Editions, Cooperations
The Hanns Eisler Complete Edition
Project duration: February 2019 – January 2026
Hanns Eisler composing the 3rd movement of the Dritte Sonate für Klavier,
Pacific Palisades, 1943
Hanns Eisler is one of the most important and versatile composers of the 20th century. He was a pupil of Arnold Schoenberg and was the first to adopt the twelve-tone technique from his teacher – even before Alban Berg and Anton Webern. At the same time, Eisler wrote popular political music characterised by an unmistakable sound. No less important are his contributions to applied music for film and stage - especially in collaboration with Bertolt Brecht. Eisler was also influential as an essayist and theorist. Together with Theodor W. Adorno, he wrote a standard work on film music theory (Composition for Film) while in exile in the USA. In 1925 he was awarded the City of Vienna's Artist Prize, from 1940 to 1942 he was a fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation in New York, and in 1958 he was honoured with the National Prize 1st Class of the GDR.
The Hanns Eisler Complete Edition (HEGA) is conceived as a historical-critical edition and aims to publish all of Eisler's preserved compositions and writings. Not only will the existing print editions be revised, but large parts of the œuvre will also be edited and made accessible for the first time.
Edited by the Internationale Hanns Eisler Gesellschaft in cooperation with the Academy of Arts, Berlin, in collaboration with Stephanie Eisler (†). The edition is published by Breitkopf & Härtel.
Until January 2019, the office of the Hanns Eisler Gesamtausgabe was located at the Peter Szondi Institute für Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft at the Freie Universität Berlin. Since February 2019, it has been linked to the Archives of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin.
Contact: Hanns Eisler Gesamtausgabe
Archiv der Akademie der Künste
Robert-Koch-Platz 10
10115 Berlin
E-Mail: iheg@hanns-eisler.de
Project management: Prof. Dr. Hartmut Fladt (Universität der Künste, Berlin)
Funded by the Hamburger Stiftung zur Förderung von Wissenschaft und Kultur and the Hanns und Steffy Eisler Stiftung.
Formerly funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG); single volumes supported with funds from the Peter Klöckner Foundation and the German Lottery Foundation Berlin.