Fidelio F. Finke

Finke was born the son of a teacher in 1891 in the north-Bohemian village of Josefstal (modern-day Josefův Důl, Czech Republic). From 1906 to 1908, he attended a teacher's seminar in Reichenberg (now Liberec). He received organ, piano and violin lessons, and from 1908 to 1911, studied at the Prague Conservatory, where he studied piano and composition. From 1911 onward, he worked as a private music teacher and from 1915 as a teacher of musical theory at the Prague Conservatory. In 1920, he moved to the German Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Prague, where he worked as a teacher of musical theory and composition. He became a professor in 1926, and worked as the rector from 1927 to 1945. His students included Friederike Schwarz.[1]

During the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, he composed works expressing sympathy for the Nazis, most notably the hymn O Herzland Böhmen (1942).[2] His opportunistic application for membership within the Nazi party expired in 1942 because of his political unreliability.[3]

After imprisonment and expropriation as a result of the Beneš decrees as well as a suicide attempt in 1945, Finke was brought to Dresden by the Soviet occupation forces via Moscow. There, he founded the State Academy of Music and Dresden Theatre, and was, until 1951, its rector. Until 1958, he was a professor of sound recordings at the Leipzig Academy of Music. His total works comprise about 170 compositions.

Finke's grave at the Heidefriedhof in Dresden

Finke was a member of the SED from 1946 until his death in 1968 in Dresden. He was buried in Heidenfriedhof Cemetery. His signature graces his gravestone. Finke's estate is preserved by the Academy of Arts in Berlin.

• 1910 Brahms-Preis at the Vienna Tonkünstlervereins
• 1919 Chorpreis des Weltmusikbundes in Vienna
• 1928 and 1937 Czechoslovak State Prize for music
• 1956 National Prize of the German Democratic Republic
• Membership at the Academy of Arts, Berlin
• Honorary sponsor at the music academies of Dresden and Leipzig
• 1961 Bronze Patriotic Order of Merit

• Dieter Härtwig: Fidelio F. Finke: Leben und Werk. Habilitationsschrift, masch. vervielf. Leipzig 1970. Deutsche Bibliothek Frankfurt am Main U.70.3699
• Fred K. Prieberg: Handbuch Deutsche Musiker 1933–1945, CD-Rom-Lexikon, Kiel 2004, p. 1565–1569.
• Wilhelm Hübner: Fidelio F. Finke – Gedanken über meinen Lehrer, in: Dresden und die avancierte Musik im 20. Jahrhundert. Teil II: 1933-1966, edited by Matthias Herrmann and Hanns-Werner Heister, Laaber 2002, p. 397–404 (Musik in Dresden 5), ISBN 3-89007-510-X

• List of classical composers in the GDR

• Work by and about Fidelio F. Finke in the German National Library catalogue
• Fidelio-F.-Finke's Archive at the archive of the Academy of Arts, Berlin