Klaus Bernbacher

Klaus Bernbacher (born 25 January 1931) is a German conductor, music event and broadcasting manager and academic teacher. He co-founded the Tage der Neuen Musik Hannover, a festival for contempory music, in 1958. He was manager for the broadcaster Radio Bremen from 1962. He was also a politician, a member of the Bremische Bürgerschaft for the Arbeit für Bremen und Bremerhaven (AfB) party, and professor at the Hochschule für Künste Bremen.

Life

Family, education and career

Born in Hanover, Bernbacher was the son of a violinist who worked as a chamber musician and in the orchestra of the Staatsoper Hannover. He came into early contact with music through piano lessons and concert visits, listening to music conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler, Herbert von Karajan, Hans Knappertsbusch, Clemens Krauss and Richard Strauss in rehearsals and performances. He studied music at the Musikhochschule Hannover to become to become a conductor. During his studies, he was involved in establishing the Jeunesses Musicales Internationalles festival from 1951, and the music centre at Schloss Weikersheim. In 1958, he and Klaus Hashagen founded a studio for contemporary music (Neue Musik). It was developed to the Tage der Neuen Musik Hannover, a festival held from 1958 to 1998 in collaboration with broadcasters NDR and Radio Bremen, the Musikhochschule and the Staatsoper.

In 1962, he became conductor at Radio Bremen and department head at the broadcaster around 1969, especially promoting Neue Musik. He was responsible for around 600 radio productions and concerts over around 40 years, including with the orchestras Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie and the Bremer Philharmoniker. He has been a Honorarprofessor (part-time professor) at the Hochschule für Künste Bremen.

Bernbacher was married to Christa Bernbacher, who became a politician of the Green Party, from 1957 until her death in 2013. The couple had four children, two of them adopted.

Politics

Bernbacher was a member of the SPD from the 1950s until 1994, influenced by Kurt Schumacher. In 1995 he joined a Wählergruppe (voters group) Arbeit (AfB) as a candidate for Bremen and Bremerhaven, a group of both dissatisfied SPD members and committed citizens who had not belonged to any party, led by the former savings bank director Friedrich Rebers. The AfB immediately achieved 10.7% of the votes and 12 seats in parliament for the 14th election period, including Bernbacher. He helped to ensure that culture was included in the constitution as a state objective. The AfB had no seat from 1999.

Other memberships

• Rundfunkrat Bremen.
• Collaboration, together with Peter Schulze, at the citizens' initiative for the preservation of the Sendesaal Bremen famous for its acoustics.
• Landesmusikrat Bremen
• Chairman of the support association "Musicon Bremen", which supports the construction of a concert hall on the Bürgerweide according to plans by Daniel Libeskind.

Work

• Klaus Bernbacher, Detlef Müller-Hennig (ed.): Dokumentation 20 Jahre Konzert des Deutschen Musikrates. Bonn 2000.

Awards

In 2011, Bernbacher was awarded the Bremische Medaille für Kunst und Wissenschaft (Bremen Medal for Art and Science) for his decades of influential work for the music scene in Germany.

Further reading

• Norbert Korfmacher: Mitgliederverzeichnis der Bremischen Bürgerschaft 1946 bis 1996 (Kommunalpolitik. Vol. 1). LIT, Münster 1997, ISBN 3-8258-3212-0.
• nmz: Kämpfer für Grundrechte und Konzertsaal, February 2011 edition

External links

• Literature by and about Klaus Bernbacher in the German National Library catalogue