Stefan Amzoll

Stefan Amzoll (21 October 1943 – 23 October 2019) was a German musicologist, journalist and independent author. In 1989/1990 he was editor-in-chief of Radio DDR 2 and 1990/91 deputy editor-in-chief of Deutschlandsender Culture. A main focus of his work was New Music.

Life Amzoll was born in Sztum and grew up in the GDR. From 1968 to 1972 he studied musicology and theatre studies at the Humboldt University Berlin. Amzoll was one of those researchers in the GDR who was open-minded about New Music.

In 1977, he began his journalistic career as an editor for the second program of the Rundfunk der DDR (Radio DDR 2). On 1 May 1978 he was awarded the order Banner of Labor in stage II as a member of the journalistic "Collective". From 1979 to December 1989 he was head of the editorial office at Radio DDR 2.

After the reunification he was provisionally taken over by the new as one of few co-workers. The journalist Otto Köhler (1993) found little sympathy for this in a guest article in Die Zeit, since DS Kultur was "above all his [Amzoll's] work" and the music editor "has gotten himself into a lot of trouble with the SED and much admiration from expert colleagues in the West for his program initiatives".

In November 1992, Amzoll was elected for the PDS by the Berlin House of Representatives for the first time in the history of the of the Sender Freies Berlin.

Since 1992 Amzoll has worked as a freelance author. Contributions and interviews have been published in specialist journals for new music (, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, Neue Musikzeitung among others) and the theatre magazine Theater der Zeit as well as the literary magazine . Biographical articles appeared in the music encyclopedias Komponisten der Gegenwart and Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. In addition, he published in the theory journal UTOPIE kreativ as well as in national daily and weekly newspapers (der Freitag and Neues Deutschland among others). Since the beginning of the 1990s, he has been writing for the feature pages of Junge Welt. Recent radio reports have been published by Deutschlandradio Kultur; for the Deutschlandfunk he designed specialist programs such as "Atelier neuer Musik". at the age of 76 in Uckerland. He was buried at in Berlin.

Radio plays 1973: with Ursula Auschner: Musik in der Funkdramatik. Eine Sendung mit dem Komponisten Tilo Medek (Rundfunk der DDR) 1996: Warum haben Sie niemals Stalin angeklagt? – Regie: (Rundfunk der DDR) 1996: Ich bin das Auge. Radio-Szenario about Dziga Vertov – Regie: (Deutschlandradio) 2003: Putze Polina – Regie: Wolfgang Rindfleisch (Deutschlandradio)

Writings (ed.): Landschaft "für" Schenker. edition refugium, Berlin 2003. (ed.): Landschaft für Katzer. Akademie der Künste, Berlin 2005. with Annette Tietz (ed.): Utopia – . Galerie Pankow, Berlin 2015.