"Wo Du nicht bist, kann ich nicht sein!"

Who was Fritz Löhner-Beda? Born in Bohemia in 1883, he attracted attention and fame in Vienna as the librettist of works such as “Das Land des Lächelns” (Franz Lehár, 1929) and “Die Blume von Hawaii” (Paul Abraham, 1931), and was ultimately murdered in Auschwitz in 1942 as a forced labourer at the Buna works belonging to I.G. Farben – and is now unjustly forgotten. “He was one of the most brilliant minds in the entertainment industry, his intelligence was simply incredible. He could do everything – from sentimental operettas to comic nonsense songs to charmingly wicked lyrics,” his biographer Marie-Theres Arnbom wrote of Löhner-Beda. He also penned the anthems sung by the inmates of the Buna and Buchenwald concentration camps. Accompanied by songs with lyrics by the artist, Andreas Beck and Jens-Karsten Stoll navigate their way through a biography that is both highly individual and yet representative of an enduring phenomenon. What role does his Jewish identity play in the collective forgetting of his person? Why is his work often more lasting than its creator? And are “Schlager” pop songs?