''Die Asche von Birkenau'' is a poem by the writer

Stephan Hermlin Stephan Hermlin (; 13 April 1915 – 6 April 1997), real name ''Rudolf Leder,'' was a German author. He wrote, among other things, stories, essays, translations, and lyric poetry and was one of the more well-known authors of former East Germany. ...

from his cycle ''Remembrance''. It was set to music as a

cantata A cantata (; ; literally "sung", past participle feminine singular of the Italian verb ''cantare'', "to sing") is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir. The meaning of ...

in 1965 by

Günter Kochan Günter Kochan (2 October 1930 – 22 February 2009) was a German composer. He studied with Boris Blacher and was a master student for composition with Hanns Eisler. From 1967 until his retirement in 1991, he worked as professor for musical comp ...

Poem

Bundesarchiv B 285 Bild-04413, KZ Auschwitz, Einfahrt

It was written in 1949 during a visit to

Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...

and published in 1951. It is composed of five twelve-line stanzas. Hermlin deals with the

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...

. The motifs are remembrance and

forgetting Forgetting or disremembering is the apparent loss or modification of information already encoded and stored in an individual's short or long-term memory. It is a spontaneous or gradual process in which old memories are unable to be recalled from ...

. The last stanza of the poem optimistically states: The author expressed himself admonitively at the same time; in a 1979 interview he said:

Music

Origin

At the time of the still ongoing 2nd

Auschwitz Trials The Auschwitz trial began on November 24, 1947, in Kraków, when Poland's Supreme National Tribunal tried forty former staff of the Auschwitz concentration camps. The trials ended on December 22, 1947. The best-known defendants were Arthur Liebe ...

, the composer

created ''The Ashes of Birkenau'' for alto solo and orchestra (1965). He took his cue from the poem by Stephan Hermlin and divided his work into a total of seven movements, using the 4 stanzas as a basis and composing 3 additional instrumental parts. The key passage is the fourth movement with its .

Movements

#''Andante rubato'' #''Interludium I (Andante)'' #''Allegro'' #''Grave'' #''Interlude II: Moderato'' #''Vivace'' #''Epilogue: Moderato''

Orchestration

soloist voice (alto), 2 flutes, 1 oboe, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 1 trombone, 1 timpani, 1 percussion, 1 celesta, 1 piano, strings

Premiere

The work was

premiere A première, also spelled premiere, is the debut (first public presentation) of a play, film, dance, or musical composition. A work will often have many premières: a world première (the first time it is shown anywhere in the world), its first ...

d on 25 May 1966 by the Berlin Symphony Orchestra conducted by

Kurt Masur Kurt Masur (18 July 1927 – 19 December 2015) was a German conductor. Called "one of the last old-style maestros", he directed many of the principal orchestras of his era. He had a long career as the Kapellmeister of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Or ...

in Berlin. It has a duration of approximately 16 minutes.

Importance

Kochan considered ''the Ashes of Birkenau'' to be one of his most important pieces. According to his own statements from the 1970s, the work was broadcast by more than seven radio stations. The cantata advanced to become one of the most important musical works dealing with the genocide of the Jews.

Recordings

Annelies Burmeister Annelies Burmeister (25 November 1928 in Ludwigslust – 16 June 1988 in Berlin) was a German contralto and actress. Burmeister studied at the Hochschule für Musik in Weimar. She was a member of the Deutsche Oper in Berlin and made severa ...

(contralto), Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, conductor: Kurt Masur (1967) * Annelies Burmeister (contralto), Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, conductor: Wolf-Dieter Hauschild (1975) * Annelies Burmeister (contralto),

Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra The MDR-Sinfonieorchester (in English, MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra) is a German radio orchestra based in Leipzig. It is the radio orchestra of Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk, the public broadcaster for the German states of Thuringia, Saxony a ...

, conductor:

Herbert Kegel Herbert Kegel (29 July 1920 – 20 November 1990) was a German conductor. Kegel was born in Dresden. He studied conducting with Karl Böhm and composition with Boris Blacher at the Dresden Conservatory from 1935 to 1940. In 1946 he began co ...

(1975)

Reception

The

Holocaust survivors Holocaust survivors are people who survived the Holocaust, defined as the persecution and attempted annihilation of the Jews by Nazi Germany and Axis powers, its allies before and during World War II in Europe and North Africa. There is no unive ...

Simon Wiesenthal Simon Wiesenthal (31 December 190820 September 2005) was a history of the Jews in Austria, Jewish Austrian Holocaust survivor, Nazi hunter, and writer. He studied architecture and was living in Lwów at the outbreak of World War II. He surviv ...

wrote a text on the poem in 1979. In part, it said: . In 2002, the last section of the poem was engraved by the sculptor Ingo Warnke on a revolving stone column near the

Appellplatz Appellplatz (often spelt ''appelplatz'') is a compound German word meaning "roll call" (''Appell'') and "area" or "place" (''Platz''). In English, the word is generally used to describe the location for the daily roll calls in Nazi concentration ...

at the in Springhirsch. The text was worked into the turning stone in a spiral, so that the visitor is invited to circle the surface.In playful search for the structures of reality. Observations on the sculptor Ingo Warnke
(PDF file; 1.91 MB).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Asche Von Birkenau #Die Auschwitz concentration camp Poems about the Holocaust East German literature 1965 in music 1965 cantatas