Dieter Schneider (10 March 1937 – 22 September 2023) was a German lyricist, specialising in Schlager music. By many criteria he was the most successful lyricist in the German Democratic Republic between 1955, when he wrote his first song-text, and 1990. Since 1990 his work has been less to the fore, even though during the years of division a number of his songs became popular with Schlager fans in the west.
Biography
An orphan in wartime
Dieter Schneider was born in Berlin-Weißensee in 1937. His mother's identity is not known. The first year of his life was spent in the Stephanusstift orphanage. After a year a foster family was found for him. However, at the end of the summer of 1939, war broke out and his foster parents, convinced that they would be unable to support the infant through another war, "gave him back". Over the next few years much of his upbringing was disruptively institutionalised. He worked his way through the usual childhood illnesses, spending much of the war period in hospital. There was no scope, under the circumstances, for structured convalescence or restorative procedures. One of the diseases he underwent was the Spinal Polio which has left him physically handicapped. By 1945, when the war ended, he was an inmate at the Evangelical Johannes Orphanage in Berlin-Spandau, where he witnessed the destructive final months of the fighting and the arrival of the Soviet troops. But he had survived. The foster mother who had given him up in 1939 had also survived and now came looking for him. Having found him, she took him back into her home. Their walk across Berlin from Spandau to Weißensee took them through the heart of what had been a city. The boy had passed through his eighth birthday a few weeks earlier: memories of what he saw as he walked with his foster mother across the city would remain with him for the rest of his life. During the immediate post-war period there was no possibility of attending a school, but he learned to read and write, partly on his own and partly with the help of an uncle who was progressively losing his sight. Little Dieter used to read the newspaper to his uncle: the arrangement suited both of them. He was able to enroll at school locally in the fourth year, which under normal circumstances would have corresponded with 1948, the year of his eleventh birthday. It was immediately clear that he was different from the other children, presumably through some combination of his natural inclinations and his physical difficulties following Polio. While the others played outside or took part in "physical education" / gymnastics classes, Dieter stayed in the class room and worked on composing his first verses.
Transition years
Sources are vague over the final part of his school career, with suggestions that he became a serial truant, often taking time out to track down popular composers and offer them his hand-written verses, hoping they might become the basis for new popular songs. This involved a lot of walking the streets and a lot of knocking on doors, but success was limited. There is also mention of his having worked as an unpaid intern in various media businesses during the period between leaving school and becoming established in his chosen career, but it was nevertheless a difficult time. At one stage after his foster-mother died he found work as a trainee telephone operator. There were also more imaginative approaches that could be deployed when the money ran out. He discovered a coin operated telephone box at the Tiergarten (zoo) Train Station which, with a well practiced half-twist of the telephone dial, could be persuaded to spit out four telephone tokens. In the context of the intense austerity overhanging Berlin through the immediate post-war years, these could readily be exchanged for money's worth with local shops.
Career launch
His prospects improved when one of his song lyrics came to the attention of a man called - slightly improbably - Franz Schubert. Schubert worked for a music publisher turned record producer called Lied der Zeit (loosely, "Song of the Moment"). He arranged for the would-be songwriter to meet up with Hans Bath, a composer of Schlager music. The upshot of their meeting was a collaboration between the lyricist Schneider and the composer Bath on a song called "Wenn die Großstadt schlafen geht" ("When the big city goes to sleep"), which appeared in 1955. The lyricist was still only 18. The first radio successes were not long in coming, and even though what followed was by no means a one-way street to fame and fortune, sound foundations had been set for a remarkable career.