Wolfgang Steinecke

Wolfgang Steinecke (left) with Heinz Dressel (1957)

Wolfgang Steinecke (22 April 1910 – 23 December 1961) was a German musicologist, music critic and cultural politician.

Life

Steinecke was born in Essen as son of Käthe Steinecke née Lübbers and Hugo Wolfram Steinecke. The father was a full-time Reichsbahn inspector. As a sideline he was a music critic for well-known Essen daily newspapers and was a choirmaster. Already as a child Steinecke wrote poems and a play. He attended a grammar school in his home town. At the age of 17 he wrote his first musical work. From 1927 he wrote incidental music for school theatre performances as well as for productions of the Kiel Student Theatre. Steinecke first completed practical music studies at the Folkwangschule in Essen with Ludwig Riemann (1863-1927) and Felix Wolfes. He then studied musicology with Ernst Bücken, art history, theatre and literature and philosophy at the Cologne Academy of Music and the University of Cologne and in Kiel. By 1928 he had already written a seventy-page music aesthetic, which is in his estate.

In addition to his studies, he worked as a student of direction and assistant to Georg Hartmann at the Städtische Bühnen in Kiel. In 1934 he received his doctorate under Friedrich Blume in Cologne. The title of the dissertation was "The Parody in Music".

Steinecke was open-minded about the Nazi regime and also cultivated relationships with numerous influential musicians and musicologists during the Nazi period. Among them was his doctoral supervisor Friedrich Blume, but also Fritz Stein.

Steinecke worked as a music and theatre critic for the Rheinisch-Westfälische Zeitung in Essen until 1939. He then moved to Darmstadt to work as the editor for southwest Germany for the Düsseldorf theatre newspaper Der Mittag. He also worked as a correspondent for several daily newspapers. Due to the closure of the German theaters on September 1, 1944 he became unemployed.

After the end of the Second World War he applied in Darmstadt for a job in the newly to be founded cultural administration of the city of Darmstadt under Mayor Ludwig Metzger. On his application he stated that he was politically unencumbered and made no statements about his activities in the NS time. Also at a later time Steinecke was not subjected to a denazification procedure. On 1 August 1945 he was given a temporary contract of employment as cultural advisor. On 1 December 1945, the American Military Government agreed to employ Steinecke. The employment contract was regularly extended in the following period. He received a salary in the rank of a government councillor.

During his time as cultural advisor until 1948 Steinecke rebuilt the cultural administration in the heavily destroyed city of Darmstadt. This included the opening of the municipal library, the Academy of Musical Arts and the Volkshochschule. He also founded a municipal chamber music series and organized the first art exhibitions.

The name Steinecke is, however, particularly associated with the founding of the International Summer Courses for New Music and the Kranichstein Music Institute. The programs in the early years were strongly influenced by musicians from the transitional period between National Socialism and the Federal Republic of Germany. These included such musicians as Hugo Distler, Wolfgang Fortner, Gerhard Frommel, Hermann Reutter etc. From 1950 Steinecke devoted himself exclusively to the Darmstädter Ferienkurse. Little by little he succeeded in bringing many composers of Neue Musik to Darmstadt.

Steinecke also worked as a music critic for various newspapers and magazines.

Steinecke was married to the photographer Hella Steinecke née Dahm (1921-1982). The marriage remained childless. Steinecke died as a result of a car accident in December 1961 at the age of 51.

Publications

• 1934: Die Parodie in der Musik, Wolfenbüttel

Literature

• Artikel Wolfgang Steinecke, in Stadtlexikon Darmstadt, Stuttgart 2006, S. 889.
• Michael Custodis im Auftrag des Internationalen Musikinstituts Darmstadt (IMD): Traditionen Koalitionen Visionen. Wolfgang Steinecke und die Internationalen Ferienkurse in Darmstadt, Saarbrücken 2010.

External links

• Literature by and about Wolfgang Steinecke in the German National Library catalogue