Richard Fuchs, composer / architect, was born in Karlsruhe, Baden, Germany, on 26 April 1887 and died in Wellington, New Zealand, on 22 September 1947 Born in Karlsruhe, studied as an architect, spent some time in Dachau concentration camp and came to New Zealand via England in 1939. He worked as an architect with Natusch and Sons, then the Housing Department, was a composer and took an active part in the Wellington music scene. (Biographical notes in the manuscript collection of the Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand) Active in the Jüdischer Kulturbund Baden and President of the B’Nai Brith Lodge in Karlsruhe in the 1930s When Richard Fuchs arrived in Wellington on 17 April 1939 he brought with him a selection of his compositions, which included:
- A Symphony for a large orchestra
- Music for eight wind instruments
- A piece for choir, four soloists and orchestra, Vom judischen Schicksal (Jewish Fate) set to poems by Karl Wofskehl and Susskind von Trinberg
- A String Quartet
- Songs for soprano and orchestra, Fruhling, set to text by Arno Holz,
- A Piano Quintet
- Numerous songs to texts by Heine, Uhland, and many others.
Richard Fuchs was the most accomplished and arguably the most prolific composer living in New Zealand during the war years. In New Zealand he wrote further chamber music, another string quartet and a piano quintet, songs, including a New Zealand Christmas set to the words of Eileen Duggan, which was sung for the Queen during her visit to Rotorua by a Maori Girls Choir. Apart from some songs and a string quartet few of Richard Fuchs’s compositions were performed in his lifetime and now he is virtually forgotten. In Germany he was a Jew, in New Zealand he was German. His compositions are held in the Turnbull Library. There is a project under way to revive interest in this remarkable, forgotten composer. His younger brother was the football player Gottfried Fuchs.
