Richard Jakoby

Richard Matthias Jakoby (born September 11, 1929 in Dreis ; † July 9, 2017 in Hanover ) was a German music teacher and cultural manager and until 1993 director of the Hanover University of Music and Theater .

Life

Jakoby was the sixth of seven children (he had a twin sister with whom he took piano lessons). He attended school in Klüsserath (where his father was a teacher) and from 1937 in Trier (Friedrich-Wilhelms-Gymnasium from 1940). During World War II he was a student in the medical service and briefly drafted into the Volkssturm to dig tank trenches. The family moved back to Dreis in 1944 after Trier was destroyed by bombing. At times he worked and lived in his piano teacher's winery. From 1946 he attended the Cusanus-Gymnasium in Wittlich with the Abitur in 1949. He then studied Romance studies, musicology, music education and philosophy in Mainz. He financed his studies through classes and as a working student before receiving a Gutenberg scholarship. In 1954 he passed the state examination and received his doctorate. As a student he worked as a piano teacher and choir director. He was a high school teacher in Wittlich and Mainz, taught French at the Volkshochschule in Mainz and was a lecturer at the university institute, became director of the youth music school and director of the Mainz Peter Cornelius Conservatory.

In 1964 he became a full professor for musicology and music education at the State University for Music and Theater in Hanover, in 1968 he became the director of its predecessor institute (the University of Music) and in 1979 he was founding president of the University of Music and Theater, which he remained until his retirement in 1993. Under him, the university obtained doctorate and habilitation rights, and under him the new building and the establishment of theater and journalism departments were built. He later became an honorary citizen of the Hanover University of Music and Theater. From 1976 he also had a teaching position for musicology at the Leibniz University in Hanover, where he became honorary professor in 1981.

In foreign cultural policy, he advocated the inclusion of native musical cultures in music education for the Third World (he was also on the Council of the Goethe Institute). For a long time he represented the interests of the art and music colleges in the West German Rectors' Conference. He traveled a lot and was very active and well known as a cultural networker .

He was president and from 1988 an honorary member of the German Music Council . Jakoby was the editor of the Musikalmanach - Musikleben in Deutschland and the magazines Musik und Bildung and Musikforum .

Jakoby was also a music and theater critic for newspapers and employees of the Süddeutscher and Westdeutscher Rundfunk. He received the Lower Saxony Prize for Culture, the German Music Prize , the Honorary Plaque of the State Capital Hanover and the Great Federal Cross of Merit .

He had been married to Irmgard Mohr since 1955 and lived in Hanover and Dreis. The concert hall of the music college was named after him on his 80th birthday.

Fonts (selection)

• Richard Jakoby (Ed.): State University for Music and Theater Hanover. Structure, objectives, history , Hanover: Madsack, 1973
• On the change in musical perceptions from antiquity to the present , Göttingen, 1981

literature

• German Music Council (Ed.): Richard Jakoby, Leben und Werk, Hannover 2006

Web links

• The University of Music mourns Richard Jakoby , HAZ.net, July 12, 2017, obituary by Rainer Wagner
• Obituary in the Eifel-Zeitung by Gregor Brandt , August 30, 2017
• Obituary at the Hanover University of Music , July 12, 2017