Wolfgang Zeller

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Wolfgang Friedrich Zeller (born September 12, 1893 in Biesenrode , Mansfeld-Südharz district ; † January 11, 1967 in Berlin ) was a German composer of film music, among other things .

Life

Childhood and youth

Zeller was born in Biesenrode in the Harz Mountains in 1893 as the son of a pastor. At the age of eight he received violin lessons and began composing while still at school. After graduating from high school in Potsdam , Zeller took lessons from the Munich violin virtuoso Felix Berger , and in Berlin from the composer Jean Paul Ertel . Between October 1914 and November 1918 Zeller took part in World War I as a soldier .

After the war he wrote larger compositions for orchestra as well as chamber music and songs. He found a job as a violinist in the orchestra of the Berliner Volksbühne and from 1921 to 1929 was a composer and conductor of drama music.

Film music

Zeller came into contact with the film music through the silhouette artist Lotte Reiniger and wrote the music for her silent animation film The Adventures of Prince Achmed , which premiered in Berlin in 1926. Further film compositions (e.g. for Hans Kyser , Walter Ruttmann ) followed. Soon Zeller was one of the most sought-after and most played film composers of his time.

Zeller, who did not belong to the NSDAP , wrote not only harmless works such as the film music for The Broken Krug (1937) or Immensee (1943), but also the music for various Nazi propaganda films that were later banned by the Allied military governments during the Nazi era The old law (1934), a film that promoted the Nazi Regime's Hereditary Farm Act, Thuringian Land - the hand of the Führer (1934), The old and the young king , Ewiger Wald (1936), in which the “Myth of the German forest in relation to the people [...] in the sense of Nazi propaganda "is presented Ritt in die Freiheit (1937), Der Herrscher (1937), a film by Veit Harlan , which shows the" transformation of a selfish bourgeois publisher into a National Socialist Wirtschaftsführer "and is a" Hitler homage " according to Ernst Klee , Petermann is against it (1938) according to August Hinrichs , a film that advertises the KdF -Reisen, Du und Ich (1938) based on the novel Du s Elber bist das Rad by Eberhard Frowein , Aim in the Clouds (1938), a film that served "to advertise the air armament of the Reich". In the same year it struck Oswald Lehnich of the president Reich Film Chamber for the Reich Cultural Senate before.

This was followed by other compositions for Nazi films that were banned in 1945, such as the music for the adventure film Der Gouverneur (1939) based on the play Die Fahne by Otto Emmerich Groh , as well as the music for the anti-Semitic inflammatory film Jud Süß (1940) by Veit Harlan . In 1941 he composed the film music for Menschen im Sturm , a film in which ethnic Germans are portrayed as an oppressed minority in Yugoslavia. He also wrote incidental music for Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1940 as a replacement for the usual incidental music by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy .

After the Second World War , in 1945 Zeller became the first Kapellmeister of the Comedy and Theater on Kurfürstendamm . In addition, he continued to work as a film composer and also wrote music for anti-fascist films such as Ehe im Schatten (1947) and Morituri (1948). Zeller's last work is the music for the documentary Serengeti must not die (1959) by Bernhard Grzimek .

Social

Zeller was a member of the Christian Peace Conference . He was buried in the forest cemetery in Zehlendorf .

Film music (selection)

literature

  • Herbert Birett : Silent film music . Material collection. Berlin: Deutsche Kinemathek, 1970, p. 152, 210 (there also photo)
  • Christine Raber : The film composer Wolfgang Zeller . Berlin 2003. ISBN 3-89007-597-5
  • Fred K. Prieberg : Handbook of German Musicians 1933–1945 , CD-Rom-Lexikon, Kiel 2004, pp. 7956–7958
  • 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 , p. 679.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Fred K. Prieberg: Handbook of German Musicians , p. 7956
  2. ↑ a b c Quote from Fred K. Prieberg: Handbook of German Musicians , p. 7957
  3. ^ Ernst Klee: The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 679.
  4. ↑ a b Fred K. Prieberg: Handbook of German Musicians , p. 7957
  5. ↑ Fred K. Prieberg: Handbook of German Musicians , p. 7958
personal data
SURNAME Zeller, Wolfgang
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Zeller, Wolfgang Friedrich (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German composer of film music, among others
DATE OF BIRTH September 12, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Biesenrode , Mansfeld-Südharz district
DATE OF DEATH January 11, 1967
Place of death Berlin