1934: Tango von Berlin: Liebe ist ein Geheimnis - Kapelle Ludwig Ruth

Kapelle Ludwig Rüth - Liebe ist ein Geheimnis (Love Is A Mystery) Tango a.d. Tonfilm „Die englische Heirat” [from the Film „An English Wedding’] (Doelle – Amberg), Electrola 1934 (Germany) NOTE: This is one of the great German tangos of the interwar period, when Germany experienced its “tango heyday“ (it never returned after World War II). Composed by Franz Doelle, who is remembered in song history as the composer of one of the greatest hits of all time, “Wenn die weisse Flieder wieder blüht“ (When the white lilacs bloom again) - it was performed in the German film “Die englishe Heirat“ (The English Wedding) by actress and singer Hilde Hildebrand Ludwig RŰTH (also designated as Lewis RUTH) German musician and dance band leader (b. 1889 in Landau, Germany - d. 1941 in Durban, South Africa). He was originally a flutist and conductor at opera houses in Stuttgart, Leipzig and Munich, but turned to entertainment in the Jazz Age and in 1925 founded the Lewis Ruth Band in Berlin, in which he played as a saxophonist. From then on he played light music, especially jazz, and his band enjoyed great success through his collaboration with composer and conductor Theo Mackeben. Mackeben was the musical director of productions by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, and in 1929 Ludwig Rüth was invited to play in the premiere of The Threepenny Opera, which immediately brought him into the elite group of Germany’s best dance companies. Between 1928 and 1937, under the name Lewis Ruth, or later Ludwig Rüth, which sounded “more Aryan,“ it seems, he recorded some 400 records for Electrola. His band also worked in the theater and in nearly two dozen UFA-film productions (sometimes Rüth was also on screen with his orchestra). He also worked for a long time as Kapellmeister at Berlin’s Metropol-Theater. However, his love relationship with the Jewish woman Vera Cohn-Moser eventually led to his emigration to South Africa in 1937. Rüth left the leadership of his orchestra to the popular German composer Hans Carste, and tried to launch a new musical career in Durban, but was boycotted by the German community living in South Africa, which was mostly pro-Nazi. In 1940, Ludwig Rüth joined the British army in South Africa, and a year later drowned while swimming in Durban (his date of death is sometimes given as July 1947). In slideshow are presented several awesome German posters from the interwar including works of Ernst Dryden and Dodo.