Norbert Schultze

His later life was spent with his third wife Brigitt Salvatori (married Easter 1992, in a ceremony performed by his daughter), mainly in Majorca but also often in Bavaria.

In 1990 he told BBC researcher Karen Liebreich that the melody to "Lili Marleen"was originally written for a toothpaste radio commercial. Sound recordings, first with a female singer Lale Andersen in 1939 at first sold little, but when the German military transmitter in Belgrade signed off with a recording from the singer several times, listeners' letters showed lively demand. The song met the inner mood of millions of soldiers of all armies who were fighting on both sides of the fronts and was translated into about fifty languages to become one of the global cultural "index fossils" of the Second World War. It was the first German million-seller.

He was from 1961 president of the Association of German stage writers and composers and from 1973 to 1991 was a board member of the German Composer Association. Until 1996, he held offices on the board of GEMA, the Board of Trustees of the Social Welfare Fund of GEMA and the supply Foundation of the German composers.

Schultze remained true to his profession and wrote numerous operas, operettas (such as Rain in Paris), musicals, ballets (Struwwelpeter written pre-war during his time at Telefunken) and Max and Moritz (filmed 1956), music for more than 50 movies, and songs.

To his well-known post-war movies belong "Käpt'n Bay-Bay" (1953), "Wie einst Lili Marleen" (1956) and "Das Mädchen Rosemarie" (1958).

Hat six children from his two wife's. Two of his sons are Norbert Schultze Jr. (b. 10 August 1942) and Kristian Schultze (b. 21 January 1945).

Norbert Schultze wrote the music to movies like "Bismarck" (1940), "Kampfgeschwader Lützow" (1941), "Ich klage an" (41) and "Kolberg" (1945) till the end of war.

Composer and pianist, famed for his song "Lili Marleen". He was educated in music theory at Cologne and Munich, then was a theatrical music director in Heidelberg. In 1938, he set to music a poem, written by Hans Leip, about a soldier's sweetheart who waited for him in the lamplight, but it was not a success, selling only a few hundred copies.

He had his first great success in 1936 with the opera "Der schwarze Peter". In the same year he found out his interest in film music. And with his world hit "Lili Marleen" (38) all the doors opened for the young composer.

After a conductor training he dedicated to the composition of entertainment music from 1934.

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.

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 film composer Norbert Schultze is best-known today for the most popular soldier song of World War II which became cult on at all fronts. We are talking of "Lili Marleen" of course, lyrics written by Hans Leip. In fact: originally a poem from the 1915 book "Die kleine Hafenorgel" by Hans Leip.