Helen Tobias-Duesberg

Helen Tobias-Duesberg
Born	June 11, 1919 Suure-Jaani
Died	February, 2010
Nationality	United States of America

Helen Tobias-Duesberg (June 11, 1919 – February 4, 2010) was an Estonian-American composer.

Helen Tobias was born in Suure-Jaani, Estonia on June 11, 1919. Tobias was the youngest daughter of Estonian composer, Rudolf Tobias, born seven months after his death. She studied music composition at the Tallinn Conservatoire, which is now known as the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, under Artur Kapp and Heino Eller. She graduated from the Conservatoire as an organist in 1943. She later studied at the Berlin University of Music as well.

During World War II, she met her future husband, William Duesberg, a journalist who was repeatedly imprisoned for writing stories critical of Adolf Hitler. Shortly after the war, Duesberg died of a heart attack in a Stuttgart courtroom while preparing to testify against several Nazi war criminals.

Tobias-Duesberg moved to the United States from Estonia, which was then part of the Soviet Union, in 1951. She began composing music and performing at several churches in New York City. She composed chamber, vocal and symphonic pieces, the most famous of which may be Requiem, which was composed for orchestra, mixed choir and soloists. During the Civil Rights era, she played the organ at Friendship Baptist Church in Harlem when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. served as a guest preacher.

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