- With an engagement for a German radio broadcast began his successful international career.
- The days that came with the Nazis was everything else than pleasant. As a Jew he had already to escape from the Nazis in 1933 and fled to Vienna. There he could stay for the next five years but then the Nazis caught up with.
- His popularity was so great that he even took part in several very successful musicals, e.g. "Ein Lied geht um die Welt (1933) with Viktor de Kowa and "Heut' ist der schönste Tag in meinem Leben" (1936).
- On the 16th November 1942 the heart of Joseph Schmidt knocked off beating, a wonderful voice became silent for ever.
- In spite of a height of 1.54 Joseph Schmidt became one of the most dazzling singing stars of his time.
- A plaque is mounted at the inn where he died.
- During Word War II he got accommodation by friends in Zurich. Despite the dissuasion of his friends he reported himself to the police because he didn't want to violate the law of the country which saved him from certain death. He was sent to the internment camp Girenbad (it was the last station of his life) where he had to wait for the asylum decree.
- He was to have been issued a work permit the day after he died, so he would have been able to move freely within Switzerland.
- At twenty he was sent to Berlin where he studied voice with Frau Dr. Jaffe and Professor Hermann Weissenborn.
- He escaped from Vienna, to Brussels and 1940 to France.
- He was conscripted for military service from 1926 till 1929, afterwards he was able to concentrate to his career again.
- He had a sweet lyric tenor voice with an easy high register, sailing up even to a high D. His voice was also agile, and he possessed a perfect and dependable trill, which he demonstrated on his recordings of "Ah si ben mio" from Il trovatore and "Una furtiva lagrima" from L'elisir d'amore.
- On November 16, 1942, while attempting to recover at the nearby Waldegg Inn, the famous singer collapsed. The hostess let him rest on her couch, but not long after, she noticed that he was no longer breathing. Schmidt had suffered a heart attack. He was only 38 years old.
- His first vocal training was as a classic Hebrew singer in the local synagogue in Cernowitz.
- He visited regularly most fashionable hotels in Europe and USA, and evoked much affection from his listeners.
- In the interment camp Girenbad Joseph Schmidt caught a cold. He was hospitalized at the Kantonsspital Zurich. He was released two weeks later, his complaints about ache in the chest area as simulation. His state of health deteriorated. During a walk he entered a restaurant where he wanted to warm up. There he succumbed a heart attack and died.
- The most thorough discography of the tenor is that of Hansfried Sieben, published in the quarterly journal Record Collector (Chelmsford, Essex) for June 2000.
- His comet-like rise clashed with the rise of the Nazis. They were taking control of the Government and instituting cultural bans on Jewish artists, writers and performers. Now Joseph Schmidt was confronted with a hostile surrounding.
- As war erupted he tried to make his way to Switzerland but his effort failed twice and he was sent back. Finally he didn't have any other chance than to enter Switzerland illegal.
- His warm timbre was perfectly suited for the melodies of Schubert and Lehár. His popular song recordings were the best-sellers of that age.
- Although his stature effectively barred Schmidt from opera, there were other outlets for his talents. He appeared in a number of films, made records, and gave many radio performances. In 1934 he managed to go to Palestine, where he gave a number of concerts of cantorial music.
- When the war broke out that year he was caught in France by the German invasion.
- While his mother was sympathetic to Joseph taking up a career in music, his father was against it.
- As he established himself, so his concerts gradually took shape. They usually consisted of one half of cantorial music and the second of Neapolitan songs and operatic arias. He was an accomplished pianist and frequently accompanied himself.
- In addition to German, which was his first language, and Yiddish, he learned Hebrew and became fluent in Romanian, French and English.
- After making a dash for the Swiss border, he was interned in a Swiss refugee camp in Girenbad near Zürich in October 1942.
- He made many records, first for Ultraphone, then for Odeon/Parlophone, was featured in many radio broadcasts and acted in several movies in both German and English.
- He unsuccessfully attempted to escape to Cuba during Word War II.
- When the conductor Leo Blech first heard him sing, he was deeply moved: 'Pity you aren't small,' he said. 'But I am small,' Schmidt said. 'No, you aren't small, you're too small,' replied Blech.
- Schmidt was born in 1904 in Davideny, Buchavina, Rumania to a farming family.
- When he was 24, Schmidt's uncle, Leo Engel, who was a well-known manager, arranged for him to appear in Berlin. He remained there for a while, for his great talent brought him a position as Cantor at the Adas Yisroel Synagogue.
- Joseph Schmidt is buried at Israelitischer Friedhof Unterer Friesenberg in Zürich.
- He returned to Romania for his military service.
- In 1937, he toured the United States and performed in Carnegie Hall together with other prominent singers such as Grace Moore. He was still very much welcome in the Netherlands and Belgium, where he was immensely popular.
- In 1929, he went back to Berlin, where Cornelis Bronsgeest, a famous Dutch baritone, engaged him for a radio broadcast as Vasco da Gama in Meyerbeer's L'Africaine. This was the beginning of a successful international career.
- Owing to his diminutive stature (he was just over 1.5 m, or 4' 11") a stage career was impossible; however his voice was extremely well suited for radio.
- Because of the First World War Schmidt moved with his parents to Czernowitz where, at a very young age, he was appointed Cantor. It was also there, at the age of 20, that he gave his first public performance as a concert singer.
- His talents were quickly recognized and by 1924 he was featured in his first solo recital in Czernowitz singing traditional Jewish songs and arias by Verdi, Puccini, Rossini and Bizet. Soon he moved to Berlin and took piano and singing lessons from Professor Hermann Weissenborn at the Königliche Musikschule.
- His first vocal training was as a boy alto in the Czernowitz Synagogue.
- Ironically, Joseph Schmidt enjoyed his greatest successes during the rise of the German Nazis, who subsequently prohibited Jewish artists and writers from working.
- Romanian-born tenor Joseph Schmidt, dubbed the Jewish Caruso, was so popular that the Nazis let him continue to perform internationally, despite growing restrictions.
- He was buried in the Friezenberg Cemetery near Zurich, and it is reported that all 350 inmates of the camp attended his funeral in defiance of authority.
- After settling in Belgium in early 1939, the war broke out in September. He tried to get on a boat to the United States, but somebody left under his name and it sailed without him,. Then it was too late and the harbors were closed due to the escalation of the war.
- Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda minister, applauded at the premiere of Schmidt's most famous film in 1933.
- Despite restrictions, Schmidt still performed in Europe and North America in the early to mid-1930s. He toured the United States in a series of concerts sponsored by General Motors and sang at Carnegie Hall. He also performed in pre-state Israel. Even in 1938, when he returned to Germany, Schmidt seemed to be unaware of the impending doom. A couple of gentile friends told him, 'You've got to get out of here,' and that's the only reason he left Germany.
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