Wikipedia:
Ludwig Schmidseder (* August 24, 1904 in Passau; † June 21, 1971 in Munich) was a German composer, pianist, film actor and chef featured in television.
In his youth, Schmidseder broke off an apprenticeship as a bank clerk that his father had desired. He secretly took piano lessons. He deepened his musical knowledge at the ''Staatliche Akademie der Tonkunst'' in Munich and went to South America in 1926. He was attracted to Rio de Janeiro. There he initially worked as a dishwasher and later performed as a solo entertainer. With two partners he founded a trio of artists who traveled the world on ocean liners. Schmidseder composed his own light music for the team and developed into an original and virtuoso piano player.
From 1930, he worked in Berlin, composed film music, created operettas and musicals and set more than 500 songs to music, some of which achieved the status of popular hits. From bar pianist (until 1936) Schmidseder advanced to house composer at the old ''Berlin Metropol Theater'', the libretti of all three plays premiered here ("Melodie der Nacht" - 1938; "Die oder Keine!" - 1939; "Frauen im Metropol" - 1940) were written by Günther Schwenn. Schmidseder's operetta "Die oder Keine!" was performed over 600 times. The contemporary "German" designation and labeling of his stage works as "operetta" must be understood in this context as typical Nazi jargon. Due to the instrumentation and also the rapid recordings, for example of the fast Foxtrot - from 1940 - "Wir tanzen durch's Leben!" (dance orchestra Erhard Bauschke on Grammophon and TO Kurt Widmann on Imperial), which were made in typical swing orchestra instrumentation, these are actually, by today's standards, to be understood and understood as musicals. Not least because of the National Socialist defamation of a large part of German light music as "degenerate music" and performance bans for some of the best-known operetta composers, the non-Jewish Schmidseder, surprisingly, advanced to become one of the most sought-after German entertainment composers, despite his "degenerate tendencies", which could not be ignored and which were rooted in his music. On May 1, 1933, he joined the NSDAP (German Nazi Party) (membership number 2,879,072). Schmidseder lived in Gmunden on the Traunsee from 1943 to 1948 and organized a number of concerts there. Schmidseder also became an Austrian citizen in 1948.
After World War II, Schmidseder continued to compose music and film scores and now also appeared in feature films. In the late 1950s, the amateur chef became a television chef for ''Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR)'' - making him one of the first on German television and later also wrote cookbooks.
His father-in-law was the Austrian actor and comedian Rudolf Carl.
Schmidseder was buried at Passau's Hochfriedhof cemetery, but the gravesite was abandoned in 2012. In Passau, ''Ludwig-Schmidseder-Strasse'' is named after him. There is a memorial plaque on his birthplace at Wittgasse 10 in Passau.
Note: Translated from the German version of Wikipedia into English.
