Pathologist, expert in Caucasian studies, Armenologist, Candidate of Philosophical Sciences. In 1982-1988, he studied medicine in Leipzig receiving a qualification of a doctor having graduating from Bad Berka Secondary School in Thuringia in 1980. In 1988-89, he received supplementary education in church music as an organist in Eisenach. In 1988-1997, he started his medical career at Halle Regional Hospital (later Martha Maria City Hospital) as an assistant doctor and later as a pathologist. In 1998-2010, he was the Head doctor at St. Olaf College Hospital in Trondheim, Norway. In 2010-2016, he received a second higher education in Norway and Sweden. In 2012, he received a bachelor’s degree in classical archaeology, ancient history and Caucasian studies (University of Götheborg and Malmö High School, Sweden). In 2016, he received a Bachelor’s degree in Scandinavian Finno-Ugric Languages Studies (Tromsø University, Norway). Since 2014, he has been doing his Master’s degree at the Department of Caucasian Studies at Friedrich Schiller University in Jena and has been studying Armenology at Martin Luther University Halle. He participated in many conferences with papers on Caucasian studies and linguistics.

OSKAR FLEISCHER AND KOMITAS

Oskar Fleischer (1856-1933) was one of the three musicology professors in Friedrich Wilhelm University, where Komitas attended classes in 1896-1899. During that period, both Oskar Fleischer and Heinrich Bellermann (1832-1903) mainly dealt with medieval music. The Byzantine neumes were a special field of study in Fleischer’s research activity. Komitas had already studied medieval Armenian notation (xazagrutʿyun) in Gevorgian Seminary in Vagharshapat, the key of which had been lost during the centuries. Studying musical paleography and the art of notation under Fleischer’s supervision, Komitas cherished the hope to find the key of deciphering xazes. Komitas also worked on this issue in the years following his studies and, according to reliable sources, had nearly approached the solution. Fleischer was a knowledgeable professor for Komitas in the field of folk song study as well, who admired Komitas’s musical knowledge and talents and inspired him to continue studying folk songs. In subsequent years this was reflected in Komitas’s extensive activity of collecting and publishing folk songs. Information about Komitas’s thesis on Kurdish folk melodies or other topics in Berlin seems to be unreliable although the existence of such a work seems to be true, given the fact that Fleischer taught Iranian studies in Halle, and Komitas might certainly have been interested in that subject.
Years of study in Berlin were very effective. They could have had a wider impact, if the destructive ruling ideology had not abruptly interrupted the promising development of Komitas, as well as many other victims of the Armenian Genocide.