Hans Posegga

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Hans Posegga

Hans Posegga (born January 31, 1917 in Berlin ; † May 19, 2002 in Vienna ) was a German composer , pianist and conductor . Hans Posegga was primarily known as a film composer. His wide-ranging compositional work also includes chamber music , opera , sacred music, symphonic works and jazz . A work directory with currently 986 entries can be found on the official website (see web links). The archive has not yet been fully recorded. In addition, he left behind hundreds of tapes with film music - from entire pieces of music to fragmentary musical elements to effects, which have now largely been digitized. Some of his best-known compositions are the theme song for Die Sendung mit der Maus and the soundtracks for the four-part television series Der Seewolf , 1971 and Zwei Jahre Ferien , 1974.

Life

Hans Posegga was born in Berlin on January 31, 1917 as the fourth child of a civil servant family. His father was the 13th son of an East Prussian farmer. There was a lot of music at home and he began taking piano and violin lessons at an early age, learning from his older sisters Gretel and Marie, as well as from various local music teachers. Due to his hard work and talent, he went to Dortmund at the age of 17 , where he received lessons as a pianist from Heinz Schüngeler and was also employed as a young conductor at the local theater.

The Second World War brought his training to an abrupt end. Until recently, he missed the years of youth he had to spend as a soldier very much in his career as a musician. Sensitive and empathetic, as it later benefited him as a composer for dramaturgically designed works, he suffered immeasurably from the demands that the soldier's life placed on him. He could never identify with the ideology of the National Socialist regime and never belonged to the party.

When he was stationed in Paris with an air force corps, he and his friend Eduard Drolc (later the Berliner Philharmoniker and founder of the "Drolc Quartet") took lessons from the greats of music at the time, Jacques Thibaud and Alfred Cortot . These two brilliant musicians had the human size to see no enemy in the young German soldiers. Regardless of all fronts and even the fact that Jacques Thibaud had lost two sons in the war, Hans Posegga was allowed to study with him in Paris and get to know the impressionists of French music, who were frowned upon in Germany at the time.

As a teacher at the Trapp Conservatory in Munich , he was able to gain a foothold in the music world after the war and soon met the group of " young German films " - the brothers Peter and Ulrich Schamoni , Boris Marangosoff , Wolfgang Urchs (cartoons), Ferdinand Khittl , Raimond Ruehl and many others. He later gave up teaching in favor of an existence as a freelance composer.

In Schwabing in the 1950s and 1960s, people met in the restaurant “Meine Sister und Ich” and on Leopoldstrasse in Hahnhof, watched the pictures of the film strip against the daylight and agreed on the music to go with it. It - director Ulrich Schamoni - was the first major feature film, followed by " Schonzeit für Füchse " - director Peter Schamoni - for which Hans Posegga received the " Filmband in Gold " at the 1966 Berlinale . In 1967, Ulrich Schamoni's film Every Years Again , he can be seen as an actor and also wrote the music for this film.

In the 1960s there was hardly a documentary or short film festival at which the dominant composer was not Hans Posegga. Many of these films received awards. As a founding member of DOC 59 , he was a co-signer of the Oberhausen Manifesto .

During these years an artistic collaboration with Westdeutscher Rundfunk began that would last until the end of his life . In those early years of television, the films - mostly children's programs under the direction of editor Gert Müntefering - were shot in the studio and the music was recorded directly on the soundtrack during the shooting. This is how the series "Ratereisen auf dem Dachboden" and "Kaspar und René" came about with Peter René Körner , who interpreted many of the children's songs composed by Hans Posegga and the theme song for the " Sendung mit der Maus " program, which opened this program in 1971. During the years in the television studio, Hans Posegga benefited greatly from the fact that he had a successful pianist career behind him after the war in German broadcasting companies. In the 1970s, Posegga was hired by producer Walter Ulbrich to set various adventure four-parters to music , which were produced in international co-production by the broadcaster ZDF . The result was impressive music for “ The Sea Wolf ”, “ Cagliostro ”, “ Two Years of Vacation ”, “ Call of the Gold ” and “ Deadly Secret - The Adventures of Caleb Williams”.

The many recordings that are sent over and over again from time to time prove his great pianistic skills. He was also called to record again in Paris for the radio diffusion française .

In 1958 the Bayerischer Rundfunk commissioned him for a “piano concerto with a large orchestra”, which was premiered under the direction of the conductor Rudolf Alberth , reworked in 1986 and performed again in April 1987 with the soloist Kurt Wolf in Berchtesgaden .

In the last 20 years of his life he returned to his original vocation as a composer of autonomous music and wrote numerous instrumental works, two major oratorios (“Des Lebens Wagen” and “Christ und Antichrist” ) and several stage pieces . When he died on May 19, 2002, his piano still had the concepts for a “Concerto for Bandoneon and Large Orchestra” of which the third movement is still missing, a piano school with numerous finished pieces . The cello concerto was also waiting for the instrumentation.

Hans Posegga died on May 19, 2002 after a brief illness in Vienna. His final resting place is in the local cemetery of Berg am Starnberger See .

Film music

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ knerger.de: The grave of Hans Posegga
personal data
SURNAME Posegga, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German composer, pianist and conductor
DATE OF BIRTH January 31, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH May 19, 2002
Place of death Vienna