Composer Edwin Geist's manuscripts returned to his heirs - on loan to the Berlin State Library
Press release from 11/17/2008
The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation today returned ten autograph manuscripts from the estate of the composer and music writer Edwin Geist to his heirs. At the same time, an open-ended loan agreement was concluded so that the manuscripts will remain in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin - Preußischer Kulturbesitz. They can still be found in the music department under the catalogue numbers 55 MS 128-137.
Edwin Geist was born in Berlin in 1902. In 1938, the composer, who had a Jewish father, fled Germany and took up residence in Lithuania. The National Socialists murdered him in Kaunas (Lithuania) in 1942. Some of his autographs were donated to the German State Library (Berlin East) in 1964 by the "Society for German-Soviet Friendship". It has so far only been possible to provide an incomplete description of the paths he travelled further back. However, it is clear from Geist's biography that the manuscripts were confiscated as a result of persecution.
The President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation commented: "I am delighted that our research has enabled us to find out the provenance of these musical works and to find a fair and just solution in the spirit of the Washington Declaration of 1998. We are deeply indebted to the heirs - especially Geist's niece Rosian Zerner in Newton, Massachussetts - who entrusted us with the manuscripts."
Edwin Geist wrote two operas, numerous songs, choral pieces and a short requiem mass. He saw himself in the tradition of modernism and at the same time discovered similarities with Lithuanian folk music. As a "half-Jew", he was banned from practising his profession in Germany and emigrated to Lithuania, where he met his future wife Lyda. After the German Wehrmacht invaded, he was persecuted there too - as was his wife - and had to live in the ghetto for a time. He was arrested and shot in 1942.
Shortly afterwards, his wife, who was Jewish, took her own life in 1943 out of despair and under the impact of the persecution. At this time, there were autographs of Edwin Geist's compositions in her flat. Third parties subsequently removed the estate from the couple's sealed flat without the family's involvement.
The music department of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is the largest collection of its kind in Germany and one of the most important in the world. 80 per cent of all surviving autographs by Johann Sebastian Bach, important works by Ludwig van Beethoven, Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and many others are part of the collection. The extensive holdings of music autographs and copies, bequests, letters, portraits, books, printed music, libretti and sound recordings focus on the 18th and 19th centuries. In addition, the music department has an excellent specialised library with almost 90,000 volumes of international musicological literature.