Georg Knepler

Georg Knepler (21 December 1906 – 14 January 2003) was an Austrian pianist, conductor and musicologist.

Born in Vienna, Knepler was a son of the composer and librettist Paul Knepler and nephew of the music publisher and impresario Hugo Knepler.

He studied piano with Eduard Steuermann from 1926, conducting with Hans Gál and musicology with Guido Adler, Wilhelm Fischer, Egon Wellesz, Rudolf von Ficker and Robert Lach at the University of Vienna.

In the same period he worked as Kapellmeister, Korrepetitor and conductor at the Wiener Volksoper and at the Wiener Stadttheater, from 1930 to 1931 in Mannheim and with Karl Rankl in Wiesbaden as well as leader of workers' choirs.

In 1931 he received his doctorate with the dissertation Die Form in den Instrumentalwerken Johannes Brahms as Dr. phil. At the same time he accompanied Karl Kraus at the piano from 1928 to 1931, who performed Jacques Offenbach's operettas in Vienna, Berlin, Prague, Munich and other cities.

The years 1932/33 are marked by the collaboration with Bertolt Brecht and Hanns Eisler.

He was the piano accompanist of Helene Weigel, who sang Eisler's Wiegenlieder einer proletarischen Mutte (Lullabies of a Proletarian Mother) at workers' meetings.

From 1933 onwards, the Jew and communist Knepler was forbidden any activity and he returned to Austria.

Since he had joined the banned Communist Party of Austria in Vienna in April 1933 and distributed Communist newspapers, he was arrested in January 1934, but was able to emigrate to England the same year.

There he turned more and more intensively to the teachings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, adopted their world view and dialectics and developed his own research work on this basis.

Parallel to his musicological and journalistic work, he was active as an opera conductor as well as musical director of the emigrant theatre "Laterndl" and secretary of the "Austrian Centre".

In 1946 he went back to Vienna and took over the function of cultural adviser of the Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ).

From 1949 Knepler worked in East-Berlin, where the German Democratic Republic was founded in the same year, retaining his Austrian citizenship.

In 1950 Knepler founded the German Academy of Music Berlin, of which he became Rector, and which he directed until 1959.

In 1957 he was transferred from the KPÖ to the Socialist Unity Party of Germany.

From 1959 to 1970, he headed the Musicological Institute of the Humboldt University of Berlin, where he concentrated on the development of Marxist-oriented teaching and research in response to bourgeois musicology.

In 1964 it was given the name Hochschule für Musik "Hanns Eisler" in Berlin.

His concept was aimed at the education of musicians and singers of "new type", who, in addition to their professional qualifications, should also actively participate in social life.

In 1964 Knepler became a full member of the German Academy of Sciences at Berlin.

Knepler died on 14 January 2003 in the hospital of Köpenick at age 96, leaving behind his wife Florence Knepler (1910-2011), née Wiles.