Oskar Hagen was born on October 14, 1888 in Wiesbaden. His father was a German musician and
his mother a British subject. While growing up in Wiesbaden, Hagen received early music
instruction, and as a teenager studied composition under German composer and conductor Carl
Schuricht. In the fall of 1908 Hagen enrolled in the University of Berlin to study
musicology. While in Berlin he further studied composition under German composer Engelbert
Humperdinck. In his second semester at Berlin he switched his major to art history. Despite
this, he still retained an interest in music, completing an opera of his own, Die Kleine
Meerfrau (1912), as well as other compositions during that time.
In his lifetime, Oskar Hagen (1888-1957) achieved a certain amount of prominence in two
separate fields. In the area of music, he is known for leading a revival in the performance
of Handel's operas in Germany in the 1920's and establishing the Göttingen Händel Festspiele
(Göttingen Handel Festival) in 1920. In the area of art history, Hagen was a noted academic,
lecturer and writer, and founder of the Department of Art History at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison.
Hagen completed his art history degree at the University of Berlin in 1914. He subsequently
attended the University of Halle for further graduate studies in art history, and also took
a job at an applied arts museum. In 1918 Hagen took the position as professor of art history
at the University of Göttingen where he remained until 1925. There, while his star rose as
an art history lecturer and writer, his musical interests also continued. In June of 1920 he
inaugurated the first Göttingen Händel Festspiele, where performances of Handel's operas
were staged under Hagen's direction. For the performance of Rodelinda, Hagen served as
producer, editor, and promoter, and greatly altered Handel's original arrangement. Between
1920 and 1924 Hagen directed the festival, and his versions of Handel's operas were
performed there. After Rodelinda in 1920, the festival put on the Hagen productions of
Ottone (1921), Giulio Cesare (1922), Rodelinda again in 1923, and Serse (1924). These operas
had not been heard in Germany in almost 200 years, but after Hagen's work, there emerged a
renewed appreciation for them.
In 1924, Oskar Hagen came to the United States as a Carl Schurz Memorial Professor at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison in art history. In 1925, the university offered him a
teaching position, which Hagen accepted. Hagen moved from Göttingen to Madison where he
would remain for the remainder of his life. Upon arriving, he founded the Department of the
History and Criticism of Art, now called the Department of Art History. He was chairman for
the next 22 years. During that time, he lectured widely around the United States on art
history and wrote books on the subject, including Art Epochs and Their Leaders (1927),
Patterns and Principles of Spanish Art (1936), and The Birth of the American Tradition in
Art (1940).
Starting in the early 1940's, Oskar Hagen had a renewed interest in musical composition. He
wrote new compositions including Choral Rhapsody (Die Sonne) (1943), Concerto Grosso (1944),
Sonata for Violin and Piano (1945), Wisconsin Summer (1946), and Carducciana for Four Mixed
Voices (1948). Some of these compositions were performed by Madison-area music organizations
like the Madison Civic Symphony, and the Pro Arte Quartet. Concerto Grosso was also
performed in Frankfurt, Germany in 1946. Still active in art history and music until the end
of his life, Hagen died in Madison on October 5, 1957.
In 1914 Hagen married Danish opera singer Thyra Leisner in 1914, and they had two children,
Holger Hagen (1915-1996) and Uta Hagen (1919-2004). Both worked in stage and film. Thyra
Leisner died in 1938. Oskar Hagen subsequently married a Swiss woman, Beatrice Bentz.
