Leo Borchard

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Berlin memorial plaque on Hünensteig 6 in Berlin-Steglitz
Honor grave. Bergstrasse 38, in Berlin-Steglitz

Leo Borchard (born March 31, 1899 in Moscow , Russian Empire ; † August 23, 1945 in Berlin ; originally Lew Lwowitsch Borchard , Russian: Лев Львович Боргард) was a Russian-German conductor and brief head of the Berlin Philharmonic .

Life

In 1930 Borchard stood next to Hermann Scherchen at the podium of the ORAG radio orchestra ( Ostmarken Rundfunk AG ). At first he was considered to be an exponent specifically for Russian repertoire, but soon developed Central European literature through Bach and Beethoven's works.

Borchard first worked as an opera répétiteur , later as a freelance conductor in Berlin during the war. He wrote the libretto for Boris Blacher 's oratorio “The Grand Inquisitor”, which was premiered in 1947, based on the legend of the Grand Inquisitor by Dostoevsky .

During the Second World War , he and his partner, the journalist Ruth Andreas-Friedrich , helped Jews in Berlin with their resistance group “ Uncle Emil ” . In 1943 they distributed the leaflets of the White Rose from Munich. The group also took part in a resistance campaign in which the word no was posted on houses and shop windows in all Berlin districts.

On May 26, 1945 - only two and a half weeks after the capitulation - the Berliner Philharmoniker improvised their first concert after the war in the Steglitz Titania Palace with Tchaikovsky's 4th Symphony , which was conducted by Leo Borchard and enthusiastically celebrated by the audience. A month later, the Berlin magistrate commissioned him to lead the orchestra. This was preceded by Borchard's denunciation of the former general manager of the Prussian State Theater Heinz Tietjen , who immediately after the war received the order to direct all Berlin theaters and the Berlin Philharmonic from Colonel General Bersarin . Tietjen then lost his position and resigned from this order on June 22, 1945 (1947 denazification files Tietjen / Bundesarchiv Berlin).

On the evening of August 23, 1945, Borchard was shot dead by an American soldier when entering the American sector near the Ringbahn Bridge on Bundesplatz in Berlin-Wilmersdorf because the vehicle did not stop. The US soldiers had received orders to stop any vehicle and, if refused, to open fire immediately.

He is buried in the Steglitz cemetery (burial site: department 41 - row 2. WR C - number 14). His grave is dedicated to the city of Berlin as an honorary grave .

Works

as a librettist :

  • The Grand Inquisitor : Oratorio after Dostoyevsky by Leo Borchard for baritone, choir and orchestra. Music by Boris Blacher (1942)

as translator:

  • Nina Berberowa : Tschaikowsky: Story of a lonely life. Translated from Russian and edited by Leo Borchard. Kiepenheuer, Berlin 1938.
  • Anton Chekhov : Stories from Everyday Life. Translated from Russian and provided with a foreword by Leo Borchard. Kiepenheuer, Berlin 1938.

Sound and film documents

Record by the conductor Leo Borchard

From 1933 to 1937 Borchard recordings made with the Berlin Philharmonic for the Telefunken plate : he accompanied the singer Aulikki Rautawaara , Hans Reinmar and Marcel Wittrisch and took, among other things, the Nutcracker Suite by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky , the Peer Gynt Suite by Edvard Grieg and the Concertino for piano and orchestra by and with Jean Françaix . The French company Tahra published some of its radio recordings from June 1945 in 2003: the overture to Oberon by Carl Maria von Weber , the fantasy overture Romeo and Juliet by Tchaikovsky and the symphonic poem Stenka Rasin by Alexander Glasunow .
Film recordings from the mid-1930s show Borchard with the Staatskapelle Berlin as the conductor of works by Jacques Offenbach and Johann Strauss (son) .

Honors

  • In 1943 Gottfried von Eine dedicated his Capriccio for Orchestra, Op. 2 : “Dedicated to Leo Borchard in friendship”. Borchard also conducted the world premiere with the Berliner Philharmoniker on March 11, 1943.
  • In October 1988, a Berlin memorial plaque was unveiled on the home of Andreas-Friedrich and Borchard .
  • In April 1990 the music school in the Berlin district of Steglitz was named Leo Borchard Music School . Today it is considered the largest music school in Germany.
  • In September 1995, the Berlin Philharmonic under Claudio Abbado dedicated a festival concert to its former conductor .

literature

  • Ruth Andreas-Friedrich : The shadow man. Diary entries 1938–1945 . Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 1947. (New edition with afterword by Jörg Drews, 1986, ISBN 3-518-37767-1 )
  • Andrej Kusakin: Symphonie emphatique or: A life in four movements and an epilogue: on the 60th anniversary of the death of the conductor Leo Borchard. In: Berliner Philharmoniker: the magazine. Berlin Sept./Oct. 2005, pp. 53-55.
  • Matthias Sträßner : The conductor Leo Borchard: an unfinished career. Transit-Buchverlag, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-88747-144-X .
  • Matthias Sträßner: The conductor who did not play: Leo Borchard 1899–1945 . Lukas Verlag for Art and Intellectual History, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-86732-272-0 .

Web links

Commons : Leo Borchard  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Program booklet Philharmonic State Orchestra Hamburg. 2nd / 3rd February 1969.
  2. ^ Holger Huebner: The memory of the city. Argon, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-87024-379-1 .
  3. ^ Matthias Sträßner: The conductor Leo Borchard. Berlin 1999, pp. 271-273.
  4. ↑ Review of CD Tah 520 (in English)
  5. ↑ an.org
  6. ↑ Gedenkenafeln-in-berlin.de
  7. ↑ musikschule-steglitz-zehlendorf.de ( Memento of the original from September 7, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.musikschule-steglitz-zehlendorf.de
  8. ↑ berliner-zeitung.de
  9. ↑ Review by Peter Sühring on info-netz-musik , June 6, 2018; accessed on June 6, 2018
personal data
SURNAME Borchard, Leo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Borchard, Lev Levitsch
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian conductor and brief head of the Berlin Philharmonic
DATE OF BIRTH March 31, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Moscow
DATE OF DEATH August 23, 1945
Place of death Berlin