1945 - 1950

A thorny path

The history of Hamburg and its academic institutions is not initially a very traditional or even glorious one. Until the beginning of the 20th century, as a metropolis of millions, the Hanseatic city only had an "Academic Grammar School" and a number of scientific institutes, including, significantly, the Botanical Gardens and the Observatory. The establishment of the "Hamburg Scientific Foundation" in 1907 and the Colonial Institute in 1908 were two further important milestones on the way to a university. Although the future mayor Werner von Melle had already made the founding of a university his life's work as a senator, this plan failed in the "Bürgerschaft", which was composed according to class voting rights. The majority of voices there were those who wanted Hamburg to be limited to its dominant role as a commercial metropolis and who shied away from both the costs of a university and the social demands of its professors. It was not until the democratically elected parliament after the end of the First World War that one of its first sessions decided to found a "Hamburg University". It is ceremoniously opened on May 10, 1919 in the Hamburg Music Hall.

Hanseatic "pepper bag mentality"

A certain degree of this "pepper bag mentality" is also reflected in the founding history of the Hamburg University of Music. Between the two world wars, in every major German city of even approximately the same size and importance, it was possible to receive support or training as an amateur or professional musician in municipal or state music institutes. Hajo Hinrichs, later director of the conservatory, recalls in a memorandum on the occasion of the opening of the new building in 1986: "It is unique that until 1942 in Hamburg, the second largest German city after all, you could only continue your education and training privately, with individual private music teachers or in private conservatories. Anyone who has lived in cities with decades of musical tradition knows what it means for the musical climate and the cultural level of a city whether it has a publicly funded music school or not. I see the fact that this was not the case in Hamburg for so long as one of the burdens that the Hamburg University of Music still suffers from today."

Preliminary stage of a music academy

The global economic crisis at the end of the 1920s spelled the end for many of the private conservatories that existed in Hamburg at the time. One of the most renowned and best-equipped, the "Vogt'sche Konservatorium", was taken over by the city in 1942 as the "School for Music and Drama of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg". The Hamburg composer Ernst Gernot Klussmann, who had previously been a lecturer at the State Academy of Music in Cologne, was appointed its director. Klussmann was appointed with the express task of developing the school into the preliminary stage of a music academy, a task that was severely hampered by the course of the war and the immense destruction. This municipal "School of Music and Drama" continued to operate as a private conservatory, although some excellent teachers were recruited.

First state music academy

It was not until 1950 that the city decided to turn the municipal school into a state music academy, as the Hamburger Abendblatt reported on October 4, 1949, in emphatically Hanseatic sobriety: "The State Academy of Music, established by law on September 14, 1949, will begin its activities on April 1, 1950, after the 'School for Music and Drama' has been converted. Professor Philipp Jarnach (currently Cologne) was appointed director; Professor E.G. Klußmann was appointed deputy director. The three main departments (artistic, vocational and pedagogical training) will be headed by Professors Klußmann, Ditzel and Jöde."
Just under six months later, a certain solemn tone creeps into the report, albeit only on page 17: "The structure and overall picture of the new Hamburg University of Music have now been finalized. (...) A long-cherished wish of the Hamburg state has been fulfilled with this transformation of the municipal music school into a university. As is emphasized, without considerable additional financial expenditure. The semester begins on April 13, and the entrance examinations start on March 17. When the ceremonial opening takes place in the music hall on 12 April, it will be accompanied by the wish that our university will be able to realize the desired (and given) representative position in northern and lower Germany."

Economic misery

At the beginning of the 1950s, however, this foundation was not without controversy in view of the city's still catastrophic structural and economic situation. Hajo Hinrichs comments on this in his memorandum: "The government director at the time, Dr. Simonsen, was certainly right when he said that this university was actually founded five years too early, before the economy and the economic miracle could have a noticeable effect. It is a long and 'thorny' story - as the later First Mayor of Hamburg, Herbert Weichmann, once called it - that began with the founding of the institute. Music-loving citizens of the city joined forces with experts to establish a state 'University of Music and Performing Arts' in the economic misery of the post-war period. A citizens' initiative, one would say today, which led to success thanks to the active assistance of the art-loving and committed arts senator Heinrich Landahl."

Interim solution Budge Palais

The main problem with this early re-founding was that the new university did not have sufficient space or financial resources. A clear decision for the new building was repeatedly postponed over two decades with reference to the respective economic situation: sometimes it was the economic downturn and the resulting lack of funds, sometimes the economic overheating and the need for anti-cyclical action that torpedoed the corresponding plans. "Ten years after it was founded, the mayor's office didn't even know how to localize the conservatory!", as Hajo Hinrichs notes with some indignation. This is understandable, however, as the conservatory was scattered across the city in rented rooms in the 1950s; the small music hall also had to be used for examinations and events. This situation only improved when part of the teaching activities were moved from the Curio-Haus in Rothenbaumchaussee to the Budge-Palais on Harvestehuder Weg, where there was also a small chamber music hall. This was nevertheless intended to be an interim solution, and the director at the time, Jarnach, even had to be told by politicians that they did not want to "waste" such a prestigious property on a music academy. And in those years, one could only dream of a professional platform for concerts and opera, such as the Forum inaugurated in 1986.

Search with a "bang"

The (pre-)founding phase of the Hamburg University of Music provides a fine - and almost forgotten - example of the fact that aspirations and possibilities do not necessarily have to coincide in order to achieve what is ultimately desired.
In any case, the teachers of the "Hamburg School of Music and Drama" did not have to put up with the accusation of lacking ambition when, five months after the end of the war, they took the first concrete steps to transform their institute into a state music academy. The project itself was nothing new, although Hamburg and its inhabitants must have had other problems in the late fall of 1945 than finally offering future music students an academic home. However, the name of the future "desired director", Paul Hindemith, provided the "bang", as Stefan Weiss described it in an article on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the HfMT.

Candidate of choice Paul Hindemith

Hindemith, born in Hanau in 1895, had already been living in exile with his Jewish wife in New Haven (Connecticut) for several years towards the end of the war, where he took up a teaching post at Yale University. His expressionist compositions of the 1920s earned him the reputation of a musical bourgeois terror, before he turned to a neoclassical musical language in the following decade. Banned from performance by the National Socialists, his works are already among the most important compositions of contemporary music. Stefan Weiss comments: "Whoever named Paul Hindemith as the director of a new music academy at that time did not want to establish an ordinary educational institution among many, but at the same time wanted to land a coup with the new foundation that would have ensured immediate worldwide attention."
And this "coup" would have been all the more spectacular as Hamburg did not even have suitable premises for a music academy. In addition, there were constant disputes over the school's management, meaning that the project as a whole was in danger of being put on the back burner or coming to nothing altogether. However, in the early post-war years, Hamburg had positioned itself as a first-rate city of music with the Philharmonic Orchestra under Eugen Jochum and the newly founded Northwest German Radio Symphony Orchestra (NWDR) under Hans-Schmidt-Isserstedt. The quality of both orchestras and the Hamburg State Opera's productions, which took place amidst the ruins of the old building and were enthusiastically received by audiences and critics alike, gave the "Hochschulgesellschaft", founded in 1947 by Hamburg musicians and music lovers, renewed hope.

Philipp Jarnach - an embarrassing solution or an equal rival?

In the magazine "Musica" from February 1947, Philipp Jarnach was mentioned for the first time as a possible director in connection with the establishment of a Hamburg music academy. The fact that this name appeared more and more frequently in the following years and was ultimately favored gives the impression that the project's designers had abandoned the headline-grabbing Hindemith plans and had pragmatically chosen an unspectacular "replacement" with whom three of the four directors of the "School for Music and Drama" had maintained close personal and professional relationships in the past.
So is the choice of Philipp Jarnach as the first director of the Hamburg School of Music something of a stopgap solution? Stefan Weiss disagrees emphatically in his aforementioned article: "In fact, the nomination of Jarnach as director was by no means a step backwards from the highly ambitious plans surrounding Hindemith. Those who still remembered the musical life of the Weimar Republic certainly remembered Jarnach as an equal rival to Hindemith for the position of Germany's greatest young composers".

World musician in a cosmopolitan position

A look at the German music history of the 20th century confirms this. Born in 1892 to a Spaniard and a Flemish mother, Philipp Jarnach was one of the leading composers of modern music in the 1920s and was mentioned alongside Stravinsky, Schönberg, Bartók - or even Hindemith. Due to his family background and his sphere of influence in France, Switzerland and Germany, he is a European composer par excellence, a friend of Ferruccio Busoni and Richard Strauss, roommate of James Joyce and teacher of Kurt Weill, among others. Jarnach was the organizer of secessionist concerts, an outstanding pianist and, as a composer, a beacon of hope for those observers of musical life who did not want the negation of tonality, but rather the integration of tonality and atonality as the future path of music.At the famous "Donaueschinger Musiktage" in the summer of 1921, his String Quintet op. 10 made the greatest impression alongside Hindemith's op. 16, and in September 1927 both were simultaneously appointed as the youngest composition teachers in Germany at the only state music academies at the time (Jarnach in Cologne, Hindemith in Berlin). No "grey mouse", then, but as director of the "State Academy of Music and Drama", which was inaugurated on April 11, 1949, an "artist of international standing", as the Hamburger Abendblatt proudly pointed out, a "world musician in a world city post". Whether Paul Hindemith continued to follow the fortunes of the Hamburg Academy of Music is a matter of conjecture. The fact is that he was awarded the Bach Prize of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg in 1954 - three years after Philipp Jarnach.