Hermann Abendroth

Abendroth is known for performing classical and romantic compositions, including Beethoven, Brahms, and Bruckner.

[1] In 1934, the Nazi Party seized the city council of Cologne, and the liberally minded Abendroth was promptly removed from the public function and detained.

Nonetheless, other personalities of the arts interceded, and Abendroth was restituted into the public function, to head the department of education of the Nazi Reichsmusikkammer.

[2][4][failed verification] After World War II, the Communist new authorities of Saxony rescinded all Abendroth's contracts of Leipzig, and so - with his past of the Nazi Party - he wouldn't manage to get a new stable position anywhere else in Germany either.

Such opportunity would help cleansing Abendroth's name, about his Nazi past,[1] and so he returned to Leipzig, in charge of its Radio Symphony Orchestra, from 1949 to 1956.

As Abendroth, a heavy smoker, was becoming a prominent artist of East Germany, he was the only person allowed to smoke within the building of the radio station of Leipzig, by the Communist authorities.

[2] Nowadays, Abendroth is being successfully rediscovered by a collection of CDs, published since mid-1990s, consisting mainly of his works for the Radio Symphony Orchestra of Leipzig of since 1953.