by the newly installed Nazi authorities because he refused the nazi dictature and of being Jewish. From 1934 to 1945, Abendroth also was professor of the Leipzig conservatory (1941–1945 Leipzig Musikhochschule). In 1943 and 1944, he took part in the traditional Bayreuth Festival, conducting Die Meistersinger, its only opera for those two years. Adolf Hitler officialized and organized the festivity. East Germany After World War II, the Communist new authorities of Saxony rescinded all Abendroth's contracts of Leipzig, and so - with his past of the Nazi Party - he wouldn't manage to get a new stable position anywhere else in Germany either. Abendroth then claimed that he had never attended any political meeting, and his fortune then would change at Thuringia, whose government appointed Abendroth for music director of Weimar from 1945 to 1956. In 1950 and 1954, Abendroth was elected the People's Chamber of the GDR for a four-year mandate ending in 1954 as a representative of the Cultural Association of the GDR. Such opportunity would help cleansing Abendroth's name, about his Nazi past, and so he returned to Leipzig, in charge of its Radio Symphony Orchestra, from 1949 to 1956. As Abendroth, a heavy smoker, was becoming a prominent artist of East Germany, he was the only person allowed to smoke within the building of the radio station of Leipzig, by the Communist authorities. Abendroth toured throughout the Communist Europe. He was the first German invited to conduct in the Soviet Union after the war, and also toured Finland and Switzerland. In 1951, he conducted for the Prague Spring International Music Festival. From 1953 to 1956, he conducted Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra (East Berlin). Ironically, such new celebrity status of Abendroth awoke suspicion about his new political affinity, and some locations of West Germany banned his presentations -such as in Düsseldorf- and the release of Abendroth's records on the Eterna label was quite limited in Western Europe. Death Hermann Abendroth died of a stroke, during a surgical procedure, in Jena, on 29 May 1956. A state funeral was then granted for him. Records Abendroth was amongst the first German music directors who released studio records regularly. His production spanned from mid-1920s, until his death. Nowadays, Abendroth is being successfully rediscovered by a collection of CDs, published since mid-1990s, consisting mainly of his works for the Radio Symphony Orchestra of Leipzig of since 1953. Awards 1935 Commemorative Medal