Reiner Bredemeyer (February 2, 1929 − December 5, 1995) was a German composer. He was born in Vélez, Santander and went to school in Breslau. In 1944 he began his military service. After World War II he met Karl Amadeus Hartmann. From 1949 to 1953 he studied composition with Karl Höller at the Munich Academy for Musical Arts. In 1954 Paul Dessau took him to East Germany, where Bredemeyer became a master student of Rudolf Wagner-Régeny at the Berlin Academy of the Arts.
He taught at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts in Berlin and worked together with Bertold Brecht, Walter Felsenstein and Ernst Busch. From 1957 to 1960 he was arts director at the Theatre of Friendship in Berlin and from 1961 kapellmeister and composer at the German Theatre. His composers generation (among Friedrich Goldmann, Georg Katzer und Friedrich Schenker) broke with socialist realism and looked for orientation in western Avant-garde.[1] In 1978 he became a member of the Academy of Arts and in 1988 he was appointed professor. Until 1989 he served as a board member of the GDR's composers and musicologists Union.
Bredemeyer's grave is at Cemetery Pankow III, where a lot of famous people are buried.