Heinz Erhardt

Heinz Erhardt (20 February 1909 - 5 June 1979) was a German comedian, musician, entertainer, actor, and poet. He was born in Riga, the son of Baltic German Kapellmeister Gustav Erhardt, and lived most of his childhood with his grandparents in Riga, where his grandfather, who owned a music supply store, taught him to play the piano. From 1926 he studied at the Leipzig conservatory, though his wish to become a professional pianist was not supported by his grandparents, who wanted him to work as a merchant.

Erhardt entered the stage as a cabaret artist in several Riga coffeehouses, and in 1937 appeared on German RRG radio. The next year he moved to Berlin, performing on a Kabarett stage on Kurfurstendamm, and in 1939 made his first TV appearance with his swing song Mein Madchen. During World War II he was drafted into the Kriegsmarine, where he served as a pianist in the Marine orchestra. In 1948, he started work as a radio presenter at the public NWDR station and quickly became famous for his irresistible puns and countless nonsense poems.

Erhardt also acted in films and on stage, usually playing polite, uptight characters with a tendency to slips of the tongue, exposing the bigotry of West Germany's post-war society. By the 1960s he had become a household name, and many family gatherings still end in recitations of his most famous pieces, such as Die Made. He suffered a stroke in December 1971 that left him unable to speak or write, ending his career. As a belated 70th birthday gift, he was awarded the Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany four days before his death in 1979.