Max Reger Archive

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Max Reger Archive manages and presents the artistic and personal estate of the composer, pianist and conductor Max Reger (1873–1916). It also serves as a meeting place and research center for Reger friends and musicologists. The archive is housed as a department of the Meiningen museums in Schloss Elisabethenburg in Meiningen .

history

Franz Nölken : Max Reger at work. Painting, 1913

Just two weeks after Max Reger's death on May 11, 1916, his widow Elsa Reger campaigned for the preservation and presentation of her husband's artistic estate. For this purpose, their house in Jena should be prepared and maintained in the form of a foundation. After the implementation of their plans with the support of the musicians Fritz Busch and Adolf Busch , the archive was opened on July 2, 1920.

As a result of the inflation in the early 1920s, Elsa Reger could no longer hold the house in Jena. With a contract concluded on March 28, 1922 with the Thuringian Minister of Education, she left the Max Reger Archive to the State of Thuringia . The archive then moved to the Weimar Castle Museum , which was now supervised by a board of trustees . However, the widow was so dissatisfied with the presentation in the castle museum that she considered moving the archive to Munich , her new place of residence. In financial emergencies, she also repeatedly took various manuscripts and manuscripts from the archive in order to sell them. The move to Munich was averted and the quality of the archive could be increased enormously in the following years, especially under the senior government councilor Karl Dittmar.

In the mid-1930s, the first plans were made to move the Max Reger Archive to Meiningen . From 1911 to 1914, Max Reger directed the then famous Meiningen court orchestra as court conductor . Elsa Reger supported these plans, also because she had fond memories of Meiningen (quote: "... in which she and Max Reger had such deeply happy years that were successful for him and were bright thanks to Duke Georg's great grace"). Furthermore, the inauguration of the first German Reger monument in the English Garden of Meiningen on April 11, 1937 and Reger's lack of reference to Weimar spoke in favor of the move. Due to the war, the archive closed in 1942 and large parts of it were evacuated to the Holzdorf manor and to the vaults of the Deutsche Bank in Weimar.

In 1946, the Thuringian State Office for Public Education finally decided to relocate the Max Reger Archive to Schloss Elisabethenburg in Meiningen. Under the leadership of those responsible Karl Dittmar and Ottomar Güntzel , numerous transports with Reger's estate to Meiningen took place between 1946 and 1948 before the new Max Reger Archive was opened on May 9, 1948 under the direction of Ottomar Güntzel. Herta Müller headed the Max Reger Archive from 1965 to 2004 , her successor is Maren Goltz .

The German premiere of the biographical documentary Max Reger - Music as a permanent state took place in the Max Reger Archive on March 13, 2003 .

Stocks

  • Private sheet music collection with all of Max Reger's compositions and some works by other well-known composers, including Johann Sebastian Bach , Franz Liszt , Richard Wagner and Hugo Wolf .
  • 26 music autographs by Max Reger and first prints with handwritten inscriptions.
  • 74 conducting scores of orchestral works of the Classical and Romantic periods.
  • Furnishings from the study and music room, including Ibach grand piano and music cabinet.
  • Art and souvenir objects.
  • Parts of the correspondence from Max Reger and his wife Elsa Reger and personal documents.
  • numerous portraits of Max and Elsa Reger in the form of photographs, paintings and sculptures.

literature

  • Ottomar Güntzel , "The Max Reger Archive in Meiningen, its history and significance", in: Festschrift on the occasion of Max Reger's 80th birthday, ed. from the Max Reger Archive Meiningen, Leipzig 1953, pp. 85–90
  • Gerhard Ohlhoff, "Ottomar Güntzel and the Max Reger Archive in Meiningen", in: Mitteilungen des Max Reger Institute 10 (1959), pp. 34-35
  • Herta Müller , "Das Max-Reger-Archiv in Meiningen", in: Mitteilungen der Internationale Max-Reger-Gesellschaft 3 (2001), pp. 14-19 and 4 (2002), pp. 5-11
  • Ingrid Reissland / Annette Landgraf, "Herta Müller, née Oesterheld, and the Meiningen museums", in: Mitteilungen der Internationale Max-Reger-Gesellschaft 8 (2004), pp. 24–28
  • Maren Goltz , "A" little Bayreuth "for Max Reger. The beginnings of the Max Reger Archive", u. a. in: Mitteilungen der Internationale Max-Reger-Gesellschaft 11 (2005), pp. 21–24 and in DIE TONKUNST online, issue 05–09

See also

swell

  • Meiningen museums
  • Meiningen-Eisenach Cultural Foundation

Web links