Verstummte Stimmen

The musician was born Friedrich Löw on September 19, 1885, in Vienna to a Jewish family. In 1904, however, he converted from Judaism to Roman Catholicism and in 1908 changed his name to Richard Lert. He studied at the Vienna Conservatory and began his career as a music director in 1909 at the Stadttheater in Bochum. In 1910 he moved to the Stadttheater in Düsseldorf, in 1911 to the Stadttheater in Mulhouse, in Alsace, in 1912 to the Stadttheater in Aachen, and later that same year to the Hoftheater in Darmstadt. In 1914, at Berlin’s Theater des Westens, he conducted Wagner’s Ring tetralogy, which he also directed. From 1916 to 1918 he worked at the Stadttheater in Kiel, then until 1923 at the State Theater in Hanover, before moving to the National Theater in Mannheim as chief music director that same year. In 1928 he went to the Stadttheater in Breslau (present-day Wrocław), and from 1929 he was engaged as first music director at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, where he had already been appearing as a guest conductor since 1927. In 1932, after his contract with the State Opera had expired in July, he undertook guest conducting engagements in Europe and the United States.

Lert conducted again in Berlin in February and March of 1933, though despite seeking a permanent engagement, his career in Germany came to an end thereafter. General Director Heinz Tietjen recommended that the artist, “in consideration of the general situation” and referring to his successful US appearances the previous year, “return to America for the remainder of the season in order to conduct contract negotiations.” There, he suggested, “a more favorable outcome than here” could be expected.

Lert left Germany in April of 1933 and settled with his wife, the writer and harpist Vicki Baum, and their children in Pasadena, California. From 1936 he served as conductor and, beginning in 1940, also as artistic director of the Pasadena Symphony Orchestra. He also ran an evening music school, taught from 1944 at the University of Southern California, and directed the Music Academy in Santa Barbara, which he founded in 1948 together with the singer Lotte Lehmann, also an émigré. Richard Lert died on April 25, 1980, in Mountain View, California.

When the National Socialists came into power in 1933, it set off an unprecedented wave of expulsions from German opera and theater stages: For countless singers, actors, musicians, and members of the technical and stage staff, this meant the end of their careers. “Silenced Voices” makes the fates of those persecuted for “racial” or political reasons visible and audible.

An interactive map traces their life journeys: from major stages to the places of exclusion, exile, or murder. This creates a powerful connection between the past and the present: The biographies of those persecuted are narrated by ensemble members from some of Germany’s most important theaters, both past and present—the Hamburgische Staatsoper, the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin, the Semperoper, the Staatsschauspiel Dresden, and the Staatstheater Stuttgart.

The portal thus serves simultaneously as a tool for scientific research, a digital space for remembrance, and a resource for exploring local history.