Dr. Wolfgang Stresemann was intendant of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra from 1959 until 1978 and again between 1984 and 1986. In all those years, Herbert von Karajan was principal conductor.

He was the son of Gustav Stresemann, one of Germany's major politicians between the two world wars who was decorated for his services as foreign minister and chancellor with the Nobel Peace Prize (1926). Who knows what turn European history would have taken if he had not died in 1929. Could he have hindered Hitler's rise to power?

Gustav Stresemann married a Jewish woman; his son Wolfgang emigrated with his mother to the United States in 1939. A lawyer by profession, Stresemann had also studied music and appeared as a conductor in Berlin in the 1920s. In the United States, he was principal conductor of the Toledo Symphony Orchestra between 1949 and 1955, and acted as assistant to Bruno Walter. He also tried his hand at composition, with symphonies among his works.

In addition, Stresemann was a regular contributor to the New Yorker Staats-Zeitung und Herold, a German-language newspaper for which he was music critic between 1945 and 1949. He wrote hundreds of articles for émigrés from Germany—not only critiques and the season's previews but also essays on general musical subjects, such as the placing of instrumental groups in a symphony orchestra, illustrated by several examples.

Wolfgang Stresemann returned to Germany in 1956, to take up his position as intendant of the Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin.