Moritz Mayer-Mahr

Moritz Mayer-Mahr

Moritz Mayer-Mahr (born January 17, 1869 in Mannheim , † July 30, 1947 in Gothenburg ) was a German pianist and music teacher .

Life

Mayer-Mahr was the youngest of five children of the businessman Michael Mayer-Mahr and his wife Clara nee. Rice (s). As a schoolboy he received piano lessons. From 1886–1890 he studied composition with Woldemar Bargiel and piano with Ernst Rudorff at the Berlin University of the Arts .

Mayer-Mahr went on concert tours and appeared as a soloist, in a duo with Willy Burmester and in a trio with the cellist Heinrich Grünfeld and the violinist Bernhard Dessau , who was succeeded by Alfred Wittenberg after his death in 1923 . He admired Ferruccio Busoni , whom he knew personally. 1910–1930 he recorded a number of pieces by Franz Liszt , Frédéric Chopin and others. His late recordings were viewed with skepticism, however.

From 1892 Mayer-Mahr taught at the Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatory in Berlin . His students included Manfred Gurlitt , Georg Bertram , Jascha Spiwakowski , Henry Jolles , Lotar Olias , Erwin Bodky and Róża Etkin . In his piano schools, The Musical Piano Lessons and The Technique of Piano Playing, from the first beginnings to mastery , he was concerned with pianistic techniques and also with form and style. He edited piano pieces by Johannes Brahms and studies by Carl Czerny .

From 1907 Mayer-Mahr was one of the judges of the Ibach competition for young artists at the Stern Conservatory . He founded the Mayer-Mahr Foundation to support his students, to which he made the well-known donation presented to him on his 60th birthday.

After Hitler came to power in 1933, Mayer-Mahr lost his seat in the Senate of the Academy of Arts in Berlin because of his Jewish origins . In 1935 he was expelled from the Reich Music Chamber . In 1936 an occupational ban finally came into force. However, he was still allowed to teach foreigners and members of the Kulturbund Deutscher Juden . In 1937 he left the Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatory. In 1937 he appeared at an event of the Kulturbund Deutscher Juden with the cellist Leo Rostal of the local orchestra and the concertmaster Wladislaw Waghalter and again in 1938 for the Jewish Winter Aid . In 1938 he taught the Spanish conservatory student Ursula Reig free of charge, which brought him a lawsuit from the local musicians for violating the professional ban. The trial initially resulted in fines but was eventually dropped.

1940 Mayer-Mahr obtained for himself and his second wife Paula geb. Sternberg received the exit permit. They first went to Norway , lived briefly in Vestre Aker and fled before the occupation of Norway on to Sweden , where he taught again. His son Robert did not manage to escape, he was deported from the Drancy assembly camp to Auschwitz in 1942 and has since been considered missing.

Mayer-Mahrs Kåserier kring pianot was published in Sweden in 1943 and Serious and cheerful experiences around the piano in 1947 .

literature

• Sara Janina Lengowski: Moritz Mayer-Mahr. In: Lexicon of persecuted musicians from the Nazi era. University of Hamburg 2006 and 2014 ( lexm.uni-hamburg.de , accessed on February 16, 2016).

Individual evidence

1. ^ W. Behrend: Mayer-Mahr, Moritz . In: Johannes Brøndum-Nielsen, Palle Raunkjær (ed.): Salmonsens Konversationsleksikon . 2nd Edition. tape 26 : Supplement: A – Øyslebø . JH Schultz Forlag, Copenhagen 1930, p. 719 (Danish, runeberg.org ).
2. ^ C. Warren: Instrumental. In: The Grammophone. January 1932, p. 19.