Lale Andersen

Lieselotte Helene Berta Bunnenberg entered the world on 23 March 1905 in Bremerhaven, Germany, and departed it on 29 August 1972 in Vienna, Austria. Possessing a husky timbre and a beguiling manner, the vocalist first captured widespread attention at the outset of World War II through her interpretation of the ballad by Norbert Schultze and Hans Leip—rendered in German as “Lili Marleen”—which swiftly endeared itself to troops of the German armed forces. Troops of the British Eighth Army later encountered the same recording on enemy broadcasts and adopted it; supplied with fresh English words by Tommie Connor, the song scored a British success for Anne Shelton. A moving rendition by Marlene Dietrich likewise gained traction across Britain, the United States, and numerous additional territories. Connor joined forces with Johnny Reine to compose a sequel titled “The Wedding Of Lili Marlene,” which the Andrews Sisters propelled onto the US Hit Parade in 1949. A quarter-century afterward, the two surviving members of that trio—Patti and Maxene—appeared in connection with yet another installment, “Wait For Me, Lili,” featured in their 1974 Broadway production Over Here!, itself a tribute to the music of the Big Band Era and World War II. The originator of the entire “Lili” cycle, Lale Andersen, captured the German Song For Europe contest in 1961 with “Einmalsehen Wir Uns Wieder” (“We Will See Each Other Some Day”), ultimately placing thirteenth, and later authored the novel The Sky Has Many Colours. The book recounted the ascent of a German singer whose career ignites solely through her performance of a familiar tune; Rainer Werner Fassbinder brought the story to the screen in 1980 under the authentic German title Lili Marleen.