Hellmuth Düsedau was born on January 5, 1919, in Dresden. His father, Erich Düsedau (born 1886), was a violinist and a member of the Sächsische Staatskapelle from 1919 until his death in 1929. His mother, Antonie Düsedau, née Weiß, was born in 1880 in Békéscsaba, Hungary.
In his youth, Hellmuth attended the State Orchestra School, where he studied clarinet as well as music theory and composition. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, students at the institute were subjected to “racial” screening. As a result, Hellmuth Düsedau was forced to leave the school in 1936/37: as the son of a Jewish mother, he was classified under Nazi racial ideology as a “Mischling of the first degree”.
To escape Nazi persecution, he fled to the United States, where relatives on his mother’s side already lived. On December 8, 1937, at just 18 years old, he boarded the SS Europa in Bremen and arrived in New York on December 14. He continued his education in the years that followed—first at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, then at San Francisco State College, and finally at Columbia University in New York, where he earned a master’s degree as a music educator. He began serving as a soldier in the US Army in June of 1941 and was stationed for a time in London, where he experienced the German bombing of the British capital.
After the war, he initially returned to Philadelphia but soon settled in New Jersey. At the same time, he began searching for family members who had remained in Germany. His mother, who had been deported from Dresden to the Theresienstadt concentration camp on January 11, 1944, survived imprisonment and emigrated to the United States in 1947. His sister Margarethe, who had also been expelled from the orchestra school, likewise survived the Nazi period.
Düsedau started a family and worked as a piano tuner and as head of the Piano Technicians Guild in New Jersey. He also devoted himself to composing; his works were performed by ensembles such as the All Seasons Chamber Players. Hellmuth Düsedau died on December 29, 2007, in Paramus, New Jersey.
1919 Dresden
2007 Paramus, New Jersey