Walter Gronostay

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Walter Gronostay (born July 29, 1906 in Berlin , † October 10, 1937 in Sacrow near Potsdam ) was a German composer who was particularly active as a film composer .

life and work

The Berliner, whose ancestors came from East Prussia came, the basic knowledge of music brought autodidact in. At the age of 13 he presented his first own composition, a year later he took composition lessons with Hugo Kaun .

Soon afterwards he worked as a music teacher, as a violinist in Kreuzberg and as a conductor of a Kreuzberg orchestra. At the age of 16 he attended the piano class at the Hochschule für Musik . Thanks to a scholarship, he was admitted to the master class for composition at the Akademie der Künste three years later.

His teacher here was Arnold Schönberg . The string trio he composed was premiered at the first concert of the Schönberg students in 1927 by members of the Vienna String Quartet ( Rudolf Kolisch , Eugene Lehner and Benar Heifetz ). In the same year he wrote his short opera In Ten Minutes , which was staged in Baden-Baden in 1928 with great success.

Gronostay then got a job as a répétiteur and assistant director at the German Opera House . He achieved another success with his radio play opera Mord (1929). The young composer received excellent reviews for his innovative atonal music at the time . He composed songs, piano pieces, chamber music, orchestral works ( Romanian sketches for orchestra , 1937) and the one-act opera Judith . In 1932 he set to music with Mann im Beton. A proletarian ballad, the text by Günther Weisenborn and Robert Adolf Stemmle for the German Workers' Association, a piece for male choir, speaking choir, 7 solo speakers, photographs and a wind orchestra.

For the radio he wrote music for radio plays, such as You should recognize them in their actions by Goetz Otto Stoffregen (1933), Stein, gib Brot by Alfred Karrasch (1934), Der Flieger (radio ballad by Peter Hagen; 1935) or Winke, colorful Pennant (1937, text: Karrasch).

Since 1929 he also devoted himself to film music. Gronostay was used in relatively ambitious productions, including the two Olympiad documentaries Jugend der Welt and Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia . His music became more conventional during the National Socialist era; only on the radio did his works still show experimental traits. It is disputed whether Gronostay joined the NSDAP after it came to power . A recommendation from the Reichsrundfunk from 1935 claims this, but there is no corresponding entry in the party's central file.

The Jewish Schönberg student Bernd Bergel testified that Gronostay helped him decisively during the Nazi era (until he emigrated to Palestine) by arranging lucrative assignments. Bergel composed for the Berlin radio as well as film music under the pseudonym Walter Gronostay, for example the music for the films Lady Windermeres Fächer (1935), The Last Four of Santa Cruz (1936) and Savoy-Hotel 217 (1936). These film scores from Bergel were officially declared as his own by Gronostay, which is why they are still occasionally mistakenly listed as works by Gronostay. It even happened that music by Bergel (under Gronostay's name) was used for a National Socialist propaganda film.

Walter Gronostay married the Jewish woman Eva Schönfeldt in 1930. The daughter Sylvia emerged from the marriage and was born shortly before his death. Eva and Sylvia Gronostay escaped the National Socialists in Austria, where they were hidden by a brave family until the end of the Third Reich. Walter Gronostay died unexpectedly at the age of only 31. His daughter gave his estate to the archive of the Academy of Arts in Berlin. The Israeli musicologist Peter Gradenwitz wrote about Gronostay: “October 10, 1937 robbed the German music scene and the musical world of one of the most original, far-sighted pioneers of music for the newly created media of radio, record, film, a composer whose work is still today> contemporary <interested, entertaining and delighted like the> contemporary Divertimento 1929 <. "

Film music

See also

literature

  • Habakuk Traber and Elmar Weingarten (eds.): Displaced music. Berlin composer in exile. Berlin 1987, p. 217. ISBN 3-87024-118-7 .
  • Konrad Vogelsang: Film music in the Third Reich: a documentary. 2nd, completely revised and expanded edition. Centaurus-Verlagsgesellschaft, Pfaffenweiler 1993, p. 235, ISBN 3-890-85800-7 .
  • Peter Gradenwitz: Arnold Schönberg and his Berlin master class. Berlin 1925-1933. Vienna 1998, ISBN 3-552-04899-5 .
  • Kay Less : The film's great personal dictionary . The actors, directors, cameramen, producers, composers, screenwriters, film architects, outfitters, costume designers, editors, sound engineers, make-up artists and special effects designers of the 20th century. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 .
  • Fred K. Prieberg : Handbook of German Musicians 1933-1945. Kiel 2004, pp. 2519ff. (CD-ROM dictionary).
  • Lexicon of Film Music , ed. by Manuel Gervink and Matthias Brücke, Laaber 2012, 203f.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "After the National Socialist Revolution, Mr. Gronostay joined the NSDAP." Letter from the legal department of the Reichsrundfunk regarding approval for a performance of the radio ballad " Der Flieger " to the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda of March 15, 1935, Bundesarchiv Berlin, R55 / 1155, Sheet 70-71; "NSDAP since 1933 (according to RRG legal department, 15 / III / 35), but no entry in ZKNSDAP", quoted from: Fred K. Prieberg: Handbuch Deutschemusik 1933–1945. Kiel 2004, p. 2520 (CD-ROM lexicon)
  2. ↑ Peter Gradenwitz: Arnold Schönberg and his master student. Berlin 1925-1933. Vienna 1998, p. 335
  3. ↑ H. Traber, E. Weingarten (Ed.): Displaced music. Berlin composer in exile. Berlin 1987, p. 217.
  4. ↑ Peter Gradenwitz: Arnold Schönberg and his master students. Berlin 1925-1933. Vienna 1998, p. 126.
personal data
SURNAME Gronostay, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German film composer
DATE OF BIRTH July 29, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH October 10, 1937
Place of death Berlin