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Walter Kollo

founder of Gema

Elimar Walter Kollodzieyski was born in Neidenburg, East Prussia on January 28th 1878, the son of an affluent businessman and a concert pianist.

He was encouraged to study music from an early age by his mother, much to the disappointment of his father who later disinherited him.

His first professional engagement was as a teacher and composer in Königsberg at the turn of the century. There, he met and married Marie Preuss, a singer performing under the stage name of Mizzi Josetti.

In 1904 they had a son, Willi, and the family moved to Berlin where he changed his name to Walter Kollo.

The young pianist and composer was in great demand among the cabarets and theatres of Berlin. He was soon regularly working at Max Rheinhardt’s ‘Schall und Rauch’ and the equally famous ‘Roland Von Berlin’ cabaret stages. It was at the latter where he met Claire Waldoff, and together with lyricist Herman Frey, wrote the song Schmackeduzchen for the then unknown 23-year-old singer. They performed the song almost every night for the next two years. Walter and Claire would go on to form a lifelong friendship. They wrote and performed dozens of songs over the years including one of Claire Waldoff’s biggest hits Ach Jott, was sind die Männer dumm taken from the operetta Drei Alte Schachteln. It went on to be performed more than a thousand times at the Theater am Nollendorfplatz.

Over the next thirty years, he composed over forty operettas that premiered in theatres throughout Berlin and also in Hamburg, Munich, Mainz, Köln and Paris.

By 1923 he was collaborating with his son Willi, who was just 19-years-old. They had several huge hits culminating in the 1933 production Lieber Reich, aber Glücklich and in 1935 Berlin, wie es Weint und Lacht. Both shows ran at the Komodiehaus, sold out every night, for two years.

Away from composing, in 1915, Walter Kollo founded the Gesellschaft für Musikalische Aufführungs, now known as GEMA, and one of the world’s largest societies representing the copyrights of musicians and publishers.

He also founded his own publishing company VUVAG in 1919, which until recently was still under the ownership of the Kollo family.

In the late 1930s he retired from working life having become a grandfather to Willi’s two children – Marguerite Kollo, born in 1935 and Rene Kollo in 1937.

He died in 1940, aged just 62, in his apartment in Schwäbischer Straße in Schöneberg, and is buried in the Sophienfriedhof in Invalidenstraße.