Hans Joachim Moser

Who was Hans Joachim Moser?

Hans Joachim Moser was a German musicologist, composer and singer.

Moser was the son of the music-professor Andreas Moser, a pupil and important early biographer of Joseph Joachim. He studied the History of Music, German phililogy and Philosophy in Marburg, Berlin and Leipzig, and studied violin with his father. With the work Musical Confederations in the German Middle Ages he obtained his doctorate in 1910 at Rostock.

He took part as a Lieutenant during the First World War, was officially accepted as part of the University of Halle in 1919, and in 1922 became extraordinary Professor. In 1925 he followed a call to Heidelberg. From 1927 to 1933 he was Director of the State Academy for Church and School Music in Berlin. In 1933 Moser was forcibly pensioned off on political grounds. In 1938 he became the representative leader of the Reichs-authority for Musical Activities in the Reichs-Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda; from 1940 until 1945 he was its General Secretary. He received in 1947 a professorship from the Jena University, but after two months it was withdrawn in the light of his activities in the Propaganda Ministry.