page_title: Henri Hinrichsen
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Henri Hinrichsen / Career
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Restitutionsstein für Max Abraham, Henri Hinrichsen und Angehörige
context_page_description: Henri Hinrichsen was a German music publisher and patron of music in Leipzig. He directed the music publishing house C. F. Peters, succeeding his uncle. He helped found the Hochschule für Frauen zu Leipzig, the first academy for women in Germany, and financed the acquisition of a collection of musical instruments by the University of Leipzig. He was murdered at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
context_section_description: Born in Hamburg, Hinrichsen trained to be a music seller and publisher in Leipzig, Basel, Brussels and London. He married Martha (née Bendix, 1879–1941) in 1898. The couple had two daughters and five sons.
  Hinrichsen worked from 15 May 1891 for the music publisher C. F. Peters, which belonged to his uncle Max Abraham. On 1 January 1894, he became a part owner and after the suicide of his uncle in 1900 was the sole director of the publishing house. He published works by his contemporaries, such as Johannes Brahms and Edvard Grieg, who was his friend and had a room on the upper floor of the building which housed both the business and the family. He was the first to add works by Gustav Mahler, Hans Pfitzner, Max Reger, Arnold Schönberg and Hugo Wolf to the house's products, and in 1932, he acquired the rights to seven early tone poems by Richard Strauss. He introduced critical editions called Urtext.  
  Hinrichsen was a Geheimer Kommerzienrat, Handelsrichter and Stadtverordneter in Leipzig. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Leipzig in 1929.
  In 1911, Hinrichsen was a patron of the Hochschule für Frauen zu Leipzig, the first academy for women in Germany, founded by Henriette Goldschmidt (1825–1920), whose work he supported. In 1921, it was continued as the Sozialpädagisches Frauenseminar by the city of Leipzig but still financially sponsored by Hinrichsen. In 1926, he donated 200,000 Reichsmarks to the University of Leipzig to enable it to acquire a collection of musical instruments (Musikinstrumenten-Sammlung Wilhelm Heyer) from Cologne. It became the foundation of today's Museum of Musical Instruments of Leipzig University.
  Hinrichsen was a nationally-minded German who had been recognized by Wilhelm II, the German emperor. He therefore felt safe in the changed environment of the 1930s. In 1938, he lost ownership of the publishing house as a result of the Arisierung laws. In 1940, he travelled to Brussels and applied for visas for England and the United States. His son Max Hinrichsen  (1901–1965) had already emigrated in the 1930s and founded the Peters Edition in London.  His other son, Walter Hinrichsen (1907–1969), had left Germany in 1936 and founded the C.F. Peters Corporation in New York City. Henri Hinrichsen did not receive a visa. His wife died in Brussels on 7 October 1941, because as a Jew she could not get insulin to treat her diabetes. Henri Hinrichsen was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where he was murdered on 17 September 1942.
caption: Memorial for Dr. Henri Hinrichsen and family at the Südfriedhof in Leipzig
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