Maria Grevesmühl

Maria Grevesmühl (* 1936 in Bremen ; † October 28, 1996 in Bremen) was a German violinist and university lecturer .

biography

Origin, private life and occupation

Grevesmühl was born as the youngest child of the famous concert master and music teacher Hermann Grevesmühl and grew up in a wealthy family. Through her father, she came into contact with the violin at an early age and was trained on this instrument. She played - sometimes as a soloist - in her father's youth chamber orchestra. In December 1952 the Weser-Kurier praised her performance of Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 5 in A major and certified the then 15-year-old that she had "again demonstrated her talent, but also her further perfection". Evidently, in February 1956, she belonged to the Diepholz / Vechta district orchestra and “received stormy applause for her virtuoso playing.” In the following years she often appeared as a soloist and also made guest appearances abroad. In April 1968 she premiered a sonata by Otto Busch (* 1901) at the 21st Waage concert in Bremen .

In the end, however, she decided to turn to the teaching profession. In 1972 she bought a Stradivari violin from the year 1694 ("ex Muir-McKenzie") from the Bremen dealer Dietmar Machold for 200,000 German marks . She then worked for more than 20 years at the Conservatory of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen and at the Bremen University of the Arts as a music professor. There she was first concertmaster in Hans Joachim Kauffmann's orchestra before founding her own chamber orchestra for her students in the 1980s . Between 1987 and October 1993, Grevesmühl was President of the Mainz- based European String Teachers Association (ESTA) and, in 1988 and 1989, she was also a member of the jury at the International Violin Competition of the Hohenlohe Cultural Foundation , which is held in Schöntal Monastery . She also belonged to the board of trustees of Dr. Ernst Koch Foundation (today: ESTA Foundation for young string players), from which she also left in October 1993 at her own request.

She remained childless and unmarried.

death

In the evening hours of October 28, 1996, Grevesmühl died as a result of falling down stairs at the Bremen- Schönebeck train station , after having taken the regional train home from the city center after an evening rehearsal ( Edvard Grieg's From Holberg's time ). She suffered a fractured skull base and very serious facial injuries. She found jewelry and cash in her handbag, but the Stradivarius had been stolen, so investigators were quick to suspect a crime. The police station 31 of the Criminal Police was active with a 14-member homicide commission and a reward of 60,000 DM was offered for clues. The case attracted a great deal of attention nationwide and was widely received in the media. On November 6, 1996, Grevesmühl was buried in the Alt- Aumund cemetery .

Legal and media processing

The investigation was accompanied by a camera team from Radio Bremen , which recorded for the documentary film series Unter deutscher Dächern. Two days after the crime - in the presence of the journalists - the Romanian Marin Boaca (* 1965) was arrested as a suspect. He had tried to sell the violin to a fender in Bremen . This informed the police. Boaca had already appeared several times as a bag and shoplifter to the police, had a criminal record for robbery and bodily harm, and had been expelled or deported several times and then returned to Germany. When the officers found a business card from Grevesmühl's student Vasile Dárnea , Boaca stated that he had only acted on his behalf. The media representatives also secretly recorded this statement and a later interrogation . They also attended the autopsy of the victim and the house search of Dárnea's apartment. In the course of this, they integrated private photos and videos of him into their film. During the recording, the police harassed Dárnea massively because they saw him as the main behind the scenes. This view was shared by many representatives of the press. The student was quickly judged by the media .

However, Boaca became increasingly entangled in contradictions. So he initially claimed to have pushed the teacher, but then revised his statement to have only taken the violin from her. She must have stumbled in shock. Three months after his arrest, the violin student Dárnea was released from pretrial detention after 13 weeks for lack of urgent suspicion . The criminal chamber II of the Bremen Regional Court - before which the hearing was to take place later - had found that two house searches accompanied by television were unlawful because there was no judicial order and there was no imminent danger. The Hamburg Regional Court also ruled that several passages of the film Der Fall Stradivari, produced by Radio Bremen , may not be broadcast. On 28 May 1997, the report by was Dirk Blumenthal first time in the First sent.

Dárneas defense attorney accused the police in his closing argument that individual officers had "let themselves be carried away by the drama staged by television" and had "succumbed to the suggestion of a drama that she [the police] helped to create".

On May 15, 1998, Boaca was sentenced to 13 years imprisonment for robbery resulting in death , following the prosecution's request . The Dárnea court, for which three years' imprisonment had been requested, acquitted. An appeal by the public prosecutor against this was rejected in November 1998.

In the same year Margot Overath produced the radio feature Raub der Stradivari - The story of a young violinist under false suspicions for Radio Bremen , NDR , WDR , ORB and SFB .

Publications

• Foreword to: Wolf-Dietrich Eulitz : Motor skills and biomechanics of the violin vibrato and finger attachment - the playing muscular synkinesis and work physiological criteria of the left violinist's hand . Self-published , Berlin 1994, ISBN 978-3-9806152-0-4 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ "Three concerts on the weekend". In: Weser-Kurier , 8th year, № 278, December 2, 1952, page 6.
2. ↑ Bernhard Heimann ( Ed. ): "Illustrated Chronicle of the Men's Choir, Citizens Association Table of 1860 Dinklage". 1985, page 222. Retrieved from maennergesangverein.wordpress.com on January 3, 2017.
3. ↑ “A week of Bremen's cultural life”. In: Delmenhorster Kreisblatt , May 8, 1968. Retrieved from archivio.piccoloteatro.org on January 3, 2017.
4. ↑ Roger Graham Hargrave: Presentation of the Stradivari violin "ex Muir-McKenzie" . In The Strad , December 1985, pp. 126-132. Retrieved from roger-hargrave.de on March 17, 2016.
5. ↑ Die Tageszeitung , 1996.
6. ^ List of presidents of the European String Teachers Association. ( Memento of the original from January 2, 2017 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. Retrieved from esta-de.de on January 2, 2017. 
7. ↑ Overview of the jury members of the different events of the International Violin Competition of the Hohenlohe Cultural Foundation . ( Memento of the original of July 29, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved from violinwettbewerb.de on January 2, 2017. 
8. ^ Information on the 20th International ESTA Congress, October 1993 in St. Moritz. Retrieved from esta-de.de on January 3, 2017.
9. ↑ Bruno Schrep: "The sweet tone of the Stradivari". ( Memento of the original from March 24, 2016 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. In Der Spiegel , № 47/1996, November 18, 1996, pages 90–92. Retrieved from spiegel.de ( Spiegel Online ) on March 17, 2016. 
10. ↑ ^{a b c d} Gisela Friedrichsen : “A jumble of information”. In: Der Spiegel , № 22/1998, May 25, 1998, pages 127–129. Retrieved from spiegel.de ( Spiegel Online ) on March 17, 2016.
11. ^ David Schoenbaum : The Violin. A Social History of the World's Most Versatile Instrument . WW Norton & Company , New York City , 2012, ISBN 978-0-393-08440-5 , 212.