Norbert Schultze, German Composer -- Rest in Peace

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Subject: Norbert Schultze, German Composer

Author:
catching up

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Date Posted: October 26, 2002 7:12:39 EDT

Norbert Schultze, the German composer of the melancholy "Lili Marleen," the informal infantryman's anthem that became the best-known song of World War II, died on Oct. 14 in Bad T�lz, Bavaria. He was 91.

Inspired by a German soldier's poem written during World War I and promptly forgotten, a flop when recorded by a German cabaret singer in the late 1930's, "Lili Marleen" nonetheless emerged as the embodiment of a timeless theme: the sadness of separation brought by war.

Mr. Schultze also wrote music for German propaganda films depicting the invasion of Poland, bombing raids on Britain, the North African offensive and the Russian campaign. But he was remembered for a song far removed from martial bombast. "Lili Marleen" became a huge favorite not only with German soldiers but with British troops as well, and it was translated into many languages. It was a signature song for Marlene Dietrich during the war when she entertained American troops in Europe, and she performed it in her one-woman show on Broadway in 1967.

The song's genesis was recounted in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 1980 film "Lili Marleen." The German singer Ute Lemper performed it in London at ceremonies observing the 50th anniversary of V-E Day.

Mr. Schultze, a native of Brunswick, Germany, and the son of a doctor, was composing light music in Berlin in 1938, having already written a highly successful children's opera, "Black Peter," when he was shown an obscure poem.

Titled "The Song of a Young Sentry," written during World War I by Hans Leip, a German soldier awaiting shipment to the front, it told of the two girlfriends he was leaving behind. The women, who lived near his barracks, were fused in the poem into one called Lili Marleen.

Mr. Schultze set the poem to music and gave it to Lale Andersen, a caberet singer, who recorded it in 1939. It sold all of 700 copies.

Mr. Schultze's score gained new life in 1941 when the German army needed a musical recording to conclude nightly broadcasts to troops in North Africa from a transmitter in occupied Belgrade. It found the Lale Andersen recording in a cellar in Vienna and evidently chose it because an officer liked the bugle-call introduction that had been written by her accompanist.

"Without that bugle call, my song would still be gathering dust," Mr. Schultze said in a 1967 interview in The New York Times Magazine with Derek Jewell, assistant editor of The Sunday Times Magazine of London.

Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda chief, detested the song as too sentimental. But the German troops loved it and deluged Lale Andersen with mail addressed to "Lili Marleen."

British soldiers picked up the song from the German radio or from prisoners of war. Sometimes they sang it in German, sometimes they improvised ribald lyrics. There were, in fact, suggestions that Lili was a prostitute rather than the girl next door. The British government and the BBC, seeking a sanitized version, called upon Tommie Connor, a prolific songwriter, to create an official version in English.

His song told a story similar to the German version, the girl now known as Lilli Marlene. It was recorded in wartime Britain by Anne Shelton and Vera Lynn.

Underneath the lantern
By the barrack gate,
Darling, I remember
The way you used to wait:
'Twas there that you whispered tenderly,
That you loved me,
You'd always be
My Lilli of the lamplight,
My own Lilli Marlene.

Mr. Schultze, meanwhile, wrote some two dozen songs for German propaganda films, an endeavor that resulted in Allied occupation authorities barring him from musical pursuits for several years after the war. He later wrote an operetta, "Paris in the Rain," and worked to protect musical copyrights.

"I had the choice: be a composer or face death, so I chose the first option," The Times of London obituary quoted Mr. Schultze as having once said in defense of writing propaganda music for the Nazis as an alternative to military service.

British press reports of Mr. Schultze's death did not list any survivors.

Two decades after the war, Mr. Schultze told of one song for which the timing was not exactly right. He said that Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was so impressed with "Lili Marleen" that he wanted his own song. "I could scarcely refuse," Mr. Schultze remembered.

That song, recorded by the Luftwaffe orchestra, was "Forward With Rommel."

"But by the time I'd finished it, Rommel was going backward," Mr. Schultze remembered, "so it was never used."

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