Léonie Mendelssohn-Bartholdy

Léonie Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (born September 21, 1889 in Cologne as Léonie Langen ; died August 18, 1980 ) was a German pianist , music teacher and composer .

Life

Langen was the daughter of Rudolf Langen and his wife, née Helene Winand. The strictly Calvinist family was shaped by the Heidelberg Catechism ; Tradition has it that she was slapped by her father on the street when she attended a church service with the free-spirited pastor Carl Jatho . Other episodes also bear witness to a rebellious spirit: during a spa stay in Königsfeld in the Black Forest in 1904, she met Herbert Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. Since she then exchanged letters with the young man - even before her confirmation - she was banished to a rural family estate for a long time in order to prevent this unwanted contact.

The musical family (acquaintance of the parents with the Wette / Humperdinck siblings, for example ) encouraged her early on through piano lessons. She received this first through Lonny Epstein, then Carl Friedberg , who recommended her to James Kwast . Her training at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin lasted from 1906 to 1909 , although she is said to have attempted suicide due to the high requirements.

The family's financial difficulties caused her to drop out, and Léonie Langen returned to Cologne, where she worked as a piano teacher. In 1911, the 22-year-old completed her pianist training with Lazzaro Uzielli in Cologne and in the same year married her childhood friend, Herbert Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. She moved with him directly to Erlangen - Burgberg , where their daughter Dorothea (also later a pianist) was born in 1912. Their son Sebastian was born in 1914 (later a cellist, died in 1944). Her husband found various occupations: adult education center lecturer, music critic for a Nuremberg newspaper and as a chamber musician and violin teacher. Léonie gave piano lessons again from 1918 and performed at charitable concerts.

During the Nazi era , the family was socially ostracized and there was no work. During this time of need, the children took the name of their grandmother (Winand, after the end of the war Winand-Mendelssohn). Léonie's husband Herbert died of a stroke in 1940.

In 1946 the musical new beginning began with charity performances of The Fairy Tale of the Magic Flute (compressed children's version of the original ) and the piece Dschinnistan (fairy tale adaptation of the original ), which Léonie Mendelssohn-Bartholdy had worked on in 1945 during bombing raids. Adaptations by Bastien and Bastienne as well as The betrayed Kadi (based on Gluck ) have also been included in Mendelssohn-Bartholdy's youth theater . In 1957 Mendelssohn-Bartholdy created the fairy tale game Sputnik and the Christkind , contrasting electronic music by Karlheinz Stockhausen with classical works by Bach and Bizet . At Lake Lugano she also made friends with Max Horkheimer and worked as a hobby painter.

Mendelssohn-Bartholdy composed, arranged, wrote and made music even in old age. She gave concerts at Atzelsberg Castle in the 1960s with a young chamber orchestra she founded. The “String Quartet Erlangen” won a music prize in Bremen with a fugue composed by her. In 1970 she received the City of Erlangen's Citizens' Medal.

She ended her life in the hospital and was buried next to her husband after a memorial service in the Martinsbühler church in Erlangen.

literature

• Hellmut Patzke: In: Frauengestalten in Franken , ed. Inge Meidinger-Geise. Weidlich Verlag, Würzburg 1985. pp. 224-228. ISBN 3-8035-1242-5 .