Wikipedia:
Robert Gilbert (* September 29, 1899 in Berlin; † March 20, 1978 in Minusio, Switzerland; originally David Robert Winterfeld; pseudonym: David Weber or Rudolf Bertram, among others) was a German-American lyricist, poet, composer and cabaret artist. His first name is pronounced in German, his last name in French.
Robert Gilbert's father was the bandmaster and operetta composer Max Winterfeld, who went by the stage name Jean Gilbert, his mother Rosa née Wagner worked as a seamstress and his brother was the children's and young adult author Henry Winterfeld.
Both parents are listed on the birth certificate as being of the "Mosaic faith." Robert Gilbert attended a blessing in 1913, which was presumably a bar mitzvah. When studying in Freiburg, Gilbert claimed to be Protestant. He resigned from the Jewish Community of Berlin on November 21, 1929. According to his daughter Marianne, Gilbert and his wife considered themselves atheists.
Robert Gilbert became a soldier in the last year of World War I in 1918 and came into contact with the Spartacists (Spartakusbund), who awakened the 19-year-old's political consciousness. From 1919 to 1921, he studied philosophy and art history in Berlin and Freiburg im Breisgau, among other places, and was actively involved in political demonstrations and election campaigns.
He wrote, at first still together with his father, operettas, comedies, revues and ''Schlager'' (hits). In the course of his life, he wrote the libretti for around 60 operettas, the lyrics for around 100 sound films and, as a musically self-taught, composed numerous Schlager s) with his own lyrics. When he married at the age of 24, he wrote his first Schlager lyrics ''Kathrin, du hast die schönsten Beine von Berlin'' (Kathrin, you have the most beautiful legs in Berlin) for the composer who later became known as Frederick Loewe. Soon Gilbert also became one of the most sought-after lyricists for the musical films and composers of his time. Whether for the directors and composers Frederick Loewe, Nico Dostal, Hermann Leopoldi, Friedrich Hollaender, Werner Richard Heymann, Fred Raymond, Robert Stolz, Ralph Benatzky and Erik Charell or for the actors Lilian Harvey, Willy Fritsch, Heinz Rühmann, Paul Hörbiger, Zarah Leander and Willi Forst, his songs were always successful.
He also wrote political couplets, such as ''Die Ballade vom Nigger Jim'' for Hanns Eisler. Together with Eisler, he worked under the pseudonym David Weber on workers' struggle songs (''Auf den Straßen zu singen'', ''Stempellied'', ''Ballade von der Krüppelgarde'', ''Das Lied eines Arbeitslosen''), which Ernst Busch also included in his repertoire, as well as on an opera about unemployment ''150 Mark''. In 1929, Gilbert and Eisler were represented at the music festival of the International Society for New Music (IGNM) in Baden-Baden with the radio cantata ''Tempo der Zeit''.
Gilbert was at least close to the KPD (German Communist Party), but in the inner-party disputes he sided with the oppositional KPD-O or "Reconcilers," whom he also supported financially. In 1931, his daughter Marianne was born in Berlin. Gilbert had always told his wife before the birth that he would leave her if she had a child. About a year after the birth, he disappeared from the apartment they shared "to fetch cigarettes" and stayed away. Four years later he returned to his wife Elisabeth, called Elke, and his daughter. By then they were already in exile.
In the time of his greatest successes, he was ostracized as a Jew in the sense of the National Socialist laws after the "seizure of power" and had to emigrate because of Germany's anti-Semitic and racist policies. The first station of his exile was Vienna, where he still wrote texts for Robert Stolz and others under a pseudonym. He therefore called himself "Tarner-Brother." In the exile journals ''Neue Deutsche Blätter'' and ''Neue Weltbühne'' he wrote poems under the pseudonym ''Ohle'', some of which had the character of agitprop. After the "Anschluss" of Austria in 1938, he had to leave the country there as well and went to Paris. On March 25, 1939, he left France with his family in Cherbourg to flee to the United States.
The life of the family in exile in New York is described in a book by Marianne Gilbert Finnegan. In particular, the accounts of Robert Gilbert's Berlin, Vienna and Paris periods in this book by the daughter are based, according to her own account, on family stories heard in her childhood. They have proven to be rather unreliable. In the U.S., Gilbert also wrote a volume of political poetry entitled ''Meine Reime deine Reime'' ''Berliner'', ''Wiener'', and other poems. A number of these poems were republished in volumes of poetry published in Germany. In 1944, Gilbert became an American citizen.
In 1949, Gilbert returned to Europe, living first in Zürich and in Munich. Professionally, he was able to continue almost seamlessly with his successes before emigration, for example, with song lyrics for the play ''Feuerwerk'' (Fireworks) and therein the successful title ''Oh mein Papa'' (Oh my Papa). At the same time, he composed and wrote poetry for the Munich cabaret ''Die Kleine Freiheit'' for which Erich Kästner also worked. Gilbert did not see the Stalinist KPD as a desirable opposition in his texts.
From the end of the 1950s, Gilbert made use of his English language skills and earned his living to a large extent as a translator of a total of 20 U.S. musicals, including ''My Fair Lady'', ''Oklahoma!'', ''Hello, Dolly!'', ''Cabaret'' and ''Annie Get Your Gun''. In 1961, Gilbert's hit song ''Am Sonntag will mein Süßer mit mir segeln gehn'' (30 years after it was written)- hit the charts as music in a hit movie. In the meantime, he had finally left his wife Elke. Even after their separation, the two worked together on translations for a time.
In 1954, Gilbert became a German citizen again and moved to the Swiss canton of Ticino. In the same year he married his second wife Gisela Scholz, with whom he had a son: Stephan (born September 14, 1955, died August 31, 1989). Gilbert had been friends with Heinrich Blücher since his youth and, since 1938, with his later wife, the philosopher Hannah Arendt. He died at his home in Minusio at the age of 78.
Note: Translated from the German version of Wikipedia into English.
