Transatlantic connections: US-American music students at German conservatories, 1843–1918

This article provides a brief summary of the method and major findings of my dissertation about the US-American student migration to the German states between 1843 and 1918. The dissertation is entitled “Here I am in my Mecca”. Die US-amerikanische Musikschülermigration nach Deutschland, 1843–1918 and will be published in German in 2022 at Olms Verlag. As most of the studies about participants in the transatlantic music transfer still concen- trate on individuals or, in recent years, networks around certain teachers and music ensembles, the first goal of the dissertation was to show the overall dimensions of the migration. Therefore, student lists were put together, based on handwritten and printed student rosters and other sources by the reasearched music institutes. Through this process it was possible to find the names of over 3,500 US-American students, both male and female, who studied at German music institutes until 1918. In a second step, these findings were put into the context of the political, social and, of course, musical histories of both the United States and the German lands, the history of the individual institutes and general questions of gender and music education, and gender and music professions. This was done by focusing more on the macro level than on individual biographies, with the objective of highlighting groups often marginalized in research, such as women or music teachers, who accounted for a large proportion of music students. The consistent question in this macro-study was why US-American students came in such large numbers to study music in Germany, a time-intensive and, even more important, quite expensive undertaking. In the course of the dissertation, multiple reasons could be identified: on a personal level, many students either had ancestors in Germany or followed their German-educated teachers; on a societal level there was the requirement of music study in Europe, and especially Germany as the home of so many well-known composers and musicians, to experience the unique “musical atmosphere”, something repeated quite often in both individual accounts and the press. Up until the turn of the century this was a basic requirement for taking up a career both on stage as well as in music institutes in the United States. And on the musical level there was the hope of studying under famous teachers (though this ultimately did not come true for many students), to garner initial experiences on stage in student orchestras or vocal ensembles and finally maybe even debut on the German stage.