50th anniversary of death of Paul Linke - Germany / Federal Republic of Germany 1996 - 100 Pfennig

The crisp tone and the brash Berlin local flavor of his tunes became a trademark as well as the accurately-twirled Wilhelminian mustache. Paul Lincke, born in Berlin on November 7, 1866, is praised in many places as the »father of the Berlin operetta«. Devoted to the light muse throughout his life, he composed more than 20 stage works, including operettas ("Frau Luna", "Lysistrata", "In the Realm of Indra"), minor antics with vocal inlays and two revues. Above all, his hits made him popular, such as the sleek marching song "Das ist das Berliner Luft" or the catchy "Glühwürmchen-Idyll". Most of his stage works had premieres in the Berlin Apollo Theater, where in 1892 he assumed a position as conductor and house composer. After a two-year engagement as "Maître des Musique" at the world-famous Paris Variety "Folies-Bergères", he returned to Berlin in 1899. The cooperation with the librettist Heinz Bolten-Baeckers proved particularly fruitful there. The burlesque-fantastic operetta "Frau Luna", first performed in 1899 and repeatedly revised by Lincke, is considered the parade work of the Lincke-Bolten-Baeckers team. In this country, Paul Lincke not only emerged as a composer and conductor, the pragmatically inclined Berliner also founded the Apollo music publishing house and was a pioneer in the fight for copyright in Germany. Driven by the turmoil of war from his hometown, Paul Lincke died on September 3, 1946 in Clausthal-Zellerfeld. (Text: Alexandra Heinz, Musicology Seminar, University of Bonn)