The
Kurt-Singer-Institute for Music Physiology and
Musician's Health (KSI) was founded in 2002 at the
University of the Arts Berlin (UdK) and the Hanns
Eisler School of Music Berlin (HfM).
Name patron is the Jewish physician and musicologist
Kurt Singer, who headed a medical counselling centre at
the Musikhochschule in Berlin from 1923 to 1932. This
makes him the successor of surgeon Moritz Katzenstein.
In addition, he held a teaching position for musicians’
diseases. He was released from his duties with the
seizure of power by the Nazis and died in Theresienstadt
concentration camp in 1944. The musicians’ medicine
specialist Prof. Dr. med. Dipl. Mus. Alexander Schmidt
has headed the institute since 2014.
In East Berlin/GDR, the medical care of musicians,
dancers and artists was provided in the ambulatory
Berlin stages, including examinations of their
performance and fitness. In addition to a directly
responsible company doctor, orthopaedic surgeons, ENT
specialists, ophthalmologists and dentists also worked
there. The singers were examined in the Phoniatric
Department of the University Clinic for ENT-Medicine of
the Charité.
Prof. Dr. med. Christoph Wagner, one of the pioneers of
music physiology, founded the "Institut für
experimentelle Musikpädagogik" (Institute for
Experimental Music Pedagogy) in 1974 as the first
institute of this kind in Germany and Europe. His work
was intended to clarify the relationship between music
physiology and musical practice. From 1979 it was called
the "Institut für Musikphysiologie" (Institute for Music
Physiology).
The Berlin Institute is, beside the institutes in
Hanover an Dresden, the third of the institutes for
music physiology founded in Germany. With its name, it
is reminiscent of Kurt Singer and his concern to give
the health of musicians an important place in music
education.
From 1987 to 1990, Dr. Hartmut Puls established the
Department of Physioprophylaxis at the Hanns Eisler
School of Music Berlin, which was promoted by the first
elected rector after the political turnaround, the
pianist Professor Annerose Schmidt, as an elective
compulsory part of the studies. As a result, the
university was the first in Germany in which a movement
subject became an obligatory part of the training of
musicians.
Even before the foundation of the institute in 1996, a
consulting session for musicians in and outside the
university was set up at the former High School of Arts
Berlin.
At the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin the subject
"Physioprophylaxis" (Dr. Hartmut Puls) was integrated
into the curriculum as a sports therapeutic prevention
offer.
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In May 2002 the present
institute was founded in cooperation between the
University of the Arts Berlin (UdK) and the Hanns Eisler
School of Music Berlin (HfM).
Kurt Bernhard
Singer
* 11.10.1885, Berent (West Prussia)
† 07.02.1944, Ghetto Theresienstadt
Founding members were
Prof. Dr. med. Helmut Möller (Director), Prof. Heide
Görtz (Deputy Director), Prof. Dr. Ulrich Mahlert,
Alexandra Müller, Prof. Markus Nyikos, Grazyna
Przbylska-Angermann, Prof. Dr. Herbert Wiedemann (UdK),
Prof. Kristin Guttenberg and Dr. Hartmut Puls (HfM). The
establishment of such an inter-university institute was
largely due to the dean of the former UdK Prof. Dr.
Patrick Dinslage and the rector of the HfM Prof.
Christhard Gössling.
The KSI bundled the various courses that had existed up
to then and extended the range of courses to include
medical / music-physiological counselling and support
for music students, research into preventive measures
and the management and supervision of the continuing
vocational training course "Music Physiology in Artistic
Everyday Life".
Since 2010, the KSI has been put on a broader basis on
the initiative of Rector Prof. Weigle, the provisional
head of the KSI Prof. Guttenberg and Alexandra Müller,
and the Department of Audiology and Phoniatrics of the
Charité under Prof. Dr. med. Manfred Gross, by including
musicians’ medicine in a cooperation agreement with the
Charité.
Prof. Dr. med. Tadeus Nawka, took over the provisional
leadership in 2012 until 2014 Prof. Dr. med. Dipl. Mus.
Alexander Schmidt was appointed.
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