Biography
Hans Erdmann was a German composer of film music, also credited as Dr. Hans Erdmann. Born Johannes Erdmann Themotius Guckel in Breslau in 1882, he studied violin, music theory and composition in his home city. He completed a doctorate in 1912 with a dissertation on the history of Catholic church music in Silesia and worked as a concertmaster and theatre musician before the First World War.
In the early 1920s he began composing for film. He wrote the original score for Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) and conducted its premiere performance. He later scored The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933) and other productions, taught film music at the Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatory in Berlin and co-authored the Allgemeines Handbuch der Film-Musik (1927).
