Max von Schillings

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Max von Schillings on a photograph by Nicola Perscheid

Max von Schillings (born April 19, 1868 in Düren in the Rhineland, † July 24, 1933 in Berlin ) was a German composer , conductor and theater manager .

Life

Schillings was the grandson of Timotheus Josef Schillings, who laid out the Schillingspark in Gürzenich at the beginning of the 19th century. In Bonn , Max Schillings received his first music lessons in addition to his school education. His teachers were Caspar Joseph Brambach and Otto von Königslöw . In Munich he studied law first , then philosophy in 1889/90 .

On October 1, 1892, Schillings married his cousin Caroline Josefa Peill in Römlinghoven . The marriage ended in divorce in 1923. In Berlin-Charlottenburg he married the opera singer Barbara Kemp (1881-1959) on June 11, 1923 .

After assisting at the Bayreuth Festival in 1892 , he worked as a conductor and music teacher in Munich. He was appointed professor on February 16, 1903 by the Royal Bavarian State Ministry of the Interior . His students included Paul von Klenau , Wilhelm Furtwängler and Robert Heger . Frederick Delius dedicated his composition Sea Drift (1903/04, text: Walt Whitman ) to him.

From 1908 to 1918 Schillings held the position of general music director at the Royal Court Theater in Stuttgart .

In 1910 Schillings got into the headlines privately: he arranged for his mother-in-law and aunt Wilhelmine Peill-Schillings (~ 1830–1913) to be admitted to the closed department of the Ehrenwall'schen private mental institution in Ahrweiler. Schillings wanted to incapacitate the old lady because she had appointed the Barmer merchant and patron Conrad Albert Ursprung (1856–1932) to be her asset manager. The lawyer Paul Elmer, who at the time was campaigning for a reform of the German law on the insane, discussed the case in an educational pamphlet entitled Money and the Madhouse (1914).

From 1919 to 1925 worked Schilling to succeed his longtime friend Richard Strauss as general intendant of the Prussian State Opera in Berlin . From 1924 to 1932 he was also musical director of the urban forest opera Ostseebad Soppot . From 1925 he went on concert tours through Europe and the USA as a guest conductor .

Max von Schillings was an opponent of the Weimar Republic and a declared anti-Semite . As successor to Max Liebermann , he was elected President of the Prussian Academy of the Arts in Berlin in 1932 "in an act of anticipatory adaptation" (according to the Academy of the Arts 1996) and held office there until his death in July 1933.

After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists , he became a member of the NSDAP on April 1, 1933 (No. 1.774.590). On April 10, 1933, as a private citizen, in a petition to the Justice Minister of Prussia, Hanns Kerrl , he denounced Alfred Baum's attorney as a Jew in order to obtain his release. During his tenure as President of the Prussian Academy of the Arts, the forced resignations and exclusions of important Jewish and unadapted artists ( Käthe Kollwitz , Heinrich Mann , Ricarda Huch , Alfred Döblin , Thomas Mann , Max Liebermann , Alfons Paquet , Franz Werfel , Jakob Wassermann ) began. Max von Schillings also dismissed two important composition teachers: he urged Arnold Schönberg to resign from his contract - which was actually for life - and he forced Franz Schreker into retirement. However, he also unsuccessfully interceded for the actor Albert Bassermann . One month before Schillings' death, on June 13, 1933 , Adolf Hitler conferred with him and the architects Paul Schultze-Naumburg and German Bestelmeyer about the whereabouts of such works of art, which in the eyes of the National Socialists were considered " degenerate " and not destroyed, but should be housed as “ monuments of a German decay in special rooms ”.

From March 1933 until his death, Schillings was also director of the Berlin City Opera . He died of a pulmonary embolism as a result of colon cancer surgery. His urn was buried in the main cemetery in Frankfurt am Main (crypt 48 - Brentano / Schillings).

Max von Schillings was the brother of the photographer Carl Georg Schillings . Her parents were Carl Xaverius Hubertus Schillings and Johanna Antonia Brentano (1839-1885).

See also

plant

Schillings composed stage and vocal works, orchestral and chamber music. His works, which are in the tradition of Richard Wagner , are largely forgotten today. Occasionally his melodrama Das Hexenlied (1902/03, based on the ballad of the same name by Ernst von Wildenbruch ) is performed. With this showpiece for charismatic reciters like Ernst von Possart and Ludwig Wüllner , Schillings, even more than Humperdinck and Richard Strauss, contributed to a renaissance of melodrama. Later the witch's song a . a. interpreted by Martha Mödl and Wolfgang Büttner . The witch's song was filmed in 1910. In 1907 Schillings took the witch's song and the prelude to the III. Act of his opera “Der Pfeifertag” on rolls for the Welte-Mignon reproduction piano .

Schillings' operas have so far not been able to be reintegrated into the repertoire of music theater. Only Mona Lisa (libretto by Beatrice Dovsky , premiered in 1915 in Stuttgart), one of the most played pieces in Germany at the time, is now occasionally on the repertoire, for example at the Kiel Opera (here also CD production by the cpo label ) or at the Braunschweig State Theater .

Honors

Compositions (selection)

Stage works

Operas

Incidental music

Vocal compositions

For voice (s)

  • The transfigured (op. 21; 1905). An anthemic rhapsody for mixed choir, baritone and large orchestra
  • Bell songs (op.22)

Melodramas

  • Two melodramas (op. 9; 1900) for speaker and piano (dedicated to Ernst von Possart). Texts: Friedrich Schiller
1.  Kassandra - 2.  The Eleusian Festival
  • Das Hexenlied ( op.15 ; 1902/03) for speaker and orchestra (or piano). Text: Ernst von Wildenbruch
  • Jung-Olaf (op. 28; 1914). Ballad for speaker and orchestra (or piano). Text: Ernst von Wildenbruch

Orchestral works

  • Greetings from the Sea and Sea Morning (op. 6; 1895). Two symphonic fantasies. Premiere February 7, 1896 Munich (conductor: Richard Strauss)
  • A Dialogue (Op. 8; 1897) for violin, violoncello and chamber orchestra
  • Violin Concerto in A minor (op.25; 1910) premiered January 20, 1910 (Felix Berber in Berlin, to whom the work was dedicated)
  • Tanz der Blumen (WoO; 1930) for chamber orchestra

Chamber music

  • String Quartet in E minor (1887/1906)
  • String Quintet in E flat major (op.32; 1917)
  • Four piano pieces (op. 36; 1932)

literature

  • Roswitha Schlötterer-Traimer:  Schillings, Max Emil Julius von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 22, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-428-11203-2 , p. 772 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Christian Detig: German art, German nation - the composer Max von Schillings . Kassel: Bosse 1998 (= Cologne contributions to music research, vol. 201). ISBN 3-7649-2633-3
  • Franz Joseph Hall, Monika Rothmaier-Szúdy and Manfred Schnabel: Max von Schillings: Contributions to a biography . Düren: Hahne & Schloemer 1996. ISBN 3-927312-21-5
  • Roswitha Schlötterer (ed.): Richard Strauss - Max von Schillings: an exchange of letters . Pfaffenhofen: Ludwig 1987. ISBN 3-7787-2087-2
  • Dieter Kühn: Max von Schillings . In: Ders., Löwenmusik: Essays . Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1979 (edition suhrkamp 984) ISBN 3-518-10984-7
  • Josef Geuenich and Karl Strahn (eds.): Commemorative publication Prof. Dr. phil. hc Max von Schillings, composer and conductor; On the 100th birthday April 19, 1968 . Düren: Düren History Association 1968
  • Wilhelm Raupp: Max von Schillings: the fight of a German artist . Hamburg: Hanseatic Publishing House 1935
  • Joachim Beck: Max von Schillings: Complete list of his works . Berlin: [B. v. Schillings] 1934
  • August Richard: Max Schillings . Munich: Drei-Masken-Verlag 1922 (contemporary composers. 7)
  • Paul Elmer: Money and the madhouse: based on records; Contributions for the necessity of legal protection of personal freedom. [A critical consideration of the internment and incapacitation of Mrs. Wilhelmine Peill-Schillings] . Berlin: Rosenthal 1914
  • R. Louis: Max Schillings . In: Monographs of Modern Musicians, Vol. 3. Leipzig: Kahnt 1909

Documents

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.aachener-zeitung.de/lokales/dueren/mona-lisa-turm-ein-ort-der-erammlung-und-des-schaffens-1.1198083
  2. ↑ Short biography of Conrad Albert Ursprung on the website of the district of Barmen ( Memento of the original from March 9, 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. ; Dietrich Kämper : Conrad Albert Ursprung jr. , in: Karl Gustav Fellerer (Ed.): Rhenish musicians. 5th episode . A. Volk, Cologne 1967, pp. 129-130 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.barmen-200-jahre.de
  3. ↑ Fred K. Prieberg : Handbook of German Musicians 1933–1945 , CD-Rom-Lexikon, Kiel 2004, pp. 6.112–6.113.
  4. ^ Angelika Königseder, Law and National Socialist Rule: Berlin Lawyers 1933-1945 . Bonn 2001, ISBN 3-8240-0528-X , p. 248.
  5. ↑ Fred K. Prieberg: Handbuch , p. 6114.
  6. ↑ Quote from Fred K. Prieberg: Handbuch , p. 6.113.
  7. ↑ Chronicle of the Pfeifer family , around 1975 (only published in the family circle)
  8. ↑ Gerd Dangel and Hans W. Schmitz, Welte-Mignon piano rolls, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-00-017110-X
personal data
SURNAME Schillings, Max von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German composer, conductor and theater manager
DATE OF BIRTH April 19, 1868
PLACE OF BIRTH Düren in the Rhineland
DATE OF DEATH July 24, 1933
Place of death Berlin