Reinhold Hammerstein


Reinhold Hammerstein was a German musicologist.

Life and career

Hammerstein was born in, Hessen, son of the rektor August Hammerstein. After his Abitur, he studied musicology, history and German studies at the University of Freiburg and the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. In 1940 he obtained the Academic Degree of Dr. phil. In addition he completed an education in piano and singing.
During the Second World War he served as a soldier in Russia, but was dismissed from military service as incurably ill due to a severe dysentery. He spent the end of the war in 1944/45 in Tengen at Lake Constance. In 1946 he was assigned lecturer of music history at the Musikhochschule Freiburg, a position he held until 1958. In 1954 his habilitation qualified him as private lecturer of musicology at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau, where he was appointed extraordinary professor in 1962. Between 1955 and 1956 he also held a visiting scholar position at the University of Basel. In 1963, Hammerstein accepted the call for a full professorship in musicology at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, which he held until his in 1980
Hammerstein, who expanded the field of musicology to include iconography, married Dr. Irmgard Hueck, born in 1943, with whom he had three children. He died in 2010, at the age of 95, in Freiburg im Breisgau. One of his brothers is the historian Notker Hammerstein.

Publications