Norbert von Hannenheim

Norbert von Hannenheim, with full name Norbert Wolfgang Stephan Hann von Hannenheim (*1898.5.15 Nagyszeben, +1945.9.29 in the Landeskrankenhaus Obrawalde near Międzyrzecz) was an Austro-Hungarian-born German composer. He is seen as one of the most brilliant later pupils of Arnold Schoenberg.

A member of the Saxon community in Transylvania, Hannenheim was born in the city of Nagyszeben (in German: Hermannstadt, present-day Sibiu). He visited the German High School in Hermannstadt and received private piano lessons. Hannenheim occupied himself with music since his childhood and occasionally wrote compositions as an autodidact. In 1916 he was scheduled to perform a movement of his piano sonata, but recruitment into the army prevented this. From his early times date some tonalic settings of poems, which he partly published himself. He studied in Graz, Austria, from 1922 to 1923, and subsequently with Paul Graener in Leipzig. Here he composed pieces of chamber music for different ensembles, pieces for orchestra, one concerto for violin with chamber orchestra, one concerto for violoncello with chamber orchestra, one symphony for big orchestra in one movement and a concerto for big orchestra. In 1925, in the competition for the "George Enescu-Preis", Hannenheim won the "Zweiten Nationalpreis für Komposition" ("Second national prize for composition"). The piece, which was performed, was the first of six sonatas for violin, composed in this year. It remained characteristic of Hannenheim, that he liked to write several pieces for the same instrument or ensemble nearly simultaneously. In 1928/29 he continued his composition studies with Alexander Jemnitz in Budapest. Hannenheim was then a pupil in Schoenberg's Master Class in Composition at the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin (1929 to 1932). Schoenberg regarded him highly, calling him "one of the most interesting personalities I have ever met". Perhaps Schoenberg was particularly impressed by Hannenheim, because "he was nearly the only one, who would contradict him" (Erich Schmid).

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