Wilhelm E. Liefland

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Wilhelm Eberhard Liefland (* 1938 in Obernkirchen; † August 1980 in front of Nordstrand ) was a German poet and music critic, especially of jazz.

Life

Liefland was the son of a pastor from Northern Germany. He studied theology, German literature and philosophy in Heidelberg, Hamburg, Berlin, Frankfurt. In 1969 he made his master's degree with a thesis on Friedrich Theodor Vischer . He also had piano lessons (classical, jazz). He worked for the Frankfurter Rundschau from 1969 and wrote jazz reviews for this newspaper and the Jazz Podium from 1970 until his death in 1980 . His reviews were shaped by his coming from the Frankfurt School . From 1977 onwards, on the occasion of the publication of an anthology of works by the well-known jazz author and producer ("Jazz Pope") Joachim Ernst Berendt ("A Window from Jazz"), he had a violent public exchange of blows , as he particularly focused on the political dimension in Berendt's assessment of free jazz neglected. He also complained about Berendt's “lying”, “cheeky”, “authoritarian rasping” tone, his tendency towards self-exaggeration and religious digressions and exploiting his overpowering position in German jazz. Before that, Liefland had attacked the “commercialism” of the tenant and co-owner of the Frankfurt jazz cellar Willi Geipel, about which Berendt had complained personally in a letter to him. In a subsequent controversial letter to the editor in the Frankfurter Rundschau in 1977, Eberhard Weber , among others, sided with Liefland.

He published poems in anthologies and a volume of poetry, but burned his poems from earlier years before he switched to music critic in the late 1960s. In Frankfurt he also carried out jazz and lyric programs, especially from 1978 with the trio of Michel Pilz , Buschi Niebergall and Uwe Schmitt .

Liefland had overcome his alcohol problems (where he was temporarily hospitalized) from the mid-1970s, but had a relapse after an attack and died in the mudflats off Nordstrand . His estate is in the Darmstadt Jazz Institute . The group Voices ( Heinz Sauer , Christof Lauer , Bob Degen , Thomas Heidepriem , Ralf Hübner ) named their album Für Wilhelm E. after him.

Axel Springer's board member Mathias Döpfner called him in his doctoral thesis published in 1991 a “ decisive pioneer of professional popular music criticism in Germany ”. Wolfgang Sandner emphasized the cleansing power of his reviews, which even after that rarely reached jazz critics .

Fonts

  • Jazz, music, criticism , Verlag der Buchhandlung Raymund Dillmann, Kriftel 1992 (music reviews, selection 1970 to 1980, foreword by Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich, with kind relentlessness )
  • Songs along the fear - sixty-six poems , Verlagsgesellschaft Greno, Heusenstamm 1975 (poetry, 102 pages), new edition Dillmann 1981
  • Poetry - the poetic work , Wolke Verlag, Hofheim 1987 (editor Jutta Dillmann)
  • with Herbert Joos : Chet- an illustrated portrait , Bonz 1990 (about Chet Baker , drawings by Joos, with poems by Liefland, 64 pages, published in a limited edition of 1000 copies)
  • The hole in the scene: From jazz and from utopia and from the paralysis in the Frankfurt Jazz Keller , printed in: Johannes Oehlmann (editor) Jazzaz - texts on jazz music , Focus, Giessen 1982.

Discography

  • Jazz ensemble of the Hessischer Rundfunk : Atmospheric Conditions Permitting ; ECM 517 354-2. 1967–1993 (contains, inter alia, two poems by Liefland, "Oben" and "Schattenlehre", which he recites to music by Pilz, Niebergall, Bob Degen and Ralf Hübner)

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Liefland, Poesie, Hofheim 1987
  2. ^ Andrew Wright Hurley "The return of jazz: Joachim-Ernst Berendt and West German Cultural Change", Berghahn Books 2009. The article with the review of Berendts Window from Jazz was published on August 26, 1977 in the Frankfurter Rundschau. The controversy with Berendt and others is documented in the supplement rundy of the Neue Musik Zeitung, issue August / September 1977.
  3. ↑ The Jazz Killer pubs with music in Frankfurt gnaw at the jazz cellar. Difficult, but not hopeless , Neue Musik Zeitung , August / September 1977, reprinted in Liefland: Jazz, Musik, Critique , 1992. Liefland, previously a regular customer in the Jazzkeller, was then banned from the house. Volker Kriegel Jazz & Rock in Burghard König (Ed.) Jazz Rock , rororo 1983.
  4. ^ Information from Liefland in a letter to Manfred Eicher , printed in Jazz, Musik, Critique . Then he was treated for the first time in 1969 in a psychiatric institution
  5. ↑ Sometimes a suicide is suspected or alleged (e.g. Andrew Wright Hurley “The return of jazz: Joachim-Ernst Berendt and West German Cultural Change”, Berghahn Books 2009). In the preface to the edition of Liefland's reviews, Dillmann speaks of tragic accidental death .
  6. ↑ Döpfner “Music Criticism in Germany after 1945”, Lang 1991, p. 207.
  7. ↑ From mixed to feature pages - Jazz and its critics , in Jürgen Schwab Der Frankfurt Sound , Societäts-Verlag 2003, p. 285.
personal data
SURNAME Liefland, Wilhelm
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Liefland, Wilhelm Eberhard; Liefland, Wilhelm E.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lyric poet and jazz critic
DATE OF BIRTH 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH Obernkirchen
DATE OF DEATH August 1980
Place of death at north beach