Regensburg Cathedral, the place the Regensburger Domspatzen choir performs, on July 14, 2021.
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Regensburg Cathedral, the place the Regensburger Domspatzen choir performs, on July 14, 2021.
Lena Mucha for NPR
REGENSBURG, Germany — For so long as she will be able to bear in mind, 15-year-old Elisabeth Wühl sang together with her twin brother, Serafin, in the identical choir.
“We each began piano classes once we had been 6, after which we joined our church choir, after which the cathedral choir,” stated Wühl in an interview final 12 months.
However the twins yearned to additional their musical research, which meant leaving their hometown.
Serafin utilized for one among Europe’s prime choirs, the Regensburger Domspatzen within the Bavarian metropolis of Regensburg.
Based within the 12 months 975, the Domspatzen is among the world’s oldest choirs and performs on the metropolis’s historic Gothic cathedral.
However all through its thousand-year-old historical past, the Domspatzen — “cathedral sparrows” in German — has solely accepted boys, and when Serafin earned a spot within the choir, Elisabeth discovered herself empty-handed.
Elisabeth Wühl used to sing together with her twin brother however needed to attend a special faculty, Regensburg’s School of Catholic Church Music and Musical Training, as a result of the Regensburger Domspatzen the place her brother went was boys solely.
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Elisabeth Wühl used to sing together with her twin brother however needed to attend a special faculty, Regensburg’s School of Catholic Church Music and Musical Training, as a result of the Regensburger Domspatzen the place her brother went was boys solely.
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Thankfully for her, she gained admission to a women’ choir at a close-by Catholic music school.
This week, nevertheless, the Domspatzen upended a millennium of historical past and is now permitting women into its music faculty and to sing in a women’ choir.
It might have come too late for Elisabeth, who says she is dedicated to staying at her present faculty. However the transfer is being hailed as a significant milestone for an establishment that was as soon as feted by Adolf Hitler and later performed host to a decades-long scandal of bodily and sexual abuse.
Among the many choirboys of the Domspatzen, the transfer to confess women has lengthy divided opinion.
“I am a bit skeptical as to how nicely the varsity will operate with women; we’re so used to only being amongst boys,” stated Johannes Ferber, 13, as he relaxed with classmates on the choir’s boarding faculty campus final 12 months.
However Maximilian Steiner, 15, says he has warmed as much as the concept of getting feminine classmates.
Maximilian Steiner practices his trumpet in his room at choir boarding faculty on July 15, 2021. He joined the varsity beginning in first grade.
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Maximilian Steiner practices his trumpet in his room at choir boarding faculty on July 15, 2021. He joined the varsity beginning in first grade.
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“It is lengthy overdue,” he stated. “We’re manner behind on this challenge. Women ought to have the identical alternatives as us boys in terms of training. My sister could not come to this faculty and now it is too late for her.”
The brand new women at Domspatzen at the moment are attending faculty with the boys however have a separate choir directed by a feminine conductor.
“Deciding to permit women in was a part of a protracted and broader decision-making course of about the way forward for the choir,” stated Christian Heiss, the musical director of the boys’ choir.
“We have made loads of modifications right here lately,” he stated. “We rebuilt the varsity, modernized it, made it nicer. So, then we requested: How will we wish to use these new services? We got here to the conclusion to permit women to profit from them because the boys do.”
Christian Heiss, musical director of the boys’ choir, within the Regensburger Domspatzen faculty on July 15, 2021. He joined the varsity in 2019.
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Christian Heiss, musical director of the boys’ choir, within the Regensburger Domspatzen faculty on July 15, 2021. He joined the varsity in 2019.
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Heiss says it’s a “revolutionary step” within the choir’s thousand-year historical past — a historical past that has typically mirrored a few of Germany’s darkest chapters.
In 1938, the Domspatzen carried out at one of many Nazi Get together’s annual Nuremberg rallies. Hitler was a fan of the choir, pals with its then-director, and he gave it common donations within the years to return.
“It was Hitler who made the choir what it’s at present,” stated Magnus Meier, who was a choirboy with the Domspatzen within the Nineteen Eighties.
“As an alternative of merely singing mass because it used to, Hitler had the choir sing secular music and despatched them off on tour. That is how the choir began to tour and acquire worldwide fame.”
Hitler used the choir as a propaganda instrument for Nazi Germany, showcasing it all through Europe within the run-up to World Warfare II.
The touring ended on the conclusion of the warfare, however it was changed with one other darkish interval for the choir: many years of systematic bodily and sexual abuse.
As a younger boy, Meier was one among lots of of victims.
“The college director then was one of many worst,” Meier stated of then-director Johann Meier (no relation). “He’d been an officer within the Second World Warfare, and his punishment strategies had been much like the kind that Nazis carried out within the camps. I actually consider if homicide weren’t against the law, he would have killed us.”
In 2017, an investigation commissioned by the Catholic Diocese of Regensburg discovered that Magnus Meier was one among 547 Domspatzen choirboys who had been subjected to bodily and sexual abuse by the hands of clergymen and lecturers from 1945 to 2015.
The 440-page report describes lecturers on the Domspatzen boarding faculty slapping boys within the face so exhausting that marks may very well be seen the following day, and whipping them with picket sticks and violin bows.
The choir was run by Georg Ratzinger — elder brother of retired Pope Benedict XVI — from 1964 to 1994, when a lot of the abuse occurred. Ratzinger denied realizing about it, and by the point the abuse got here to gentle, a lot of the perpetrators had died. (Ratzinger died in 2020.)
Georg Ratzinger at dwelling in Regensburg on April 19, 2005.
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Georg Ratzinger at dwelling in Regensburg on April 19, 2005.
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The church later compensated victims like Meier with funds of between $20,000 and $30,000.
“As children, we did not know any higher,” stated Meier via tears. “We thought the beatings and abuse had been regular. It wasn’t till later that I spotted none of it was regular and that is once I began to take care of the trauma.”
Meier, now 50, nonetheless struggles with post-traumatic stress dysfunction and borderline character dysfunction. He says the varsity and the church won’t ever be capable to apologize sufficient for what they did to generations of younger folks like him.
Nonetheless, he says the Domspatzen’s resolution to open itself as much as women is an effective one, albeit, one which, in his thoughts, reeks of “rebranding.”
However Choir Director Heiss says the choice to confess women has nothing to do with the abuse scandal.
He insists the choir won’t ever sweep its previous beneath the rug, however the abuse occurred within the earlier century, the choir management has modified, and the church led an intensive investigation, listening to the victims.
“And that is now our job: to ensure it by no means occurs once more. It is a extremely delicate challenge we take very severely.”
The Regensburger Domspatzen choir sing at a live performance in Lappersdorf, Germany, on July 15, 2021.
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The Regensburger Domspatzen choir sing at a live performance in Lappersdorf, Germany, on July 15, 2021.
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At a Domspatzen live performance at a cultural middle within the city of Lappersdorf final 12 months, the choir sang to a full home.
A type of within the viewers, Sabine Schick, stated she was thrilled for the choir’s future.
“It’s particular and the choir means quite a bit to this area,” stated Schick. “The abuse scandal was dreadful and it is a disgrace that such issues occurred to such choir with such wonderful musicians, however I am attempting to concentrate on the optimistic.”
Schick stated it’s now time to have women sing with this thousand-year-old choir.
“I would not wish to throw away all our outdated traditions, however it is time to enterprise on a brand new path,” she stated.
Esme Nicholson contributed to this story from Berlin, and Austin Davis contributed from Regensburg.
