![\"\"](\"https:\/\/mnmusichalloffame.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Fritz-Reuter2-182x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Friedrich \u201cFritz\u201d Otto Reuter<\/p>\n
Inducted 2024<\/p>\n
Friedrich \u201cFritz\u201d Otto Reuter was born on October 11, 1863 in Jahnsbach, Saxony, Germany. He had shown a talent for music in his early childhood. In his music education, Retuer studied with well-known teachers of his day, including Bernhard Reichart in Waldenburg, Theodor Schneider and Gustav Schreck in Leipzig, Joseph Rheinberger in Munich, and Karl Thiel in Berlin. Reuter completed his formal training in music at The Akademische Institut f\u00fcr\u00a0Kirchenmusik in Berlin where his studies emphasized composition. Reuter\u2019s teachers could boast a rather impressive lineage. Reichart\u2019s teacher was Johann Toepfer, who was taught by August Mueller, whose teacher was Johann Christoph Bach, whose teacher (and father) was J.S. Bach, the Lutheran church musician who many still regard as the world\u2019s greatest composer. As a result, any student of\u00a0Reuter and any student of a Reuter student has a direct link in their music education to Old Bach. Although Reuter had held some rather prestigious positions as teacher and church\u00a0musician in his home country, he had at times found himself out of fellowship with his state church. His continuing concern over theological controversies in Germany led him to seek positions in North America.<\/p>\n
Through connections of his brother, Karl, he was able to make contact with a church and school in Winnipeg, Canada. Clara Tekla Sonntag Reuter, spouse to Fritz and mother to their eight children, fulfilled the immeasurable and often silent and less-than-fully-appreciated role of women in that era. Leaving Germany with her husband, she totally left her family of origin behind, never to see them again. As they boarded the ship for America with five little girls under nine years of age, she was also carrying their next soon-to-be-born child. Upon landing in Canada, Fritz Otto contracted typhoid fever and recovered. Tragically, Ida Hanna (age 7) and baby Katherine (6 months) also contracted the disease and were buried in Winnipeg. The new baby, Fritz Gustav, was born in July of \u201906. All those events would be more than enough to bear, if one were surrounded by loving and supportive family and friends; however, such family and friends being totally absent, here she was in a strange land, with no knowledge whatsoever, much less fluency, of the English language and her husband fully occupied as the family bread-winner. After serving in Canada a few years, Reuter accepted a position with the Missouri Synod in Chicago in 1907. Reuter became known to the Dr. Martin Luther College faculty through joint teacher\u2019s conferences of the Wisconsin and Missouri Synod. Reuter\u2019s assignment as the first full-time music teacher of the college was to chair\u00a0the music department and to develop the music curriculum. He was forty-four years old when he came to New Ulm, Minnesota. Reuter came to DMLC highly qualified in keyboard, choral conducting, music history, stringed instruments, music theory, composition, and pedagogy. He arrived in April of 1908 and began his work right away. Reuter even presented a concert in New Ulm\u2019s Turner Hall before the end of the school year.<\/p>\n
Fritz Reuter gave music \u201ca place and a dignity hitherto unknown at the college” (Morton Schroeder, Gifted Musician, The Northwestern Lutheran, June 1997). He began singing classes, started mixed and male choirs, taught a 32-hour course load per week, gave keyboard and violin lessons, and, when he could, he composed\u00a0his own music. During his first years at DMLC, Reuter\u2019s choirs sang music from Elgar, H\u00e4ndel,\u00a0Mendelssohn, Sch\u00fctz, and J.S. Bach. Two of Reuter\u2019s works that were sung early on were “Also hat Gott die Welt geliebt, und Siehe, das ist Gottes Lamm”. Reuter himself spoke of the work of his choirs: \u201cThe men’s choir as well as the mixed choir works diligently in the area of tone\u00a0and voice formation and intonation, and in the area of melodic, rhythmic and harmonic assuredness\u201d (The Messenger, vol. II, no. 3, 57). Over the years many Reuter compositions were sung and played on the DMLC campus. Organ students worked out of Reuter chorale prelude books, and his choral piece, “Weihnachtsgeschichte”, or \u201cThe Christmas Story,\u201d written for mixed choir, organ, and narrator was performed almost every year at the DMLC Christmas Concert from the late 1920\u2019s to the late 1950\u2019s, several times between the 50\u2019s and 90\u2019s, and again at the final Christmas concert of Dr. Martin Luther College in December of 1994.<\/p>\n
Reuter wrote much secular music in addition to his great body of sacred works. Locally, the Reuters lived at 126 N. Washington Street in New Ulm. He was an active member at St. Paul\u2019s Lutheran Church and served in music there, too. There were eight children: Two, Ida Hanna (age 7) and baby Katherine (6 months) died\u00a0from typhoid fever in Canada, three daughters, Magdalena, Marie, and Elizabeth, and one son, Friedrich, also called \u201cFritz.\u201d His granddaughter, Margo Reuter Martens, has been actively involved in preserving Reuter\u2019s personal history and music.<\/p>\n
Confined to bed with illness, Reuter had been given a leave of absence from Christmas to the end of the 1922-1923 school year. Emil Backer, a New Ulm native, mentee of Reuter, graduate of DMLC, and also a highly skilled musician and teacher, was asked to take over Reuter\u2019s work on a temporary basis with the hope that Reuter would recover. But he did not, and died on June 9, 1924 of a brain tumor. The baton was passed to Backer, who remained in the position of Music Professor and Choir Director at DMLC until his passing in 1957. Fritz Reuter and his wife are buried in the St. Paul Lutheran cemetery in New Ulm. There is a stained glass window in St John\u2019s Lutheran Church in Frankenmuth, one of the panes contains Fritz Reuter, picture and name.\u00a0One of his students was stationed there and was responsible for that being displayed in the church window.<\/p>\n
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Friedrich \u201cFritz\u201d Otto Reuter Inducted 2024 Friedrich \u201cFritz\u201d Otto Reuter was born on October 11, 1863 in Jahnsbach, Saxony, Germany. He had shown a talent for music in his early […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2136,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[51,6],"tags":[58,471,470,468,469,65,57,45,61,67],"class_list":["post-2135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-51","category-inductee","tag-58","tag-dr-martin-luther-college","tag-friedrich-otto-reuter","tag-friedrich-reuter","tag-fritz-reuter","tag-inductee","tag-minnesota","tag-minnesota-music-hall-of-fame","tag-new-ulm","tag-organ"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mnmusichalloffame.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mnmusichalloffame.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mnmusichalloffame.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mnmusichalloffame.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mnmusichalloffame.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mnmusichalloffame.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mnmusichalloffame.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mnmusichalloffame.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mnmusichalloffame.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mnmusichalloffame.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}