Arthur Oskar Chitz

Arthur Chitz was born on September 5, 1882 as the son of a German-Jewish industrialist family from Prague. Even before the age of ten he was an orphan. He attended a Catholic convent school with an emphasis in Music, where he received additional instruction. He was also studied composition with Vítězoslav Novák and František Spilka. He also took piano and violin lessons. He studied natural sciences, philosophy and music history at the German University in Prague, and later in Vienna and Dresden. His doctorate 1905, he wrote to the University of Prague with "The Hofmusikkapelle Emperor Rudolf II.". He worked under Leo Blech as aspirant and violinist at the Prague National Theatre and was Speaker of the Prague German newspaper "Bohemia". Chitz married in 1906 Gertrud Helene Stern, who was the daughter of the chief editor of the newspaper where he worked as an advisor. In 1908 he moved to Dresden and published between 1912 and 1915 musicological studies that have been published in various journals. Object of his research was published Beethoven's compositions for the mandolin. In 1914/15 he got a job as a lecturer in theory and music history at the music school of Ernst von Schuch . Until 1918, he worked as Korrepititor at the Dresden opera. From October 1918 he worked as music director of the Dresden theater. Later he was also music director of the theater and member of the artistic council.

Chitz composed songs, string quartets, music for theater premieres and revivals Dresdner like pieces of Shakespeare, Schiller, and Captain Erich Ponto. On December 18, 1923 Arthur Chitz 'fairy tale Sleeping Beauty was premiered.

From 1933 inhabited Chitz age Jewish house of Lorraine Route 2 in Dresden.  1933 Chitz was deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp, but came back to Dresden, where he Eva Doering pontoon with mother in residence department store met: 

"On a very sad and terrible encounter as I can remember: We knew that Chitz will soon come to a camp in 1933 - and one day I was with my mother in a department store Reka and he suddenly beside us, very bald shaved!  He motioned for us somehow that we do not need him to see - it was a terrible situation. " 

- Eva Doering Ponto [2] 

A commemorative plaque was placed at the Neustadt railway station, which is reminiscent of the "evacuation order" from January 15, 1942 [3] , whereupon Dresdner 240 Jews were taken to the Riga ghetto in the night of 20 January 21, 1942 to Skirotava in Riga.  In the deportees was Dr. Arthur Chitz, with his wife.  1944 died Chitz. 

Before the house in the Helmoholtzstraße 3B in Dresden, where Chitz has lived 24 years old, remembered today a stumbling block to the musicologist.

The following is a short film made in his honor     [http://vimeo.com/114340018]