Pianist, composer and band leader, the son of a chamber music singer and trained at Cologne Conservatory and the Munich Academy of Music. First performed in public from the age of eleven. Musical director of the Deutschen Theater in Munich and in Berlin from 1922 and of the "Max-Reinhardt-Buehnen" in 1930. In the 1930's and 40's, he became a leading composer of film music. He was among the first to popularise jazz and swing elements in German music during the 1930's.