Hans Stieber
He was the founding director of the Hochschule für Theater und Musik in Halle an der Saale.
His maternal great-grandmother Friederike Komitsch, née Schaffner, was an actress at the Schauspielhaus Berlin and married the actor Ludwig Devrient in her first marriage.
[1] His grandfather was the jurist Wilhelm Stieber and worked as a police director, privy councillor and head of the Central-Nachrichten-Bureaus at the Preußisches Staatsministerium [de] in Berlin.
His father made it to the 1st director of the Norddeutsche miners association [de]'s pension fund in Halle an der Saale.
[2] Stieber's brother Paul Devrient (1890–1973) was an opera and concert singer (tenor), especially a sought-after Mozart and Verdi-interpreter.
He played the viola in Dvořák's 14th string quartet, conducted an aria from Mendelssohn's oratorium Elija and participated as soloist in the Violin Concerto in E minor of the composer.
At the Opernhaus Kiel, where he worked from 1917 to 1920, he was responsible for the new production of Cherubini's opera Der Wasserträger with recitatives composed by himself.
[6] In the 1920s and 1930s he composed numerous stage and choral works which were premiered in Hanover, Essen, Bremen, Vienna, Leipzig and Breslau.
In 1924 In 1924 with the Männerchor and the Hannoversche Konzertchor founded by him, the later Singakademie, he performed Pfitzner's romantic cantata Von deutscher Seele [de] to the Hanover premiere.
[8] During his Leipzig years he also composed symphonic works and cantatas, which were performed under the direction of Hermann Abendroth and Paul Schmitz [de] at the Gewandhaus.
He belonged to the circle of friends of the Leipzig mayor and resistance fighter Carl Friedrich Goerdeler.
[11] In June 1946, commissioned by the Soviet Military Administration in Germany, gründete er 1947[12] among others together with Max Schneider, Walther Davisson, Bronisław von Poźniak and Sigfrid Grundeis the Hochschule für Theater und Musik in Halle, which he headed until 1938.
He was also active in the Commission for Music Theatre in the Association of Composers and Musicologists of the GDR [de], for which he also prepared expert opinions.
So he became a member of the Ernst Barlach Gesellschaft Hamburg [de] and of the Barlach-Arbeitskreis of the Cultural Association of the GDR.
Within the framework of the Hallische Musiktage, the "Hans Stieber Prize" was awarded posthumously from 1977 onwards at the suggestion of the Association of Composers and Musicologists of the GDR.
