Background
Grüner was born in Sieniawa, Poland (then part of Austro-Hungarian Empire) on May 14, 1888.
Grüner was born in Sieniawa, Poland (then part of Austro-Hungarian Empire) on May 14, 1888.
He finished elementary school and three years of economic high school in Budapest, where he also attended Yeshiva. Grüner studied for hazzan with the Hungarian State Opera House scholarship.
As a child, when he was nine years old, Grüner was known singer in the Budapest Jewish circles. In Szatmár County he gained his orthodox rabbinical college degree. In 1913, his first hazzan position was in Nitra, Slovakia.
From 1918 to 1923, Grüner served as hazzan at the Dohány Street Synagogue in Budapest.
In Székesfehérvár, Hungary he served as hazzan from 1923 to 1929. In 1929, Grüner moved to Zagreb where he was appointed as the hazzan at the Zagreb Synagogue.
In 1941 during the destruction of a Zagreb Synagogue Grüner saved, with help from Croatian composer Franjo Lučić, the Torah rolls and organization Grüner was taken to prison at Savska street by Ustaše, but under influence of the Archbishop of Zagreb, Aloysius Stepinac, he was soon released and managed to survive the Holocaust.
From the beginning of his service as hazzan in Nitra, he wrote down the chants that he used in a synagogue services.
With in the Grüner manuscript collection there are also chants of Salomon Sulzer, Louis Lewandowski and Samuel Naumbourg. Grüner composed over 70 synagogue chants. With his death in 1955, Croatian synagogue chants tradition was stopped.
In 2012, music notes book "Synagogue chants of Bernard Grüner" was presented at the Jewish community Zagreb.