Leopold Reichwein

From Wikipedia:
Leopold Reichwein (16 May 1878, Breslau - 8 April 1945, Vienna ) was a German conductor and composer .

Reichwein was Hofkapellmeister of the Großherzoglich Badischen Hofkapelle Karlsruhe from 1909 to 1913. In 1913 he succeeded Bruno Walter as conductor of the Vienna Court Opera . With Wilhelm Furtwängler, he was concert director of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna from 1921 to 1927. From 1926 to 1938 he directed the Bochum Symphoniker. Under his direction, the modern compositions by Paul Hindemith, Ernst Krenek, Erwin Schulhoff and Anton Webern, which had been cultivated by this orchestra, were the background of the repertoire in favour of classical romantic music. In 1932, he published the article The Jews in German Music, in which he leaned towards Richard Wagner's antisemitic "Judaism in Music", incurring the wrath of the still resistant Bochum.

Reichwein was a committed national socialist, and had joined the NSDAP as early as 1932, as well as the Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur. He attacked Jewish composers such as Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy in the Völkischer Beobachter, insinuating that financial interests were the driving force behind their compositions. After the National Socialists came to power, he was a member of the Reichsmusikkammer. On 29 April 1938, Adolf Hitler appointed him as general music director. After the Anschluss with Austria ... he was a conductor at the Vienna State Opera and conductor of the conductor's class at the Staatsakademie für Musik Vienna. Reichwein re-founded the Tonkünstler Orchestra as the N.S. Wiener Tonkünstler Orchestra.

On 8 April 1945 in Vienna, as the end of the Second World War neared, Reichwein chose to commit suicide.