Karl-Ernst Sasse

Karl-Ernst Sasse (December 5, 1923 – November 12, 2006) was a German composer and conductor. He was considered one of the most important film composers in East Germany. His life’s work as a composer includes numerous stage music as well as more than 500 film soundtracks for various DEFA films. In the 1960s and 1970s he composed the music for several DEFA Indian films and silent film classics that made him famous. From 1959 to 1964 he was chief conductor of the DEFA Symphony Orchestra Potsdam-Babelsberg and from 1964 to 1967 of the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Halle. Early life and education Karl-Ernst Sasse was born in Bremen in 1923 as the son of the music educator and conductor Ernst Sasse and his wife Herta, a chemical assistant. Even as a child he received massive artistic support from his parents. At the age of seven he received private lessons and learned to play various musical instruments such as piano, flute, viola and saxophone at an early age. At the age of ten he composed his own pieces for the first time and was self-taught with music theory. He started his school career in Bückeburg, Lower Saxony, where he attended the Gymnasium Adolphinum from 1934 to 1936. He th