Willi Schmid
Willi Schmid | |
---|---|
Born | Wilhelm Eduard Schmid April 12, 1893 |
Died | June 30, 1934 | (aged 41)
Nationality | German |
Occupation | Music critic |
Known for | Being killed during the Night of the Long Knives by mistake |
Spouse | Kate Eva |
Wilhelm Eduard Schmid (April 12, 1893 – June 30, 1934), better known as Willi Schmid, was a German
Biography
Born in 1893, Willi Schmid served in the Imperial Army in World War I, during which he was wounded in the stomach. A practising musician, he studied music under Christian Döbereiner, and founded the Munich Viol Quartet.[1] He was also a well-respected music critic and wrote for the Münchener Neueste Nachrichten.[2]
He was killed by the
Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess visited the family a few days later to express condolences for the mistake and offer his widow a pension.[4] Schmid's widow, Kate Eva (née Tietz), later emigrated to the United States (with the help of the covert anti-Nazi activist Fritz Wiedemann, who was with Hess during his visit) and became a US citizen in 1944. She died there in 1985.
Schmid's friend, the philosopher Oswald Spengler, commemorated him in a poem and letter in Reden und Aufsätze (Collected Essays, published in 1937). Schmid's daughter Duscha went on to marry the Austro-American theoretical physicist Victor Weisskopf, and later wrote a book about her father, Willi Schmid: A Life in Germany.
References
- ISBN 0-486-29162-6.
- ISBN 0-671-72868-7.
- ^ Gunther, John (1940). Inside Europe. New York: Harper & Brothers. p. 51.
- ^ ISBN 1-57488-503-0.
- ISBN 0-393-04671-0.