Gustav Havemann

Gustav Havemann first had violin lessons with his father, a military musician. As a youth, he already played in the Schwerin court orchestra. He later became a student of the eminent violinist Joseph Joachim (1831-1907) at the Berlin Academy of Music. He was a concertmaster in Lübeck, Darmstadt (1903-09), and with the Hamburg Philharmonic (from 1909). In 1911 he became a teacher at the Leipzig Conservatory. After serving as concertmaster of the orchestra of the Dresden Court Opera (later the State Opera) (1915-21), he was appointed professor at the Berlin Academy of Music (1921-45).

As a violinist, Havemann became the primary violinist of the Dresden String Quartet of the Royal Orchestra (formerly the Petri Quartet). Then, in the early 1920s, he was the founder and first violinist of the internationally known Havemann Quartet, which had one focus on modern music.

Havemann was a member of the anti-Semitic “Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur” (Militant League for German Culture) and became a member of the NSDAP in 1932. In 1935, he was removed by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels from his position as head of the “Reichsmusikerschaft” because he supported the ostracized composer Paul Hindemith (1895-1963). Havemann, however, remained a professor at the Academy and continued to write articles for the Nazi magazine “Das Reich.”

After World War II, Havemann taught in the GDR at the Cottbus School of Music in 1950 and then (1951-1959) at the German Academy of Music in East Berlin. The violinist Bertha Fuchs (1892-1931) was first his student in her younger years and became his second wife in 1913. One of his sons was the resistance fighter Wolfgang Havemann (1914-2004).