Kerstin Holm, a culture editor at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, has written an open letter to the federal government, calling on them to rescine plans to deport composer Vladimir Tarnopolsky back to Russia.
Tarnopolsky, 69, originally from Ukraine, left Moscow after the start of hostilities in March 2022. He has been composing and teaching in Germany ever since, but questions have been raised about the validity of his work permit. Officials have told him to return to Moscow and apply for a new visa. Were he to do so, he would certainly be arrested.
Kerstin Holm writes:
Vladimir Tarnopolsky has been deeply integrated into the artistic and social life of Germany for many years. He is a member of the Association of German Composers, a scholarship holder of the College of Sciences in Berlin, a member of the Saxon Academy of Arts, a laureate of the Paul Hindemith Composer’s Prize and other international awards. In 2023, he was awarded the Christoph and Stefan Kaske Foundation Prize.
Just four days after the attack on Ukraine began, Tarnopolsky gave an anti-war concert at the Boulez Hall in Berlin. During his two years in Germany, he wrote five large, passionately anti-war pieces of music, which were performed in the most famous concert halls of Munich (Prinzregenttentheater), Hamburg (Elbphilharmonie), Frankfurt (Alte Oper), Vienna (Konzerthaus), as well as in Berlin, Freiburg, Dresden, and in cities in Austria, Norway, Italy and America.
He took part in a series of conferences “Art and Responsibility” in several cities in Germany; at the invitation of the Munich and Dresden Music Academies, he led a series of seminars on composition.
Mr. Tarnopolsky is now faced with the option of returning to Russia to apply for another visa — where he and his family members face prosecution solely because of his anti-war sentiments — or seeking asylum with an uncertain outcome, which would leave him unable to create art, as he would be barred from employment and therefore unable to work as a musician.
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