Kerstin Thieme

Kerstin Thieme (23 June 1909, as Karl Thieme – 26 November 2001) was a German composer, composition teacher, music educator and music writer. Life and career Thieme was born in Bad Schlema, Ore Mountains. After her Abitur at the in Aue, she studied music education and composition at the University of Music and Theatre Leipzig with Hermann Grabner from 1929 to 1934. Her fellow students included Hugo Distler and Miklós Rózsa. In 1933, she successfully passed the Staatsexamen for teaching at secondary schools and received her doctorate in 1934 with a thesis on the topic of “Klangstil des Mozartorchesters”. Her first teaching activities in Leipzig followed. From 1939 to 1945, Thieme was obliged to serve as a soldier on the front in the Second World War and later became a prisoner of war in Italy. After her political escape from the Soviet occupation zone in 1948, she obtained a position as Studienrat at the Labenwolf-Oberrealschule in Nuremberg, an arts grammar school, from 1950 to 1951. From 1956 to 1960, she was a lecturer at the Hochschule für Musik Nürnberg, where she taught music theory. From 1960 to 1974, she was a lecturer in the Department of Music Education at the Friedrich-Al