Ottmar Gerster (29 June 1897 in Braunfels, Germany – 31 August 1969 in Borsdorf) was a German viola player, conductor and composer who in 1948 became rector of the Liszt Music Academy in Weimar.

He attended an Academic secondary school ("Gymnasium") and entered, in 1913, the Dr Hoch Music Conservatory where his teachers included Bernhard Sekles (improvisation) and Adolf Rebner (violin).

He composed a "Consecration piece" for the regime in 1933 as well as a "battle hymn" for (Nazi) German Christian organisation entitled "You should burn",[2] setting a text by Baldur von Schirach.

Further productions quickly followed in Bremen, Magdeburg, Essen und Liegnitz, and in the same year the city of Düsseldorf awarded him its version of the Robert Schumann Prize for the work.

In 1943 the National Office for Music Production (die Reichsstelle für Musikbearbeitung) gave him a 50,000 Mark contract to compose his opera "The Nutter" ("Rappelkopf")[5] which was later renamed, less colloquially, "The enchanted self" ("Das verzauberte Ich").

This listed more than 1,000 people from the arts establishment who on account of their cultural value should be kept away from involvement in fighting even, as the enemy armies advanced, on the home front.

He stuck to the framework of conventional extended tonality, often using church music modes, essentially building his chord structures on fourths and fifths.