Rudolf Schulz-Dornburg

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Emil Stumpp : Rudolf Schulz-Dornburg (1933)

Rudolf Schulz-Dornburg (born March 31, 1891 in Würzburg , † August 16, 1949 in Gmund am Tegernsee ) was a German conductor and composer . He became known in the 1920s and 1930s as an avant-garde conductor and pioneer of modern music theater. He was one of the founders of today's Folkwang University . During the time of National Socialism he was, among other things, conductor of the Reich Orchestra of the German Air Sports Association and general music director of the German broadcaster . After the war he held a brief post as general music director at the Lübeck Theater .

Early years

Schulz-Dornburg comes from a Cologne family of singers. His father, Richard Schulz-Dornburg (1855–1913), was a concert singer and later a singing and university teacher at the Cologne University of Music . Son Rudolf had an older brother and two sisters: Hanns Schulz-Dornburg (1890–1950) worked as an opera singer and theater director, Marie Schulz-Dornburg (1892–1976) worked as an opera singer and university teacher at the Salzburg Mozarteum , Else Schulz-Dornburg (* 1903) as a coloratura soubrette .

Rudolf Schulz-Dornburg attended the Cologne Conservatory and then studied in Würzburg. One of his teachers was Otto Neitzel , from whom he received composition lessons.

Started his career in the Weimar Republic

After his first activities as a singer and choir director , he became Kapellmeister at the Deutsches Theater in Cologne in 1912 after a study trip , where he performed an adaptation of the oldest German singspiel Seelewig by Sigmund Theophil Staden . In 1913 he moved to the Mannheim Court Theater as conductor (Kapellmeister) and dramaturge . After the end of the First World War , in which he was deployed as a fighter pilot, Schulz-Dornburg's career began.

Bochum Symphony Orchestra

Municipal Orchestra Bochum 1919

In 1919, at the age of only 28, he was appointed general music director of the newly founded Bochum Municipal Orchestra . At a time in which - unlike in other parts of Germany - symphony orchestras were enlarged and new ones emerged in the Ruhr area, Schulz-Dornburg quickly gained a nationwide reputation for the ensemble with avant-garde programs (e.g. with compositions by Paul Hindemith , Ernst Krenek and Erwin Schulhoff ) procure. He also realized the idea of ​​performing medieval music together with contemporary music (in one or more concerts) and thus confronting each other.

Symphony orchestra in Münster

From 1924 he worked as general music director of the city ​​of Münster , with responsibility for the Münster symphony orchestra and the musical direction of the municipal theater while simultaneously assuming the function of director of the "Westphalian School for Music". Here Schulz-Dornburg u. a. the "Handel Renaissance", which attracted attention beyond the region with Handel operas and oratorios . The modern music experienced under him an upswing in Münster - so next Hindemith also were Béla Bartók and Arnold Schoenberg played. However, the plan to found an “Academy for Movement, Language and Music” was dashed during the economic crisis. When a scandal broke out during a ballet production by Kurt Jooss (The Dance of Death) , Schulz-Dornburg had to leave Münster.

Essen theaters and Folkwang school

Under the then mayor Franz Bracht , he was appointed to Essen in 1927 as an “artistic consultant”. Bracht hoped that his engagement would significantly improve the cultural life of Essen. World premieres should also raise the level of the Essen opera stage. Together with Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht , the idea for a revue-like industrial opera, the "Ruhr Epos", was developed. According to Schulz-Dornburg, "something extraordinarily important and beautiful should become that ... the intentions of the city in artistic terms can be seen particularly clearly in the first year ...". In Essen, too, the general music director made a name for himself as a proponent of modernist trends in music, in addition to cultivating classical music. So were Alban Berg , Ernst Krenek , Paul Hindemith, Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky brought to the stage. At that time, Essen was also trend-setting in ballet - the Jooss choreography The Green Table was premiered here in 1932.

The (later) Folkwang University was also founded in Essen in 1927 . Schulz-Dornburg developed the training concept of the Folkwang School for Music, Dance and Speaking together with the set designer Hein Heckroth and the choreographer Kurt Jooss, who also moved to Essen.

Activity during the Nazi era

After the seizure of power by the Nazis in 1933, Schulz-buckthorn Petersburg programmatic approach changed. He turned away from the previously funded avant-garde music and began to play and compose artists valued by the rulers as well as a "special aviation music". The music by Alban Berg , Stravinsky and Hindemith, which was soon to be outlawed , was deleted from the repertoire and works by Paul Höffer and Curt Gebhard were included. In 1936 Schulz-Dornburg was hired as a guest conductor for the annual gala concert held in Stuttgart by "SS Section X" for the so-called "Day of the Seizure of Power", in which he united the Württemberg State Orchestra and the orchestra of the Reichsender Stuttgart and a program Performed works by Ludwig van Beethoven , the climax of which was the cantata The Glorious Moment , which Schulz-Dornburg re-shaped with a new text he wrote in the spirit of the Nazi state.

Carl Zuckmayer stated in 1944 in his character portrait of Schulz-Dornburg written for the Office of Strategic Services :

“... immediately after the Nazis seized power, he appeared as the conductor of the first aviation orchestra subsidized by Göring, the Russian blouse adorned with military medals, and in a very short time the workers' jacket was completely transformed into a beautiful black SS uniform with all kinds of leader badges and pretty swastika. "

- Carl Zuckmayer : Gunther Nickel and Johanna Schrön, secret report

The Lübeck cultural journalists Karsten Bartels and Günter Zschacke suspect that Schulz-Dornburg “must at least have been close to the NSDAP” with a view to his activities during the Nazi era. On the other hand, Schulz-Dornburg, who was Major in the Air Force at the end of the war, was also controversial in the Third Reich and was spied on.

Reichsorchester Deutscher Luftsport

At the request of Hermann Göring , who had also been a fighter pilot in World War I, Schulz-Dornburg founded the Reichsorchester Deutscher Luftsport in 1934 , of which he was the conductor. This wind orchestra of the German Air Sports Association , a predecessor organization of the Luftwaffe of the Wehrmacht , including its conductor, performed in a kind of fantasy uniform and consisted of young and good, if initially inexperienced musicians. Schulz-Dornburg was referred to in the media as the “music pilot” or “pilot captain” of the orchestra and was very well known. The orchestra used for Nazi propaganda purposes performed all over the country, sometimes even several times a day.

Tasks in Berlin

Schulz-Dornburg also worked again and again in Berlin, for which he was given leave of absence from the management of the air sports orchestra. In 1936 he became chief conductor of the German broadcaster . He was chief conductor of the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra and worked with the Berlin Philharmonic . From 1939 he was also the general music director and conductor of the newly founded chamber orchestra of the Deutschlandsender.

General music director at the Reich broadcaster in Cologne

Since April 1937, Schulz-Dornburg directed the orchestra of the Cologne Reichsender . Here he tried to continue his music education work - excluding new, atonal music .

At the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft

In 1942, Schulz-Dornburg took on a department head function within the program management of the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft . He worked with the Reichsintendent. The RRG had been in the Upper Austrian Abbey of Sankt Florian since 1941 , where Anton Bruckner had worked in the 19th century . Schulz-Dornburg acted as music officer and was supposed to set up a Bruckner transmitter here in the final phase of the war . From 1942 Schulz-Dornburg was head of the group "Serious, but generally understandable music" at Großdeutscher Rundfunk .

post war period

After the war, Schulz-Dornburg had professional difficulties. Initially looking in vain for a job in western Germany, a move to the Soviet occupation zone in 1946 also offered no future. After a short time he gave up the task he was offered as music director in Plauen . In the 1947/48 season he was still able to work as general music director at the Lübeck Theater . Here too, however, there were disputes, as a result of which he lost the job.

Family and death

Rudolf Schulz-Dornburg had been married to the theater actress Ellen Hamacher (1898–1978), a daughter of the landscape and marine painter Willy Hamacher , since 1925 .

The son Michael Schulz-Dornburg , born in Essen on November 29, 1929, came from the marriage. As a child actor in 1937, he portrayed Zarah Leander 's son in the film La Habanera . Michael Schulz-Dornburg was drafted into the Volkssturm in November 1944 and then drafted into the Wehrmacht at the end of March 1945. His fate is unclear, either he fell in the last days of the war as a 16-year-old in Berlin or in the Oderbruch or he died in a Soviet prisoner-of-war camp; his body was never found. A second son of the couple is Stefan Schulz-Dornburg, born in 1937, who later worked as an industrial manager, film producer and actor. His biological father was a resistance fighter and Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff was murdered by the Gestapo in 1945 ; the illegitimate child was recognized and treated as his own by Rudolf Schulz-Dornburg. Stefan Schulz-Dornburg only found out years after the musician's death that he was not his biological father. Screenwriter Nikolaus Schulz-Dornburg (* 1983) is a grandson.

The Schulz-Dornburgs' marriage broke up after the Second World War and they divorced on June 20, 1948. Until his death in 1949 Schulz-Dornburg lived with a new partner.

reception

The musicologist Fred K. Prieberg filed his research on Schulz-Dornburg under the file number AP V 30 in the so-called Archive Prieberg of the University of Kiel . “Music and musicians can be misused as ever,” said Prieberg at the end of his book Music in the Nazi State . For the historian, "this statement is as boring as it is bleak, because it gives the answer to the question: do musicians never actually learn?"

In his novel The Ear of Fathers , Stefan Schulz-Dornburg asks: “Was Rudolf Schulz-Dornburg a staunch National Socialist, a misguided idealist, or was he an opportunistic careerist? Can you separate that? It is difficult to judge this man because all three elements can be found in his character. "

literature

Web links

Commons : Rudolf Schulz-Dornburg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bernhard Habla, International Society for Research and Promotion of Brass Music (Ed.), Congress Report Oberwölz / Steiermark 2004 , ISBN 978-3-7952-1203-2 , Schneider 2006, p. 153
  2. ^ Thomas Eicher, Barbara Panse and Henning Rischbieter , Theater in the “Third Reich” , ISBN 978-3-7800-0117-7 , Kallmeyer, Seelze-Velber 2000
  3. ^ Academy for Music and Performing Arts Mozarteum in Salzburg (Ed.), Annual Report 1961/1962 , Horst Springauf (Verantl), self-published, p. 22
  4. ^ Karl-Josef Kutsch and Leo Riemens , Immortal Voices , Francke, 1975, p. 635
  5. ↑ a b c Matthias Uecker, A “Märtyrer für die Jüngsten” , in: Zwischen Industrieprovinz und Großstadthoffnung , ISBN 978-3-8244-4151-8 , Deutscher Universitätsverlag, Wiesbaden 1994, pp. 100-139
  6. ↑ Chris Walton, Othmar Schoeck: Life and Works , University Rochester Press, ISBN 978-1-58046-300-3 , 2009, p 229 (in English)
  7. ^ The history of the Bochumer Symphoniker , website of the Bochumer Symphoniker
  8. ^ Nathanael Ullmann, Ten Generals led the orchestra in Bochum , October 11, 2016, IKZ Online (Funke Medien)
  9. ^ Wilhelm Koschs (Ed.): Deutsches Theaterlexikon and the German Biographical Encyclopedia (online edition) indicate 1925 as the beginning of the GMD position in Münster.
  10. ↑ a b c Music school management 1919-2019: Rudolf Schulz-Dormburg , Westphalian School for Music, website of the city of Münster
  11. ↑ Christoph Schmidt, National Socialist Cultural Policy in the Gau Westfalen-Nord: regional structures and local milieus (1933-1945) , research on regional history (54), dissertation, ISBN 978-3-506-72983-5 , Paderborn 2006, p. 297
  12. ↑ Werner Häußner, Vertane Chance: Das "Ruhrepos" by Kurt Weill and Bert Brecht , February 27, 2015, in: Revierpassagen
  13. ↑ Lecture: Grillo-Theater through the ages , October 22, 2017, Lintorfer (Internet newspaper)
  14. ^ The Folkwang History , website of the Folkwang University of the Arts
  15. ^ Susann Witt-Stahl , "But his soul goes marching on": Music for the aestheticization of war, ISBN 978-3-00-005319-1 , Forum Coda, 1999
  16. ^ Fred K. Prieberg : Music in the Nazi State . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt / M. 1982, ISBN 3-596-26901-6 .
  17. ^ Carl Zuckmayer , Secret Report , Gunther Nickel and Johanna Schrön (Eds), ISBN 978-3-89244-599-9 , Wallstein, 2002, p. 170
  18. ↑ Karsten Bartels and Günter Zschacke , 100 Years of the Orchestra in the Hanseatic City of Lübeck 1897-1997 , ISBN 978-3-7950-1225-0 , Schmidt-Römhild, 1997
  19. ^ A b c d The "Reichssender Köln": Radio during the Nazi dictatorship , WDR website , caption 12/29
  20. ↑ a b Michael Schramm, Hans Felix Husadel: work, work, effect; Documentation on the symposium , documentation volume on the symposium of the same name from October 20 to 22, 2004 in Bonn, ISBN 978-3-00-020320-6 , Military Music Service of the Bundeswehr (ed.), 2006
  21. ^ Messages from the Hans Pfitzner Society , episodes 51–54, Hans Pfitzner Society (ed.), ISBN 978-3-7952-0636-9 , Verlag H. Schneider, 1990, p. 26
  22. ↑ a b c Christa Brüstle, Anton Bruckner and posterity: On the history of the composer's reception in the first half of the 20th century , ISBN 978-3-476-04283-5 , Springer-Verlag, 2016, p. 99 (footnotes)
  23. ^ Neue Zeitschrift für Musik , Volume 102, Verlag Gustav Bosse, 1935, p. 174
  24. ↑ Hanns Kreczi , Das Bruckner-Stift St. Florian and the Linzer Reichs-Bruckner-Orchester (1942-1945) , Anton Bruckner Documents and Studies (5), ISBN 978-3-201-01319-2 , Akademische Druck- u. Publishing House, 1986, p. 136
  25. ^ The theater management of the Theater Lübeck: Lübeck chief conductors and general music directors , website of the Lübeck theater
  26. ↑ Wilhelm Koschs (ed.): Deutsches Theaterlexikon and the German Biographical Encyclopedia (online edition) indicate the beginning of the season 1945/46 as the beginning of the GMD position in Lübeck.
  27. ↑ Claus Raab , Folkwang - History of an Idea: Music, Dance, Theater , ISBN 978-3-7959-0671-9 , Noetzel, Wilhelmshaven 1994, p. 39
  28. ^ The "Archive Prieberg". In: Musicological Institute. Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel (CAU), accessed on July 26, 2020 .
  29. ^ Fred K. Prieberg : Music in the Nazi State . New edition edition. Dittrich, Cologne 2000, ISBN 3-920862-66-X , p. 409 ( google.de [accessed on July 26, 2020] Quoted from Stefan Schulz-Dornburg, Das Ohr der Väter, 2019, p. 185).
  30. ↑ Stefan Schulz-Dornburg: The ear of the fathers . Allitera Verlag, Munich 2019, ISBN 978-3-96233-197-9 , pp. 185 ( google.de [accessed on July 26, 2020]).

Remarks

  1. ↑ The musicologist Jens Ferber suspects similarities between the original Folkwang idea and the ideology of the National Socialists . After all, the Third Reich also brought fame and honor to many Folkwang exponents. Jens Ferber, artist, citizen, authorities: Hagen music and theater politics in the 19th and 20th centuries , ISBN 978-3-89688-058-1 , Agenda, 1999, p. 159
  2. ↑ The culture and political journalist Susann Witt-Stahl describes Schulz-Dornburg as “Göring's aviator”. Susann Witt-Stahl , "But his soul goes marching on": Music for the aestheticization of war , ISBN 978-3-00-005319-1 , Forum Coda, 1999
personal data
SURNAME Schulz-Dornburg, Rudolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German conductor
DATE OF BIRTH March 31, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Wurzburg
DATE OF DEATH August 16, 1949
Place of death Gmund am Tegernsee