Register for ourINTERNATIONAL LEO KESTENBERG SOCIETY
PROF. DR. WILFRIED GRUHN
President
PRESS RELEASE
On June 20, 2009, the INTERNATIONAL LEO-KESTENBERG-SOCIETY has been founded in Berlin, Germany. The society aims to promote research on Kestenberg's ample work in the arts, in cultural politics and in education, furthermore to make all scientific sources accessible, to coordinate ongoing research activities, and to collaborate with Kestenberg institutions and archives worldwide.
In 1898 Leo Kestenberg (1882 - 1962) arrived at Berlin to study piano with Franz Kullak and Ferruccio Busoni. Since 1903 he got involved socially and pedagogically in the education programs of Freie Volksbühne in Berlin. He also became a member of the education committees at the Social Democratic Party. After the First World War he was appointed as consultant for music at the Prussian Ministry for Science, Arts and Education, and soon he became the key figure of the entire organization of music education and the musical life in Prussia where he then performed his far reaching and ground breaking reforms. Because of his Jewish origin he was released from the Ministry in 1932 and emigrated via Prague and Paris to Tel Aviv where he stayed until the end of his life. In Prague he organised three well received International Conferences of the Society for Music Education. Later in Tel Aviv he became General Manager of the Palestine Symphony Orchestra, founded by the famous violinist Bronisław Huberman, but later-on he put all his efforts on establishing a new Israeli music education system.
Kestenberg must not only be seen as an influential innovator in cultural politics and education reforms, at the same time he was estimated as a distinguished pianist and active social-democrat whose philosophy of education culminated in the idea of a general and everybody accessible public education (Volksbildung). The INTERNATIONAL LEO-KESTENBERG-SOCIETY seeks to keep the recollection of this great European and Cosmopolitan alive and will focus on his integration of the arts and politics, Europe and Israel, Christianity and Judaism. This shall be performed in academic projects and practical presentations.
The first volume of Leo Kestenberg's Gesammelte Schriften (Collected Writings) which contains the main programmatic essays and his autobiography, is just recently published with Rombach Publications in Freiburg, Germany. The entire edition is projected for 4 volumes, and shall be completed in 2012.
Office:
c/o Leo-Kestenberg-Musikschule Berlin
Grunewaldstr. 6-7, 10823 Berlin, Germany
Andreas Eschen
E-mail: info@leo-kestenberg.de
Internet: www.leo-kestenberg.com
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