Walter Popper

Walter Popper

Walter Popper (born April 1, 1905 in Hirschberg ( Silesia ) in what is now Poland , † August 10, 1962 in Munich ) was an Austrian conductor , Kapellmeister , pianist and composer .

Live and act

Walter Popper spent most of his childhood and youth in Cologne and Berlin . He studied at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin under the then director Alexander von Fielitz , where he completed his training as a conductor and composer. After several years of conducting activity in Berlin and in the Rhineland, Walter Popper was heard for the first time in Munich in 1933, where he appeared with his own ensemble Kapelle Walter Popper in the then renowned revue theater Die Bonbonniere . Some of Walter Popper's film scores for Diehl Film and Bavaria Film also come from this period .

On May 30, 1938, due to his Jewish descent, he was excluded from the Reichsmusikkammer and banned from further professional activities in the area of ​​responsibility of the Reichsmusikkammer with immediate effect. From October 19, 1944 to March 8, 1945, Walter Popper was interned as a forced laborer in the central labor camp in Tiefenort ad Werra , a satellite camp of the Buchenwald concentration camp . From there he managed to escape shortly before the end of the war.

After the Second World War , he built the radio orchestra of the newly founded radio station Radio Munich , from which the Bavarian Broadcasting later emerged. In 1945, under Walter Popper's direction, the first operetta life broadcast after the war on Radio Munich went over the airwaves. Even before the Munich Radio Orchestra was officially founded in 1952, Walter Popper was also director and chief conductor as well as vocal accompanist of the Radio Munich radio orchestra from 1946 . Walter Popper was a co-founder of the Munich Radio Orchestra of the Bavarian Radio (first chief conductor was Werner Schmidt-Boelcke in 1952 ).

On television he rehearsed all the singing parts of Wilhelm's synchronous opera produced in Munich. He stayed at Bayerischer Rundfunk for only a few years until he finally settled down as a freelancer and devoted himself primarily to composing. In addition, he also repeatedly worked as a guest conductor at Bayerischer Rundfunk. Many successful compositions , especially waltzes , fall during this period . Music for some radio plays also dates from this period, for example for the popular Dickie-Dick-Dickens series , the theme music for Happy Sunday Stroll or songs for Ernie Singerl and the Isarspatzen .

He was characterized by the BR with the words: “Walter Popper avoided the public and the limelight as much as possible. In his calm manner, he helped shape the post-war period in Munich. "Walter Popper lived with his last wife, Gerda, née Bücklers, and his children for many years in Munich-Pasing at Alten Allee 27. After a short and serious illness, he died on 10 August 1962. Popper was buried in the Munich Obermenzing cemetery .

family

As the eldest of three baptized children (Walter, Alexander, Charlotte Liselotte), Walter Popper came from an old Austrian ( Bohemian / Hungarian ), originally commercially active Jewish family. His father Leopold (born in Vienna ), who had converted to Christianity , left the family's trading company and from 1898 worked as an actor , director and chief director (including director and chief director of the German Theater in Ukraine , based in Odessa ). Walter Popper's Catholic mother Hermine (née Storch, from Heidelberg ) had a strong influence on his musical education as an opera singer . Walter Popper was married three times. There are four children from these three marriages.

Works (selection)

• “Confetti”, waltz
• "Waltz of the Stars"
• "Waltz premiere"
• “Dance in the Twilight”, waltz
• “When the blue Buddha dreams”, foxtrot
• “La Danza di Nora”, instrumentation for large orchestra
• "Seven Stars", song for saxophone and small orchestra
• "Everything was like music", foxtrot song
• "Stork polka"
• "Love comes, love goes," waltz
• "Sinking sun, your last wave ..", song and tango
• "Little reverie oh how warm the sun was", song
• "Blame my son"
• "My darling is with the police," Foxtrot
• “Parisian Impressions”, waltz
• “Spring in the English Garden”, song
• “Peter Pan”, concert piece
• "Peter in Vienna"
• "Today the world is so full of music"
• "Your radiant smile"
• "Do I have a whip" (W. Popper and Fred Rauch ), march polka song
• Compositions for "Permit my name is Cox", detective radio plays, (authors: Alexandra and Rolf Becker ), 1959
• Compositions for the entire "Dickie-Dick-Dickens" series, detective radio plays, (authors: Rolf and Alexandra Becker), BR 1957–1960,
• Compositions for "Dangerous Money", detective radio plays, (Author: Edward J. Mason), BR 1961
• Compositions for some "Brummlg'schichten", oral arthearing plays, (authors: Kurt Wilhelm , Olf Fischer , Michl Lang ), BR 1948/1949
• Compositions for "Pit and Fonso", detective radio plays, (authors: Willy Purucker , Olf Fischer, Fred Rauch), BR 1951
• Composition for “Der Schmied von Kochel”, folk radio play, (author: Joseph Maria Lutz ), BR 1955
• Compositions for "Inspector Hornleigh" detective radio plays, (Author: John P. Wynn), BR 1960
• Composition for "Das Grillenlied", radio play, (Author: Hugo Hartung), BR 1958
• Compositions for "A case for Perry Clifton", crime radio plays, (Author: Wolfgang Ecke ), BR 1963/64
• "Come a bird flew", children's song book with drawings by Gerda Bücklers
• "Suse liebe Suse", children's song book with drawings by Gerda Bücklers

literature

• General Encyclopedia of Sciences and Arts. 1976.
• Archives and documentations of the Bavarian Radio, Walter Popper commemorative broadcasts 1985, 1995, 2005 ( Music Hall )
• Society for musical performance and mechanical reproduction rights ( Gema ), Berlin
• J. Kowalenko: Searching for traces, multinational local lore in Odessa. The history of the Odessa collectivist theater. Polytechn. University of Odessa
• Foundation “New Synagogue in Berlin”, 2013: Documents on Leopold Popper
• Landesarchiv Berlin, 2013: Documents on Leopold Popper
• Abraham Stein : The History of the Jews in Bohemia. P. 161 ff.
• Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (ed.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 2: Early camp, Dachau, Emsland camp. CH Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-52962-3 , p. 449.
• Benzion, Kaganoff: A Dictionary of Jewish Names and their History. London 1977.
• "Jewish Genealogy Family Austria"
• Jan Zupanik: Zidovska slechta podunajske monarchy. Prague 2012.
• Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Vienna
• The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (ed.): Bavarian Musicians Lexicon . 2008.
2. ↑ ^{a b c} LexM. University of Hamburg, accessed on April 4, 2016 . 
3. ^ ^{A b} E. Weissweiler: Ausgemerzt-the lexicon of the Jews in music and its murderous consequences . Ed .: Verlag Dittrich. Verlag Dittrich, 1999, p. 217 .
4. ↑ ^{a b c} M. Mederer: The child prodigy and what became of it: Walter Popper . Ed .: “Gong” magazine. 1949.
5. ↑ ^{a b c d e} B. Hasselbring: BR-HISTORY (N) - In Memoriam Walter Popper . Ed .: “Gong” magazine. 1997.
6. ^ ^{A b} State Compensation Office Bavaria in the State Office for Finance: Compensation file Walter Popper .
7. ↑ EHRI Documents (The European Holocaust Research Infrastructure). (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on April 4, 2016 ; Retrieved April 4, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
8. ↑ Bayerischer Rundfunk. Retrieved April 4, 2014 . 
9. ↑ Karl-Otto Sauer: "A little something is always possible", the history of the Bavarian radio . dtv, 2009, p. 102 .
10. ↑ ARD audio game database. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on June 14, 2014 ; Retrieved April 4, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
11. ↑ In memory of Walter Popper. Commemorative broadcasts by Bayerischer Rundfunk in 1985 and 1995 and April 1, 2005 in the Music Hall broadcast
12. ↑ List of famous burial places-Germany-Bavaria-Munich-Obermenzing - Walter Popper. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on April 7, 2014 ; Retrieved April 4, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
13. ^ List of burial sites of well-known personalities in Bavaria, Munich Friedhof Obermenzing. Retrieved April 4, 2016 .