Comedian Harmonists

The Comedian Harmonists were an internationally famous, all-male German close harmony ensemble that performed between 1928 and 1934 as one of the most successful musical groups in Europe before World War II.

The hallmark of the Comedian Harmonists was its members' ability to blend their voices together so that the individual singers could appear and disappear back into the vocal texture.

The Nazis progressively made the group's professional life more difficult, initially banning pieces by Jewish composers, and finally prohibiting them from performing in public.

When Shutorev died unexpectedly while the group was on tour in Norway in September 1948,[2] Erich Collin asked Harry Frommermann to jump in as a replacement, and so two of the original Comedian Harmonists were reunited on stage.

The group remained largely forgotten until filmmaker Eberhard Fechner [de] created a four-hour black-and-white television documentary, in which he interviewed the surviving members in 1975, who were scattered throughout the world.

In 1979 Erwin Bootz and Robert Biberti received the certificate and the trophy of the Deutscher Schallplattenpreis in the category Historic Recordings/Entertainment for the double-LP, Die Comedian Harmonists Story, Odeon 1 C 148-32 974 M .

The 1997 film directly led to a musical play about the group, Veronika, der Lenz ist da – Die Comedian Harmonists, which opened at the Komödie in Berlin in December 1997.

Receiving mixed-to-positive reviews, the production, staged by Warren Carlyle and featuring Chip Zien and Julie Benko, closed on February 4, 2024.