Joseph Goebbels was born as "Paul Joseph Goebbels" in Mönchengladbach on 29 October 1897. His father, Friedrich Goebbels, was a bookkeeper and his mother was Maria Goebbels (born Oldenhausen). He was the third child of the family and grew up with five siblings. Due to an illness in his childhood in 1901, Goebbels' right foot was malformed and he was . He went to a Roman Catholic school in Rheydt in 1908. In 1914, Goebbels went to high school in Rheydt. When the First World War started in August 1914, he volunteered to be part of the Army. This was refused because of his limp.
Goebbels took his Abitur (school exams) in 1917. He was the best in his class. He gave a speech at the end of the school year. However, his headteacher said, that he would not become a good speaker. Later, in 1917, Goebbels studied ancient philology, history and German philology at the University of Bonn. He received his PhD in Drama from the Heidelberg university in 1921. In 1923, Goebbels worked for the Deutsche Bank.
Goebbels joined the National Socialist German Workers' Party in 1926. In the same year, Hitler made him a Gauleiter for Berlin and Brandenburg. In 1927, Goebbels published the first Nazi newspaper, "Der Angriff" ("The Attack"), in Berlin. The newspaper was printed twice a week. In 1928, he became a member of the German Reichstag. He kept this position until 1945. In 1929, Goebbels saw his first movie with sound, ""The Singing Fool"". He said it would be the future of propaganda.
In 1930, he became the "Reichspropagandaleiter" ("Chief of the German Propaganda") and the deputy of Heinrich Himmler. Goebbels married Magda Quand in 1931. Franz Ritter von Epp and Adolf Hitler were the witnesses at the wedding.
When Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, Goebbels became the Reich Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.
In 1934, Goebbels moved to a villa near Berlin. On 30 June 1934, he saw the arrest of Ernst Röhm in Bad Wiessee. Goebbels gave the order to confiscate about 650 art exhibits in 1937. He put them on display in show called "Degenerate Art". On 9 November 1938, a German diplomat was killed in France by a Jewish teenager. Because of this murder, Goebbels gave the order to the SS for what is now called Kristallnacht.
At the start of the Second World War, Goebbels ordered to broadcast special announcements at the cinema and on the radio. On 26 May 1940, he published the new weekly newspaper "Das Reich" ("The Imperium") for the first time. In 1942, Goebbels took part in the Wannsee Conference. He was one of the Nazi leaders who planned the Final Solution to kill all the Jewish people. In 1943, he gave a well known speech in the Berlin Sportpalast where he called the Germans to support total war. The coup on 20 July 1944 failed, because of Goebbels' quick thinking. He broadcast on radio that the coup had failed, before the plan of Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg could succeed.
On 22 April 1945, two days after Adolf Hitler's birthday, he arrived in the Führerbunker in Berlin. He was one of the witnesses to the marriage of Hitler to Eva Braun. On the same day, he took over the leadership from Hitler. After Hitler's suicide on 30 April, he became the Chancellor of Germany. He only held this job for one day, because on 1 May 1945, his wife poisoned their six children with the help of an SS doctor. Immediately afterward he and his wife went up to the garden of the Chancellery, where they killed themselves. The details of their suicides are uncertain. After the war, Rear-Admiral Michael Musmanno, a U.S. naval officer and judge, published several accounts apparently based on eye-witness testimony: According to one account. "While Schwägermann was preparing the petrol, he heard a shot. Goebbels had shot himself and his wife took poison. Schwägermann ordered one of the soldiers to shoot Goebbels again because he was unable to do it himself." One SS officer said they each took cyanide and ordered an SS trooper to shoot them both. According to another account, Goebbels shot his wife and then himself.
Carl Maria von Weber
Carl Maria von Weber (born Eutin, Holstein, baptised 20 November 1786; died 5 June, 1826 in London), was one of the most important German composers of the early Romantic period. He wrote many operas, of which "Der Freischütz", "Euryanthe" and "Oberon" are especially famous. He wrote instrumental music, especially for the clarinet, and wrote very well for orchestra.
Weber was the eldest of the three children of Franz Anton von Weber. The word “von” in front of a German surname normally means that the family had noble ancestry, but the Weber family do not appear to be of noble blood. Weber was never a strong, healthy child. He had a damaged hip-bone and always walked with a limp. His father worked in the theatre, and the family often moved from one town to another. This was difficult for his education. His mother was called Rosa, she influenced him to go to military school at the age of 20, but his love for music meant that he would go to Cranbrook in Germany. His daughter Laurel was well known for playing the viola in many Orchestras.
Weber’s mother died of tuberculosis when he was eleven. Later that year Weber went to Salzburg, to study with Michael Haydn (the brother of the famous Joseph Haydn), and later to Munich. He started to publish some piano music, and even composed an opera. When he was 14 the family moved to Freiberg in Saxony. He had an opera performed there, and he started to write articles as a critic in a Leipzig newspaper.
In 1801 the family went back to Salzburg and Weber had more lessons from Michael Haydn. He also studied in Vienna with a famous musician called Abbé Vogler. Through him he got to know another of his pupils, Giacomo Meyerbeer, who became a famous composer and was a close friend of Weber.
Vogler thought Weber was very talented, and helped him to get a job in Breslau. Weber had lots of good ideas about how to improve the music there: by changing the way that the orchestra sat, having more rehearsal time, not playing bad pieces of music, and pensioning off old singers. A lot of people there did not like these ideas and made life difficult for him. One night he absent-mindedly drank from a wine bottle. The bottle had engraving-acid inside, and it made him ill for two months. He was never able to sing again. When he tried to go back to work all the good changes he had made had been undone, so he resigned. He had a job in Karlsruhe for a short time, then went briefly back to Breslau, but because he owed people money there he disappeared and got a job in Stuttgart.
His lifestyle was rather wild, and he even got arrested once for debt and fraud. However, he continued to become well known as a composer and wrote a lot of instrumental and religious music. He spent some time in several large cities including Prague and Berlin. In Dresden he worked hard to make German Opera a success (most operas were still Italian in those days).
Weber was not well. He was suffering from tuberculosis, but needed money to support his family. So when he was invited to go to London to compose and produce his opera "Oberon" he accepted the offer. He had already been having English lessons and learned to speak the language quite well. In 1826 he travelled to England where he finished composing "Oberon" and conducted its first performance on 12 April. He stayed on in England to earn some more money. He was looking forward to going home, but on 5 June, the night before he was due to go back to Germany, he died. He was buried in London. 18 years later Richard Wagner arranged for Weber’s body to be brought back to Germany to be buried in Dresden.
Weber left an opera "Die Drei Pintos" ('The Three Pintos') unfinished. Meyerbeer was going to finish it, but in the end it was Gustav Mahler who finished it and conducted the first performance of the completed work in Leipzig in 1888.