Rolf Wilhelm

At the age of seven, Rolf Wilhelm began piano lessons. He then attended high school in Berlin and Vienna. From 1942, he studied piano with a special permit under Grete Hinterhofer and composition under Joseph Max at the Vienna Music Academy. His musical career was interrupted by his war service as an air force assistant and subsequent imprisonment, but he returned to the destroyed Munich in 1945 with an emergency diploma. There, he was able to resume his studies at the Munich University of Music in 1946 and passed his final exam in 1948. His teachers included Heinrich Knappe, Joseph Haas, and Hans Rosbaud.

Even before that, in 1946, Radio Munich, the predecessor of Bayerischer Rundfunk, produced one of its first radio plays after World War II, "The Canterville Ghost." Through the mediation of his brother Kurt Wilhelm, who acted as assistant director on the piece, the then-nineteen-year-old composer received his first commission. The work convinced, and Wilhelm became a busy freelance employee of the station.

He also composed music for various animated stories by Reiner Zimnik for the still young medium of television, such as "Jonas the Angler" (1954) and "The Crane" (1956). Wilhelm wrote his first major film score in 1954 for the first film of the "08/15" trilogy, which became one of the most successful films of the post-war period. Until the 1990s, he followed with scores for a total of 62 feature films.

One of his most multifaceted film works is the music for the German major production "Die Nibelungen." The rhythmic and sound patterns processed in it from the "Mars" of Gustav Holst's symphonic poem cycle "The Planets" are now part of the standard repertoire of stylistic devices for Hollywood film composers. Wilhelm has composed music for more than 250 radio plays, over 350 television productions, and about 300 commercials. Additionally, numerous stage music pieces, orchestral suites, and literary chansons have been created. For his achievements, Rolf Wilhelm received the Federal Cross of Merit in 1993 and was honored by the Munich Turmschreiber with the Bavarian Poet's Medal.