7. Max Reger's last day


Introduction

With the waning of years, some details concerning the death of Max Reger seem to get increasingly more difficult to find. At the time, it was a major blow to German music and the German musical world, as Reger was very famous and had an extremely overloaded concert schedule. Nowadays, it is even hard to find the whereabouts of where Max Reger's died.
Much information about Reger's last day can be compiled from his letters to various persons. The next paragraphs provide some information about what happened Wednesday May 10, 1916.

Since Reger left Leipzig for Meiningen, he always absolved his lessons there on one day in the week. On such a day, Reger left Meiningen at 8:13, arrived 12:49 in Leipzig and used the lunch at Adolf Wach's home. From 14 to 20hr, he teached at the conservatory. He then left Leipzig with the train of 21:38 (arrival in Meiningen 2:30!). From 1914 onwards, he came once in two weeks and teached two days in a row. This was because of the worsening conditions with the train connections. At the end of the first day he always visited Cafe Hannes and slept afterwards in Hotel Hentschel (Popp & Shigihara 1995, Peters correspondence, page 455 note 1).


The locations of his last day

The last evening of his life, Reger was at several locations in Leipzig:

  1. The conservatory
  2. The house of Hinrichsen
  3. Cafe Hannes
  4. Hotel Hentschel

The Leipzig Conservatory and the house of Hinrichsen (Talstraße 10) both still exist (although the conservatory took severe damage), but the exact locations of Cafe Hannes and Hotel Hentschel are never mentioned in any Reger-biographies I know of. Unfortunately, both underlied the severe bombings of Leipzig of December 4, 1943.