Oskar Siebert (musician)

Oskar Siebert (born June 20, 1923 in Neukirchen vorm Wald ; † May 28, 2009 ) was a German musician ( violin , guitar ) and composer .

Live and act

Oskar Siebert's father Erwin Siebert was a fourth generation violin maker in Rome , his mother Katarina Aleksandra Gutkina was a Jewish Russian (whom he had met in 1918 as a German prisoner of war in Moscow). Oskar grew up in the Berlin district of Wedding and from 1927 received violin lessons from Richard Goldmann, a violinist at the State Opera. From 1933 he attended a musical high school; from 1937 the music college, which he had to leave the following year because of the racial laws for "non-Aryans". He played the violin or guitar in bars and clubs at night; finally he was able to continue his studies (violin and composition) at the Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatory ; before he was arrested in 1941, taken to the Racial Hygiene Research Center in Dahlem and had to do the labor service in Wuppertal. After being transported to the Mauthausen concentration camp , he found himself in a band that had to play for the “Alpenland” guards in the concentration camp. In 1943 he and his brother Egon were brought to the Todt Organization , where they were used in the construction of bunkers and rocket launch pads and on the French Atlantic coast. When the Wehrmacht withdrew from France, he was returned to the Mauthausen concentration camp.

In 1945 he managed to escape with a coal transport to Berlin. In 1946 he made his first appearances as a musician under the stage name Bob Siebert with his own sextet in Allied clubs and on the radio station RIAS ; In 1947 there was an encounter with Django Reinhardt . From 1950 to 1954 he worked in the United States in various bands and dance orchestras, such as Tommy Dorsey and Les Paul . He also took composition lessons with Arnold Schönberg in Los Angeles . After his return to West Berlin , Siebert lived with his family in Reinickendorf and was a member of the RIAS dance orchestra under the direction of Kurt Edelhagen and television orchestras. From the 1980s onwards he became more involved in composing and wrote a number of songs and chamber music works. Shortly before his death, he published his autobiography I played for my life. From the illegal music band in Mauthausen to the Berlin dance orchestra (2008).

Works

• I was playing for my life. From the illegal music band in Mauthausen to the Berlin dance orchestra. Self-published, Berlin 2008, OCLC 263735421 .

Web links

• Portrait at Musica reanimata
• The odyssey of the Jewish "Gypsy" musician Oskar Siebert in the Jewish Community of Berlin