Jewish Music and Poetry Project, 2013

Edwin Ernst Moritz Geist (1902-1942) was a German composer, originally from Berlin, who moved to Kaunas, Lithuania after he was expelled by the Nazis from the Reichsmusikkammer (Reich Music Chamber) in 1937. After arriving in Lithuania, Geist married the pianist Lyda Bagriansky, in 1938, and experienced his most productive period as a composer during the next several years, creating the opera "Die Heimkehr des Dionysos" (1934-1939), "Kleine Deutsche Totenmesse" (1940), and "Kosmischer Frühling" (1941). After the German invasion of Lithuania in 1941, Geist and his wife Lyda were imprisoned at the Ninth Fort in Kaunas, where Geist was held until he was released through the intervention of friends in March1942. Geist sought to obtain the release of Lyda as well, but he was rearrested several months later and was shot on 10 December 1942. After learning of his death, Lyda took her own life as well. Geist's music was rediscovered in Lithuania in the 1970s, and "Die Heimkehr des Dionysos" had its premiere in Vilnius in 2002, and his works have been performed in Germany, Lithuania, and the United States in the years since.