Reinhold Merten

Reinhold Adolf Merten (born June 6, 1894 in Wiesbaden , † August 19, 1943 in Munich ) was a German conductor .

Life

Coming from a family of musicians, Merten first attended the Conservatory in Wiesbaden, but then studied medicine at the Philipps University in Marburg and Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main and was a medical officer during the First World War . After the war his doctorate , the University of Frankfurt him with a dissertation on The acid-resistant, tuberkelbazillenähnlichen bacilli in wind instruments (1933) to Dr. med.

However, Merten did not work as a doctor, but became a solo coach at the Frankfurt Opera in 1920 . Together with Paul Hindemith he founded the Frankfurt Music Association in 1922. After the Südwestdeutsche Rundfunkdienst AG in Frankfurt am Main (Radio Frankfurt) started operations in April 1924, some musicians gathered under Merten's direction in the transmitter's studio in the old post office on Stephanstraße and made ensemble music. From 1926 he worked in Frankfurt as an organist and pianist . In 1927 he joined the SPD , of which he was a member until 1931. On October 1, 1929, the Frankfurter Rundfunk-Symphonie-Orchester was founded with Hans Rosbaud as first and Reinhold Merten as second conductor .

In addition to his musical activity, he was a "music functionary" for radio. In 1933 he became a member of the NSDAP . In 1934 he was entrusted with setting up a sound engineering school in Berlin. In 1938 he became head of the acoustic-musical border areas department of the central technology management within the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft in Dresden . In 1939 he switched to the great orchestra of the Reichsender Leipzig as chief conductor . It stayed there until the station was shut down due to the war in 1940. He was also a lecturer in applied musicology at the University of Freiburg .

In 1941 he went to the Reichsender Munich as the first Kapellmeister . After a serious illness he died in Munich in 1943 .

literature

• Jörg Clemen, Steffen Lieberwirth: Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk. The history of the symphony orchestra. Verlag Klaus-Jürgen Kamprad, Altenburg 1999, ISBN 3-930550-09-1 , p. 78 f.
• Fred K. Prieberg : Handbook of German Musicians 1933-1945 . CD-ROM Lexicon, Kiel 2004, p. 4582.

Web links

• Literature by and about Reinhold Merten in the catalog of the German National Library
• The beginnings. - History of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra (with photos by Reinhold Merten)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Michael Stapper: light music on the radio of the Weimar Republic . In: Würzburg music history contributions . tape 24 . Schneider, Tutzing 2001, ISBN 3-7952-1060-7 , pp. 58 .
2. ↑ reporting map of Merten in Munich City Archives
3. ^ Fred K. Prieberg: Handbook of German Musicians 1933–1945 . CD-ROM Lexicon, Kiel 2004, p. 4582.