Max Reger's 1915 Requiem (or the Hebbel Requiem), Op. 144b, is a late Romantic setting of Friedrich Hebbel's poem "Requiem" for alto or baritone solo, chorus and orchestra. It is Reger's last completed work for chorus and orchestra, dedicated in the autograph as Dem Andenken der im Kriege 1914/15 gefallenen deutschen Helden (To the memory of the German heroes who fell in the 1914/15 War).

Reger had composed Requiem settings before: his 1912 motet for male chorus, published as the final part of his Op. 83, uses the same poem, and in 1914 he set out to compose a choral work in memory of the victims of the Great War. The setting is of the Latin Requiem, the Catholic service for the dead, but the work remained a fragment and was eventually designated the Lateinisches Requiem (Latin Requiem), Op. 145a.

The Hebbel Requiem was published by N. Simrock in 1916, after the composer's death, with another choral composition, Der Einsiedler (The Hermit), Op. 144a, to a poem by Joseph von Eichendorff. That publication was titled Zwei Gesänge für gemischten Chor mit Orchester (Two songs for mixed chorus with orchestra), Op. 144. Reger provided a piano transcription of the orchestral parts. Max Beckschäfer arranged the work for voice, chorus and organ in 1985. The Hebbel Requiem was first performed in Heidelberg on 16 July 1916 as part of a memorial concert for Reger, conducted by Philipp Wolfrum.

Reger thought the Hebbel Requiem was "among the most beautiful things" he ever wrote. It has been described as of "lyrical beauty, a dramatic compactness, and [of] economy of musical means" in which the composer's "mastery of impulse, technique, and material is apparent".

Reger was a German composer, born in Brand in 1873 and raised in Weiden in der Oberpfalz. He studied music theory from April to July 1890 with Hugo Riemann at the royal conservatory in Sondershausen and continued his studies, in piano and theory, at the Wiesbaden Conservatory beginning in September of that year. He established himself as a keyboard composer, performer, and teacher of piano and organ. The first compositions to which he assigned opus numbers were chamber music. In 1891 he composed his Sechs Lieder, Op. 4, a collection of six songs. The first, "Gebet" (Prayer), was on a text by Friedrich Hebbel, who also wrote the poem on which two of Reger's Requiem settings are based.

Reger returned to his parental home in 1898, where he composed his first work for choir and orchestra, Hymne an den Gesang (Hymn to song), Op. 21. He moved to Munich in 1901. Income from publishers, concerts and private teaching enabled him to marry in 1902. His wife, Elsa von Bercken, was a divorced Protestant, and as a result he was excommunicated from the Catholic Church. In 1907 he was appointed musical director at Leipzig University and professor at the Royal Conservatory in Leipzig.

In 1911 Reger was appointed Hofkapellmeister (music director) at the court of Duke Georg II of Saxe-Meiningen, while retaining his professorial duties at the Leipzig conservatory. In 1912 he set Hebbel's poem "Requiem" as a motet for unaccompanied male choir, which was published as No. 10 of his collection Op. 83. In 1913 he composed four tone poems on paintings by Arnold Böcklin (Vier Tondichtungen nach A. Böcklin), including the painting Die Toteninsel (Isle of the Dead), as his Op. 128. He gave up the court position in 1914 for health reasons. That year, in response to the World War, he set out to compose a choral work to commemorate the soldiers who had died or were mortally wounded. He began to set the Latin Requiem but abandoned the work as a fragment. In 1915 he moved to Jena but continued teaching in Leipzig. In Jena, he composed the Hebbel Requiem for soloist, choir and orchestra, Op. 144b, again on Hebbel's poem, as in the setting for men's chorus. Following a full day of teaching in Leipzig, Reger died of a heart attack while staying at a hotel there on 11 May 1916.

In 1840 the playwright Friedrich Hebbel wrote a poem in German titled "Requiem", its Latin title alluding to "Requiem aeternam" (eternal rest), the first words of the Mass for the Dead. The poem opens with an apostrophe to a "soul" in a plea, "Seele, vergiß sie nicht, Seele, vergiß nicht die Toten" (Soul, forget them not, soul, forget not the dead). These words appear to echo various psalms, such as Psalm 103, "Bless the Lord, O my soul". Hebbel, however, evokes an "eternal rest" that is distinctly non-religious: the poem offers no metaphysical reference, Christian or otherwise, but calls for remembrance as the only way to keep the dead alive. The first lines, in which the speaker calls upon the soul not to forget the dead, are repeated in the centre of the poem and again at its conclusion, as a refrain that sets apart two longer sections of verse. The first of these sections describes how the dead, nurtured by love, enjoy a final glow of life. In contrast, the latter section portrays a different fate for souls that have been forsaken: who are relegated to an unending, desolate struggle for renewed existence. The musicologist Katherine FitzGibbon notes that the speaker of this narrative is not identified, but may be "a poetic narrator, divine voice, or even the dead".