Gus Anton

Gustav "Gus" Anton was a German conductor, composer, choral arranger and music publisher who shaped the musical and theatrical life of the Bergisches Land and the Oberberg district for more than half a century. He was the first artistic director of the municipal theatre in Gummersbach, led the Gummersbach male choir Die Räuber for 49 years and conducted the Symphony Orchestra of the Oberbergischer Kreis for 28 years. He died on 11 November 2026 at the age of 88.

He was born on 16 March 1938 in Remscheid. He studied piano, choral conducting and conducting at the Cologne University of Music and continued his training at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, where his teachers included Lovro von Matačić and Herbert von Karajan. He then worked in Remscheid as assistant to the conductor Thomas Ungar. In 1961, still in his early twenties, he founded a chamber choir in his home town that later carried his name as the Gus Anton Chor.

In August 1970 he became musical director of the Gummersbach male voice choir Die Räuber, aiming, in his own words, to give the old fashioned German male choir contemporary impulses without neglecting the classical repertoire. In 1972 he joined the town of Gummersbach as its cultural officer. He oversaw the building of the new theatre and became its director when it opened in October 1974. With the stage director Siegfried Grote he brought Mozart's The Abduction from the Seraglio to the stage in 1978 as the theatre's first in house opera production, followed by many operas, operettas and musicals with a specially founded theatre chorus. Gummersbach productions toured to Marburg, Fulda and Emden. He ran the theatre until he retired in 2006.

Across German speaking countries he was known for his arrangements of well known songs and arias for choir, many published through his own music publishing house. With Die Räuber he recorded a male choir version of Schubert's song cycle Die schöne Müllerin. After retirement he built an independent concert subscription series with the Symphony Orchestra of the Oberbergischer Kreis, moved concerts into the Hohenzollernbad during the theatre's renovation, managed the Gummersbach music school for many years and helped found the town's association of cultural societies.

Gummersbach awarded him its gold town medal in 2006 and, on 5 April 2019, its Ring of Honour. In 2019 he also said farewell to the orchestra and to Die Räuber, who named him honorary choir director, and Remscheid presented him with a certificate of honour at his chamber choir's farewell concert. He died in hospital on Wednesday 11 November 2026. Mayor Raoul Halding-Hoppenheit said he had given many people in Gummersbach the chance to make music together and stand on a stage, and that the town was grateful to him.