Trivia

Bruno Balz was saved from the Konzentration Camp with the help from the Swedish singer Zarah Leander.

Held by the Nazi regime because of his homosexuality. He was give special permission to leave the concentration camp conditional on him producing inspirational music for the German movie-going public.

The fall of the Nazi regime did not spell an end to the persecution of Balz, as Paragraph 175, the law against homosexuality, continued in force. Thus his name is considerably less well-known than if he had been properly credited for his lyrics.

Many of his important lyrics he wrote for the singer and actress Zarah Leander.

Because of his homosexuality he soon fell out of favor with the National Socialists. Already in 1936 he was arrested for the first time and he was only released on condition that his name will no longer appear in the public. Furthermore they arranged an unconsummated marriage.

In 1941 he was arrested again and after a torture of several days' duration there was also the danger of a deportation into a concentration camp. Thank to the intervention of Zarah Leander and Michael Jary this never happened. They assured Joseph Goebbels that they would no longer be able to write and interpret the demanded optimistic songs without Bruno Balz.

His film songs for Leander, a star of UFA musicals which were later criticized as having helped public and armed forces morale during the war, became anthems for homosexuals imprisoned in concentration camps.

The songwriter Bruno Balz is recommended as one of the most successful German lyricist at all. In his long lasting career he not only wrote countless songs for well-known singers of that time but also lyrics for many popular movies. Many of these songs became a hit thank to the lyrics of Bruno Balz and were sung by the German population even many years after the first release. He celebrated his greatest successes in collaboration with the composer Michael Jary.

Bruno Balz wrote in his testament that in the first ten years after his death there should nothing been written about him. His partner, the actor Jürgen Draeger, followed Balz's wish and only started to write Balz's biography in 1998. With this biography he brought Balz back to the public's awareness again.

He did not start his film career as a lyricist but as a film composer for "Dich hab ich geliebt" (1929).