The Violin Music of East Germany Part IV: Hanns Eisler.
This month the spotlight is on Hanns Eisler, arguably the most famous East German composer. Eisler had an equally fraught and illustrious career. No other composer from my project seems to have combined politics and music so completely, which caused both trials and tribulations in his musical career. Musicologist David Blake notes that ‘no composer suffered more from the post-1945 cultural cold war,’ than Eisler. However, in recent years his work has been celebrated.
He is best known for composing the national anthem of East Germany, for his long artistic association with Bertolt Brecht, his film scores, and the book he co-wrote with Adorno. Plus, The Hochschule für Musik "Hanns Eisler" is named after him. Not bad.
His violin music was the easiest to find, although admittedly, he didn't write much for violins and strings. Now that I own it, I’ve quickly learned that it is not easy to play. His music is difficult and challenging and sits awkwardly on the violin. I blame his teacher, Schoenberg, but no doubt there is more to it.
Read on to learn more.
About Eisler
Eisler was born in Leipzig, July 6, 1898 (happy belated birthday!), but grew up in Vienna, where his father, an Austrian Jew, worked as an editor and translator. Both of his parents were amateur musicians, and from an early age, Eisler immersed himself in music.
During WWI, He served as a soldier on the front-lines in the Austro-Hungarian army and was wounded several times during combat. After his discharge from the military in 1918, Eisler studied composition with Karl Weigl at the New Vienna Conservatory and supported himself with proofreading work at the Universal Editions publishing house. During his first few months as a civilian, Eisler composed prolifically. From 1919-1923 He was a pupil of Arnold Schoenberg and was the first of Schoenberg's disciples to compose in the twelve-tone or serial technique. His music from the early 1920s very much shows the influence of his mentor.
In 1925 Eisler accepted a teaching position at the Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatory in Berlin and in 1926 he applied for membership in the German Communist Party but was denied membership mostly because he failed to pay his dues on time. In 1926 he started writing articles on music for the Communist periodical Die Rote Fahne. He also created anthems, marching songs, and pieces for unaccompanied men's chorus that were not just overtly supportive of the proletariat in their texts but also self-consciously 'accessible' in their musical content. (all of this was recorded in FBI files – more on that later).
A disagreement in musical and political values led to a break with his esteemed teacher, Schoenberg, who moved to Berlin in January 1926 to teach at the Prussian Academy of Arts. Schoenberg accused Eisler of being disloyal, and Eisler, in turn, accused, Schoenberg of being bourgeois.
Eisler was in Vienna in January 1933 when Hitler became German Chancellor. Those involved with the German Workers' movement were forced to cease their activities immediately, and Eisler decided not to return to Berlin. The Nazi Party subsequently banned his music. During the early 1930s, Eisler moved around Europe and traveled to and from New York regularly, where he spoke publicly against Fascism in Germany. In 1937 Eisler accepted a teaching position at the New School for Social Research in New York in the hopes of moving to the United States permanently.
In 1942 Eisler moved from New York to Hollywood to teach at USC and write music for films. He continued his collaborations with Brecht while living in California, and in 1947 co-wrote Composing for the Films with Theodore Adorno. His reputation and contacts enabled a fruitful career as a Hollywood composer, and he was nominated for an Academy Award in 1942 for the score for Hangmen also Die (1942), which depicts the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, Reichsprotektor in charge of Czechoslovakia and the Czech people’s resistance to Nazi occupation. Eisler was one of the first Hollywood composers to use atonality and tone rows in film music.
Eisler's promising career in the U.S. was interrupted by the Cold War. He was one of the first artists placed on the Hollywood blacklist by the film studio bosses. In two interrogations by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, the composer was accused of being "the Karl Marx of music" and the chief Soviet agent in Hollywood. His supporters, including his friend Charlie Chaplin and the composers Igor Stravinsky, Aaron Copland, and Leonard Bernstein, organized benefit concerts to raise money for his defense fund, but he was deported in early 1948. Folksinger Woody Guthrie protested the composer's deportation in his lyrics for "Eisler on the Go"—recorded fifty years later by Billy Bragg and Wilco on the Mermaid Avenue album (1998).
Eisler on the Go
Words by Woody Guthrie, Music by Billy Bragg
Eisler on the go,
Eisler on the move
Brother is on the Vinegar truck and
I don't know what I'll do
I don't know what I'll do,
I don't know what I'll do
Eisler's on the come and go and
I don't know what I'll do
Eisler on the farm,
Eisler on the town
Sister in the tickly bush and
I don't know what I'll do
Eisler on the boat,
Eisler on the ship
Daddy on the henhouse roof and
I don't know what I'll do
Eisler in the jailoe,
Eisler back at home,
Ranking scratch his head and cry and
I don't know what I'll do
Eisler him write music,
Eisler him teach school,
Truman him don't play so good and
I don't know what I'll do
On March 26, 1948, Eisler and his wife departed the United States and returned to Germany, where they settled in East Berlin, attracted by its promise of a socialist society. Before leaving, he read the following statement:
I leave this country, not without bitterness and infuriation. I could well understand it when in 1933, the Hitler bandits put a price on my head and drove me out. They were the evil of the period; I was proud of being driven out. But I feel heartbroken over being driven out of this beautiful country in this ridiculous way.
Upon his arrival in East Germany, one of his first compositional activities was setting Johannes Becher's poem "Auferstanden aus Ruinen," (Risen from Ruins) to music, which became the national anthem for the newly established German Democratic Republic. He was then elected to the German Academy of Arts and served as an esteemed professor of composition at the Hochschule für Musik for twelve years.
Eisler died of a heart attack (his second) in East Berlin in September 1962 and. His grave is near Brecht's in the Dorotheenstadt cemetery.
Eisler (left) pictured here with good friend and collaborator Bertolt Brecht.
His Legacy
After his death, the Hochschule für Musik was renamed the Eisler Conservatory in his honor, and in 1994 the reunified Germany officially supported both the founding of an International Hanns Eisler Society and the launch of a critical edition of Eisler's collected works.
The Hanns Eisler Music Conservatory in Berlin.
On January 25, 2009, Leon Botstein at Bard College conducted a concert at New York's Avery Fisher Hall, titled "Music of the Other Germany," which included the music of Eisler, Dessau, Wagner-Regeny, Zimmermann, and Matthus.
Eisler’s Violin Music
Prelude and Fugue on B–A–C–H (string trio) (1934) acquired
Sonate für Violine und Klavier "Die Reisesonate" (1937) acquired
Duo Op.7 for Violin and Cello acquired
Sources:
http://orelfoundation.org/composers/article/hanns_eisler
http://holocaustmusic.ort.org/resistance-and-exile/hanns-eisler/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanns_Eisler
private communications with friends of the Wende Museum.