Hans Werner (poet)

Memorial plaque for Hans Werner in Währinger Strasse 68

Hans Werner (born November 15, 1898 in Vienna ; † April 18, 1980 ibid) was an Austrian lyricist, author and co-author (especially with the publisher Josef Hochmuth, since also under the common pseudonym Hans Honer ) of many well-known classical Viennese songs and chansons .

Life

Hans Werner became a half-orphan at the age of three due to the early death of his father and thus experienced a meager youth in a children's home. After graduating from the commercial academy, he first worked as a banker, then as a publishing clerk at the music publisher Hofmeister-Figaro, and from the 1930s onwards he became increasingly self-employed as an author and lyricist. This was followed by continuous collaboration with composers such as Hans Lang , Nico Dostal , Emmerich Zillner , Karl Föderl , and Karl Loube - he was best known for his "witty-wine-blissful-wistful" texts to numerous Viennese songs.

He was married for 55 years to Emmy Werner (senior), a former dancer at the Vienna Volksoper, and is the father of the actor Robert Werner (1925–1996) and the actress, director and long-time director of the Vienna Volkstheater Emmy Werner .

He rests in an honorary grave by the City of Vienna at Neustift Cemetery (M-7-24).

Awards

• Silver medal for services to the State of Vienna in 1969
• Awarded the professional title of professor in 1973
• Honorary member of the AKM

Works

In addition to his lyrics, Hans Werner wrote numerous translations, including of English children's operas, the libretto for Smetana's opera 2 Witwen , he designed rhymes for newly set fairy tales, wrote children's books, created operetta libretti, the German texts for hits like La mer by Charles Trenet , contributions to musical songs and hit lyrics for popular films.

His best-known lyrics include:

• Sunday in the Prater
• There is an old walnut tree (outside in Heiligenstadt)
• Me Weana san Lamperln
• On the grandmother's coffee mug
• There are sky streets in Grinzing
• Yes mom, yes mom
• Imagine the world would be a bouquet of flowers
• Take a good look at your friends
• Younger me nimma
• I would like to hear your heart pounding
• Let it be, let it be
• La bella, bella musica
• That is the Viennese specialty
• Where the path becomes a path
• Young heart and gray hair
• When you say goodbye to everything that was beautiful

Together with Kurt Svab written (who also composed the music) Hans Werner the text for the first Austrian Euro Vision contribution of Bob Martin : Where do Little Pony?

In 2012 his daughter Emmy Werner published the audio CD: Our [ve: ana] Patent with the most famous songs by Hans Werner under the musical direction of Michael Kienzl and the interpreters Karl Markovics , Erwin Steinhauer , Otto Tausig and Emmy as a homage to her father Werner himself.

Web links

Commons : Hans Werner  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Hans Werner at Discogs (English)
• Literature by and about Hans Werner in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Elisabeth Th. Fritz, Helmut Kretschmer (Ed.): Vienna, Music History: Folk Music and Wienerlied . 2004, p. 378 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed December 1, 2015]).
2. ↑ Werner, Hans (pseud. Hans Honer). Austrian Academy of Sciences, August 1, 2013, accessed on December 1, 2015 . 
3. ↑ List of honorary members of the AKM ( Memento of the original from July 28, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
4. ↑ Hubert Bergmann: "I just want to sing ...": Austria's song contest pioneer Leo Heppe alias Bob Martin (1922–1998). (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on May 18, 2015 ; accessed on December 1, 2015 (biography of the month in the Austrian Biographical Lexicon (May 2015)). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.