Wolfgang Boetticher

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Wolfgang Boetticher (born August 19, 1914 in Bad Ems ; † April 7, 2002 in Göttingen ) was a German musicologist and long-time professor at the University of Göttingen . Boetticher was the arranger and editor of numerous works by the composer Robert Schumann , especially for the G. Henle publishing house in Munich.

Life

Boetticher, son of a chemist in the civil service, studied musicology at the University of Berlin after training as a pianist with Arnold Schering , Georg Schünemann , Curt Sachs , Hans Joachim Moser , Friedrich Blume and Helmuth Osthoff . Already during his studies he was active in the NSD student union from 1934 . In the Reichsstudentenführung he worked in the music department from 1937. After an application dated February 20, 1938, he became a member of the NSDAP retroactively with effect from May 1, 1937 ( party number 5,919,688), for which he finally worked full-time. He was also a member of the Nazi People's Welfare .

After receiving his doctorate on Robert Schumann in 1939 (publication of the dissertation in 1941), he completed his habilitation in 1943 with his work Studies on Solo Lute Practice of the 16th and 17th Centuries with a bibliography of the intavolated lute prints and hss.

From 1939 Boetticher was a consultant and head of the music-political liaison office in the Rosenberg office . During the Second World War he was also active in the robbery organization Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) from 1940 to 1944 . In 1940 Boetticher accompanied Alfred Rosenberg to Krakow and Warsaw to requisition music. From the State Library and the Kraków Archives, etc. a. Manuscripts from Frédéric Chopin's teacher Joseph Elsner and materials from the Chopin Institute confiscated and transported away. In 1941 Boetticher was involved in the plundering of the collection of the harpsichordist Wanda Landowska , who fled the Nazis , and in the confiscation of other Jewish property.

In July 1941 Boetticher joined the Waffen SS , where he made it to the position of Unterscharführer. From 1940 he was co-author of the Lexicon of Jews in Music . In 1942 he was promoted to head of the Reich Main Office of the ERR, and from 1944 he worked as a private lecturer in Berlin . In 1943 he received the Robert Schumann Prize for identifying new diaries and letters from Schumann .

After the end of the Second World War , Boetticher became a lecturer in Göttingen in 1948 . In 1955 he received a professorship at the University of Göttingen, where he became director of the Musicological Institute in 1957 and was dean of the Faculty of Philosophy from 1972 to 1974 . In 1963 he was visiting professor at the Charles University in Prague .

Boetticher's National Socialist past was not unknown in post-war Germany. As early as 1963 , Joseph Wulf published several documents in his source work Musik im Third Reich , which documented the National Socialist and anti-Semitic commitment of Wolfgang Boetticher. So he presented a document that proves Boetticher's collaboration on the infamous anti-Semitic lexicon of Jews in music . Nevertheless, Boetticher continued his career in musicology. Even after his retirement, he held lectures in the musicology seminar until the winter semester 1998/99. After Willem de Vries discovered his activity in the “ Special Staff Music ” of the ERR, the lectures were canceled by the seminar leader with immediate effect.

Boetticher left handwritten memoirs in which he glossed over his work during the Nazi era. These were published by Hans Schneider, Musikantiquariat and Verlag in Tutzing . Even in his self-portrayal in the first edition of MGG Volume 2, 1952, he did not go into his activities outside the university.

Boetticher's Schumann Research

Boetticher was considered an important Schumann researcher, although criticism of his publications from the Nazi era was loud.

As early as April 29, 1940, the Rosenberg chancellery announced in a confidential message that “ Boetticher had checked the entire Robert Schumann archive with regard to“ our ideological principles ”and made important discoveries which in many respects brought new knowledge about Schumann ". These were allegedly anti-Semitic statements by Schumann, which Boetticher published in 1942 under the title Robert Schumann in his writings and letters . Musicological examinations since the 1980s showed, however, that Boetticher had forged some of Schumann's letters to portray him as an anti-Semite.

From today's perspective, the scientific balance sheet of his research is sobering. The Schumann researcher Gerd Nauhaus gives examples: "Schumann's household books were - like numerous other autobiographical documents - especially in the works of W Boetticher ( Robert Schumann. Introduction to Life and Work , 1941 and Robert Schumann in his writings and letters , 1942) (partly) published and cited, but with such horrific reading errors, misleading omissions and rearrangements as well as misleading comments that they cannot be used in individual cases without time-consuming verification. This also applies to the letters and other records used by Boetticher. In addition, the directories created by him are z. B. the Schumann correspondence or as yet unpublished materials are usually unreliable. What could at times be seen as progress in Schumann research ultimately turned out to be its major stumbling block. "Nauhaus sums up:" The quality of the results [are] truly devastating, and a reviewer who spoke of an 'overturned note box' has Hit the nail on the head: The philological unreliability throughout all of Boetticher's Schumann works is striking. In its voluminous introduction (1941; reissued in 2004!), A faded philosophical-aesthetic concept with unmistakable ideological influences of the Nazi era is pursued. "

Fonts (selection)

  • To be German means to seem unclear. In: Die Musik XXX / 6, March 1938, pp. 399–404
  • The cultural conference of the Reichsstudentenführung in Königsberg i. Pr. From April 22 to 24, 1938. In: Die Musik XXX / 8, May 1938
  • To the knowledge of race and nationality in music. In: Music in the People. Basic Issues in Music Education , ed. by W. Stumme. Berlin 1939, pp. 217-229
  • Robert Schumann. Introduction to personality and work. Contributions to the epistemological criticism of music history and studies on the problem of expression in the 19th century. Festschrift for the 130th anniversary of Robert Schumann's birthday, Berlin: Hahnefeld, 1941 (= publication of the German Robert Schumann Society; university publication; also Berlin, Phil. Diss., 1942). Revised new edition under the title: Robert Schumann - Leben und Werk , Noetzel Verlag 2004, ISBN 3-7959-0804-3
  • Orlando di Lasso and his time , 2 vols., Kassel 1958
  • From Palestrina to Bach , Stuttgart 1959
  • Documents and letters from Orlando di Lasso , Kassel 1960
  • New materials on Robert Schumann's Viennese circle of acquaintances. In: Studies on Musicology , Volume 25 (= Festschrift for Erich Schenk ), Graz-Vienna-Cologne 1962, pp. 37–55
  • From Orlando di Lasso's sphere of activity , (= publisher of the Ges. Für Bayerische Musikgeschichte, Volume 1), Kassel 1963
  • Robert Schumann's piano works (= source catalog for Mg., Volume 9), Wilhelmshaven 1977
  • Handwritten lute and guitar tablatures from the 15th to 18th centuries (Répertoire International des Sources Musicales, B VII). Günter Henle, Munich (1978 and) 1986, ISBN 978-3-87328-012-0
  • Introduction to musical romanticism , (= pocket books on Mw. XLIX), Wilhelmshaven 1983
  • Robert Schumann's piano works, new biographical and text-critical investigations, part II (= source category for Mg. 10A), Wilhelmshaven 1984
  • History of the Motet (= Paths of Research , Vol. 268, Darmstadt 1989), 2nd edition, supplementary new edition Noetzel, Wilhelmshaven 2000

See also

literature

  • Ernst Klee : The cultural lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 .
  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945 . 2nd Edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
  • Fred K. Prieberg : Handbook of German Musicians 1933–1945 , CD-Rom-Lexikon, Kiel 2004, pp. 578–598; Pp. 8152-8156.
  • Willem de Vries: Sonderstab Musik - organized looting in Western Europe 1940–1945. Dittrich, Cologne 1998, ISBN 3-920862-18-X .
    • As a paperback edition under the title Kunstraub in the West 1940–1945. Alfred Rosenberg and the "Special Staff Music" . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2000, ISBN 3-596-14768-9 . (The original text was published in English in 1996 under the title Sonderstab Musik: music confiscations by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg under the Nazi occupation of Western Europe in Amsterdam.)
  • Eva Weissweiler : Eliminated! The Lexicon of the Jews in Music and its Murderous Consequences . Dittrich-Verlag Cologne, 1999, ISBN 3-920862-25-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Ernst Klee: The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 60.
  2. ↑ a b c d e Wolfgang Boetticher: Boetticher, Wolfgang. In: The music in past and present vol. 02 , Bärenreiter-Verlag 1952, p. 57, CD-ROM edition p. 8638.
  3. ^ A b c Fred K. Prieberg: Handbook of German Musicians 1933–1945 , CD-Rom-Lexikon, Kiel 2004, p. 578.
  4. ↑ a b c Ernst Klee: The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 61.
  5. ↑ Fred K. Prieberg: Handbook of German Musicians 1933–1945 , CD-Rom-Lexikon, Kiel 2004, p. 594.
  6. ↑ Fred K. Prieberg: Handbook of German Musicians 1933–1945 , CD-Rom-Lexikon, Kiel 2004, p. 582.
  7. ↑ Fred K. Prieberg: Handbook of German Musicians 1933–1945 , CD-Rom-Lexikon, Kiel 2004, pp. 583–584.
  8. ^ Joseph Wulf : Music in the Third Reich: A Documentation . Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main 1989 (unchanged reprint of the first edition by Sigbert Mohn Verlag, Gütersloh 1963), ISBN 3-550-07059-4 .
  9. ^ Press comments on Willem de Vries' publication Sonderstab Musik .
  10. ↑ Fred K. Prieberg: Handbook of German Musicians 1933–1945 , CD-Rom-Lexikon, Kiel 2004, p. 598.
  11. ↑ Fred K. Prieberg: Handbook of German Musicians 1933–1945 , CD-Rom-Lexikon, Kiel 2004, p. 587.
  12. ↑ Fred K. Prieberg: Handbook of German Musicians 1933–1945 , CD-Rom-Lexikon, Kiel 2004, p. 582, source: BA NS 8/136. Sheet 65.
  13. ↑ Fred K. Prieberg: Handbook of German Musicians 1933–1945 , CD-Rom-Lexikon, Kiel 2004, p. 587, with reference to Eric Werner: Mendelssohn - life and work in a new perspective , Zurich, 1980, Anthony Lewis: Facing the Music In: The New York Times , February 18, 1982; Willem de Vries: Sonderstab Musik , Amsterdam, 1996. pp. 193–195.
  14. ^ Willem de Vries: Art robbery in the west , Fischer TB 2000, p. 258; Pp. 271-274.
  15. ↑ Gerd Nauhaus, Trends in Schumann Research (E-Text in schumann-portal.de), in: Ulrich Tadday (Hg), Schumann-Handbuch , Stuttgart 2006, Metzler; here p. 4 and 5.
personal data
SURNAME Boetticher, Wolfgang
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German musicologist
DATE OF BIRTH August 19, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Bad Ems
DATE OF DEATH April 7, 2002
Place of death Goettingen