Family of Paul DESSAU and Ruth BERGHAUS

Husband:	Paul DESSAU (1894-1979)
Wife:	Ruth BERGHAUS (1927-1996)
Children:	Living DESSAU ( - )
Marriage	20 Dec 1954

Husband: Paul DESSAU

Name:	Paul DESSAU1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9
Sex:	Male
Father:	Sally DESSAU (1849-1923)
Mother:	Louise BURCHARD (1863-1942)
Birth	19 Dec 1894	Hamburg, Germany1,2,4,10,11,12,13,14,15
Occupation		Composer, Musician and Conductor
Immigration	1933 (age 38-39)	to Herblay, Val-d'Oise, Île-de-France, France
Immigration	1939 (age 44-45)	to New York, USA
Residence	1 Apr 1940 (age 45)	New York, USA16
	Marital Status: Divorced; Relation to Head of House: Partner
Residence	1942 (age 47-48)	New York, USA17
	Address: 344 West 84th Street See draft card
Residence	1943 (age 48-49)	Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA
Residence	27 Apr 1945 (age 50)	California, USA18
Residence	1948 (age 53-54)	Germany
Death	28 Jun 1979 (age 84)	Königs Wusterhausen, Dahme-Spreewald, Brandenburg, Germany1,2
Burial	1979	Mitte, Berlin, Germany1,2
	Address: Dorotheenstadtischer Cemetery

Wife: Ruth BERGHAUS

Name:	Ruth BERGHAUS19
Sex:	Female
Father:	-
Mother:	-
Birth	2 Jul 1927	Dresden, Sachsen, Germany19
Occupation		Dancer, Choreographer, Director
Death	25 Jan 1996 (age 68)	Zeuthen, Dahme-Spreewald, Brandenburg, Germany19
	Cause: Cancer

Child 1: Living DESSAU

Name:	Living DESSAU
Sex:	Male

Note on Husband: Paul DESSAU - shared note

Paul Dessau was born in Hamburg into a musical family. His grandfather, Moses Berend Dessau, was a cantor, his uncle, Bernhard Dessau, a violinist at the Royal Opera House, Unter den Linden, and his cousin Max Winterfeld became generally known under the name Jean Gilbert as a composer of operettas.

 

From 1909 he majored in violin at the Klindworth-Scharwenka-Conservatory in Berlin. In 1912 he became répétiteur at the City Theatre (Stadttheater) in Hamburg. There he studied the works of the composers Felix von Weingartner and Arthur Nikisch and took classes in composition from Max Julius Loewengard. He was second Kapellmeister at the Tivoli Theatre in Bremen in 1914 before being drafted for military service in 1915.

 

After World War I he became conductor at the Intimate Theatre (Kammerspiele), Hamburg, and was répétiteur and later Kapellmeister at the opera house in Cologne under Otto Klemperer between 1919 and 1923. In 1923 he became Kapellmeister in Mainz and from 1925 Principal Kapellmeister at the Städtische Oper Berlin under Bruno Walter.

 

In 1933 Dessau emigrated to FRA, and 1939 moved further to the USA where initially he lived in New York before moving to Hollywood. Dessau returned to DEU with his second wife, the writer Elisabeth Hauptmann, and settled in East Berlin in 1948.

 

Starting in 1952 he taught at the Public Drama School (Staatliche Schauspielschule) in Berlin-Oberschöneweide where he was appointed to a professorship in 1959. He became a member of the Deutsche Akademie der Künste Berlin in 1952 and was vice-president of this institution between 1957 and 1962. He taught many Meisterschüler (pupils in a master class), including Friedrich Goldmann, Reiner Bredemeyer, Jörg Herchet, Hans-Karsten Raecke, Friedrich Schenker, Luca Lombardi and Karl Ottomar Treibmann.

 

From 1954 he was married to the choreographer and director Ruth Berghaus. Their son Maxim Dessau (b. 1954) studied at the College of Film and Television (Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen) in Potsdam-Babelsberg. He is now a movie director.

 

Dessau composed operas, scenic plays, incidental music, ballets, symphonies and other works for orchestra, and pieces for solo instruments as well as vocal music. Since the 1920s he had been fascinated by film music. Among others he wrote compositions for early movies of Walt Disney, background music for silent pictures and early German films. While in exile in Paris he wrote the oratorio Hagadah shel Pessach after a libretto by Max Brod. In the 1950s in collaboration with Bertolt Brecht he focussed on the musical theatre. During that time his operas were produced. He also wrote Gebrauchsmusik (utility music) for the propaganda of the German Democratic Republic. At the same time he lobbied for the musical avant-garde (e.g. Witold Lutosławski, Alfred Schnittke, Boris Blacher, Hans Werner Henze and Luigi Nono).

 

*Award of the music publisher Schott 1925

*National Prize III. Category 1953

*National Prize II. Category 1956

*National Prize I. Category 1965

*Vaterländischer Verdienstorden (''Decoration of Honour for Services to the GDR) in Gold 1965

*Karl-Marx-Orden (Karl-Marx-Decoration) 1969

*National Prize I. Category 1974

 

Dessau died on 28 June 1979 at the age of 84, in the then East German city of Königs Wusterhausen, on the outskirts of Berlin.

 

There is a Paul Dessau Strasse in Hamburg and in Berlin.

 

Paul Dessau was a famous musician and composer. When he was a young man his parents sent him to Paris to study. During World War II he was able to come to Santa Monica, California, where he worked for the film industry. However, after the war, during the McCarthy era, Dessau had trouble getting work in Los Angeles because of his Communist/Socialist beliefs. In his youth he had been friends with Ulbricht in the Communist Youth Brigade in Germany. Ulbricht became the prime minister of East Germany, and invited Dessau to return to Germany as a man with privilege. Dessau returned, became the director of the Berliner Ensemble, and composed numerous operettas which are still performed in Germany. He also collaborated with Berthold Brecht in writing operettas. when Norman Kulla and Katherine Mader visited Germany in the 1970's they met Dessau in East Berlin. He had complete privileges, which were very unusual, to go to West Berlin to shop. In the west he would buy all of his and his families toiletries and music albums. When he met Norman and Kathy he was driving a new Mercedes and wearing a velvet suit. After meeting in the west, and shopping in a drug store, Dessau took some toiletries and put them in his pocket without paying for them. When queried by Norman, he smilingly muttered anti-capitalistic slogans. Thus were the ways of an "artiste".

Note on Wife: Ruth BERGHAUS - shared note

She served as an aide in the German Army during World War II and, after the war ended, spent several months in a British detention camp. Despite her periodic clashes with East Germany's cultural commissars, Miss Berghaus maintained her membership in the Communist Party. As a result, she was not only allowed to travel freely, a privilege denied to most East Germans, but was permitted to own luxuries like a Mercedes-Benz and a motorboat. She lived in a modernistic glass-and-steel villa, and the Government awarded her various cultural prizes.

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