Siegfried Würzburger

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Siegfried Würzburger (born May 29, 1877 in Frankfurt am Main ; died February 12, 1942 in the Litzmannstadt ghetto ) was a German-Jewish organist . He worked as an organ teacher, was organist at the newly founded Westend Synagogue in Frankfurt from 1911 to 1938 and emerged as a composer.

youth

Stumbling block for Siegfried Würzburger in the Bockenheimer Landstrasse

Siegfried Würzburger and his brother Max were the sons of Amalie, née Brandeis, and the businessman Josef Würzburger. Josef left the family between 1890 and 1895 and emigrated to the United States without reporting again.

Siegfried Würzburger was almost blind from birth. He developed a good sense of hearing and received private singing and piano lessons. He then took piano and music theory lessons from Ivan Knoll at the Hoch Conservatory . There he also received organ lessons from Karl Breidenstein , who was the director of the choir of the main synagogue .

Family and work

In 1907 he married the teacher and pianist Gertrude Hirsch . Hirsch's parents were the merchant Isidor Hirsch and Auguste, née Heilbrunn. Gertrud was a teacher at the Holzhausenschule.

Gertrude and Siegfried Würzburger founded a private music school. They also founded the regional branch of the Jugend musiziert competition . They had four sons born in Frankfurt:

  • Hans (born August 28, 1911, missing after October 19, 1941),
  • Walter (born April 21, 1914, died March 21, 1995 in Worcester Park, London ),
  • Paul Daniel (born February 6, 1918, died June 14, 2000 in Hanover ),
  • Karl Robert, later Kenneth Ward (born November 29, 1922, died January 11, 2010 in Wickford, Basildon ).

In 1911, Würzburger became the first organist at the newly opened Westend Synagogue, where he participated in many church services and as a concert soloist. At church services he often framed the liturgy with improvised preludes and reenactments based on themes from Jewish liturgical music. He also played the works of organ literature by composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach and Dietrich Buxtehude .

Würzburger was very interested in the technology of the organ and studied Albert Schweitzer's writings on organ building. In his private apartment, Würzburger installed an organ pedal that could be connected to the piano so that he could also practice organ playing at home and teach students.

After 1933

The circle of Würzburg's students, the majority of whom came from non-Jewish circles, was restricted after the Nazis came to power in 1933. In this situation Würzburger devoted himself increasingly to composing. He also appeared in numerous events and charity concerts of the Jewish Cultural Association as a soloist and accompanist.

Walter studied in the jazz class of the Hoch Conservatory. When his teachers there, Bernhard Sekles and Mátyás Seiber , were released in 1933, Walter emigrated to Paris, and in 1939 on to Singapore, where he was interned and from where he was deported to Tatura camp in Australia in 1940 . During the internment he started composing. In 1942 he became a soldier in the Australian Army and was also able to study music theory and clarinet at the Melbourne Conservatory. In 1950 he continued his clarinet studies in London with Seiber. In 1974 he founded the Kingston Philharmonia amateur orchestra as conductor.

Paul Daniel emigrated to Palestine in 1939 and participated in the Jewish Brigade in the advance of the British army to Friuli . He returned to Germany in 1971.

Karl Robert attended the Philanthropin from 1936 and arrived in England on August 24, 1939 on a Kindertransport. He later called himself Kenneth (Ken) Ward. As a volunteer he took the 1st Royal Tank Regiment at the landing in Normandy in part in the 1944th

Since Hans suffered from severe asthma, he and his parents could not emigrate abroad. On October 21, 1941 Siegfried, Gertrud and Hans were abducted. They were part of a transport of 1180 Frankfurt Jews to the Litzmannstadt ghetto . Only three people from this transport survived the Nazi era, including Würzburg's student Fritz Schafranek. Würzburger died on February 12, 1942 of exhaustion and a cold in Schafrank's arms. Hans is considered missing.

student

Würzburg's most important organ students include:

  • Herbert Fromm (1905–1998), who emigrated to the USA in 1937 and became one of the most productive composers in various genres of reform synagogue music,
  • his son Walter,
  • Martel (later: Martha) Sommer (later Hirsch) (1918–2011), who emigrated to the United States via Holland and England in 1939, where she was organist of the Habonim Congregation for over 44 years .

Fromm, Walter Würzburger and Sommer also played as substitute organists in the Westend Synagogue.

Compositions

Würzburger created numerous works for keyboard instruments. Some of his pieces vary Jewish themes, such as the Kol Nidre prayer and the Maos Zur song .

The piano pieces Variations and Fugue on "Kol nidre" and paraphrases of "Kol nidre" and "Moaus zur" as well as the organ work Variations on "Moaus Zur" have been lost . Passacaglia about “Moaus-zur” (approx. 1933) and Passacaglia and Fugue about “Kol Nidre” (approx. 1933–34) have survived in the musical text . Sommer Hirsch brought the manuscripts of both works with her to the USA when she emigrated and later sent them to Ken Ward in England.

Würzburger performed his best-known work Passacaglia and Fugue on “Kol Nidre” for the first time as part of a “spiritual concert” in the main synagogue in Wiesbaden. The work was praised in the contemporary Jewish press as a masterpiece of counterpoint, and as a "noble, serious work that deserves entry into all services".

literature

  • Tina Frühauf: Organ and Organ Music in German-Jewish Culture , Georg Olms, Hildesheim 2005
  • T. Frühauf: The organ and its music in German-Jewish culture , Oxford University Press, New York 2009
  • Kenneth Ward (d. I. Karl Robert Würzburger): ... And then the music stopped playing , Braiswick, Suffolk 2006
  • Siegfried Würzburger (1877–1942), in: T. Frühauf (Hrsg.): German-Jewish organ music: an anthology of works from the 1820s to the 1960s , AR Editions, 2013, p. Xix-xx
  • Passacaglia and Fugue on “Kol Nidre” , in: T. Frühauf (ed.): German-Jewish organ music: an anthology of works from the 1820s to the 1960s , AR Editions, 2013, pp. 70–78

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Walter Würzburger (1914-1995) , Musica Reanimata
  2. ↑ Kenneth R. Ward, obituary notice Frankfurter Rundschau , February 12, 2010, reproduced in: Initiative Stolpersteine ​​Frankfurt am Main eV: 8th documentation , (127 pages pdf), 2010, p. 5
  3. ^ Deportation of Jews from Frankfurt am Main 1941–1945. In: Frankfurt 1933–1945. Institute for Urban History , accessed on June 26, 2015 .
  4. ↑ Claudia Michels: Deportations of Frankfurt Jews: Three out of 1,180 people returned , Frankfurt Rundschau , October 19, 2011
  5. ^ Fromm, Herbert , Jewish Virtual Library after Encyclopaedia Judaica
  6. ^ Martha Sommer, Erwin Hirsch , Photo Archives, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
  7. ^ HIRSCH, MARTHA (NEE SOMMER) , obituary in the New York Times , April 1, 2011
  8. ↑ a b Gemeindeblatt der Israelitische Gemeinde Frankfurt am Main , Issue 8 (April 1934), p. 331, digitized
  9. ^ Tanja Frühauf: Passacaglia and Fugue on Kol Nidre , Music and the Holocaust
personal data
SURNAME Wurzburger, Siegfried
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German organist, organ teacher and composer
DATE OF BIRTH May 29, 1877
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH February 12, 1942
Place of death Litzmannstadt ghetto