German conductor, notably of the music of Richard Wagner.

Career Summary

Franz Hoesslin was the second child of Gustaf Adolf Balthasar von Hoeßlin, MD, and Maria Magdalena Auguste Rüdinger. After completing secondary school at the humanistic Royal Theresia Secondary School in Munich in 1904, Franz Hoesslin studied composition under Max Reger and orchestral conducting under Felix Mottl. His conducting career started in 1908, with positions as conductor of the Riga Symphony Orchestra and of the Danzig city theater, but was interrupted by the First World War, in which he served as an officer right to the end. After the war, he continued his career at the Bayreuth Festival as Ring Cycle interpreter in 1927, 1928, and 1940. In 1934, 1938 and 1939 he conducted Parsifal there. He also directed concerts and operas in nearly all musical hubs in Germany, guest conducting the Berlin State Opera and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra several times. Starting in 1923, he was the musical director in the theater at the Royal Hippodrome in Dessau. From 1926 to 1932, he was the general musical director of the city of Wuppertal. In 1932 he transferred to Breslau, where he also taught at the Conservatory. His students include Günter Wand, Franz Pabel, and Heinz Schubert.

Hoesslin's second wife, the Jewish mezzo-soprano Erna Liebenthal, was first prevented from performing in 1933 and the couple came under increasing pressure by National Socialist cultural politicians. In June of 1936, Hoesslin therefore had the orchestra play the Horst Wessel Song at a state event without his participation. He was immedately discharged and told to leave Breslau within twenty-eight days. As a farewell concert on June 26, 1936, he conducted Beethoven's Ninth Symphony to a packed house. That night, Hoesslin took his wife to Florence. Erna Hoesslin stayed in Italy until the end of the Second World War and was the only one of three siblings in her family to survive the holocaust. Hoesslin himself was supported by his friend Winifred Wagner, who invited him to conduct at the Bayreuth Festival several times. He also guest-conducted in European cities outside Germany, such as Amsterdam, London, Stockholm and The Hague.

In September 1946, Hoesslin missed a flight from Barcelona to Geneva, where he was to conduct Così fan tutte that evening. He then took a private airplane, which crashed into the sea near Sète, killing Hoesslin and his wife.

Bamberger and Schenker

The two men seem first to have been in contact in 1913. Hoesslin, then in Riga, evidently inquired about the manuscript of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony; Schenker replied on July 20 that he had not himself seen the manuscript. In November 1922, Carl Bamberger persuaded Schenker to attend a concert conducted by Hoesslin, whom Schenker met for the first time after the concert in the dressing room. In November 1927, Hoesslin invited Schenker to attend a performance of Brahms’s First Symphony (Schenker seems not to have accepted), and the same work again in October 1928, which Schenker attended on November 8, with meetings before and after the concert, Schenker praising Hoesslin’s performance warmly in his diary in preference to that of Furtwängler. The relationship seems always to have been cordial and respectful, despite Hoesslin’s strong ties to the music and family of Wagner.

Correspondence

Two letters and one postcard survive from Hoesslin as OJ 11/55, [1]–[3], the first (1913) with the letterhead of conductor of the Riga Symphony Orchestra, the latter two (1927) with that of the General Music Director of Barmen and Elberfeld.

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