Siegfried Alkan

From Kaiserreich

Siegfried Alkan (born on May, 30 1858 in Dillingen, Germany) is a German composer.

Alkan was the son of Johannes Alkan and Johanna Bonn in a family of merchants and musicians. Through his mother he was a distant cousin of the composers Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Fanny Hensel and Giacomo Meyerbeer. It is unknown how, or if, he was related to the French composer and pianist Charles-Valentin Alkan, but he was like the latter a scion of Jewish families from the Moselle region.

Many of the works of Siegfried Alkan are still popular in today's Germany, as the Princess Cecilie sometimes asks to the septuagenarian artist to perform at the Cecilienhof Palace. For instance, his compositions "Gruß an die Saar" (Opus 32), "O wüsstest du's" (Opus 39), "Neues Saarlied" (Opus 91) and "Ur-Großmütterchen" (Opus 80), which became very popular after the Weltkrieg. Due to its Jewish ancestry, he was often threatened by racist Pan-Germanists.