Norbert Schultze

Norbert Arnold Wilhelm Richard Schultze (26 January 1911 in Brunswick – 14 October 2002 in Bad Tölz) was a prolific German composer of film music and a member of the NSDAP and of Joseph Goebbels' staff during World War II. He is best remembered for having written the melody of the World War II classic "Lili Marleen", originally a poem from the 1915 book ''Die kleine Hafenorgel'' by Hans Leip.

Other works were the operas ''Schwarzer Peter'' and ''Das kalte Herz'', the musical ''Käpt'n Bye-Bye'', from which comes the evergreen "Nimm' mich mit, Kapitän, auf die Reise" ("Take me travelling, Captain"), as well as numerous films, such as ' (1955).

Pseudonyms used by Schultze include ''Frank Norbert'', ''Peter Kornfeld'', and ''Henri Iversen''.

Life

Schultze took the Abitur in Brunswick and went on to study piano, conducting, composing and theatre science in Cologne and Munich. He went to the Bavarian capital in the 1930s as a composer and worked under the name Frank Norbert as an actor in a student cabaret "Die Vier Nachrichter" ("The Four Reporters"). This was followed by 1932-34 involvement in Heidelberg and as a conductor in Darmstadt, Munich and Leipzig and Mannheim.

The Third Reich

After several projects as production manager at Telefunken, Schultze decided in 1936 to try his luck as a freelance composer for stage and film. He delivered a series of compositions for martial and propaganda songs and was advised to become a member of the National Socialist German Workers Party in 1940 in order not to be conscripted. In 1932 he married his first wife, the actress Vera Spohr, with whom he had four children. After his divorce in 1943 he married the Bulgarian actress, singer and writer Iwa Wanja, who contributed libretti to several of his stage works. They had two sons.

On behalf of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels he created works such as "From Finland to the Black Sea", "the song of the Kleist tank group", "tanks roll in Africa" and "bombs on England".

The popularity of these combat and soldier songs led Norbert Schultze to be continually in demand by National Socialist propaganda. He also wrote music for Veit Harlan's morale-boosting "hold out" film ''Kolberg'', and the main theme of the war documentary ''Baptism of Fire'' (''Feuertaufe''). His subsequent comment regarding his war work was, "You know, I was at the best age for a soldier, 30 or so. For me the alternatives were: compose or croak. So I decided for the former.""The 100 Greatest Braunschweiger", Braunschweiger Zeitung Special, Issue 1, 2005.

Schultze was defined under denazification as a "fellow traveller", and on payment of a "processing fee" of 3,000 DM he got an immediate work permit. His songs being controlled to this day by GEMA (Germany), Schultze ordered that all of his royalties from 1933 to 1945 go to the German Red Cross as is the case to this day.

Especially his song "Bomben auf Engeland" led to him being nicknamed "Bomben-Schultze" within Germany's writers of popular tunes in the war years.

In a German speaking BBC documentary about artists working with Joseph Goebbels he claimed: "after writing the tune for national culture bombs on England I said to myself: Oh my god, what if the air-defence hits my relatives or friends. So naive I was."

Lili Marleen

Schultze wrote the melody to "Lili Marleen" from the poem "Die kleine Hafenorgel" by Hans Leip. In 1990 he told BBC
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