Robert Stolz

Robert Stolz was an Austrian composer, conductor, and songwriter born in Graz to a musical family. His father, Jakob Stolz, was a conductor and composer, and his mother, Ida Bondy, was a concert pianist. He was also the great-nephew of soprano Teresa Stolz. By the age of seven he was touring Europe as a pianist performing Mozart, and he later studied at the Vienna Conservatory under Robert Fuchs and Engelbert Humperdinck.

Stolz began his conducting career in 1899, holding successive posts in Maribor, Salzburg, and Brno before taking over from Artur Bodanzky at the Theater an der Wien in 1907. During his tenure there he led the world premiere of Oscar Straus's Der tapfere Soldat, known in English as The Chocolate Soldier, in 1908. He left the position in 1910 to pursue work as a freelance composer and conductor, having already begun composing operettas and individual songs with considerable success. Following service in the Austrian Army during World War I, he turned his attention largely to cabaret and relocated to Berlin in 1925.

Around 1930, Stolz began composing for film. His score for Zwei Herzen im Dreivierteltakt, considered the first German sound film, produced a title waltz that became widely popular. Earlier compositions also reached broader audiences through film, including "Adieu, mein kleiner Gardeoffizier" from his operetta Die lustigen Weiber von Wien, which was interpolated into Im weißen Rößl. As Nazi Germany rose to power, Stolz returned to Vienna, where he continued composing for film and scored a hit with the title song for Ungeküsst soll man nicht schlafen gehn. During this period he also made repeated trips by car between Vienna and Berlin, using his limousine to smuggle Jews and political refugees across the German-Austrian border, a feat he accomplished 21 times. After the Anschluss he moved first to Zürich and then to Paris, where he was interned as an enemy alien in 1939. Released with the assistance of friends, he arrived in New York in 1940.

In America, Stolz built a reputation through concerts of Viennese music, beginning with a program titled "A Night in Vienna" at Carnegie Hall. His Broadway credits during this period include the musicals Mr. Strauss Goes to Boston, Night of Love, and Sky High, as well as the revue Shoot the Works, for which he served as composer and, in some cases, book writer. He also received two Academy Award nominations: his song "Waltzing in the Clouds" from Spring Parade was nominated for Best Original Song in 1941, and his score for It Happened Tomorrow received a nomination for Best Dramatic or Comedy Picture Score in 1945.

Stolz returned to Vienna in 1946 and remained there for the rest of his life. In 1952 he began composing for the Vienna Ice Revue, ultimately writing 19 ice operettas, the first of which, Eternal Eve, he dedicated to European Champion Eva Pawlik. During the 1960s and 1970s he made numerous recordings of operettas by composers including Johann Strauss, Franz Lehár, Emmerich Kálmán, and Leo Fall, all of whom he had known personally. In his later years he conducted with a baton inherited from Franz Lehár that had originally belonged to Johann Strauss and bore Strauss's initials engraved in silver.

Among the many honors Stolz received were the title of Honorary Citizen of Vienna in 1970, on the occasion of his 90th birthday, and Vienna's Grand Medal of Honour, making him only the second musician so recognized after Richard Strauss. He was also named an honorary citizen of Graz, the first honorary member of the Vienna Volksoper in 1964, and received the Great Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1962. In 1971 he received the Jerusalem Medal in recognition of his efforts to assist Jewish citizens during the war. He was married five times; his fifth wife, Yvonne Louise Ulrich, known as Einzi, served as his manager until his death and was recognized for her role in assisting German and Austrian artists in exile in Paris during World War II. Stolz died in Berlin in 1975 and was accorded a lying-in-state in the foyer of the Vienna State Opera House. He was buried in Vienna's Zentralfriedhof near Johannes Brahms and Johann Strauss II, and statues in his honor were erected in multiple locations across Germany and Austria.