Composer. Born in Leipzig, Germany, he was raised in Vienna and studied music privately with Arnold Schoenberg, whose 12-tone composing method he adopted in his early works. Later he developed his own unique idiom, which blended traditional tonality with biting harmonies and made frequent use of cabaret-style jazz. In Berlin in the late 1920s Eisler was attracted by left-wing ideals and applied for (but apparently did not join) the Communist Party. He came to believe that music should have a populist function and the bulk of his output consists of vocal settings, many to texts by his friend Bertolt Brecht. These include the famous "Solidarity Song" (1931), incidental music for Brecht's plays "The Measures Taken" (1930), "The Mother" (1931), and "Galileo" (1947), numerous marching songs and cantatas, and his most ambitious opus, the 10-movement "German Symphony" for chorus, soloists and orchestra, begun in 1937 but not performed until 1959. Branded a "musical degenerate" by the Nazis in 1933, Eisler wandered throughout Europe and Mexico before arriving in Los Angeles in 1942, where he scored several films and received Academy Award nominations for "Hangmen also Die" (1943) and "None but the Lonely Heart" (1944). His finest art songs, collected in the cycle "The Hollywood Songbook" (1943), were also completed here. In 1948, after being called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, Eisler was labeled an "unfriendly witness" for his Communist sympathies and forced to leave the United States; he eventually settled in East Berlin, accepting an appointment as professor at the German Academy of Music (now the Hanns Eisler Academy). Although he was hailed as an ideal musician by the Communist regime and awarded two state prizes, he felt increasingly stifled by his country's oppressive cultural atmosphere. His plans for an opera based on Thomas Mann's novel "Doctor Faustus" were abandoned after its libretto was criticized by Party officials, and he was shouted down for defending jazz and new musical trends. Eisler's disillusionment was expressed in his final work, "Serious Songs" (1962). His other notable compositions include a Chamber Symphony (1940), "Five Orchestral Pieces" (1940), the quintet "Fourteen Ways of Describing Rain" (dedicated to Schoenberg, 1944), two string quartets, three piano sonatas, and the music for the film "Night and Fog" (1956). Eisler's song "Auferstanden aus Ruinen" ("Risen from Ruins") was the National Anthem of East Germany from 1949 to 1990.