(Almost) everything by and about Zarah Leander's lyricist Bruno Balz
Everyone knows songs like “Ich brech’ die Herzen der stolzesten Frau’n,” “Der Wind hat mir ein Lied erzählt,” or “Ich weiß, es wird einmal ein Wunder geschehen” and the singers who performed them. But who was Bruno Balz, the man behind these lyrics? The man who wrote one of the first gay pop songs, penned hundreds of song lyrics for UFA films, and even after 1945 scored hits like “Wir wollen niemals auseinandergeh’n” or “Mama”? …
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Enno Kraus sings songs that Balz wrote for Zarah Leander and others, with Alba Gentili-Tedeschi at the piano, and Judith Kessler reveals from her book “Kann denn Liebe Sünde sein? Auf den Spuren des Liedtexters Bruno Balz” (Nicolai 2025), what’s true about the stories told about him—how Balz was able to write many of the most famous schmaltzy, but also cheeky and ambiguous pop songs of the 1930s and 1940s, and how the image of a tragic hero emerged, who, as a homosexual mistreated by the Nazis, is said to have written his songs under duress.
An evening of songs, vices, and legends.
(in German)
Dates
July 2026
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