Robert Sondheimer

Robert Jonas Sondheimer (born February 6, 1881 in Mainz , † December 7, 1956 in Hanover ) was a German musicologist .

Life and activity

After attending school, Sondheimer was trained at the Mainz Conservatory as well as with Engelbert Humperdinck at the Cologne Conservatory and with Friedrich Ernst Koch in Berlin. He studied musicology in Bonn, Berlin and Basel. In 1921 he received his doctorate for a dissertation on Franz Beck's symphonies. phil.

In the following years Sondheimer lived as a music writer in Berlin. From 1922 to 1923 he headed Edition Bernoulli, a collection of musical works from the time when the new sonata style was created (18th century).

After the National Socialists came to power in the spring of 1933, Sondheimer emigrated to Switzerland, where he continued his publishing house from 1934. In 1939 he moved to Great Britain, where he continued his publishing house in London.

After his emigration, Sondheimer was classified by the National Socialist police as an enemy of the state and an important target: In the spring of 1940, the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin put him on the special wanted list GB , a directory of people whom the NS surveillance apparatus considered particularly dangerous or important, which is why they were In the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles by the Wehrmacht, special SS commandos that followed the occupation troops should be located and arrested with special priority.

Fonts

• Franz Beck's symphonies , 1922.
• The theory of the symphony and the assessment of individual symphony composers among eighteenth-century music writers , Leipzig 1925.
• Haydn. A Historical and Psychological Study Based on his Quartets , Bernoulli, London 1951.

literature

• Bruno Jahn: German biographical encyclopedia of music , Vol. 2, 2003, p. 810.
• Parallel world of the book. Contributions to book politics, publishing history, bibliophilia and book art, p. 230.

Web links

• Literature by and about Robert Sondheimer in the catalog of the German National Library