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Abstract
This thesis seeks to identify the personal forces that motivated the composition of the Karl Amadeus Hartmanns Symphony no. 1, Versuch eines Requiems, and how these may inform an interpretation of the Symphony today. These issues include the influences that led to Hartmanns unique style in the 1930s, the politics of the works would-be reception in the early years of the Nazi Regime, and the post-war changes in the composers own interpretation of the work. The final chapter proposes an interpretive reading of the work as a dramatic monologue by the Allmutter, personified by the alto singer, and who mourns the loss of her sons, her daughters in a great and oppressive misery - an obvious comment on the cruelty and destruction of the Third Reich. The untexted theme and variations movement is seen as a meaningful gesture of identification with those oppressed by the Regime.