Leo Kestenberg

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Leo Kestenberg at the piano, 1905

Leo Kestenberg (born November 27, 1882 in Rosenberg , Austria-Hungary , † January 13, 1962 in Tel Aviv , Israel ) was a German-Israeli pianist , music teacher and cultural politician .

Live and act

childhood and education

Kestenberg was born the son of a Jewish cantor in Rózsahegy / Rosenberg in what was then the Kingdom of Hungary of the Habsburg monarchy. When he was four years old, the family moved to Prague and from there two years later to Reichenberg . Kestenberg received his first piano lessons from his father, then in 1894/95 from music director Gustav Albrecht in Zittau . His school closed Kestenberg after completing the lower secondary school with GCSEs from. At the age of 15 he began to study piano with Franz Kullak in Berlin . The meeting in 1898 with Ferruccio Busoni , with whom and whose family he had a close friendship, led to a decisive turning point in his artistic life. After piano lessons with José Vianna da Motta , Hermann Scholtz and Felix Draeseke , Kestenberg attended a master class by Busoni in Weimar in 1900 and dealt with the works of Bach , Schumann and above all Liszt . In the same year he joined the military band in Josefsstadt and began his concert activities in Reichenberg as a soloist in Liszt 's Concerto in E flat major . He became musical advisor to the Volksbühne Berlin , piano teacher at the Stern Conservatory and the Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatory in Berlin, and began his work in the educational committees of the Social Democratic Party , which he had joined in 1900, and published in the Socialist monthly books .

Berlin

Berlin memorial plaque on the house, Barstrasse 12, in Berlin-Wilmersdorf

In January 1906 Kestenberg gave his first piano recital in Berlin and became a sought-after and acclaimed Liszt interpreter.

In 1908 he married Grete Kussel , with whom he had two daughters.

Kestenberg began his professional career as a concert pianist, which was ultimately crowned with a professorship for piano at the Berlin University of Music from 1921 to 1929. However, this did not suppress his commitment to cultural policy. Since 1905 he has organized numerous artistic events as part of the social democratic workers 'associations and unions in the Free Volksbühne and the Arbeiter-Sängerbund, gave workers' concerts and campaigned for the democratization of the arts. His involvement in the popular education project of the Kroll Opera (1927–1930), his participation in Paul Cassirer's art magazine Der Bildermann (1916) and his support for the “Commission for exemplary workers' furniture” (1912) served this purpose.

In 1918 Kestenberg joined the Prussian Ministry of Culture as a research assistant , was appointed advisor in the art department in 1920 and headed the music department of the “Central Institute for Education and Teaching”. Here he devoted himself not only to the modernization and professionalization of school music education, but also directed the entire Prussian appointment policy for the Berlin theaters and orchestras. In his book Music Education and Music Care (1921) he first set up an overall educational plan from kindergarten to university and on folk music care, which then formed the basis for the "Memorandum on All Music Care in School and People" (1923) requested by the Prussian state parliament . With the support of the non-party Minister of Education, Carl Heinrich Becker , he was able to carry out important educational reforms in Prussia ( Kestenberg reform ). Just a few days after his 50th birthday, Kestenberg was put into temporary retirement on December 1, 1932 for political reasons.

Prague

Immediately after the handover of power to the National Socialists , Kestenberg emigrated to Prague in 1933, where he was able to reactivate his Czechoslovak citizenship. Immediately after his arrival there he made contact with Foreign Minister Kamil Krofta and with the German emigrant circles (Oskar Kokoschka, Willy Haas, Ernst Bloch, Golo Mann) and Max Brod from Prague . Here, however, he soon got caught between the fronts of the more nationalistic Czech music education in contrast to the existing tendency of increasing international opening. When the “Society for Music Education” was founded in Prague in 1934, he therefore took over the management of the section for international relations. Kestenberg was also involved in the specialist group of former Reich German educators that was affiliated with the Association of German Teacher Emigrants .

In autumn 1938 Kestenberg had to flee again from the National Socialists and came to Paris, where he wanted to continue the “International Society for Music Education” founded in Prague with the help of friends and colleagues. The politically increasingly threatening situation in Europe prompted him to emigrate again at the end of 1938 and move to Tel Aviv .

Tel Aviv

Memorial plaque for Leo Kestenberg on the house where he lived in Tel Aviv (20 Adam HaCohen Street)

In Tel Aviv he initially took over the position of general manager of the Palestine Orchestra , which had been founded by Heinrich Simon and the violinist Bronisław Huberman with immigrant musicians. However, this activity meant a purely administrative task that was alien to him as a creative artist and active educational politician. Already after a few years there were tensions between him and the orchestra musicians, so that after six years he gave up this position and devoted himself entirely to music pedagogical work with the establishment of a general music education in his new home, which was still being established. The most important result of this endeavor was the founding of a seminar for music educators (Midrasha le mechanchim leMusica) in 1945, which was continued as an independent Music Teacher College and was incorporated in the Levinsky College of Education in Tel Aviv in the 1980s and continues in this form to this day. In addition to teaching at Midrasha, he taught many private students (including Menahem Pressler , "Sigi" (Alexis) Weissenberg , Hadassah Brill, Rina Braverman, Ricci Horenstein). In 1953 he was elected first honorary president of the newly founded International Society for Music Education (ISME) because of his services to music education . In the same year he came again for a short visit to Berlin and Badenweiler.

Cultural-political significance

Socialism and art

During his school days in Reichenberg, Kestenberg came into contact with the socialist labor movement and its ideas of equality and human dignity. From an early age he linked the belief in socialism with the importance of music, which must be imparted to all people as an experience that lifts them up beyond the hardships of everyday life. From this root grew all of his educational work, especially his programmatic work in the labor movement, the trade unions and the Freie Volksbühne. Here he developed the idea of ​​a general popular education, which then finally led to the reform approaches in educational work as a music consultant in the Prussian Ministry of Culture in the 1920s.

Music educational reforms

As Ministerialrat, Kestenberg was responsible for music affairs at all major stages and orchestras and conducted the appointment negotiations with Arnold Schönberg , Hans Pfitzner , Wilhelm Furtwängler and Otto Klemperer, among others , as well as with the musicological professors at the Prussian universities. In this way he decisively determined the music policy in Prussia.

The reforms of the school and music school system initiated by Kestenberg since 1922 were aimed at a technical consolidation of music lessons through an intensive professionalization of music teacher training. New guidelines for teaching in elementary, middle and high schools (1924–1927) were issued as a result of new examination regulations for the artistic teaching post (1922) and for private tuition (1925). For instrumental and school music teachers, the training was academicized and initially assigned to the universities of music and musicological seminars. This resulted in an incipient equality of music pedagogues with academic teachers and meant an educational policy upgrade of the subject. At the same time, the scientific, artistic and pedagogical training of music teachers was established, the basic features of which continue to have an effect up to the present day.

The search for new roots in the years of exile led Kestenberg to overcome a national egoism and gave rise to his cosmopolitan internationalism. This turn was heralded during the years of exile in Prague with the establishment of an International Society for Music Education in 1934, which can be seen as the forerunner of the International Society for Music Education (ISME). The internationalism of his thoughts and actions is reflected in his extensive correspondence. There is hardly a well-known intellectual, artist and scientist in the first half of the 20th century with whom Kestenberg did not maintain an intellectual exchange. In the last years of his life in Tel Aviv his original Judaism came to the fore again. Out of inner conviction he became an Israeli citizen immediately after the proclamation of the State of Israel in 1948 and continued his music education work in and for the new State of Israel.

Honors

In recognition of his life's achievements, the music school in the Berlin district of Tempelhof-Schöneberg bears the name Leo Kestenberg Music School .

On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the founding of the Society for Music Education in Prague, the music school organized a benefit concert as a Leo Kestenberg project on March 25, 2014 in the chamber music hall of the Berlin Philharmonic .

On November 27, 2017 , a Berlin memorial plaque was unveiled at his former home, Berlin-Wilmersdorf , Barstrasse 12 .

Fonts

  • Leo Kestenberg: Collected writings in 4 volumes and 2 partial volumes. ed. by Wilfried Gruhn, Freiburg 2009–2013.
  • Leo Kestenberg (ed.): Art and technology. Berlin 1930, again at epOs-Music , Osnabrück 1999
  • Ph. A. Maxwell (Eds.): Leo Kestenberg & Franz W. Beidler, Complete Correspondence 1933–1956, online press 2013

literature

  • G. Batel: Leo Kestenberg. Pianist - piano teacher - cultural organizer - reformer of music education. (= Important music educators. Volume 1). Wolfenbüttel 1989.
  • G. Braun: School music education in Prussia from the Falk regulations to the Kestenberg reform. Kassel 1957.
  • S. Fontaine, U. Mahlert, D. Schenk, T. Weber-Lucks (Eds.): Leo Kestenberg. Music pedagogue and music politician in Berlin, Prague and Tel Aviv. Freiburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-7930-9461-6 .
  • W. Gruhn: We have to learn to dance in chains. Leo Kestenberg's life between art and cultural politics . Hofheim 2015, ISBN 978-3-95593-062-2 .
  • Moritz von Bredow: rebellious pianist. The life of Grete Sultan between Berlin and New York. Schott Music , Mainz 2012, ISBN 978-3-7957-0800-9 . (Biography. Many references to Leo Kestenberg and Berlin's musical life)

Web links

Commons : Leo Kestenberg  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Leo Kestenberg. Vita. Leo Kestenberg Project, accessed October 24, 2011 .
  2. ↑ Hildegard Feidel-Mertz / Hermann Schnorbach : teachers in emigration. The Association of German Emigrant Teachers (1933–39) in the traditional context of the democratic teachers' movement , Beltz Verlag, Weinheim and Basel, 1981, ISBN 3-407-54114-7 , p. 331
  3. ↑ Leo Kestenberg Music School (LKM)
personal data
SURNAME Kestenberg, Leo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Israeli cultural politician, pianist and music teacher
DATE OF BIRTH November 27, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Ružomberok
DATE OF DEATH January 13, 1962
Place of death Tel Aviv