Max Sinzheimer

Max Sinzheimer (born June 20, 1894 in Frankfurt am Main , † October 16, 1977 in Elm Grove, Wisconsin) was a German-American conductor, choir director, pianist, organist and composer.

Life

Max Sinzheimer was born as the son of the businessman Siegmund Sinzheimer (1857–1927) and his wife Bertha, b. Marx (1869–1921), born. He received his first musical training in Frankfurt am Main from the organist Carl Breidenstein and from Bernhard Sekles at the Hochschen Conservatory and later studied composition with Walter Braunfels in Munich . In 1915 at the age of 21 he became a répétiteur at the Landestheater Darmstadt , in 1917 he went to the Mannheim National Theater as Kapellmeister . There he had the two renowned conductors Wilhelm Furtwängler and Felix Lederer next to him, so that as a beginner he was only responsible for the “light” muse, that is, operas and operettas. Since 1919 Sinzheimer was also the artistic director of the Jewish choral society Liederkranz. In 1920 his engagement at the theater ended. Sinzheimer stayed in Mannheim as a freelance musician, teaching and conducting the Stamitz Orchestra, which he co-founded. Here Sinzheimer also met his wife Lene Hesse-Sinzheimer (1896–1957), the orchestra's concertmaster. Sinzheimer was also involved in the Mannheim Society for New Music and conducted the Bach choir of the Evangelical Christ Church.

At the end of the 1920s, Sinzheimer also took over the management of the synagogue choir; after 1933 the Liederkranz choral society was only allowed to work in Jewish musical life. As a result of the November pogrom in 1938, Sinzheimer was imprisoned in Dachau concentration camp for almost a month before he and his wife were able to emigrate to the USA via London in March 1939 . He succeeded in establishing himself as a musician in Chicago , where he was director of the Opera and Choral Department at the American University of Music Chicago and was music director at St. Andrew Lutheran Church. His first wife Lene Hesse-Sinzheimer died in 1957, she had taught at the Chicago School of Music and had also performed as a soloist. In the 1960s, Max Sinzheimer married Gertrude Margaretha Schamber (1904–1993), also a German émigré.

After the end of the Second World War, Sinzheimer was compensated under an agreement between the state of Baden-Württemberg and the IRSO.

literature

• Herbert Meyer: Max Sinzheimer. A contribution to Mannheim's music history . In: Mannheimer Hefte, 1979, pp. 14–15.
• Karl Otto Watzinger : History of the Jews in Mannheim 1650–1945 with 52 biographies , 2nd edition, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer 1987 (publications of the Mannheim City Archives; 12), pp. 135–136.
• Susanne Schlösser: Max Sinzheimer as conductor and programmer of the Jewish men's choir Liederkranz in Mannheim 1919–1938 . in: Hermann Jung (ed.): Spurensicherung, Frankfurt am Main [u. a.]: Lang 2007 (Mannheimer Hochschulschriften; 6), pp. 285–300.
• Susanne Schlösser: "A conductor of importance": The Jewish musician Max Sinzheimer in Mannheim and while emigrating . In: Mannheimer Geschichtsblätter , Vol. 12, pp. 137–146.
• Susanne Schlösser: Max Sinzheimer , in: Claudia Maurer Zenck, Peter Petersen (eds.): Lexicon of persecuted musicians from the Nazi era, Hamburg: Universität Hamburg 2010 ( [1] ).
• Susanne Schlösser: No experiments, but truthfulness: Ernst Toch and Max Sinzheimer - two pioneers of "New Music" in Mannheim in the interwar period , Mannheim: Association of Friends of the Mannheim City Archives eV, 2010 (city history digital; 7), ISBN 978-3- 9813584-0-7 .
• Sinzheimer, Max , in: Joseph Walk (ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945 . Munich: Saur, 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 , p. 346