2023-11-30 09:31:00
Eduard Lassen will continue to wait: Trierer Strasse is not ready to regain its pre-Nazi name.
Professor Roofer (ULB)
As the DH was able to explain last year, the initiative comes from Professor Manuel Couvreur. Professor emeritus at ULB and member of the Arts class of the Royal Academy of Belgium, Manuel Couvreur carries out a duty of memory and justice here.
Of Danish origin, Eduard Lassen was one of the great composers and conductors of the second half of the 19th century. But if History has remembered the names of his contemporaries Richard Wagner, Gustav Mahler, Franz Liszt and Rossini to name but a few, Eduard Lassen, whose work was no less considerable, fell completely into the oversight. Manuel Couvreur recalls that Eduard Lassen nevertheless composed the most sung tunes between 1870 and 1900. “Lassen composed melodies that were played everywhere, even in New York”.
Naturalized Belgian
Born in Copenhagen in 1830, Eduard Lassen arrived in Brussels as a child and obtained Belgian nationality as a teenager. It was in Brussels, his adopted city, that he obtained his first piano prize at the Royal Conservatory. In 1844, the prestigious Belgian Prix de Rome for composition opened his doors internationally. Eduard Lassen would spend very long stays in Germany, more precisely, in Weimar where he became a friend of the Hungarian Liszt, whom he would succeed as director of the Opera and Court orchestras. The Belgian held the position for almost forty years, acquiring such prestige in Weimar that, among other distinctions, the city paid him homage by giving Eduard-Lassen-Strasse one of its beautiful boulevards, which is also right next door. from Richard-Wagner-Strasse.
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The Nazi objective
Except that Eduard Lassen was born into a Jewish family and that the Nazi regime would endeavor from 1933 to erase everything relating to the name and work of Eduard Lassen. Lassen-Strasse became Trierer Strasse while Wagner-Strasse naturally retained its original name.
Of Danish origin, Eduard Lassen was one of the great composers and conductors of the second half of the 19th century. ©DR
This is what the DH reported on November 10 and 11, 2022. Unlike other artists, no commemorative plaque recalls the place where Eduard Lassen lived and died in 1904.
In a way, the Nazis succeeded. By not restoring its original name to Trierer Strasse, the city is perpetuating their plan to eliminate from the field of memory, for the sole reason of its Jewishness, any trace recalling an artist who came from Brussels.
President Jeholet responsive
Professor Manuel Couvreur’s fight is supported by the Israelite Consistory and the Royal Academy of Belgium. In our article: “The Nazis erased the existence of Eduard Lassen because he was Jewish”, the professor emeritus asked the city of Weimar to repair this injustice by restoring the old name of Lassen-Strasse. And if everyone understands the practical obstacles, everyone also knows that there are solutions to every problem.
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The letter
Fight lost in advance? We thought so but not at all. On November 28, fifteen days after the article, the Wallonia-Brussels Federation reacted. Its minister-president wrote, in German, to the bürgermeister of the city of Weimar: “As minister-president of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, I have the honor to count among my skills the duty of memory.” Pierre-Yves Jeholet continues: “It is within the framework of this that I am addressing you. (…) Through this letter, I wish to support the cause of the rehabilitation of Eduard Lassen and (as suggests Professor Couvreur), the change of name of the current Trierer Strasse to Eduard-Lassen-Strasse. I am convinced that you fully appreciate the memorial importance of this request, both for the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, for the city of Weimar but also and above all for the Lassen family”.
New mayor
A year later, we were confirmed, in the office of Pierre-Yves Jeholet, that Weimar did not follow up. No reaction, neither official nor unofficial, nothing.
But the letter was addressed to Ralf Kirsten. Was this the right person? Because at the same time elections took place which replaced Ralf Kirsten with Markus Herrmann. This should encourage Pierre-Yves Jeholet to renew the request and send it to the new bürgermeister.
Located a few kilometers from Buchenwald, Weimar is a city with an impressive cultural past. Many famous men lived in Weimar, including the painter Cranach, the poets Schiller and Goethe, and the composers Bach, Beethoven and Liszt. As well as our Eduard Lassen whose French-speaking Belgium, through its minister-president, asks the authorities to honor the memory by repairing an injustice inherited from the dark period of the Nazi state.
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