Prof Hanns (Juan) Stein has died
17 November 1926 - 26 July 2024
An obituary for the Czech-Chilean tenor and voice professor Hanns Stein by Johannes Kaiser
His father foresaw disaster and applied for a visa in good time. This is how thirteen-year-old Hanns Stein, born in Prague and raised in the German-speaking Sudetenland, escaped Theresienstadt and Auschwitz, where most of his Jewish relatives perished. His family escaped to Chile via England in 1938 following Hitler's occupation of the Czech Republic. There, the boy soon discovered his love of music, especially singing, took lessons and trained as a tenor. A scholarship at the Prague Conservatory from 1966 to 1968 laid the foundations for his later professorship in music at the Universidad de Chile.
Hanns Stein and his family experienced both the Prague Spring and its violent end. The second occupation of his old homeland cured the communist of many illusions about the Soviet Union. When he returned to Chile, he became involved in Salvador Allende's Unidad Popular in favour of a Chilean version of the democratic transition to socialism.
In 1973, he and his family had to flee again after Pinochet's coup. Ironically, this time Germany offered him and his family exile and the GDR took in the tenor and music professor. He taught as a voice professor at the Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin, a time he enjoyed. Hanns Stein gave many concerts in the GDR, West Berlin and Europe, including premières of compositions by Juan Allende-Blin and a concert with the Hanns Eisler Choir in the West Berlin Philharmonie. Many renowned singers completed their training with him.
Seven years later, the family returned to Chile, where political changes were still taking place under Pinochet. At least his children were not to grow up homeless like him. After Pinochet's abdication, he became a professor of music again at the Universidad de Chile in Santiago de Chile. He taught and gave private singing lessons until his nineties. He has now died in his home in Santiago at the age of 97.