, 10:45 p.m.
  11. ↑ Kristian Wegscheider in the article Staging a Lifestyle: The Festival Culture of Dresden Boheme Between Baroque Reminiscences and Space Problems. Retrieved on May 9, 2014 from the website of the German Historical Museum.
personal data
SURNAME Wegscheider, Kristian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German organ builder and restorer
DATE OF BIRTH January 20, 1954
PLACE OF BIRTH Ahrenshoop