Hermann Zilcher (born August 18, 1881 in Frankfurt am Main – 1 January 1948 in Würzburg) was a German composer, pianist, conductor and music teacher. He was the father of actress Eva Zilcher (1920-1994) and the conductor Heinz Reinhart Zilcher (1906-1967). Zilcher received early piano lessons from his father, the composer and piano pedagogue Paul Zilcher (1855-1943), who was known as a composer of didactic piano and chamber music. The son studied from 1897 at the Dr. Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, piano with James Kwast, counterpoint and morphology with Iwan Knorr and composition with Bernhard Scholz. At graduation he was awarded the Mozart Prize. In Frankfurt. In 1901 he moved to Berlin, where he quickly established himself mainly as a pianist for singers and instrumentalists, with concert tours, which made him internationally known in the US and in Europe. In 1905 he returned to Frankfurt as a piano teacher at the Dr. Hoch Conservatory. In 1908 he was appointed by Felix Mottl as a piano professor and in 1916 as a composition professor at the Academy of Music in Munich. In Munich, he worked closely with the head of the Munich Kammerspiele, Otto Falckenberg (1873-1947), for whom he wrote incidental music. In 1920 he became director of the Bavarian State Conservatory in Würzburg, and founded in 1922, the Würzburg Mozart Festival, which soon became internationally famous. For these accomplishments Zilcher was appointed in 1924 Privy Councillor by the Bavarian government and the University of Würzburg awarded him an honorary doctorate.