Pils in our time

Pils in our time

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norman lebrecht

September 21, 2016

The Bamberg Symphony Orchestra was formed in 1946 by German musicians who had been ruthlessly expelled from liberated Czechoslovakia (most were members of the German Philharmonic Orchestra of Prague).

This weekend, Bamberg instals a new chief conductor, Jakub Hrusa.

He’s Czech.

Cheers.

hrusa

Comments

  • richard dorset says:

    I thought that they voluntarily left as the Russians approached.

  • Simon S. says:

    Those who didn’t leave voluntarily were expelled by force.

    The Czech lands had had a very considerable German speaking population for centuries until 1945, when they were deported virtually completely.

    It is true that many of them had welcomed enthusiastically the Munich Agreement and the Nazi-German occupation of the country. And it is true that Czechoslovakia (which, by the way, had been besides Switzerland the only stable democracy in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1930s) suffered unspeakable horrors during Nazi-German occupation.

    But it is also true that the post-1945 deportation of the German speaking population was based on ethnic criteria only and included even outspoken Social Democrats, trade-unionists and others who had offered active resistance to the Nazi regime.

  • Petros Linardos says:

    According to wikipedia, Bamberg has about 73,000 inhabitants. What other cities of that scale have a world class symphony orchestra?

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