Wolfgang Reimann (church musician)

Wolfgang Reimann (born September 3, 1887 in Neusalz / Oder; † November 16, 1971 in Rottach-Egern ) was a German church musician , organist and university professor.

Life

Gravestone for Wolfgang Reimann and Irmgard Rühle at the Zehlendorf forest cemetery

Wolfgang Reimann was the son of the Silesian elementary school teacher Karl Reimann. 1900–1903 he attended the teacher training college in Greiffenberg . A serious illness interrupted his training, which he continued from 1906 at the Leipzig Conservatory . His teachers included u. a. the Leipzig Thomaskantor Karl Straube . From 1910 Reimann worked as organist and cantor at the Jerusalem Church in Berlin , from 1913 he was permanent organist at the Philharmonic Concerts in Bremen . After his return to Berlin (1921) he continued his previous cantor activities at the Jerusalemkirche and from 1923 taught organ and score playing as well as Protestant liturgy and liturgical organ playing at the State Academy for Church and School Music . In 1935 he was appointed professor at the State University of Music . From 1930 Reimann also worked as an organist and choirmaster at Berlin's Grunewald Church until it was destroyed in the war in 1943 , after which he took over the leadership of the State and Cathedral Choir in Berlin as the successor to Hugo Distler . After the war ended in 1945, Reimann headed the church music department at the State University of Music , took over the office of cantor at St. Marien in Berlin and was chairman of the New Bach Society in Leipzig (until 1949). He was a member of the Berlin Masonic Lodge To the Three Seraphim .

Above all, Wolfgang Reimann has rendered outstanding services to the renewal of Protestant church music and, in particular, actively supported the organ movement . He was co-editor of the magazine “Der Kirchenmusiker” and in 1969 was appointed honorary president of the New Bach Society in Leipzig.

Wolfgang Reimann was married to the contralto Irmgard Rühle (1894–1972). His eldest son Dieter Reimann died in a bomb attack in 1944, his younger son is the composer Aribert Reimann (* 1936).

Publications (selection)

• Lived life. (Autobiography), Berlin 1967

Individual evidence

1. ^ Ulrich Bender: Wilhelm Bender. Church musician in the “Third Reich”: Wilhelm Bender (1911 to 1944). Musicians at the Berlin Parochial Church. Person and work in church-political competition. Mauer Verlag, Rottenburg a / N 2011, p. 142
2. ↑ Obituary