ABSTRACT
The German Democratic Republic was founded, amid much ceremonial, on 7 October 1949. The new state was preoccupied with many things, not least with the urgent priorities of feeding and sheltering a population still recovering from the traumas of war and occupation. Therefore, that within only weeks of the founding ceremonies, on 27 October 1949, the GDR formed a committee of politicians, academics, and musicians to co-ordinate the preparations for the imminent 200th anniversary of the death of Johann Sebastian Bach in 1750. The most energetic and influential member of the committee, the composer and musicologist Ernst Hermann Meyer, was given a particular responsibility. He was told, in strangely crude language, to see what aspects of Bach might be renovated. Stanley Sadie, editor of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, walked out of a speech on George Frideric Handel being delivered by Otto Grotewohl in Halle in 1959; he was not invited back.
