Gieseking, Walter

Pianist

born: 05.11.1895 in Lyon

died: 26.10.1956 in London

Gieseking grew up on the Riviera. He was taught privately by his parents. In 1911, the family moved to Hanover, where Gieseking received his first piano lessons at the Municipal Conservatory. It was here that he began his systematic training as a pianist with Karl Leimer (1858-1944). He became an exemplary student of his teaching method, which they both presented in a textbook in 1931. After the First World War, in which Gieseking took part as a regimental musician, his career took off quickly, first in Germany, then throughout Europe. In 1926 he undertook his first tour of America.

Gieseking was celebrated above all for his interpretation of French piano music, for example for his impressionistic tone color stimuli in Debussy and Ravel. Bach and Mozart were further focal points. He also performed numerous contemporary works, for example by Rachmaninov and Schönberg. In 1925, he married his former pupil Anni Haake in Hanover, with whom he had two daughters. In 1934, the family moved to Wiesbaden.

In 1937 he was appointed professor by Hitler, and in 1944 he was placed on the Nazi state's list of artists of importance to the state and thus exempted from military service. However, Gieseking never belonged to a Nazi organization. The pianist performed regularly in the territories occupied by Germany, for example in Belgium and France. At least one of these concerts was subsidized by the Reichskulturkammer, and the pianist also performed for the Winterhilfswerk. He later received the War Merit Cross II Class without Swords for his commitment to entertaining the troops.

In 1945, he was initially banned from appearing in public. During this time, the writer Friedrich Michael became his neighbor in Wilhelminenstraße, who described some of his encounters on the occasion of the demolition of Gieseking's house in 1970. In 1947, Gieseking took over the master class for piano at the Saarbrücken Conservatory. He was able to resume his touring activities in 1948, but until 1953 individual concerts in the USA and Australia were prevented or accompanied by protest demonstrations due to his closeness to the Nazi regime.

From 1921 onwards, Gieseking repeatedly performed in Wiesbaden, for example in 1948 he played a sonata by Wolfgang Fortner and one of his own compositions with the cellist Ludwig Hoelscher in the Walhalla Studio Theater.

Like his father, he also worked as an entomologist, and his butterfly collection ended up in the Wiesbaden Museum. Walter Gieseking died in London, but was buried in Wiesbaden's North Cemetery. In Wiesbaden, a street north of the Kurpark in the north-east district bears his name. It was named after a resolution passed by the city council on May 22, 1969.

[This text was written by Wolfgang Jung in 2012 for the printed version of the Wiesbaden city encyclopaedia and revised and supplemented by Lena Böschemeyer in 2023]