Villa Seligmann

The House of Jewish Music

100 years after the beautiful sandstone villa was built for Continental director Siegmund Seligmann and his family, Professor Andor Izsák had an idea.
The house was to become a place of living Jewish culture. And that is what it is today. Born in Budapest in 1944, the organist, lecturer and conductor has been involved with Jewish music all his life. In 2003, he was appointed Professor of Synagogue Music at the neighbouring University of Music, Theatre and Media. Now the prestigious villa, which in the meantime belonged to the city, has become a centre for Jewish music. And what a house it is!

New tones struck

Managing Director Eliah Sakakushev-von Bismarck is leading the theatre into the top league with a constant stream of new ideas and programme expansions. An artistic residency was established for the first time in 2020. The "Concert Goscari" ensemble, which specialises in early music, took up European themes in four subscription concerts and explored how people want to live together. Music can do so much: connect, comfort, animate, question, answer, relax or ignite. This is the appropriate, honourable setting for this.

A Liebermann painting shows the Jewish entrepreneur

Who else was this Seligmann? He was a Jewish banker, born in Verden an der Aller in 1853. This assertive man developed the company Continental into a (today we would say) global player. The city made him an honorary citizen as early as 1923. Max Liebermann painted a portrait of the successful entrepreneur. The oil painting adorns a wall in the villa.

And what has Andor Izsák been doing since his retirement? He researches and talks about his subject. The book "Andor der Spielmann - ein jüdisches Musikerleben" by Arno Beyer, former deputy director of NDR, was published about the honorary president of the Siegmund Seligmann Foundation.