Norbert Schultze

Norbert Arnold Wilhelm Richard Schultze (26 January 1911 in Brunswick – 14 October 2002 in Bad Tölz) was a prolific German composer of film music and a member of the NSDAP and of Joseph Goebbels' staff during World War II.

He is best remembered for having written the melody of the World War II classic "Lili Marleen", originally a poem from the 1915 book Die kleine Hafenorgel by Hans Leip.

Other works were the operas Schwarzer Peter and Das kalte Herz, the musical Käpt'n Bye-Bye, from which comes the evergreen "Nimm' mich mit, Kapitän, auf die Reise" ("Take me travelling, Captain"), as well as numerous films, such as The Immenhof Girls (1955).

He delivered a series of compositions for martial and propaganda songs and was advised to become a member of the National Socialist German Workers Party in 1940 in order not to be conscripted.

In a German speaking BBC documentary about artists working with Joseph Goebbels he claimed: "after writing the tune for national culture bombs on England I said to myself: Oh my God, what if the air-defence hits my relatives or friends.

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.