The son of an art dealer, Manfred Gurlitt studied in his native Berlin with, among others, Engelbert Humperdinck and Hugo Kaun, and learned conducting under Karl Muck, Richard Strauss, and Leo Blech. Having joined the Berlin Hofoper in 1908, the 21-year-old répétiteur was invited to Bayreuth in 1911 as Karl Muck’s assistant. After engagements in Essen and Augsburg, he became a music director at the Bremen Stadttheater in 1914, rising to the position of general music director in 1924. From 1927 onward, he lived once again in Berlin, where he conducted at the Kroll Opera and the Deutsches Theater, led radio concerts, and composed. The premiere of his opera Nana, scheduled for April of 1933 in Mannheim, was prevented by the Nazis’ seizure of power and the subsequent takeover of Germany’s theaters in March of that year.
Even before 1933, the work had been attacked by the Nazis because of its social criticism and because its librettist, Max Brod, was Jewish. Gurlitt himself was now falsely denounced as being of Jewish descent. The composer rejected the accusation and, moreover, joined the Nazi Party in 1933. Neither measure helped. Gurlitt was classified as a “quarter-Jew”, and his party membership was revoked in 1937. At first, this had little effect on his professional life. His compositions were not banned; on the contrary, German theaters continued to show considerable interest in them. What was striking, however, was that his works were repeatedly withdrawn from performance schedules at the last minute, and films for which he had written the music were denied screening permits. These obstructions also had financial consequences, prompting him to accept a position at the Music Academy in Tokyo in 1938. Yet new obstacles suddenly arose, and a contract that was ready to be signed fell through after German authorities intervened through diplomatic channels. Gurlitt understood the message: he was meant to “be trapped in his homeland and perish there.” In the spring of 1939, however, he and his wife succeeded in fleeing to Japan, where they arrived on May 23 with virtually no money.
Thanks above all to the support of Japanese colleagues, Gurlitt was able to rebuild his career quickly as an orchestra director, radio conductor, and university teacher. Although this second career was interrupted in 1944 by the internment of nearly all foreigners in Japan, after the war he was able to resume his success and, in the years that followed, played a major role in shaping Japanese musical life. In Germany, however, recognition continued to elude him. As one German publisher informed him with blunt brevity, he had been “virtually forgotten because of the long Nazi ban.” Neither the many honors he received in Japan nor the Federal Cross of Merit could change that. Manfred Gurlitt died on April 29, 1972, in Tokyo.
1890 Berlin
1972 Tokyo