Hans Winterberg

2. String Quartet

Hans Winterberg's 2nd String Quartet from 1942 is one of the few works that he was able to compose under unimaginable living conditions during the period of Nazi terror in Czechoslovakia. In that year, his mother was murdered in a Nazi extermination camp in the Ukraine, Winterberg himself was separated from his wife and daughter and relocated to a "Jews' house". The fact that he had to do forced labor and was not deported to Theresienstadt, like almost all other representatives of the country's Jewish cultural elite, saved his life. Winterberg emigrated to Munich in 1947 and was able to gain a foothold in musical life there relatively quickly. Through close contact with the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, the 2nd String Quartet found its way into the repertoire of the Koeckert Quartet, which premiered it in Munich on 15th January 1951. The highly expressive, complex work is not only a sounding diary from a time of horror and uncertainty - it is above all a deeply moving document of artistic creation as an expression of spiritual resistance against dehumanization.