Composer, conductor, music director and lecturer, born in Hain (Community Borna/Saxony), died in Weimar (Thuringia).
After graduating from high school in 1942, he studied conducting and composition at the Musikhochschule Leipzig until 1946 and at the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt Weimar (inter alia with Hermann Abendroth). From 1956 to 1958 he studied as a master student at the German Academy of Arts in Berlin with Ottmar Gerster. Since 1946 he has worked as Kapellmeister, solo reeditor and music director at the Deutsches National Theater Weimar and at other well-known concert halls in Thuringia (Jena, Mühlhausen and Rudolstadt).
From 1953 to 1960 he worked as a lecturer at the Conservatory in Weimar and from 1960 to 1966 as a music editor at the Radio DDR, broadcaster Leipzig and as a sound director at the radio station Weimar. In the years 1966 to 1991 he worked as a lecturer for orchestra and choir conductors at the Academy of Music Franz Liszt Weimar. Since the founding of the Association of Composers and Musicologists of the GDR, he was a member of the board of the District Association of Thuringia. Since 1968 he was a member of the central board.
His works include not only choral music but also symphonic works, ballet and chamber music, cantatas and solo songs. For the inauguration of the memorial and memorial Buchenwald 1958 he composed the Buchenwald Poem (for soloists, mixed choir and orchestra).
(Rainer Stelle)