Werner Gerdes

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Werner Gerdes (born June 16, 1910 ; † unknown) was a choirmaster in Braunschweig and the author of treatises on music during the so-called Third Reich .

Live and act

In the 1940s Gerdes published essays in the magazine Die Musik and its successor organ Musik im Krieg, in which he expressed himself from a decidedly National Socialist point of view on questions of music theory and questions about the effect of music. In the band Music and German National Identity , edited by Celia Applegate and Pamela M. Potter , Gesa Kodes describes Gerdes as "a leading demagogue". However, this assessment is likely to overestimate its importance.

Hans-Jörg Koch lectures on Gerdes' essay on light music : “In the sense of a 'folk-biological approach', it should therefore be free from the 'flattening into shallowness and slipperiness'. Therefore, according to the author, 'jazz is a bacillus'. Jazz doesn't stimulate, it excites! He also counted the hit melody among the “musical mayflies”, which “carried the germ of death in itself from day one”. ... 'The German and Germanic type of person is a performance type of the very first order, he is even the performance type par excellence. It is least of all given to him to indulge in the 'dolce far niente' for long hours. ' ... Only 'the special circumstances of the armed struggle' justified the current state of popular music ... "

After the end of the Second World War he became a music teacher at the Wilhelm-Gymnasium in Braunschweig. In the book Music in the Third Reich , published in 1963, Joseph Wulf printed an abridged excerpt from an article by Gerdes from 1942 in the journal Die Musik . This informed the public that Gerdes had represented his ideology during the time of National Socialism. This does not seem to have had any consequences for his work as a high school teacher.

Publications

  • Music maintenance as a social task . In: Die Musik , 34th vol., 1st half, 1941–1942, p. 15.
  • Music as an expression of time . In: Die Musik , 34th vol., 2nd half, 1942, p. 220.
  • Biological prerequisites for folk music care . In: Die Musik , 34th vol., 2nd half, 1942, p. 351.
  • Tasks and characteristics of German light music . In: Music in War , October / November 1943, p. 127.

literature

  • Joseph Wulf (Ed.): Music in the Third Reich. A documentation. Rowohlt 1963.
  • Michael Meyer: Assumption and Implementation of Nazi Policy towards Music. Ph. D., Dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles 1970, p. 485.
  • Hans-Jörg Koch: The request concert on Nazi radio . With a foreword by Hans-Ulrich Wehler . Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2003, ISBN 3-412-10903-7 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  • Annie J. Randall (Ed.): Music, Power and Politics . Routledge, New York 2005, ISBN 0-415-94364-7 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  • Peter Moormann, Albrecht Riethmüller , Rebecca Wolf (eds.): Paradestück military music. Contributions to the change in state representation through music . transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2012, ISBN 978-3-8376-1655-2 ( limited preview in Google book search).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ On this, Musik im War # Note (Wikisource) .
  2. ↑ Celia Applegate, Pamela M. Potter: Music and German National Identity . The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, London 2002, ISBN 0-226-02130-0 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  3. ↑ Koch, p. 86 f. with reference to the article on popular music, published October 1943.
  4. ↑ The article is also published by Peter Moormann et al. a. quoted.
  5. ↑ Table of Contents 1922–1943 . The music
  6. ↑ Abridged excerpt from the text in Wulf: Music in the Third Reich , p. 281 under the title There are no unmusical Germans.
  7. ↑ Quoted in Koch, p. 86, fn. 145.
personal data
SURNAME Gerdes, Werner
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German teacher and author on music issues
DATE OF BIRTH June 16, 1910
DATE OF DEATH 20th century or 21st century