On Flickr I came across a postcard of the Vestische Musikschule at Gelsenkirchen-Buer, which is where from 1969 to 1971 my mother took piano lessons (for herself rather than offering any kind of musical education to her children). Her teacher was the then head of the school, Kurt Kayser. So I was intrigued to read on the back of the flickr postcard the name Eusebius Kayser.
The chronicles of the city of Gelsenkirchen name Eusebius as the headteacher when the school reopened in 1946, but Kurt as the founder (in 1920) as well as the headteacher in the early 1970s, until his death in 1972. Which is all a bit confusing, but I assume they were related and the music school was more of a family business rather than a public institution? Eusebius also played cello, like Kurt, and in 1946-47 played recitals together with his mother, Ida Kayser-Insinger, playing piano. Search "Eusebius" in the city chronicles for 1946 and 1947.
The name Vestische, by the way, looks kind of official but isn't, as the Vest Recklinghousen was a judiciary district in the Middle Ages, but hasn't had any official significance since. When I was growing up in the Vest, the name was everywhere, but it was never clear to me where the Vest was exactly.
It bothers me that there is virtually no info about the Vestische Musikschule to be found online, apart from the snippets I already mentioned, so if anybody knows more, I'd be grateful for any hints. The city's public Musikschule has been in operation since 1978, so I'm thinking the Vestische may just have been merged into that, or it may have died out with the Kayser family?
NB In the budget for 1974, funding for the foundation of a music school was rejected, the city chronicles note. There is no mention of the word Musikschule in the volume for the previous year.
The building at Pfefferackerstraß 11 looks really lovely on the old postcards. As the one on flickr has been scribbled on, here's a clean copy I found in a forum online:
The building is now the home of a ballet school called Swoboda - when you search for that you'll also get a google streetview image.
More generally, in the research for my musical family memoir project, I am getting the impression that music schools and conservatoires don't often have a Wikipedia entry or any kind of written history online - in contrast to eg schools and universities. Making music look like some sort of clandestine society?
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