Fritz Berend (10 March 1889 – 29 December 1955) was a German, later an English conductor, theater and music director[1] as well as Kapellmeister,[2] composer[3] and musicologist.
[4] Born in Hanover during the Gründerzeit of the German Empire as scion of a Jewish scholarly family,[4] son of a lawyer and notary and later Privy Councillor of Justice Emil Berend (1846–1920)[5] and his second wife Leonore, née Cohen, Behren grew up in Hannover with three half siblings,[4] including the later literary scholar Eduard Berend [de] (1883–1972).
Only a few weeks later, on 10 June 1933, Karl-Eugen Heinrich denounced the theatre director to Joseph Goebbels that Berend was "to address him as a Jew according to party official regulations".
In a personal conversation with Goebbels, Liebscher's successor Wilhelm Hanke succeeded in keeping Berend in his post, pointing out that otherwise he would have to close the Münster Theater.
During this time he initially looked for a position as a répétiteur, but then joined the Jüdische Künstlerhilfe, where he could work as a conductor, and shortly afterwards also in Breslauer Kulturbund-Orchester.
[2][6] Then, however, he received a warning from the non-Jewish actress Ilsabe (Ilse Annemarie) Dieck, who lived in Münster, that the Gestapo would make inquiries about the mutual relationship.
Because of the violation of the ban on work, he feared the so-called "Sippenhaft" for his siblings who remained in the German Reich, especially after his brother Eduard had been arrested there.
[4] After Benito Mussolini had also enacted Italian racial laws in the fall of 1938, similar to Adolf Hitler, and Berend was now threatened with persecution and expulsion in Italy as well, the artist left the country by means of a visa after the forced payment of the "Reich Flight Tax" in the amount of 1,917 ℛ︁ℳ︁ – for which he had to sell his concert piano – and reached England on 18 March 1939.
Berend once found a larger audience when the Landesgruppe deutscher Gewerkschafter in Gross-Britannien celebrated the 25th anniversary of the November Revolution in the middle of the war on 9 November 1943: at the well-attended event with lectures, musical interludes and recitations by Ferdinand Freiligrath and Bertolt Brecht, Berend was able to present the audience with a sonata by Ludwig van Beethoven and his Victory Symphony from Egmont.
[4] Between 1944 and the post-war period of 1951, Berend found a large public as a conductor, especially in London during the matinees of the National Gallery of Art, performing cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach among others.