In 2012, he finally quit his job at RIPM. It was just too stressful. He took a job at Acorn Hill, a Waldorf kindergarten which his own children attended. Lucky children! Ole read stories and sang to them at naptime! But there was still the question of Ole’s true vocation, as well as his income. One morning, Ingrid had a “lightning bolt” idea! They could do puppetry! This was a “flash from God” according to Ingrid. She wrote a grant proposal. Their credentials were impeccable. They got the grant! So Beech Tree Puppets was born! The first show they did was the Grimms’ Tale, “The Crystal Ball” and it was so meaningful that the puppeteers could hardly keep from tears. There was tremendous creative collaboration between the two of them. The puppet plays were musical, artistic, ingenious, endearing and magical! Ingrid and Ole poured themselves into the puppetry and it showed. Their fame grew in the greater DC area. They performed at schools, libraries, Glen Echo and summer festivals. Ole appreciated that there was no “self-promotion” involved, as opposed to classical singing. Indeed, the puppeteers were “invisible.”

Obituary written by Christine Doran

 Ole Hass was born in Hamburg, Germany on May 31, 1968. He died on October 26, 2025, aged 57, in the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, of complications after a long battle with cancer. Ole is survived by his wife Ingrid Cowan Hass, children Eva and Cecilia, older brother Bodo Hass and younger half-brother Jan Guhl.

Ole sang for many years as a boy soprano in St Michael’s Cathedral in Hamburg, an experience that laid the foundations for a life steeped in music. After finishing high school at Gymnasium Corveystrasse he chose to undertake civil service rather than military service and went to court in order to avoid jail and prove his commitment as a conscientious objector. He did this work for almost four years, first caring for children with mental disabilities and later providing home care to elderly people. At the age of 22, after hearing a recording of renowned German tenor Fritz Wunderlich singing Schubert’s Art Songs, he left his study of biochemistry to focus on classical singing. A year later, in 1991, he met Ingrid, then a Smith College student of art and music studying abroad at the University of Hamburg. Both living in the music dorm, they were each assigned a shelf in the same mini-fridge. During that year they went to many concerts together and romance quickly blossomed. Between semesters that winter, they traveled around European cities and gave their first concert together in Hamburg in the spring of 1992. Subsequently, Ole came to the USA to pursue a master’s degree in opera at the North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, and he and Ingrid were married on June 29, 1996, at her family church, St Francis Episcopal, in Rutherfordton, N.C.

Ole and Ingrid moved to Greenbelt, Maryland, in 1998 for Ole to take up a fellowship from the University of Maryland in College Park. He earned his doctorate in musical arts in classical singing there in 2002 and after graduation worked as associate editor at RIPM (Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals), indexing German music periodicals, for 10 years. At this time he was also performing as a soloist all over the greater Washington, D.C., area, singing with the Washington Bach Consort, Cantate Chamber Singers, the New Dominion Chorale, the City Choir of Washington and at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall. He performed the role of the Evangelist in Bach’s St John Passion at the National Cathedral and at Strathmore to great acclaim. He sang many lead roles in Gilbert and Sullivan operettas with the Washington Savoyards and performed with small opera companies such as IN Series, the Opera Theatre of Northern Virginia and Washington National Opera Chorus. In addition to Bach, he sang all the main tenor roles of Mozart’s operas. He sang Art Song, often with Ingrid, in hundreds of venues, from churches to embassies as well as concert halls.

 At age 37 Ole became a father. This role was a cornerstone of his existence, and he was a most loving and giving parent. He loved reading aloud to his family, and making music and baking with his children. As they grew older, he was always available to help with math homework. He loved to take biking vacations with his family and playing complex role-playing and tabletop games of strategy and chance. With help from with his own father, a carpenter, he remodeled the family house on Northway, built an addition and a deck, refurbished the basement and made countless other improvements. Ole became a US citizen in 2010. After RIPM, he worked for two years at Acorn Hill Waldorf School in Silver Spring as an assistant teacher. This experience in part inspired the puppetry shows that he and Ingrid began to develop and perform in 2012.

At age 43 Ole was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). His brother (in Germany) was diagnosed with the same cancer in the same month, and their father died of cancer that year. CLL is a chronic and treatable cancer, and Ole was able to participate in medical trials at NIH that proved very effective. In 2012, he and Ingrid started Beech Tree Puppets and in 2015 he took a position as a German language coach with the prestigious Young Artists program at the National Washington Opera — a job he loved, working with the best new singers of the nation.

In 2023, however, Ole’s chronic leukemia transformed into a rare central nervous system lymphoma in his brain, which he fought through aggressive treatment over the next two years. The treatment was successful, but, quite suddenly in October 2025, he succumbed to a rare form of pneumonia that can affect people with weakened immune systems, as his was due to the years of cancer treatment. Ole was a loving husband and caring father, with a warm heart and a huge intellect. He had a gentle soul, kind and giving, and was patient and positive in his endurance, constantly upright. He was a gifted musician, storyteller and puppeteer; witty, smart and creative. With the puppet shows that he and Ingrid conceived and performed, he wanted to bring healing and nourishment to children through storytelling with wholesome images and beautiful music. A creative problem-solver and collaborator, he found grounding in handywork and construction, making the wooden set pieces for the shows and writing the music. The puppet shows were perfectly choreographed duets in action and song that brought delight to the youngest and oldest viewers; in a way, they were a perfect representation of the interwoven support and equal partnership of Ole and Ingrid’s marriage of two artists. The Hass family’s long journey through Ole’s illness has been eased by the love and support of the Greenbelt community. A small, family-only funeral took place in late October and a larger celebration of Ole’s life will be organized for January, with details to come.