Noel Coward Noel Coward ▼ Primary Sources ▼ Noel Coward Noel Coward was born in Teddington on 16th December, 1899. Coward began acting at the age of 12 and appeared in Peter Pan in 1913. His first play was produced in 1917. However, it was the play, I'll Leave It to You (1920) that first brought him national recognition. This was followed by The Vortex (1924), Hay Fever (1925) and This Year of Grace (1928). Coward was also a singer who wrote his own music. His operetta Bitter Sweet, was produced in 1929. Other popular plays and musicals included Private Lives (1930), Cavalcade (1931) and Words and Music (1932), which featured his most famous song, Mad Dogs and Englishmen. Coward also published an autobiography, Present Indicative in 1937.

Other popular songs by Coward include Poor Little Rich Girl, A Room With a View, Dance Little Lady, Someday I'll Find You, Alexander's Ragtime Band, Mrs Worthington, Mad About the Boy, London Pride and Don't Let's Be Beastly to the Germans, a song that was banned by the BBC for being pro-German. During the Second World War Coward began to write film scripts. This included In Which We Serve (1942), Blithe Spirit (1945) and Brief Encounter (1945). After the war Coward published a second volume of autobiography, Future Indefinite (1954) and wrote several plays and musicals There Are Bad Times Just Around the Corner (1952), Nude With Violin (1956) and Sail Away (1961). Noel Coward died in Port Maria, Jamaica, on 26th March, 1973.

(1) Noel Coward, Don't Let's Be Beastly to the Germans (1943) Verse And with an open mind We must endeavour to find A way - To let the Germans know that when the war is over They are not the ones who'll have to pay. We must be sweet And when they've suffered defeat We mustn't let The feeling that we're cross with them or hate them, Our future policy must be to reinstate them. Refrain 1 Don't let's be beastly to the Germans When our victory is ultimately won, It was just those nasty Nazis who persuaded them to fight And their Beethoven and Bach are really far worse than their bite Let's be meek to them- And turn the other cheek to them And try to bring out their latent sense of fun. Let's give them full air parity And treat the rats with charity, But don't let's be beastly to the Hun. Verse 2 And win their love and trust And in addition we must Be wise And ask the conquered lands to join our hands to aid them. That would be a wonderful surprise.

For many years- They've been in floods of tears Because the poor little dears Have been so wronged and only longed To cheat the world, This is the moment when we ought to sing their praises. Refrain 2 Don't let's be beastly to the Germans When we've definately got them on the run Let us treat them very kindly as we would a valued friend We might send them out some Bishops as a form of lease and lend, Let's be sweet to them And day by day repeat to them That 'sterilization' simply isn't done. Let's help the dirty swine again To occupy the Rhine again, But don't let's be beastly to the Hun. Refrain 3 Don't let's be beastly to the Germans When the age of peace and plenty has begun. We must send them steel and oil and coal and everything they need For their peaceable intentions can be always guaranteed. Let's employ with them a sort of 'strength through joy' with them, They're better than us at honest manly fun. Let's let them feel they're swell again and bomb us all to hell again, But don't let's be beastly to the Hun.

Refrain 4 Don't let's be beastly to the Germans For you can't deprive a gangster of his gun Though they've been a little naughty to the Czechs and Poles and Dutch But I don't suppose those countries really minded very much Let's be free with them and share the B.B.C. with them. We mustn't prevent them basking in the sun. Let's soften their defeat again - and build their bloody fleet again, But don't let's be beastly to the Hun. Any Major Dude With Half A Heart » German stuff Any Major Dude With Half A Heart November 3rd, 2014 17 comments This is the second part of the recycled German hitparade of the era just before and during the war. Again, if you dig genocidal fascism and want this mix to have a Nazi party, please go somewhere else. In 1944, the Third Reich’s propaganda and culture minister Joseph Goebbels issued a list of artists who were exempted from military duty. The list included individuals deemed too valuable for sacrifice on the battlefield — and friends of the regime.

The Gottbegnadeten-Liste (God-gifted list) included authors, architects, painters, sculptors, composers (including 80-year-old Richard Strauss), conductors as well as singers and actors. Those included on that list have featured on these two compilations included Willy Fritsch, Paul Hörbiger (soon to be arrested for resistance activities), Hans Albers, Wilhelm Strienz, and Heinz Rühmann. These artists enjoyed protection because of their sometimes unwitting collaboration in Goebbels’ endeavours of feeding a positive mood among an increasingly demoralised German population that had lost its youth on battlefields, its homes in bombed cities and its comforts with shortages in food, heat and clothing. It had long been Goebbels’ strategy to distract the German population from the less savoury sides of life under Nazism. Throughout the Nazi-era, he actively promoted light and apolitical feel-good films and songs (much as Hollywood did during the Depression). This meant that artists who were critical of the regime could work in the German film industry without troubling their conscience. Most probably did not realise that they were being used.

In the notes to the German Hitparade 1930-37 we encountered the affable Heinz Rühmann, who demonstrably differed with the Nazis on notions of racial purity. Yet it was he who prepared Germans for the war and the encouragement to see it through stoically when his signature hit Das kann doch einen Seemann nicht erschüttern (That can’t rattle a seaman) was released just a month before the invasion of Poland. The song came from the film Paradies der Junggesellen (with Josef Sieber and Hans Brausewetter, who also appear on the song; watch the clip and note the swastika on the walls of the hall). It seems more of a coincidence, however, that Lale Andersen recorded her famous Lili Marlen, the original, almost exactly a month before the start of World War 2. Zarah Leander confidently predicts that there will be a miracle in the 1942 film Die große Liebe. During the war, many songs that ostensibly dealt with matters of romance had a rather unsubtle subtext that exhorted Germans to endure the war until the inevitable final victory. As the news from the fronts became increasingly troubling, so these songs became more frequent.

While Bomber Arthur Harris destroyed German cities, Zarah Leander sang Davon geht die Welt nicht unter (Cheer up, Volk, it’s not the end of the world) and the optimistic Ich weiß, es wird einmal ein Wunder gescheh’n (I know that one day there’ll be a miracle). Lale Andersen suggested that everything will pass eventually. By then, a sense of cynicism began to prevail. Wags would complement her hit’s title Es geht alles vorüber, es geht alles vorbei with the rhyme “erst geht der Adolf, dann die Partei” (Everything must pass, everything will go away; first goes Adolf, then the party). People were executed for less. But as the end neared, a sense of fatalism started to creep in. The final song on this compilation, from 1944, will have resonated with soldiers on the front: Seagull, you’re flying home; send it my regards. Many of the soldiers did not go the way of the title’s feathered friend. Some of the singers certainly were glad of their relationship with the Nazi regime, but it does not follow that all of those who appeared in German film were sympathisers.

Some actors were jailed in concentration camps; some were executed or died of illness in camps. These unfortunates included the actor Robert Dorsay, a dancing comic who for a few months between 1932 and ’33 was even a party member. In 1941 he was drafted into the army, where he drove trucks. While on home leave, he was overheard making political jokes, which was reported to the Gestapo. The secret police then intercepted Dorsay’s mail. In one letter, dated 31 March 1943, he asked (rhetorically) about the war: “When will this idiocy end?”. That was enough for a court to sentence Dorsay to death. The 39-year-old actor, who had appeared in more than 30 movies between 1936 and ’39, was executed within hours of being sentenced in October that year (see a clip of Dorsay singing and dancing in the 1936 film Es geht um mein Leben, which – irony spotters, take note – could be translated as It’s a matter of my survival).

Another singer featured here was arrested: Evelyn Künnecke (1921-2001), daughter of two big opera stars, had not impressed the Nazi hierarchy by singing the racially impure and altogether degenerate American swing music (see this article on Germany’s Swing Kids scene) . Despite going on tours entertaining German troops on both eastern and western fronts, Künnecke was arrested for “defeatism” in January 1945. She was released shortly before the war with a view to recording English-language “propaganda jazz” songs for the disinformation station Germany Calling. It is not clear that Künnecke ever recorded with the station’s houseband, Charlie and his Orchestra. In short, it would be rather too easy to damn all German artists of the era for lacking the courage to openly oppose the Nazis. By the same token, it is difficult to understand how some of the enthusiastic collaborators with Nazism were able to make such an easy transition to lucrative post-war careers. The case of Lale Andersen (1905-72) is an interesting example of the thin ice German artists skated on at the time.

Andersen reputedly was Hitler’s favourite singer, and her recording of Lili Marlen (originally titled Lied eines jungen Wachtposten and based on a WW1 poem) had made her well-known beyond Germany. Andersen had been reluctant to record the song because she didn’t like its martial tone; for Goebbels, who hated it, Lili Marlen was not martial enough. By 1942, the Nazi leadership decided that Andersen’s signature song was too morbid, and banned it (it had been subject to limited bans soon after its release). It seems Andersen disregarded the proscription, for she was strongly admonished never to sing it in public again, least of all in front of soldiers. She then aggravated matters by declining to appear in concert in Warsaw and further by writing allegedly critical letters to refugees in Switzerland, which the Gestapo had intercepted. It is said that only a premature report of her arrest on the BBC saved Andersen from an already ordered arrest and deportation to a concentration camp. Like Evelyn Künnecke, Andersen was made to cut a deal in exchange for freedom: she had to perform weekly with Germany Calling’s Charlie and his Orchestra.

Unlike other, more willing, participants in Nazi propaganda, this action brought the singer a brief post-war performance ban. Foreign stars seemed to be better behaved than some of their local counterparts, such as the magnificent diva Zarah Leander (1907-81), who with her extravagant gestures and alto soprano was an obvious favourite drag queen character in the West Germany of the ’70s and ’80s. Born in Sweden, Leander’s life would make a great biopic. She enjoyed her first success in Vienna in 1936 with the operetta Axel an der Himmelstür, the libretto of which was written by one Paul Morgan, a German émigré. Within two years, Morgan had died of pneumonia in the Buchenwald concentration camp, while the singer who had sung his words on the Vienna stage had become one of Nazi Germany’s biggest stars, appearing in many propaganda films. Leander always claimed to have been apolitical; not everybody was convinced of it. She left Germany in 1942. Another Scandinavian, the Norwegian Kirsten Heiberg (1907-76) had a glittering career as an actress of the femme fatale type.

But she did not endear herself to the Nazi brass by refusing to join the NSDAP, and when she spoke out – albeit without forthright trenchancy – against the German occupation of her home country, she was banned from performing in public for two years. Norwegians did not forgive Heiberg’s association with the Nazi regime, and she retired from show business in 1954. [Edit: See comments for a further discussion on Heiberg and her politics.] Heiberg was married to Franz Grothe (1908-82), who was a party member, having joined the NSDAP in May 1933. Before that, the composer had written many songs for Richard Tauber (who left Germany after being beaten up by Grothe’s new pals). After the war, Grothe resisted the denazification process, but that act of noncompliance did little to obstruct his post-war career. Until his death, he was chief conductor on the very popular, long-running and conservative Volksmusik TV show Zum blauen Block.

Another non-German who had a glittering career in the Third Reich was Johannes Heesters (1903 – ), who appeared on the first compilation and here duetting with Marika Rökk (1913-2004, an admirer of Hitler in her day and, guess what, another post-war star whose Nazi-sympathising past was not a problem). The singing and dancing actor, who came to Germany in 1936, is still despised in his native Netherlands as a Nazi collaborator. Heesters, who performed for Hitler and in 1941 visited the Dachau concentration camp (apparently to entertain SS guards, which Heesters denies), did not distance himself from the Third Reich. But at the same time, in 1938 Heesters did appear on a Dutch stage with a Jewish group of actors. His unapologetic collaboration with the Nazi regime notwithstanding, the allies allowed him to continue his career after the war. Heesters is the world’s oldest active entertainer. His career started in 1921, he last appeared in a TV film in 2003.

Perhaps the most active Nazi featured here was the tenor Wilhelm Strienz (1900-87), who in 1933 joined the Sturmabteilung (Ernst Röhm’s brownshirts) and produced a series of propaganda hits on themes such as “Being German means being faithful” and “Fly, German flag, fly”. He regularly contributed to cultural Nazi propaganda, which did not deter London’s Covent Garden opera house from engaging him. After the war, German radio blacklisted Strienz – not a very common step – but the singer continued a successful touring and recording until his retirement in 1963. Die Goldene Sieben was the regime’s attempt to create German jazz as an alternative to the decadent swing music from the USA. The attempt failed. Die Goldene Sieben, featured in part 1 with Ich wollt’ ich wär ein Huhn and here with Oh Aha!, were a musical experiment by the Nazis. The group was founded in Berlin to record “German jazz”, a type that would conform to the moral requirements of the Third Reich, as opposed to the “decadent” US jazz.

However, the ever rotating members of the band failed to invent German jazz, doing so much of US-style swinging that Goebbels’ ministry disbanded the group in 1939, after five years of activity. Likewise, the Austrian singer and composer Peter Igelhoff (1904-78) was considered too jazzy, and was prohibited from performing in public and banned from radio in 1942. Instead, the entertainer was drafted into the army and sent to the front. He survived and enjoyed a rewarding career in post-war Germany. Among the most successful songwriting teams of the era was that of Michael Jary and Bruno Balz, who wrote those escapist anthems Das kann doch einen Seemann nicht erschüttern, Ich weiß, es wird einmal ein Wunder gescheh’n and Davon geht die Welt nicht unter. These songs were useful propaganda, and in the end might have saved Balz’s life. Bruno Balz (1902-88) was jailed in 1936 under the notorious anti-gay law of 1872 (which the Federal Republic of Germany retained until 1973) for having homosexual relations.

He was released early under the condition that he keep his name out of the public domain and that he enter into a marriage with a party loyalist. Moreover, his name was not to appear in song or film credits (a situation that was not rectified until many years after the war). Bruno “re-offended”: in 1941 he was arrested by the Gestapo and tortured. It took the intervention of Jary who said that he could not produce the songs which Goebbels demanded without Balz. The lyricist was quickly released. The story goes that within a day of that traumatic event, Jary and Balz wrote the two Zarah Leander classics mentioned above. Michael Jary (1906-88), who died just four months after his old songwriting partner, was not only a Schlager writer and an accomplished composer and arranger of classical film scores, but also a bandleader in the style of US swing orchestra leaders. Born in Poland as Maximilan Jarczyk, the Catholic Jary — who at point studied for the priesthood — was often mistaken for being Jewish, and so changed his name (also calling himself Max Jantzen and Jackie Leeds).

Running an orchestra came in useful for Jary: just 19 days after the fall of the Third Reich, he was recording programmes for Berlin radio commissioned by the Soviet forces. Jary’s preferred lead singer was Rudi Schuricke (1913-73), who in 1931 was invited to join the Comedian Harmonists but instead went on to found his own trio, the Schuricke–Terzett. He recorded with his group, guested on orchestras such as Jary’s and released solo records, often expressing sentimental longings for exotic locations (and in the 1930s and ’40s, when foreign holidays were unattainable fantasies, ideas of Napoli and Capri were very glamorous indeed). Schuricke’s post-war career was brief, a short-lived comeback in the 1970s notwithstanding, and he ended up running a hotel and laundry. The best rumour concerning anyone featured here involves Ilse Werner (1921-2005), who was famous for whistling interludes in her songs. It is said that it is her whistling on the Scorpions’ hit Winds Of Change.

Werner was also something of a pioneer of TV, presenting a programme on German television – the world’s first – before the regime stopped broadcasts in 1944. Like Andersen, Werner was given a performance ban after the war before she re-established herself. TRACKLISTING October 27th, 2014 16 comments Listening to this mix, previously posted in 2010, the other day, I thought it might be useful to recycle it, especially since with the 75th anniversary of the outbreak of WW2 the era is of heightened interest again. Obviously, if you want this mix, and the second one I’ll repost next week, because you are nostalgic for the Third Reich, you are not welcome to it. As Indiana Jones so memorably put it: “Nazis. I hate these guys.” This is the first of two compilations of German hits covering the era from the rise of Nazism to its demise. The first compilation leads us through the latter years of the Weimar Republic to 1937, just before war became an inevitable prospect.

The second mix will start in 1938 — the year of the Anschluß, or annexation of Austria — through the war to 1944 (there were no hits in 1945, it seems). None of the pre-war Schlager featured here are of the Nazi propaganda sort, and even the propaganda of the war-period songs is subtle, framing national optimism and encouragement in romantic song (with sentiments such as “I know one day there’ll be a miracle” and “Everything must pass”), which was very much in line with Goebbels’ propaganda strategy which used film and song to distract the Volk’s mind from matters of war. The careers of some of the artists featured in the first mix ended with the advent of Nazism. Marlene Dietrich (1901-92), whose Ich bin die fesche Lola comes from Der Blaue Engel (filmed simultaneously as The Blue Angel in 1929), launched her Hollywood career before Hitler assumed power on 31 January 1933. While Dietrich agitated against the Nazis from the safety of Hollywood, her sister ran a cinema near the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, frequented mainly by SS guards.

Marlene renounced her sister as a result, yet after the war helped her financially. In post-war West Germany, Dietrich was long regarded by many as a traitor on account of her support for the Allies in WW2. At a 1960 concert in Düsseldorf, an audience member threw an egg at her (in fairness, other audience members gave the offender a good beating for his troubles). Comedian Harmonists The sextett Comedian Harmonists created many pre-Nazi classics which became German standards (such as Veronika, der Lenz ist da; Wochenend und Sonnenschein; Ein Freund, ein guter Freund; Mein kleiner Kaktus). Half of the group comprised Jewish members, and the group struggled soon after the Nazis took power. In 1934 the group was prohibited from performing in Germany; after a year of foreign tours it split in 1936. The three Jewish members emigrated, and formed a band which toured under the original name; the three Aryans formed a new group called the Meistersextett.

Likewise, the Hungarian Jewish singer Gitta Alpár (1903-91) left Germany after 1933, and was divorced by her Aryan actor husband Gustav Fröhlich on top of that. Richard Tauber (1891-1948), the Austrian tenor who was the subject of Tom Waits’ blues, was the son of a Jew who had converted to Catholicism, and had even hoped Richard would become a priest. Instead, Richard joined the stage, appearing in operas and operettas. Already a big star in Germany, Tauber was badly beaten up by Nazi thugs, presumably because of his Jewish ancestry, and left Germany for Austria. He fled his homeland after its annexation. He subsequently became a British citizen, and died in London at the age of 57. Then there was the tragic Joseph Schmidt (1904-42), a Jewish tenor who was among the first artists to be banned from German radio by the Nazis.

A few months after the release of his film Ein Lied geht um die Welt (the title track features on this set; see the video clip from the film ) in May 1933, Schmidt fled Germany for Vienna, then after the Anschluß to Belgium, then after its invasion by Germany to France, and following France’s occupation to neutral Switzerland, where he arrived in September 1942. Several escape attempts had weakened Schmidt, leading to his collapse on a Zürich street. He was identified as a Jewish refugee, a category that in Swiss law was not regarded as political emigrés, and taken to the internment camp Girenbad while his residence application was being processed. While interned he fell ill and was treated in a hospital for an inflammation of the throat. The doctors refused to follow up his complaint about chest pains, and Schmidt was returned to Girenbad. Two days later, on November 16, he died of a heart attack. The following day, his approved residence permit arrived. Just as dramatic is the story of Renate Müller (1906-37).

Müller was a movie star (appearing in 1933’s Viktor und Viktoria, a movie banned by the Nazis and remade in English in 1980 as Victor/Victoria, from which the featured song comes. See video clip ). After the departure of Marlene Dietrich, Adolf Hitler himself asked the beautiful, thoroughly Aryan Müller to make Nazi propaganda movies. She refused to do so, and also resisted pressure to split from her Jewish lover. Her sudden death at 31 in 1937 was attributed to epilepsy, but in reality she died after falling from a window. It might have been suicide, but Gestapo officers were seen entering the building shortly before. She might have jumped in a panic at the approach of the feared secret police, or she might have been pushed the agents. There are rumours that Müller had some incriminating information on Hitler.

The Polish-born actress Pola Negri (1897-1987), the famous femme fatale of Hollywood’s silent movies era and former lover of Rudolfo Valentino and Charlie Chaplin, had returned to Europe after her career floundered with the advent of the talkies and after losing a fortune in the Wall Street Crash. She acted in a few Goebbels-commissioned films, then fled Germany in 1938 as rumours of her part-Jewish ancestry appeared. Other rumours concerned an alleged affair with Hitler, who counted the Negri movie Mazurka among his favourites. Negri won a libel suit against a French magazine that had made the claim. Like the unfortunate Joseph Schmidt, many artists left Germany as the horror of life under the Nazis began to reveal itself. The movie folks and writers among them, Jewish and gentile, tended to move to the US. These included the comic actor Siegfried Arno (1895-1975), who in his day was known as “the German Chaplin”. But the USA had no great demand for singers. So many of them continued their careers in Germany.

Some of them surely had Nazi sympathies, or at least exhibited exceedingly high levels of pragmatism and wilful ignorance. Some, like Dutch-born singing hoofer Johannes Heesters, Swedish diva Zarah Leander or Führer-favourite Lale Andersen, would claim that they had no idea about politics, as though one needed the insights of a Chomsky to realise that very bad things indeed were happening under the swastika, even while cocooned in the protective shell of celebrity. But it would be an error to believe that all artists were supportive of the Nazis. Hans Albers (1891-1960), one of the biggest stars in Nazi Germany, despised the Nazis. The regime forced him to officially split from his half-Jewish girlfriend, Hansi Burg, but he continued to live with her. In 1939, he arranged for her escape to Switzerland. When she returned to post-war Germany, Albers dropped his girlfriend at the time to reunite with Burg, with whom he lived until his death in 1960. His Flieger, grüss mir die Sonne is sometimes considered a Nazi propaganda anthem.

It was nothing of the sort, at least not in intent. Released the year before the Nazis took power, Albers sung it in the sci-fi film F.P. 1 Antwortet Nicht. Paul Hörbiger (1894-1981), an Hungarian-Austrian actor, became a resistance fighter against the Nazis. Arrested by the Nazis in 1945, he was sentenced to death for treason, with the BBC even reporting his death. Hörbiger lived, and enjoyed a long career on film, TV and stage which ended just a year before his death in 1981 at 86. Long revered in Germany and Austria as a grand old gentleman of stage and screen, Hörbiger’s film credits include the classic The Third Man, in which he played Harry Lime’s nameless porter. Hans Söhnker (1903-1981) was discovered just as the Nazis took power. With some fellow actors of much courage he helped hide Jews on the run from the Nazis.

Reportedly Söhnker was blacklisted by the Gestapo on several occasions because of these activities, with his celebrity presumably protecting him from the serious consequences non-famous Germans risked doing the same noble thing. He went on to have a long, fruitful career in Germany, where there was much affection for him. Lilian Harvey (1906-1968) was born in London to English and German parents. During WW1, her father worked in Magdeburg, preventing the family from returning to England. Lilian might have become a big British star; instead her career hit the big time in Germany. After a failed attempt at breaking through in Hollywood, she drew the attention of the Gestapo in the ’30s for her refusal to disassociate from her Jewish friends. Based in France after war, she resumed her career in West Germany. Others were apolitical.

Heinz Rühmann (1902-94) was one of Germany’s biggest stars for close to six decades (he appeared in the excellent 1930 comedy Die drei von der Tankstelle, and in a 1941propaganda comedy with the entirely unfortunate title Der Gasmann , which, unusually for comedies, liberally used the “Heil Hitler” salute). Rühmann, reportedly Anne Frank’s favourite actor, presented himself in public as entirely apolitical, but after the war he was accused of having divorced his Jewish wife in 1938 so as to protect his career in the Third Reich. However, his next wife, Hertha Feiler, (with whom he remained until her death in 1975) had a Jewish grandfather, which caused Rühmann some trouble with the Nazi hierarchy. A Rühmann & Feiler duet appears on the second mix. Willi Forst (1903-80), an Austrian actor, director and singer, was highly regarded by the Nazis, and made movies commissioned by them (including that Hitler favourite starring Pola Negri).

After the war he defended himself from accusations of having been a sell-out, referring to his country’s “occupation” (for which his compatriots had voted, of course) and pointing to subtle subversion in his films. The fine actor Curd Jürgens later recalled Forst’s advice during the Nazi era to never make any political statement in case it might come back later to bite him. Actor Willy Fritsch (1901-73) was a member of the NSDAP, though he made no political statements in his films other than the 1944 propaganda flick Junge Adler (which featured post-war movie star Hardy Krüger and 1970s TV host Dietmar Schönherr). Fritsch’s Nazi party membership was not held against him after the war, when he was one of Germany’s most popular actors. Singing with him on Ich wollt’ ich wär’ ein Huhn, recycled from the film Glückskinder, is Lilian Harvey ( video clip ).

Their lyric is different from the more comedic version of Die Goldene Sieben (more about whom in part 2), who draw some verses from the movie version of the song, including the notion that Mickey Mouse lives in a mousehole. In the hit version Fritsch is more interested in being a chicken so that he need not have to go to the office. And it is that everyday-man persona with which he cemented his acting career. In some of these post-war roles he played the father to young Romy Schneider’s characters. The ill-fated Romy was the daughter of the committed Austrian Nazi actor Wolf Albach-Retty and Magda Schneider (1909-96), of whom it is said that she had been close to Adolf Hitler. Like Heesters and Fritsch, her post-war career was not inhibited by the taint of Nazi associations. Another performer with a dodgy Third Reich record could never be taken to task: the Viennese crooner Luigi Bernauer (1899-1945) died in Oslo while on a tour entertaining German troops in occupied territories.

TRACKLISTING May 23rd, 2013 4 comments On Saturday the Champions League final will be played in London between two German clubs, Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund. All people of sound principles will hope for a Bayern defeat, even if they couldn’t care less about Dortmund. To mark the all-German final, here is a mix of German curiosities, some chosen because they are very good or interesting (or both), and a couple of football-themed songs at the end, selected because they are entertaining in their musical poverty. Some tracks have featured here before, but the links are long dead. I’ve also cribbed a few notes from those instalments. For a whole mix of songs recorded by international stars in German go HERE (posted almost exactly a year ago). As ever, the mix is timed to fit on a standard CD-R, and includes hausgemachte covers. PW in comments 1. Die Toten Hosen – Bayern (2000) The title refer to Germany’s most dominant football club, whom non-fans regard, with no exaggeration, as a cancer in the body of German football.

So the alternative rock band Die Toten Hosen (The Dead Trousers) composed a very catchy number explaining how, if they were “super-talented” young footballers, they would never sign a contract with that club because such an act would be thoroughly corrupting. At one point the singer demands to know: “What kind of parents must one have to be so stupid as to sign for that shit club?” Well, Mario Götze, just how verdommen are you, and what kind of parents do you have? 2. Alexander Wolfrum – Hey Büblein (2006) When somebody records an acoustic version of “Hey Joe” and renders the title as, roughly translated, Hey Little Boy, it’s worth listening to. The lyrics have nothing to do with the original either: it deals with metaphors involving thin ice, drowning in a lake and a rescue. And in-between a female voice warns that Joe is going to catch a cold.

Wolfrum, known by everybody as Sandy, is a singer-songwriter who performs in the dialect of Franconia — the region around Nuremberg — and founded a Festival der Liedermacher (or Festival of Songwriters) in Bayreuth, the home town of Richard Wagner. Check out more by Alexander Wolfrum at 3. David Bowie – Helden (1977) In his Berlin period Bowie fused the cultures of the Weimar Republic cabarets, Krautrock and Kraftwerk, and the local junkie scene. It’s very nice that David Bowie sought to pay tribute to the city that served as his muse by recording in German, but since he lived and recorded there, one might quibble that he could have taken better care with his pronunciations. As it turns out, he put as much effort in enunciating German words correctly as English football commentators do in pronouncing the names of German (or any non-Latinate) football players. 4. Cindy & Bert – Der Hund von Baskerville (1970) Husband-and-wife duo Cindy & Bert were a Schlager duo that epitomised square in the 1970s.

My grandmother thought Cindy & Bert were delightful, so Oma would have been shocked to discover that Cindy & Bert’s catalogue included a cover version of Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid”, with the lyrics taking a Sherlock Holmes theme. It need no pointing out that my grandmother probably wasn’t a hardcore Sabbath fan. Alas, Bert died last July—and was not even noted in the In Memoriam series! 5. Howard Carpendale – Du hast mich (1970) In German Schlager history, Howard Carpendale wrote a particularly successful chapter. Unable to hack it in his home country South Africa as an Elvis impersonator, the former shotput champion moved to Germany, learned to speak the language with just enough of a touch of an accent (German audiences really got off on foreign accents; but only in entertainment and romance, not in shops, pubs or public transport), and became the leading romantic singer of the 1970s and ’80s Schlager scene, selling some 25 million records. None of those 25 million records soiled my collection, I am pleased to say. His first breakthrough came with the standard Schlager “Das Mädchen von Seite 1” (The girl from the front page).

The flip side, however, was entire unschlagerish, a rocker called “Du hast mich” (You Have Me), a cover of a song Glory Be by German psychedelic rockers Daisy Clan which sounds like a heavy fuzz-guitared, organ-hammering Santana number. Glory Be was the b-side of Daisy Clan’s 1970 single “Love Needs Love”, apparently the group’s final English-language single (their final release in 1972 was appropriately titled “Es geht vorrüber”, which could be translated as “It goes by”). The Daisy Clan apparently were Schlager singer Michael Holm and songwriter Joachim Haider, going by the name of Alfie Khan. 6. Udo Jürgens – Peace Now (1970) The first of a fistful of English-language tracks here is by Udo Jürgens, the Austrian-born Swiss national who enjoyed immense success in West Germany, the place of his parents’ birth. Jürgens was as big a star as any on the Schlager scene, though his songs tended to be a notch or five above the usual banalities of the genre.

Jürgens also wrote hits for Matt Munro, Sammy Davis Jr and Shirley Bassey. “Peace Now” was the rocking English-language b-side of a German single titled “Deine Einsamkeit”, released in October 1970. It’s pretty good, in a dated sort of way that draws from rock, funk and gospel. Udo, exhibiting a rather lilting German accent, buys into the Zeitgeist as he sings: “Everybody is talkin’ ’bout peace in the world, but everytime I hear a hungry baby cry I ask: Peace, now show me your face.” 7. Heidi Brühl – Berlin (1969) Schlager singers, as a rule, were not cool. Heidi Brühl was not cool either. She had been a popular child actress, making her screen debut in 1954 as a 12-year-old. As a 17-year-old she became a Schlager singer, selling a million copies of her 1960 hit “Wir wollen niemals auseinandergeh’n”, the runner-up in the Eurovision Song Contest that year.

In the late ’60s Heidi, now married to American actor Brett Halsey, wanted to be cool — understandably, since her first hit in three years in 1966 was a cover of “The Ballad of the Green Berets”. By now living in Rome, she went to London and recorded in English. “Berlin”, released in 1969, has that Swingin’ London sound which might have had a revival in an Austin Powers movie. Brühl’s sound — think Petula Clark covering Nico — sound was not well received, and the excellent “Berlin” was relegated to the status of a b-side. In 1970 the singer moved to the USA, thereby putting a slow end to her Schlager career. Brühl died of breast cancer in 1991 at the age of 49. 8. Vicky Leandros Singers – Wo ist er (1971) Last weekend a whole continent took part in the annual ritual of the Eurovision Song Contest. Here is a singer who won the thing in 1972, for Luxembourg with a song called “Après Toi”.

The English version of it, “Come What May”, reached #2 in the UK. But the career of the Greek-born singer was based mainly in West Germany, where her singer father had moved in search of success. Vicky began recording as a teenager in the mid-60s, but broke through when she adopted her dad’s Christian name as her surname. “Wo ist er” is a German take on George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord”; an obvious imitation of the Edwin Hawkins Singers, whose Oh Happy Day arrangement this borrows from (and which inspired Harrison). Vicky’s vocals are quite excellent. Until recently Leandros participated in Greek politics. Under the magnificent name of Vassiliki von Ruffin (her real first name and the surname from her second marriage) she has served as deputy mayor of Piraeus as a representative of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) . 9. Barry Ryan – Zeit macht nur vor dem Teufel halt (1971) Best known for his crazy hit “Eloise”, Barry Ryan had a fairly decent career in West Germany, where he recorded his rather good Sanctus album in 1971.

In 1972 he had a top 10 in West Germany hit with the catchy “Zeit macht nur vor dem Teufel halt” (Time stops only before the devil). The melody was written by his brother Paul Ryan, and used for Irish singer Dana’s song “Today”. Barry Ryan even appeared on the only German-language music show ZDF Hitparade with “Zeit macht nur vor dem Teufel halt”, to my knowledge the first time an international rock star appeared on the show ( Video here ). 10. Françoise Hardy – Ich bin nun mal ein Mädchen (1965) The French superstar had some hits in Germany as well, with covers of French hits as well as German originals with material that took a bit from chanson, a bit from what was called Beat music. As a former student of German, her command of German was excellent, with that lovely French inflection. She also recorded in English and Italian. “Ich bin nun mal ein Mädchen” (I am a girl after all) was a version of her French 1964 hit “Pourtant tu m’aimes”, itself a cover of The Joys’ “I Still Love Him”.

It’s a cute song with cute lyrics. The song was a minor hit in 1966. 11. The Supremes – Where Did Our Love Go (German) (1964) Berry Gordy could spot a marketing opportunity, and so he had the stars of his Motown roster record their big hits in various European languages, apparently singing from phonetic lyric sheets. Unlike most others, Diana Ross makes a game attempt at it; one can understand her implorations not to be left by the addressee of the song. 12. Marvin Gaye – Sympatica (1964) I have no idea whether Marvin Gaye was a polyglot or whether he just gave more of a shit, but, like La Ross, he did a better job of it than most of his peers — and even sang a German original composition. So here we have one instance of Motown going Schlager, sort of. 13. Johnny Cash – Wer kennt den Weg (1966) In 1966, Johnny Cash recorded “I Walk The Line” as “Wer kennt den Weg?” (alas not as Johannes Bargeld).

In the early 1950s, Cash had been based as an US soldier in southern Germany. Clearly he did little in that time to benefit from the opportunity to learn German; his accent is quite appalling. 14. Peter, Paul & Mary – Puff (1963) It must have seemed an excellent idea for Peter, Paul & Mary to record their version of “Puff, The Magic Dragon” in German. The monster in question became a Zauberdrachen, and our biblically-named trio sung it with clear diction. So it is a little unfortunate that they titled the song “Puff” — colloquial German for the word “brothel”. 15. Hildegard Knef – From Here On It Got Rough (1969) The actress Hildegard Knef was a remarkable woman. Having made her breakthrough just after World War II with the film classic Die Mörder sind unter uns, she became the first actress in German cinema to do a nude scene in 1950, for which the Spiesser (squares) couldn’t forgive her for a long time.

She was so good that Hollywood beckoned, but she turned down Hollywood because she was expected to change her name to Gilda Christian and pretend to be Austrian (she later acted on Broadway as Hildegard Neff). Privately, Knef fought several battles with cancer; when she died in 2002 at 76, it was emphysema that claimed her, not the Big C. Knef became a singer and frequent songwriter in 1963, though not on the Schlager scene but in the Chanson genre, singing in German and English. “From Here On It Got Rough”, an amusing autobiography with a cute pay-off line, was the English version of her song “Von nun ging’s bergab” (you can see her perform it at 16. Max Raabe & Palast Orchester – Lady Marmalade (2002) The career of Max Raabe, a 51-year-old baritione, is predicated on conjuring the chanson of the Weimar Republic, either by covering songs or writing songs in the style of the era.

He is brilliant at it, with his clipped diction and straight-faced wit — so much so that one yearns for Marlene Dietrich and Noel Coward to join on him on stage. He performed at the wedding of Marilyn Manson and Dita Von Teese, which must have been quite a scene. Raabe records prolifically; this track comes from the second of a pair of novelty albums on which Raabe covers pop songs, with mixed results. 17. Kandy – Die Kung-Fu-Leute (1974) It was quite normal for Schlager acts to record German versions of international hits. I have no information about Kandy, but despite obviously not being German, it was his lot to record the teutonic take on Carl Douglas’ novelty hit “Kung Fu Fighting”. And when Douglas said everybody was kung fu fighting, Kandy meant it was the kung fu people doing the fighting. It was produced by Michael Kunze, who also gave us the Silver Convention and has since become the German equivalent of Andrew Lloyd-Webber (though possibly with a more attractive persona). 18.

Udo Lindenberg – Reeperbahn (1978) Udo Lindenberg was the posterboy of the anti-establishment in the 1970s and ’80s, with his long hair, his sneering brashness, his supposedly cool one-liners, and presumably his steadfast refusal to hold a note. He gets aggressively out-of-tune on “Reeperbahn”, his cover of The Beatles’ “Penny Lane”, transposed to the street in Hamburg’s red light district where The Beatles spent their formative musical years. In his nostalgic paean, Lindenberg pretends to have grown up in the city in which he lived; he actually grew up in a small town near the Dutch border and moved to Hamburg only in 1968. 19. Klaus Doldinger – Theme of Tatort (1970) This is the full theme of the German crime TV series Tatort, which has run for 43 years now. I know the theme has been re-recorded twice, in 1978 and 2004.

I’m not sure which version this is, but on the original our friend Udo Lindenberg from the previous song played the drums. Composer Klaus Doldinger, a jazz saxophonist, also wrote the theme of the German cinema classic Das Boot, which was directed by Wolfgang Petersen. And Petersen came to national prominence for directing a landmark Tatort episode in 1977, tited “Reifezeugnis” and featuring the teenage Nastassja Kinski. 20. Peter Gabriel – Schock den Affen (1982) I include this for reader Johnny Diego, who in a comment (you do know that you are welcome to comment, right?) proposes the theory that “there are two languages that lend themselves perfectly to [rock] music. One is, of course, English. The other is German, with its harsh guttural sounds. One can hear some that guttsyness in German bands that will never be heard in, say, French speaking bands.” This track is from Peter Gabriel’s second effort at re-recording an album in German, new instrumentation and all.

The first was the self-titled 1980 album with “Games Without Frontiers”; the second was the self-titled 1982 album with “Shock The Monkey”, the German take of which features here. 21. Zeltinger Band – Der lachende Vagabund (1980) The Zeltinger Band was a punk outfit fronted by what may be Germany’s first openly gay singer, whose bruising appearance challenged the stereotype of common imagination ( see this video ). Their biggest hit was a cover of the Ramones song Rockaway Beach, which was renamed “Müngersdorfer Stadion” — after the public swimming baths, not the football stadium — and advocated the practice of fare dodging on public transport. “Der lachende Vagabund” is a contemptuous version of the 1957 Schlager hit by Fred Bertelmann, which was a cover of the country song Rusty Draper’s 1953 hit “Gambler’s Guitar”. The German version was so popular, it sold more copies in Germany that Draper’s million-seller did in the US.

Hear Draper’s song HERE and Bertelmann’s HERE . 22. Agnetha – Señor Gonzales (1968) Before she became one of the As in ABBA, Agnetha Fältskog tried to realise the ambition of many Scandinavian singers of the day with a dream of musical success: breaking into the German Schlager scene. Agnetha released a batch of German singles between 1968 and 1972, most of them quite awful even by the low standards of the genre, though a couple were actually quite good. In her endeavours, Agnetha — who already had a career in Sweden but put it on hold while going for stardom in West Germany — was produced by her boyfriend, Dieter Zimmermann. Once Dieter was history, her next boyfriend, Björn, worked out better on the way to stardom. “Señor Gonzales” was Agnetha’s second German single.

I see no reason why it shouldn’t have been a Schlager hit: it has the necessary clichéd lyrics and banal melody; it even has the faux-Mexican sound the Schlager-buying public was so fond of — though here Agnetha might have been ahead of her time; the Mexican Schlager wave peaked in 1972 with Rex Gildo’s superbly tacky “Fiesta Mexicana”. 23. Gerd Müller – Dann macht es bumm (1969) Fans of English football (or soccer, as my American friends would say) are likely to cringe at the memory of their players’ attempts at pop stardom: Kevin Keegan’s 1979 hit single “Head Over Heels”, or Glenn Hoddle & Chris Waddle with their 1987 UK #12 hit “Diamond Lights”, or Paul Gascoigne teaming up with Lindisfarne to warble “The Fog On The Tyne” (there’s a Newcastle United thread here).

Bad though these might be, English football fans would have no cause to cringe if they knew what their German counterparts have been subjected to, horrors that would make Hoddle & Waddle seem like the Righteous Brothers. Two Bayern München legends perpetrated particular crimes against music. I’ll spare you Franz Beckenbauer’s attempts at romancing the Schlager audience, but shall inflict upon you the stylings of his teammate Gerd Müller. His nickname, just a quarter of a century after World War II, was “Der Bomber”, though this was based on a mistaken notion: though the greatest goalscoring machine ever, Müller didn’t have a powerful shot. His single, “Dann macht es bum” (“And then it bangs”), perpetuates the mistaken notion of the blitzkrieging bomber. It also perpetuates the reality that Gerd Müller wasn’t particularly bright 24. Village People & die Deutsche Fussballnationalmannschaft – Far Away In America (1994) Sticking with the football theme, we close this mix with a most bizarre collaboration: the Village People and the German football squad, recording the official song for the German team’s participation in the 1994 World Cup in the USA.

It is as awful yet insidiously catchy as one would expect, continuing a lamentable tradition of the German team recording the most appalling songs their federation could commission, and giving them the worst production possible. There was even an LP, which featured such acts as Udo Lindenberg, The Scorpions and — you guessed it — David Hasselhoff. The lyrics of “Far Away In America” were possibly not inspired by Goethe or Schiller. “We’re gonna make it, get it up and shake it. You’re gonna fight for the light, baby, come on and know it’s allright,” Klinsmann, Matthäus, Völler and pals croon with the Village People. Bring on those light-demanding Bulgarians, baby! The football-loving German public sent its team on its way to defend the World Cup title by propelling the lead single to the dizzy heights on the hit parade of…#44. Bonus: Albert Brooks – The Englishman-German-Jew Blues (1975) We’re ending this collection with a song that has no real connection with German music, nor much with Germany, but this is so good I want to share it.

It’s from Albert Brooks’ concept comedy album A Star Is Bought, on which various music stars appeared as the comedian tries to become a musician. On this track, he riffs with blues legend Albert King, whose career is based on feeling blue”. May 24th, 2012 15 comments I have previously posted some German versions of English-language hits sung by the stars of these songs themselves. Here’s a mix of 29 such songs, spanning just over a decade, from 1961-72. The fashion of Anglophone artists to record in various European languages hit overdrive in the mid-’60s. As mainland Europe’s biggest record market, Germany benefited (or not) from that fashion in particular. Some artists just recorded a few songs, often used as b-sides (for example, The Supremes’ German version of Where Did Our Love Go was the flip side of the English-language Moonlight And Kisses). Others recorded more regularly. British singers such as Petula Clark, Sandie Shaw and Peter & Gordon, as well as Connie Francis recorded several original German songs.

Some singers clearly could not speak German and sang their lyrics phonetically, often poorly, such as Millie, The Searchers, The Temptations and Dionne Warwick. Others made at the very least an effort, such as The Supremes, Beach Boys, Roy Orbison, Willie Nelson, Dusty Springfield, Sandie Shaw, Connie Francis, Brian Hyland, The Honeycombs or Manfred Mann And some either spoke German or made a great effort to learn the proper pronunciation of words. Top of the class would be The New Christy Minstrels, Peter Paul & Mary, Olivia Newton-John (her mother was German, the daughter of physics Nobel laureate Max Born) and ABBA (whose Agnetha once tried to make it as a Schlager singer, as we saw in Curious Germany Vol 2 ). Johnny Cash, who as a GI was stationed in Bavaria, does a good job on In Virginia (which features here), but did some violence to German on his version of I Walk The Line (featured on Curious Germany Vol. 3 ) Most of the translations more or less reflect the original; but a few take a whole new theme.

Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String becomes Wiedehopf im Mai, for example. A Wiedehopf is a bird ( picture here ). Of course, she also recorded the Eurovision Song Contest-winning song in French, Spanish and Italian, possibly without reference to tongue-twisting feathered friends. And then there is Donny Osmond, whose Go Away, Little Girl becomes the opposite: Bleib’ bei mir (Stay with me). As always, the mix is timed to fit on a standard CD-R, and includes home-baked covers (as well as a larger version of the above collage of single covers). TRACKLISTING July 17th, 2009 20 comments Some readers may remember a series of posts in which I looked at songs that evoked particular times, the way music often does. That was two years ago, and for two years I’ve regretted not milking the concept more than I did. In my excitement, I rushed through the years, overlooking some essential songs. And, of course, I’ve rediscovered a few in the meantime.

One I found a couple of weeks ago; the chorus had been a recurring, random earworm for more than three decades without revealing itself in a manner by which I could carry out the appropriate research in order to identify and acquire it. Around the same time, I stumbled upon a song I had entirely forgotten about. Hearing both beamed me back to 1971/72, when I was five years old. That then, is the point of this revised series (I will probably recycle some blurb I wrote two years ago while pretending to ignore what I posted): to recreate, as the cliché goes, a soundtrack to my life consisting of the hits of the day. Be warned, some of the music will be utterly horrible, enjoyable only as an act of nostalgia, and even then not very much. There will be oddities that must be included because they were pivotal in my life, like my first idol, childstar Heintje, or my first single (an obscure soul song now regarded as a classic in its genre called… oh, OK, a terrible Schlager single).

I will be brutally frank in acknowledging a record of bad taste in childhood, and of questionable record purchases as a young man in the 1980s (What’s The Color Of Money, anyone?). But I also know that there are many who will share these records of bad taste, the questionable purchases, and enjoy revisiting these — maybe even recalling the same songs with similar experiences. This, then, is my musical autobiography. My interest in knowing the names of performers, other than the legend that is Heintje, began in 1970, when I was four. In this first installment we look at songs that were hits before then, but which remind me of my childhood, not necessarily of the time when they were hits (except for Heintje, of course). * * *

Question: The song "Don't Let's Be Beastly To The Germans" was banned by the BBC in 1942. Who was the artist?
Answer: Noel Coward