Margarethe Quidde

Margarethe Quidde
A young white woman, seated, holding a cello. She is wearing a long white dress with a high neck and ruffles.
Margarethe Quidde with her cello, from an undated photograph
Born
Margarethe Jacobson

(1858-06-11)June 11, 1858
Königsberg
DiedApril 25, 1940(1940-04-25) (aged 81)
Munich
NationalityGerman
Other namesMargarete Quidde
Occupation(s)Cellist, pianist, writer, translator, critic

Margarethe Quidde (née Jacobson; 11 June 1858 – 25 April 1940) was a German cellist, writer, music educator, and pianist.

Early life

Margarethe Jacobson was born in Königsberg in 1858, the daughter of Julius Jacobson (or Jacobsohn), an eye specialist, and Hermine Haller Jacobson, an opera singer. She studied piano, cello, voice, and composition as a young woman, in Prussia and later in Berlin with Woldemar Bargiel and Robert Hausmann. She pursued further training on the cello with Carlo Alfredo Piatti from 1880 to 1882, in Cadenabbia. She corresponded about her musical education with Joseph Joachim.[1][2]

Career

Margarethe Jacobson was a professional musician in Vienna and Munich as a young woman, before she married in 1882. Although she gave up her performing career, she continued as a music writer for the Munich Free Press, translator, and critic.[3] She taught cello, and played cello and piano in small ensembles in Munich.[1][4] She was active in the German peace movement before World War I,[5][6] and involved with the Alliance for Radical Ethics; the Quiddes also founded an organization for animal welfare.[1][7]

Her writings included Legislation and Science (1883), Heretics from the Bayreuth Sanctuary (1897), translations of Ouida,[3] and a 1904 criticism of Isadora Duncan's controversial dances to Beethoven music: "She [Duncan] appears to have no feeling for the fact that musical works of art, born of pure artistic feeling as ends in themselves, are not to be degraded as means to other ends."[8]

Personal life

Margarethe Johnson married German historian and politician Ludwig Quidde in 1882.[9] He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1927.[10] In 1933, Ludwig Quidde fled to Switzerland, in fear of Nazi persecution for his pacifism and other affiliations; Margarethe stayed in Munich to care for a sick sister. This was especially dangerous for her, because her father was Jewish. She died in Munich in 1940, aged 81 years, from heart failure.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b c d Katja Franz, "Margarethe Quidde", Europäische Instrumentalistinnen des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts Sophie-Drinker-Institut (2014).
  2. ^ Wenzel, Silke. "Margarete Quidde" MUGI: Musik und Gender im Internet.
  3. ^ a b "Margarete Quidde". The International Blue Book. International Who's Who Publishing Company. 1911. p. 876.
  4. ^ "Munich (untitled news item)". Musical Courier. 50: 13. 26 April 1905.
  5. ^ Chickering, Roger (8 March 2015). Imperial Germany and a World Without War: The Peace Movement and German Society, 1892-1914. Princeton University Press. p. 158. ISBN 978-1-4008-6773-8.
  6. ^ Official Report of the Thirteenth Universal Peace Congress, Held at Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A., October Third to Eighth, 1904 (in French). Peace Congress Committee. 1904. pp. 190. Margarete Quidde.
  7. ^ Maehle, Andreas-Holger (2011). "Doctors in Court, Honour, and Professional Ethics: Two Scandals in Imperial Germany". Gesnerus. 68 (1): 61–79. doi:10.1163/22977953-06801004. ISSN 0016-9161. PMC 3696867. PMID 22303773.
  8. ^ Anderson, Christopher (13 September 2013). Selected Writings of Max Reger. Routledge. p. 69. ISBN 978-1-135-48011-0.
  9. ^ The International Who's who: Who's who in the World : a Biographical Dictionary of the World's Notable Living Men and Women. International Who's Who Publishing Company. 1911. p. 876.
  10. ^ "The Nobel Peace Prize 1927: Ludwig Quidde". The Nobel Prize. Retrieved 14 December 2019.