Karl Zumpe (20 May 1924 – 15 November 2001) was a German musician and long-time director of the

Gewandhaus Gewandhaus is a concert hall in Leipzig, the home of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. Today's hall is the third to bear this name; like the second, it is noted for its fine acoustics. History The first Gewandhaus (''Altes Gewandhaus'') The f ...

Leipzig.

Life

Zumpe was born in

Zwickau Zwickau (; is, with around 87,500 inhabitants (2020), the fourth-largest city of Saxony after Leipzig, Dresden and Chemnitz and it is the seat of the Zwickau District. The West Saxon city is situated in the valley of the Zwickau Mulde (German: ...

. After passing the Not abitur, Zumpe was drafted into military service at the age of eighteen. After serving on both the

East East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the fac ...

and the West Front, he was a prisoner of war until 1948. After a period as a warehouse worker, he was employed as a librarian at Wismut in

Johanngeorgenstadt Johanngeorgenstadt () is a mining town in Saxony’s Ore Mountains, 17 km south of Aue, and 27 km northwest of Karlovy Vary. It lies in the district of Erzgebirgskreis, on the border with the Czech Republic, is a state-recognized heal ...

. Equipped only with his experiences as a child in the choir of the in Zwickau, he took over as choir director in the cultural ensemble of Wismut. It was here that Rudolf Fischer of the Leipzig Musikhochschule discovered him at a choir competition and brought him to Leipzig to study. After studying music from 1951 to 1956, he obtained a position at the Leipzig Gewandhaus in 1958 as head of the Gewandhaus office. This position was changed to that of Gewandhaus director in 1960. While the Gewandhauskapellmeister was responsible for artistic and state direction, the Gewandhausdirektor was responsible for organisation and administration. He was able to dispel initial reservations of the orchestra - Zumpe had joined the

SED sed ("stream editor") is a Unix utility that parses and transforms text, using a simple, compact programming language. It was developed from 1973 to 1974 by Lee E. McMahon of Bell Labs, and is available today for most operating systems. sed w ...

during his studies - through good performance and commitment to the orchestra. After Vaclav Neumann's departure from the Gewandhaus Orchestra in 1968, the function of an artistic director equal to the '' Kapellmeister'' was introduced, and Zumpe became "commissioner for the new building of the Gewandhaus". In the early 1970s, however, the Gewandhaus Kapellmeister

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 O ...

restored the old conditions. Under Zumpe's tenure, the various concert series and forms, some of which still exist today, were introduced, as were the annual visitor debates before each new season. He summarised the history of the Gewandhaus and its activities in his two-volume dissertation, on the basis of which he was awarded a doctorate in 1981. In 1984, Zumpe received the

Kunstpreis der Stadt Leipzig From 1959 to 1989, the city of Leipzig awarded the Kunstpreis der Stadt Leipzig, which was given for outstanding merits in the artistic field to persons who promoted the reputation of the city beyond the region: architects, visual artists, compos ...

. In 1989, he had to resign as director of the Gewandhaus for health reasons. In his tenure over a period of 41 years, Zumpe exercised his office under the conductors Konwitschny, Neumann and Masur. Kempe died in

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...

aged 77.

Publications

* ''Die Geschichte des Gewandhausorchesters und die Probleme bei der Entwicklung des Klangkörpers zu einem führenden sozialistischen Musikinstitut der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik''. Dissertationsschrift 1981 * ''Res severa est verum gaudium. Gewandhaus zu Leipzig. Gewandhausanekdoten.''''Res severa est verum gaudium. Gewandhaus zu Leipzig. Gewandhausanekdoten.''
on WorldCat Leipzig. VOB Buch- und Offsetdruck, 1987. * ''Kurt Masur – Gewandhauskapellmeister Leipzig''. Ullstein, Frankfurt, Berlin, 1990

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Zumpe, Karl German opera directors 1924 births 2001 deaths People from Zwickau

Life

Publications

References

Further reading

External links