Wrocław

The Centennial Hall is a historic building in Wrocław, Poland. It was constructed according to the plans of architect Max Berg in... 1911–1913, when the city was part of the German Empire. As an early landmark of reinforced concrete architecture, it was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2006. The building is frequently visited by tourists and the local populace. It lies close to other popular tourist attractions, such as the Wrocław Zoo, the Japanese Garden, and the Pergola with its Multimedia Fountain. It was in the Lower Silesian capital of Breslau on 10 March 1813 where King Frederick William III of Prussia called upon the Prussian and German people in his proclamation An Mein Volk to rise up against Napoleon's occupation. In October of that year, at the Battle of Leipzig, Napoleon was defeated. The opening of the hall was part of the celebration commemorating the 100th anniversary of the battle, hence the name. Breslau's municipal authorities had vainly awaited state funding and ultimately had to defray the enormous costs out of their own pockets.
more

The Municipal Stadium in Wroclaw, Poland, is the highest fourth category football stadium built for the 2012 UEFA European Football Championship.... The Stadium is located on aleja Śląska in the western part of the city . It is the home stadium of the Śląsk Wrocław football team playing in the Polish T-Mobile Ekstraklasa. The stadium has a seating capacity of 42,771 spectators. All places on the stadium are seated and roofed. The Municipal Stadium in Wroclaw is the second largest arena in Ekstraklasa and the fourth one in the country . Stadium construction began in April 2009 and was completed in September 2011. Stadium opening took place at 10 September 2011 with boxing fight between Tomasz Adamek and Vitali Klitschko for WBC heavyweight title. First football match between Śląsk Wrocław and Lechia Gdańsk was played on 10 October 2011. Śląsk won this match 1:0 and Johan Voskamp was first goalscorer on the new stadium. The winning architectural concept developed by JSK Architekci is called STADIUM-LANTERN.
more

Moritz Moszkowski was a German Jewish composer, pianist, and teacher of Polish descent. His brother Alexander Moszkowski was a famous writer and... satirist in Berlin. Ignacy Paderewski said, "After Chopin, Moszkowski best understands how to write for the piano". Although little known today, Moszkowski was well respected and popular during the late nineteenth century. He was born in Breslau, Prussia into a Jewish family and studied music in Breslau, Dresden and Berlin, under Theodor Kullak and others. He was a teacher in Berlin for many years, and became very friendly with Xaver and Philipp Scharwenka. He also played four-hand pieces with Franz Liszt. He was an ardent Jew, at a time when many Jews downplayed their Jewishness. His pupils included Frank Damrosch, Joaquín Nin, Ernest Schelling and Joaquín Turina. He also claimed that Josef Hofmann was his student, although at other times he said there was nothing anyone could teach him, so this claim is uncertain. After a successful career as a concert pianist and conductor, he settled in Paris in 1897.
more

Walter Johannes Damrosch was a German-born American conductor and composer. He is best remembered today as long-time director of the New York... Symphony Orchestra and for conducting the world premiere performances of George Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F , and An American in Paris . Damrosch was born in Breslau, Silesia, a son of Helene von Heimburg, a former opera singer, and the conductor Leopold Damrosch, and brother of conductor Frank Damrosch and music teacher Clara Mannes. His parents were Lutheran . He exhibited an interest in music at an early age and was instructed by his father in harmony and also studied under Wilhelm Albert Rischbieter and Felix Draeseke at the Dresden Conservatory. He emigrated with his parents in 1871 to the United States. During the great music festival given by his father in May 1881, he first acted as conductor in drilling several sections of the large chorus, one in New York City, and another in Newark, New Jersey. The latter, consisting chiefly of members of the Harmonic Society, elected him to be their conductor.
more

Julius Stern was a German musician. Stern was born at Breslau. He received his elementary education in music from the violinist Peter Lüstner,... and at the age of nine played at concerts. In 1832 his parents removed to Berlin, where Stern studied first under Maurer, Ganz, and Saint-Lubin, and later under Rungenhagen at the Königliche Akademie der Künste. As a result of several compositions which he had written while a pupil of the academy, King Frederick William IV of Prussia, who was an ardent lover of art, granted Stern a stipend which enabled him to pursue his studies. He went to Dresden, where he received instruction from Miksch; and thence to Paris, where he subsequently was appointed leader of the Deutscher Gesangverein Society. While in the latter city he composed, among other works, the music to Mendelssohn's "Antigone." In 1846 Stern returned to Berlin, where, in the following year, he founded the Stern Gesangverein.
more

Reinhard Glemnitz is a German television actor.

Natalia Avelon is a Polish-German actress and singer. Natalia Avelon was born Natalia Siwek on 29 March 1980 in Wrocław, Poland. When she was... eight years old she moved to Germany with her parents. She played 1960s sex symbol Uschi Obermaier in Achim Bornhak's 2007 film Das Wilde Leben. Avelon performed with HIM lead singer, Ville Valo the duet of Lee Hazlewood's song "Summer Wine", which is part of the Das Wilde Leben soundtrack.
more

Maria Peszek is a Polish actress, singer and songwriter. She was born in Wrocław, Poland into a family of actors. She debuted in a theatrical... adaptation of Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass in 1995 at Juliusz Słowacki Theatre in Kraków. She graduated from acting school in Kraków in 1996. Since her appearance in Dom Juan in 1996 she became associated with Studio Theatre in Warsaw. Since 2004 she has been singing and songwriting in the band Elektrolot. She released her solo debut album, Miasto mania, in October 2005. It was certified platinum and earned her the Fryderyk award for best debut on March 30, 2006. In November 2006 she released an extended play album, Mania Siku. In September 2008 she released the next album, entitled Maria Awaria. This concept album, which dealt with sex, caused many controversies, but gathered numerous flattering reviews and was certified platinum owing to high sales.
more

Christoph Eschenbach , born February 20, 1940, Breslau, Germany is a German-born pianist and conductor. He currently holds positions in Washington,... D.C. as music director of the National Symphony Orchestra and music director of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Eschenbach's parents were Margarethe and Heribert Ringmann. He was orphaned during World War II. His mother died giving birth to him; his father, a politically active anti-Nazi, was sent to the Eastern front as part of a Nazi punishment battalion where he was killed. As a result of this trauma, Eschenbach did not speak for a year, until he was asked if he wanted to play music. Wallydore Eschenbach , his mother's cousin, adopted him in 1946 and began to teach him to play the piano. At age 11, he attended a concert conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler which had a great impact on the youngster. In 1955 Eschenbach enrolled at the Musikhochschule in Cologne, studying piano with Hans-Otto Schmidt-Neuhaus and conducting with Wilhelm Brückner-Rüggeberg.
more

Sir George Henschel , was a German-born British baritone, pianist, conductor, and composer. Henschel was born at Breslau, then part of Germany, of... Polish-Jewish parentage, and educated as a pianist, making his first public appearance in Berlin in 1862. He subsequently took up singing, initially and briefly as a basso profundo but developing a fine baritone voice. In 1868, he sang the part of Hans Sachs in a concert performance of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at Munich. With one minor and unplanned exception, he never sang on stage, confining himself to concert appearances. He was a close friend of Johannes Brahms, whom he met in May 1874 at the Lower Rhenish Music Festival in Cologne, where Henschel sang the role of Harapha in Handel's oratorio Samson. The friendship lasted until Brahms's death; Henschel reports in his memoirs that he arrived in Vienna only hours too late to see Brahms before his passing, and that their last meeting had been at a restaurant in Leipzig in 1896, where they were joined by Edvard Grieg and Arthur Nikisch.
more

Moritz Moszkowski was a German Jewish composer, pianist, and teacher of Polish descent. His brother Alexander Moszkowski was a famous writer and... satirist in Berlin. Ignacy Paderewski said, "After Chopin, Moszkowski best understands how to write for the piano". Although little known today, Moszkowski was well respected and popular during the late nineteenth century. He was born in Breslau, Prussia into a Jewish family and studied music in Breslau, Dresden and Berlin, under Theodor Kullak and others. He was a teacher in Berlin for many years, and became very friendly with Xaver and Philipp Scharwenka. He also played four-hand pieces with Franz Liszt. He was an ardent Jew, at a time when many Jews downplayed their Jewishness. His pupils included Frank Damrosch, Joaquín Nin, Ernest Schelling and Joaquín Turina. He also claimed that Josef Hofmann was his student, although at other times he said there was nothing anyone could teach him, so this claim is uncertain. After a successful career as a concert pianist and conductor, he settled in Paris in 1897.
more

Walter Johannes Damrosch was a German-born American conductor and composer. He is best remembered today as long-time director of the New York... Symphony Orchestra and for conducting the world premiere performances of George Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F , and An American in Paris . Damrosch was born in Breslau, Silesia, a son of Helene von Heimburg, a former opera singer, and the conductor Leopold Damrosch, and brother of conductor Frank Damrosch and music teacher Clara Mannes. His parents were Lutheran . He exhibited an interest in music at an early age and was instructed by his father in harmony and also studied under Wilhelm Albert Rischbieter and Felix Draeseke at the Dresden Conservatory. He emigrated with his parents in 1871 to the United States. During the great music festival given by his father in May 1881, he first acted as conductor in drilling several sections of the large chorus, one in New York City, and another in Newark, New Jersey. The latter, consisting chiefly of members of the Harmonic Society, elected him to be their conductor.
more

Robert Wiene was an important film director of the German silent cinema. Robert Wiene was born in Breslau, as the elder son of the successful... theatre actor Carl Wiene. His younger brother Conrad also became an actor, but Robert Wiene at first studied law at the University of Berlin. In 1908 he also started to act, at first in small parts on stage. His first involvement with film was in 1912, writing and directing Die Waffen der Jugend. His most memorable feature films are the 1920 horror film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Raskolnikow , an adaptation of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, both of which had a deep influence on the German cinema of that time. After Hitler took power in Germany, Wiene left Berlin, and went first to Budapest, where he directed One Night in Venice , later to London, and finally to Paris where together with Jean Cocteau he tried to produce a sound remake of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Wiene died in Paris ten days before the end of production of a spy film, Ultimatum, after having suffered from cancer. The film was finished by Wiene's friend Robert Siodmak.
more

Svika Pick is an Israeli pop singer and composer. Henrik Zvi Pick was born in Wrocław, Poland. He studied music at the Conservatory of Ramat... Gan and started to perform at the age of 15. Pick was married to Israeli songwriter Mirit Shem-Or. Shem-Or wrote the lyrics for many of Pick's hits, including Mary Lou, which was about herself. They are now divorced but the couple still collaborates artistically. They have three children. Two of Pick's daughters have performed duos as the Pick Sisters. Pick was one of Israel's leading pop singers in the 1970s, when he was voted "Israeli male singer of the Year." He played a lead part in the Hebrew version of the musical Hair in the early 1970s. In 1998 Pick wrote the song Diva performed by Dana International, which won the Eurovision Song Contest. He also wrote songs for several other Eurovision contestants. In 2002 he composed the Light a candle for Sarit Hadad, who represented Israel in Eurovision 2002. That year, Habima Theater staged a musical called Mary Lou based on Pick's old hits.
more