University of Music and Theatre Leipzig - History

History

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, the composer and Music Director of the Gewandhaus Orchestra, founded a Conservatory in the city of Leipzig on April 2, 1843. He was sponsored by a high civil servant of the Kingdom of Saxony, the Oberhofgerichtsrat Heinrich Blümner (1765–1839), who provided King Frederick Augustus II of Saxony with 20,000 Thaler.

The music school's home was in the first Gewandhaus (in the Gewandgäßchen/Universitätsstraße street at the city center, today the city's department store is based there). The musicians of the Orchestra were obligated to act as teaching staff, a tradition that was unbroken until German reunification in 1990.

In 1876 the school got permission to change its name to Königliches Konservatorium der Musik zu Leipzig, Royal Conservatory of Music of Leipzig. The new premises at Grassistraße 8 were inaugurated on December 5, 1887. They were built 1885-1887 by the architect Hugo Licht (1841–1923) in the music quarter of Leipzig, south-west of the city center. The benefactor was the pathologist Justus Radius (1797–1884).

Not until 1924 was the Royal Conservatory renamed into Landeskonservatorium der Musik zu Leipzig, six years after the fall of the Kingdom of Saxony.

In the summer term of 1938 343 male students were enrolled at the Landeskonservatorium. This made the Conservatory the fourth biggest music school in the German Reich after the Universität der Künste Berlin (633 students), the music school of Cologne (406 students) and the school for music and theater of Munich (404 students).

The Austrian composer Johann Nepomuk David (1895–1977) was the school's director from 1939 until 1945.

The school was again renamed Jun 8 1941 to Staatliche Hochschule für Musik, Musikerziehung und darstellende Kunst, Public College for music, musical education and performing arts. In 1944 the school remained closed due to the Second World War.

Once again, the school was renamed October 1, 1946 to Mendelssohn Academy and November 4, 1972, on the occasion of its founders name, to Hochschule für Musik Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy College of Music.

The Saxon University Constitution Law (Sächsische Hochschulstrukturgesetz) of April 10, 1992 confirmed the College of Music to Leipzig and expanded it with the annexation of the Hans Otto College of Theatre (Germany's first College of Theatre) to form the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy : the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy College of Music and Theatre.

The new Great Hall was inaugurated 2001 and 2004 awarded by the Bund Deutscher Architekten, a German architects union. The college's second premises were opened 2002 and there's an orchestra academy in co-operation with the Gewandhausorchestra since 2004 in order to support top musicians.