Oscar Fetrás

Oscar Fetrás (16 February 1854 – 10 January 1931) was a German composer of popular dance music, military marches, piano pieces and arrangements. Fetrás had over 200 compositions to his name. His best known work is his waltz “Mondnacht auf der Alster” Op. 60 which is still immensely popular to the present day. Biography Fetrás was born as Otto Kaufmann Faster in 1854 in Hamburg. His father Matthias Faster was an Hamburgian editor of a stock-exchange magazine. The Faster family originally came from Bützfleth, a locality of today’s Stade near Hamburg. Fetrás’s grandfather, a sea captain, died in the sinking of his ship Ceres. His mother Amalie Margarethe, born Decker, had ancestral origins from the island of Sylt. Early in his career Fetrás worked for , founder of the Flying P-Liner. Once he became widely regarded as being on the same level as the revered Viennese waltz kings, he departed to conduct his own orchestra. At the age of 26 Fetrás’s compositions attracted the attention of a Hamburg publisher. He changed his name to Fetrás, an anagram of his surname Faster. Fetrás soon rose to the position of conductor of the Uhlenhorster Fährhaus, a famous restaurant with ballrooms in Hambu