Klaus Bernbacher (born 25 January 1931) is a German conductor, music event manager, broadcasting manager and academic teacher. He co-founded the Tage der Neuen Musik Hannover, a festival for contemporary music, in 1958. He was manager for the broadcaster Radio Bremen from 1962. In Bremen, he was also a cultural politician, a member of the Bremische Bürgerschaft, and an honorary professor at the Hochschule für Künste Bremen.

Life

Family, education and musical career 
Born in Hanover, Bernbacher was the son of a violinist who worked as a chamber musician and in the orchestra of the Staatsoper Hannover. He came into early contact with music through piano lessons and concert visits, listening to music  conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler, Herbert von Karajan, Hans Knappertsbusch, Clemens Krauss, Hermann Scherchen, Johannes Schüler and Richard Strauss in rehearsals and performances. He studied music at the Musikhochschule Hannover to become a conductor. During his studies, he was involved in establishing the Jeunesses Musicales Internationalles festival from 1951, and the music centre at Schloss Weikersheim. In 1958, he and  founded a studio for contemporary music (Neue Musik). It was developed to the Tage der Neuen Musik Hannover, a festival held from 1958 to 1998 in collaboration with broadcasters NDR and Radio Bremen, the Musikhochschule and the Staatsoper. The festival featured music by Hans Werner Henze, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Mauricio Kagel, Hans Otte, Josef Anton Riedl, Werner Heider, Hans-Joachim Hespos, Hans Ulrich Engelmann, Helmut Lachenmann, Isang Yun, Peter Ruzicka and Detlef Heusinger, among others.

In 1962, he became conductor at Radio Bremen and department head at the broadcaster around 1969, especially promoting Neue Musik. He was responsible for around 600 radio productions and concerts over around 40 years, including with the orchestras Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie and the Bremer Philharmoniker. Performances included Schönberg's Gurre-Lieder in the original version and Mahler's Second Symphony at the Bremen Cathedral. He has been an honorary professor at the Hochschule für Künste Bremen.

Bernbacher was married to , who became a politician of the Green Party, from 1957 until her death in 2013. He met her in 1947 during school days. The couple had four children, two of them adopted.

Politics 
Bernbacher was a member of the SPD from the 1950s until 1994, influenced by Kurt Schumacher. In 1995 he joined a  (voters group) Arbeit für Bremen und Bremerhaven (AfB) as a candidate, a group of both dissatisfied SPD members and committed citizens who had not belonged to any party, led by the former savings bank director . The AfB immediately achieved 10.7% of the votes and 12 seats in parliament for the , including Bernbacher. He helped to ensure that culture was included in the constitution as a state objective. The AfB had no seat from 1999.

Other memberships 
  Bremen
 Collaboration, together with Peter Schulze, at the citizens' initiative for the preservation of the  famous for its acoustics.
 Landesmusikrat Bremen
 Chairman of the support association "Musicon Bremen", which supports the construction of a concert hall on the Bürgerweide according to plans by Daniel Libeskind.

Work 
 Klaus Bernbacher, Detlef Müller-Hennig (ed.): Dokumentation 20 Jahre Konzert des Deutschen Musikrates. Bonn 2000.

Awards 
In 2011, Bernbacher was awarded the Bremische Medaille für Kunst und Wissenschaft (Bremen Medal for Art and Science) for his decades of influential work for the music scene in Germany.

References

Further reading 
 Norbert Korfmacher: Mitgliederverzeichnis der Bremischen Bürgerschaft 1946 bis 1996 (Kommunalpolitik. Vol. 1). LIT, Münster 1997, .

External links 
 

1931 births     
Living people
Musicians from Hanover
Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover alumni
Academic staff of the University of the Arts Bremen
German conductors (music)
Radio Bremen people
German politicians