Luise Greger

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Luise Greger

Luise Greger, née Sumpf (born December 27, 1862 in Greifswald , † January 26, 1944 in Merxhausen Monastery ) was a German composer and singer.

Life

Childhood in Greifswald

Luise Greger was born in Greifswald on December 27, 1862 as the youngest of four children of Greifswald entrepreneur and Senator August Sumpf. She took piano lessons from the age of five and began composing independently at the age of eleven . The Greifswald music teacher Carl Ludwig Bemmann (1807-1893), a friend of Carl Loewes (1796-1896), gave her piano and composition lessons and soon had them perform in public. He promoted Luise Gregers talent, so that an early song album with 18 settings from compositions by the 13- to 16-year-old Luise Greger was created, which appeared in four editions while she was still alive.

Before she could refine her compositional techniques, Luise Greger accompanied her sick mother for a year on a trip to Italy and Switzerland. This marked the beginning of a period of great journeys which took her to all countries in Europe and the nearer East . This played a special role in the life of the composer, as in this way she brought her art together with interesting people everywhere. “During her stay in Pallanza on Lake Maggiore, she made music every evening for three weeks in the salon of 70-year-old Alfred Krupp , who was also there to relax, and among others she was on friendly terms with Julie von Bothwell, Carl Loewe's daughter."

Berlin years

In the 1880s she attended the Königliche Musikhochschule in Berlin , which she had to leave after a year for health reasons. The conditions for female students at that time were bad anyway. Your fellow student, the Berlin painter Sabine Lepsius reports:

“In addition to violin lessons, the music college's curriculum included counterpoint, music history, compulsory piano lessons and orchestral lessons. The theory lesson went on with such slowness and pedantry that I got stuck with three- and four-part movements, just as I did in the Persian Wars, and, if things had continued like this, I would not have been able to get to the joint until my 50th anniversary . I felt betrayed. I wanted to compose and not become a virtuoso. My disappointment was indescribable when I learned that although there was a composition class, female students would not be accepted. A world collapsed within me and a profound opposition to the order established by men rose within me. Gradually the decision matured in me to leave the university and to give me the composition lessons as best I could myself. "

Despite these conditions, Luise Greger became a professional composer with a very personal style.

In a questionnaire from the “Reichsmusikkammer - Working Committee III (Voice Training Issues)” that has been preserved in the family's possession, the following is soberly noted: “Professional title composer No. 02199”. According to the biography on the official website, Luise Greger received this professional title from Richard Strauss (1864–1949). After marrying the doctor Ludwig Greger (1860–1919) in 1888, Luise Greger came to Berlin and “took care of singing and piano playing with excellent masters”, she said she had received singing lessons from Hedwig Wolff, the sculptor's daughter Albert Wolff - who was distantly related to her on his mother's side - has been preserved [probably privately]. She had three sons, Helmuth (* 1889), Klaus (* 1892) and Reinhold (* 1898).

Composer in Kassel

In 1894 the family moved to Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe , where Luise Greger and her husband lived in Burgfeldstrasse. 17 founded a sanatorium. As the economic manager of this company, Luise Greger was only able to devote herself to composing and performing in the early morning and late evening hours. It took a few years before she could establish herself artistically. This is shown by a letter to her sister in 1902: "At the beginning of April I will take part in two concerts singing and playing, I will also receive my fee for this, and once the path is broken, it will probably take place more often". After her divorce in 1911, supported by her eldest son Helmuth, she organized salons in her Kassel apartment (today: Wilhelmshöher Allee 259) , in which she also performed as an interpreter of her numerous song compositions . Even after she had moved to the so-called "Siechenhaus Hofgeismar" in the summer of 1939, she still gave concerts on her piano occasionally. Because of a "gradually increasing senile mental disorder", as can be read in her medical file, she was transferred to the Merxhausen psychiatric institution in early December 1943 on a collective transport . Only three weeks later, on January 25, 1944, the composer died there at the age of 81 as a result of the "silent euthanasia" of National Socialism.

plant

Luise Greger composed over 100 songs, most of which she published herself and partly in several editions. Her most productive creative period extended from the late 1890s to the early 1930s. She set poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , Theodor Storm , Julius Wolff and Rudolf Baumbach, among others . She remained connected to her Pomeranian homeland for a lifetime, as numerous songs with Low German texts attest. With the large number of song compositions, it is in the tradition of the song genre. The closest to Luise Greger is probably Johannes Brahms - both in terms of harmony and the choice of textual content. The spectrum of her songs ranges from hymnal or longing exuberance to folk song-like gestures, whereby there is a musically very beautiful and productive spiritual home in a solemn or melancholy tone. She approached stage music late; the piano reduction of her fairy tale play Gänseliesel bears the opus number 170. Its successful premiere on December 10, 1933 in the Stadttheater Baden-Baden is likely to have been a special highlight in her life.

For a long time only the piano reduction of the Gänseliesel was known. For this reason, the Kassel musician Barbara Gabler re-orchestrated a longer episode of the fairy tale play. Klaus Schützmannsky worked on the libretto and devised a successful staging by simple means the forgotten Gänseliesel . The fairy tale game was staged in a new production on November 4, 2012 in Kassel. Due to the success, an extended version could be seen and heard on September 7, 2013 in the Augustinum Kassel . In November 2017, the orchestral version, believed to be lost, was found in an attic of the Kassel University Library .

The rediscovery of the composer was also enriched by the great-grandchildren's discovery of a chest full of sheet music.

New editions

All in Furore Verlag

  • Gooseies . Fairy tale game based on a text by Emilie Riedel - 1st episode: Gänseliesel on the Elfenwiese. Arranged by Barbara Gabler, libretto arrangement: Klaus Schützmannsky
  • On the wings of the night for baritone and piano
  • Spring beckons! Songs for voice and piano
  • Songs album for voice and piano
  • Malönchen for soprano and piano
  • Christmas carols for voice and piano
  • Christmas carol (Rösing) op. 13 arranged for male or female choir by Fr. Kattiofsky
  • Ten Low German songs based on poems by Hans Groß for voice and piano

Appreciation

Luise Greger gained great recognition in Germany and other European countries as a chamber singer and song composer. The "Alsace-Lorraine Federation" made her an honorary member in 1930. Her “Hymne to Alsace”, composed for a four-part choir, was performed in the Kassel town hall at the celebrations for the 10th anniversary of the federal government. In 1931, on the occasion of the commemoration of Empress Auguste Viktoria, who died in 1921, she stayed for several days in Doorn, Holland, and presented some of her compositions to the Emperor's (second) wife. In a newspaper article in the Kasseler Post on her 70th birthday on December 27, 1932, she was honored as "Germany's most important lyrical poet today". It continues: “Your songs belong to the repertoire of famous singers. Her tunes have already sounded in Dresden and Leipzig, in the Munich Odeon, in the Gürzenich Hall in Cologne and in many other cities, especially often in Kassel concerts, where among others Lulu Rötter, in earlier years especially the composer herself, who at the same time is also a singer and pianist, and won a lot of applause. [...] "

Honors

Luise Greger was at the center of the Kassel women's reception in 1993 and 2012. As part of the Northern Hesse cultural summer, a song recital in the Synodal Hall of the Evangelical Academy Hofgeismar was held on July 8, 2012 to commemorate the composer's 150th birthday. A memorial plaque decided in 1993 was realized in 2013 at Luise Greger's last place of residence and on July 20 of the same year the Kassel footpath between Niederwaldstraße and Baunsbergstraße was renamed “Luise-Greger-Weg”. On the following September 1st, 2013, another memorial plaque was attached to her former home at Wilhelmshöher Allee 259 in Kassel, in the presence of the Hessian Minister for Science and Art, Eva Kühne-Hörmann.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kasseler Post of December 27, 1932.
  2. ↑ Hessenspiegel No. 5, May 30, 1925.
  3. ^ Sabine Lepsius: An artist's life in Berlin at the turn of the century. Memories . Munich 1972.
  4. ↑ According to family information [1]
  5. ↑ Hessenspiegel No. 5, May 30, 1925.
  6. ↑ dpa news channel: Missing fairy tale opera "Mother Goose" rediscovered. www.sueddeutsche.de, November 21, 2017, accessed on August 3, 2020 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Greger, Luise
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German composer
DATE OF BIRTH December 27, 1862
PLACE OF BIRTH Greifswald
DATE OF DEATH January 26, 1944
Place of death Merxhausen Monastery