Jürgen Samtleben awarded the Jürgen Prölss Prize

Jürgen Samtleben, former senior research fellow and head of the Latin America Unit at the Max Planck Institute for Private Law, received the Jürgen Prölss Prize on 19 January 2022. The prize is awarded annually by the Department of Law at Freie Universität Berlin in recognition of academic work done by lawyers – in the German language – in a non-legal field. Jürgen Samtleben was honoured for his research on the work of Johann Sebastian Bach.

In his monograph “Eine Flötensonate von Johann Sebastian Bach – oder von wem sonst? Ein Beitrag zum Streit um den Autor der Sonate g-Moll BWV 1020”, published in 2020, Samtleben delves into a long-standing musicological debate and examines whether the Flute Sonata was composed by Johann Sebastian Bach, his son Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach or by another composer. To this end, he subjects the historical sources as well as the stylistic arguments to an in-depth analysis and re-evaluation. His work is considered as providing a new basis for musicological discourse.

Dr. iur. Jürgen Samtleben did his initial university coursework in musicology and Romance studies before later studying law in Hamburg and São Paulo. He received his doctorate from the University of Hamburg in 1978. From 1971 to 2002 he was head of the Latin America Unit at the Institute.