Karl Klingler
Karl Klingler (7 December 1879 – 18 March 1971) was a German violinist, concertmaster, composer, music teacher and lecturer.
[2] Broken only by his military service during the World War I, Klingler's teaching career at the UdK lasted more than 30 years, concluding in 1936.
[4] Along with performing and teaching, he also turned his talents to composition, producing songs, chamber music and a violin concerto which he premiered with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1907.
[5] During the years before the war, he was receiving glowing reviews from the critics, notably in the United States in 1911 for a performance of Beethoven's Triple Concerto with the Welsh cellist Arthur Williams and the Galician pianist Artur Schnabel.
He arranged regular musical evenings at his house in the Sophienstraße (today the Bellstraße), with fellow musicians such as Korngold, Wilhelm Kempff and Emil von Reznicek.
Racism and strident antisemitism which had been a feature of Nazi propaganda during the previous decade were now progressively and rapidly integrated into daily life.
As a former president of the "German League of Concert Artists" he must have been familiar with the politicised music policy of these and other culture based institutions when he involved himself in them.
[8] Klingler received a succession of warnings and threats from Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, probably backed up by communications from Herbert Gerigk, the top music administrator in Nazi Germany: The Jewish cellist must be replaced.
Klingler had actually met Adolf Hitler, albeit briefly, at a musical event set up by President Hindenburg back in March 1934, and now he wrote personally to Hitler, a letter dated 22 November 1934, hoping that the leader would be appreciative of the artistic and German qualities of the Klingler Quartet including its Jewish cellist.
Silberstein continued to play the cello in the quartet till its final appearance on 17 March 1936 despite opposition from the Propaganda Ministry, thanks to a succession of "Special Permits" issued by the Reich Chamber of Culture (Reichskulturkammer).
[4] On 9 March 1936, in the presence of several students, Klingler protested at the university when he discovered that a bust of his (Jewish) mentor, Joseph Joachim, had been removed.
In January 1938 he performed in a trio with his elder brother Fridolin Klingler and the flautist Gustav Scheck at a chamber music evening organised by the Bremen Philharmonic Society.
[8] In 1943 the family home in Berlin was rendered uninhabitable by an air raid and the Klinglers moved permanently to the small country estate at Krumke [de], just outside Osterburg (Altmark), which Margarethe had inherited after her father died in 1931.
His address book was confiscated: it included contact details for his friend's son Erwin Planck, who around this time was sentenced to death for involvement in the 20 July plot to assassinate the Führer.
The country estate was permanently confiscated under the auspices of the land reforms in East Germany and it was converted for use as a tuberculosis sanatorium.
A month later they reached Kirchrode on the southside of Hanover where they were reunited with their son, Wolfgang, recently released from a stint as a prisoner of war.
On the invitation of President Hindenburg, in March 1934 the Klingler Quartet, including the cellist Ernst Silberstein, performed in the presence of Adolf Hitler.
After the publication of Klingler's essay "On the fundamentals of violin playing" (Über die Grundlagen des Violinspiels), which was reissued in 1990 along with some additional texts, most of the sheet music editions he published were of the Brahms quartets.
Some of his own chamber music works, including his piano quintet in E-flat major, were published during the composer's lifetime, some even re-released.
