Guido Masanetz, Music director & composer, Died at 101

Guido Masanetz was born on May 17, 1914, and died on November 5, 2015, in Berlin.

He was a German music director, composer and band leader.

Guido was one of the most important and successful musicians of the former GDR.

He studied piano and conducting in Pilsen.

But the focus of his ministry was formed very soon the activity as a conductor and composition.

In 1939 Guido received an engagement at the theater in Brno, where in 1941 his operetta Barbara was first performed.

During the war he worked as a military musician.

Over three decades, he was a conductor at the Metropol Theater in Berlin, where he committed and headed the first performances of his works.

Guido composed numerous songs, hits, operettas, musicals and film scores, especially for fantasy films.

He wrote, among other things, the well-known songs, colourful lanterns (1946 come Rudi Schuricke) and 1962 sailor have you forgotten me?.

In 1979 Guido won the GDR Art Prize and the National Prize awarded in 1984, he was awarded the Theodor Körner Prize.

In 1974 he was awarded the Patriotic Order of Merit in bronze and 1989 silver in 2013, he was awarded the Sudeten German Cultural Award in Munich.

In 2008 he was appointed ordinary honorary member of the European Cultural Workshop (EKW) Berlin-Vienna.

His artistic credo was always “… strengthening and exploiting the diversity of harmonious melody”.

Guido passed away at age 101 on 5 November 2015 in Berlin.