Die Asche von Birkenau
Die Asche von Birkenau is a poem by the writer Stephan Hermlin from his cycle "Remembrance". It was set to music as a cantata in 1965 by Günter Kochan. Poem. It was written in 1949 during a visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and published in 1951. It is composed of five twelve-line stanzas. Hermlin deals with the Holocaust. The motifs are remembrance and forgetting. The last stanza of the poem optimistically states: The author expressed himself admonitively at the same time; in a 1979 interview he said: Music. Origin. At the time of the  still ongoing 2nd Auschwitz Trials, the composer Günter Kochan created "The Ashes of Birkenau" for alto solo and orchestra (1965). He took his cue from the poem by Stephan Hermlin and divided his work into a total of seven movements, using the 4 stanzas as a basis and composing 3 additional instrumental parts. The key passage is the fourth movement with its . Orchestration. soloist voice (alto), 2 flutes, 1 oboe, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 1 trombone, 1 timpani, 1 percussion, 1 celesta, 1 piano, strings Premiere. The work was premiered on 25 May 1966 by the  Berlin Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kurt Masur in Berlin. It has a duration of approximately 16 minutes. Importance. Kochan considered "the Ashes of Birkenau" to be one of his most important pieces. According to his own statements from the 1970s, the work was broadcast by more than seven radio stations. The cantata advanced to become one of the most important musical works dealing with the genocide of the Jews. Reception. The Holocaust survivors Simon Wiesenthal wrote a text on the poem in 1979. In part, it said: In 2002, the last section of the poem was engraved by the sculptor  Ingo Warnke on a revolving stone column near the Appellplatz at the in Springhirsch. The text was worked into the turning stone in a spiral, so that the visitor is invited to circle the surface.