Agata Schindler

PhDr. Agata Schindler is a Slovak musicologist and music journalist. She studied piano at the Conservatory in Košice and musicology at the Faculty of Arts of Comenius University in Bratislava.

During her studies, she worked as an editor for the journal Slovenská hudba (Slovak Music). She later joined the Union of Slovak Composers as secretary of the musicology section, led by Ladislav Mokrý. She contributed articles and reviews—under the names Vlasta Lorberová, Vlasta Adamčiaková, and the pseudonym VLK—to Slovenská hudba, Večerník, Nové slovo, Hudobný život (Musical Life), as well as to Czech journals Hudební rozhledy and Gramorevue. She also collaborated as an author with Czechoslovak Radio and the record label Opus.

Since 1981, she has lived in Dresden, where she worked as secretary of the Dresden branch of the Verband der Komponisten und Musikwissenschaftler der DDR (Association of Composers and Musicologists of the GDR) until the organization’s dissolution in 1990. She was subsequently active in the Zentrum für verfemte Musik (Center for Ostracized Music) at the Dresdner Zentrum für zeitgenössische Musik (Dresden Center for Contemporary Music), in the Dreiklang festival, and at the Kulturamt der Stadt Dresden (Cultural Department of the City of Dresden).

Since 1995 (and as a freelancer since 2003), Agata Schindler has focused her musicological research on forgotten musicians persecuted under National Socialism (1933–1945). She undertook research trips to Germany, Austria, the USA, Israel, India, and the Czech and Slovak Republics, contacted archives, participated in international conferences, and published her findings in academic journals in several countries.

She is the initiator and author of projects on persecuted musicians, realized in cooperation with Czech Cultural Days in Dresden, the Dreiklang music festival in the German-Czech-Polish border region, the Goethe Institute in Prague, the Semper Opera in Dresden, the Sudeten German Institute in Regensburg, the association Musica Reanimata in Berlin, and the Ludwig van Beethoven Music Festival in Teplice.

Agata Schindler is the initiator and author of the traveling exhibition Aktenzeichen ‚Unerwünscht. Dresdner Musikerschicksale und nationalsozialistische Judenverfolgung 1933 – 1945 (Case File "Undesirable": Fates of Dresden Musicians and National Socialist Persecution of Jews 1933–1945), as well as the author of a publication of the same name (1999).

In 2003, she published her second book: Dresdner Liste. Musikstadt Dresden und nationalsozialistische Judenverfolgung 1933 – 1945 in Wort und Bild (The Dresden List: Music City Dresden and National Socialist Persecution of Jews 1933–1945 in Word and Image). It is the first German publication of its kind addressing the musical history of Dresden. After more than half a century of silence, the book reflects on the works, lives, and fates of persecuted musicians, musicologists, and critics who had worked successfully in this important musical center before 1933 but later became targets and victims of racial persecution.

In 2016, the Music Centre Slovakia published her third book in both Slovak and English: Maličká slzička. Nacizmus a jeho ničivé dôsledky v životoch stredoeurópskych hudobníkov (1933 – 1945) (A Tiny Teardrop: Nazism and Its Devastating Consequences in the Lives of Central European Musicians, 1933–1945).

Agata Schindler later expanded her research into Slovak territory. She was the first to examine a part of Slovak music history through the lens of National Socialist policy and its impact on musical life in Slovakia between 1939 and 1945. Her study was published as a serialized series in the journal Hudobný život. A full-length feature film based on Schindler’s research, titled V tichu (In Silence), premiered at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in 2014.

In collaboration with the Semper Opera in Dresden, she prepared two music-literary evenings: Ein Theresienstädter Konzertabend (2006–2012) and Eine winzige Träne (2017–2019). The latter was based on her book Maličká slzička and featured, among others, forgotten and newly rediscovered works and songs by Karol Elbert and Josef Weiss.

Agata Schindler currently contributes to the Opera Slovakia portal and the journal Hudobný život, documenting musical life in Dresden.