Fritz Dietrich

Fritz Dietrich (13 February 1905 – January 1945) was a German musicologist and composer. Biography Dietrich was born in Pforzheim. After his secondary education there, he attended the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology for one semester, before moving to music. He studied from 1925 in Freiburg with Wilibald Gurlitt and Heinrich Besseler. Later study saw him move to Heidelberg University, where Besseler had moved. For a short time, Dietrich studied in Leipzig at the conservatory, under Karl Straube. From 1931 to 1934, Dietrich took a music assistantship in Heidelberg, whilst training to teach at university level. This he did in 1935, but with the Nazi regime strengthening its grip on the German society, working opportunities for music teachers dwindled. Between 1935 and 1944 Dietrich worked for the Bärenreiter publishing house in Kassel, and himself published a collection of small notebooks with music for laymen. He was conscripted into the army, and in January 1945 went missing on the Eastern front in the area around Heiligenbeil (now Mamonovo in Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia) at the start of the East Prussian offensive by the Red Army. Dietrich’s known works were written for organ and