Hans Bassermann

German violinist and music scholar and teacher who was concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic for one year at age 23. In 1913 he won a Mendelssohn Scholarship. Bassermann then undertook art tours at home and abroad and took up teaching posts.

In 1928 he succeeded Henri Marteau at the Leipzig Conservatory and in 1930 he became a lecturer at the Musikhochschule in Weimar, where, being Jewish, he was dismissed in 1933. Before emigrating to the USA via Switzerland and Israel in 1938, he was concertmaster in the orchestra of the Kulturbund Deutscher Juden. In Switzerland he played as concertmaster in the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande under Ernest Ansermet in 1937.

In the USA he played as violinist in the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra from 1938 to 1944 and as assistant concertmaster in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 1944 to 1952. He was first violin teacher at Chicago Musical College. In 1952 he was appointed professor for violin at a university in Lakeland, Florida. From 1958 to 1960 he was concertmaster of the Oakland Symphony Orchestra.

Among his students were Arthur Bohnhardt, Georg Hanstedt and Franz Konwitschny.

Hans Bassermann died on 12 February 1978 in Cincinnati, Ohio, aged 89.