Leo Roth (Cantor)

Leo Roth (* 1921 in Graz ; † 2004 in Baden-Baden ) was an Austrian chasan .

Youth and Exile

Leo Roth was born in Graz in 1921. His family was of Polish-Jewish origin . After Austria was annexed to the German Reich in mid-March 1938, the previously existing anti-Semitic hostility, discrimination, marginalization and violent incidents in his homeland intensified : discrimination against people of Jewish faith and of Jewish origin was openly the goal of state action in the so-called Ostmark . In 1938, Roth was one of those who could be protected from further persecution by a children's transport to Great Britain . After a short stay, however, like some other exiled children, he was re-embarked for Canada . An odyssey followed, which instead ended in Australia . Roth was interned in a camp , but was then able to travel on to his parents, who had meanwhile emigrated to Shanghai . Roth's friend Kurt Rudolf Fischer , who was also able to emigrate to Shanghai with his parents after the outbreak of World War II, later described:

“After arriving in Shanghai, the emigrants separated into two groups: Those who had some money moved to the so-called Frenchtown or the International Settlement - districts with extra-territorial rights in which the Chinese administration, or at that time the Japanese administration, was eliminated were. The second group, without money, had to move to Hongkew and needed support. Hongkew was a suburb of Shanghai under Japanese sovereignty with miserable hygienic and sanitary conditions. "

Roth's family were among those who could economically afford to live in the extraterritorial zone. Leo Roth enrolled as a student of biology . From mid-1943, however, the Japanese occupation forces had all Jews who had come to Shanghai after 1937 move into their own ghetto. Since 1944, the ghetto came unintentionally under attack by US troops. When it was liberated on September 3, 1945, the Roth family returned to Austria via Great Britain.

Chasan

Persecution and exile had helped Leo Roth turn to the Jewish religion . So he initially held the church service in his native Graz. While in Shanghai, Kurt Rudolf Fischer noticed that Leo Roth “had an excellent singing voice”. Roth was therefore soon appointed to Vienna as the first cantor of the Jewish community away from Graz. In 1957 he moved to Berlin on recruitment from Heinz Galinski . It was easier for him as an Austrian than for a German to cross the border between the Federal Republic and West Berlin on the one hand and the German Democratic Republic and East Berlin on the other. Therefore, like Estrongo Nachama, he soon worked as a chasan in synagogues on both sides of the border, such as the Rykestraße synagogue in Prenzlauer Berg and the Pestalozzistraße synagogue in Berlin-Charlottenburg and the Fraenkelufer synagogue in Berlin-Kreuzberg.

Care of synagogue music

With his tenor voice, Leo Roth gradually acquired an extensive repertoire of solo and concert synagogue music. For years, his performances were an integral part of the Sabbath broadcasts by both the ( West Berlin ) broadcaster Free Berlin and the ( East Berlin ) Berliner Rundfunk . In addition, he created an extensive archive of synagogue music on the media of the time, which was not only published by West and East German publishers for the German-speaking area, but also occasionally in southern Europe, Latin and North America. He performed particularly frequently in the Pestalozzistraße synagogue with its choirmaster and organist Harry Foss and together with the Leipzig Synagogal Choir, founded by Chief Cantor Werner Sander and later directed by Helmut Klotz , and with the Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra . In 1978 Roth took part in the renewed edition of a study by the Berlin chasan Aron Friedmann on synagogue chants.

Retirement

Leo Roth spent his last years in Baden-Baden, where he died in 2004.

Discography (selection)

More than 50 works by and with Leo Roth are available in over 100 publications and eight languages, including:

• Masterpieces of the synagogue OCLC 45999053 OCLC 317634136 OCLC 729993265
• Treasures of Jewish Folklore OCLC 3495139 OCLC 725737313 OCLC 707191528 OCLC 80609448
• Kol Nidre: Sacred Music of the Synagogue OCLC 34179116
• Twelve large chants OCLC 608020320 OCLC 725465391
• Canciones populares Israelitas OCLC 68746448
• Canciones folkloricas Judias OCLC 34388490
• Hear Israel ...: 23 Chants of the Sabbath and Holidays OCLC 711833156
• Music of the Jewish people OCLC 6697998
• The Leipziger Synagogalchor in aid of the reconstruction of the Dresden Synagogue OCLC 313777127

Honorary positions

Leo Roth was a founding member and, until his death, a member of the Orpheus Trust, a foundation with an important collection of information on musicians with ties to Austria who were persecuted and expelled by the Nazi regime.

media

Sound files of parts or entire performances by Leon Roth are free of charge. a. available here:

• Kol Nidre
• Kaddish (MP3; 5.2 MB)
• various

Web links

• Literature by and about Leo Roth in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Kurt Rudolf Fischer: Emigration to Shanghai , pp. 487-498 in: Friedrich Stadler (Ed.): Displaced Reason I Emigration - Exil - Continuity , Vol. 1, LIT Verlag Münster, 2004. ISBN 978-3-82587-3 -721
2. ↑ Leo Roth's report in: Steve Hochstadt: Shanghai stories: the Jewish flight to China . Hentrich & Hentrich, 2007, ISBN 978-3-938485-50-7
3. ↑ Website of the Synagogue Pestalozzistraße Berlin-Charlottenburg ( Memento of the original from January 3, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
4. ↑ Jew. General Weekly newspaper 2009: Memory of Cantor Leo Roth 1983 in the Fraenkelufer Synagogue
5. ^ HaGalil: In memory of Harry Foss and Leo Roth: The sublimity of the human voice .
6. ↑ haGalil: In memory of Harry Foss: Accompany and raise the human voice .
7. ↑ American Jewish Yearbook 1971, p. 397 Leo Roth under Werner Sander in the Leipziger Synagogalchor (pdf, English)
8. ↑ Helmut Klotz in an interview: In 1969 stepped in for Leo Roth who was ill
9. ↑ Festschrift 50 Years of the Leipziger Synagogalchor (with illus. By Leo Roth and Werner Sander) (PDF; 3.2 MB)
10. ^ Aron Friedmann: Synagogal Chants. A study. For the 100th birthday of Salomon Sulzer and the 10th anniversary of the death of Louis Lewandowski (1904) along with their bibliographies , presented by Aron Friedmann, Haupt-Cantor of the Jewish. Parish of Berlin and Kgl. Music director. Second, much expanded edition. Berlin, C. Boas, 1908. Photomechanical reprint of the original Berlin 1908 edition from the copy in the German State Library Berlin. Edited with afterword and registers by Leo Roth and Richard Campbell in conjunction with Helmut Aris. Leipzig 1978. Edition Peters
11. ↑ Online Computer Library Center: Leo Roth (but also assignments to other people of the same name)  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
12. ↑ Orpheus Trust: Activity Report 2004