Lili Marlene

DESCRIPTION: Soldier speaks fondly of his sweetheart, "My Lili of the lamplight," Lili Marlene. She has waited for him "Underneath the lantern by the barrack gate." The soldiers are shipping out, and the singer remembers and dreams of Lili.
AUTHOR: German Words: Hans Leip; Music: Norbert Schultze; English lyrics often incorrectly credited to Marlene Dietrich; there are multiple English translations but the standard British version is credited to Tommie Connor (see NOTES)
EARLIEST DATE: 1937 (first published as song)
KEYWORDS: loneliness love army war separation foreignlanguage nonballad
FOUND IN: Germany
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Hopkins-SongsFromTheFrontAndRear, pp. 148-149, "Lilli Marlene" (1 English+1 German text, the latter titled "Lili Marleen"; 1 tune)
Fireside-Book-of-Folk-Songs, p. 202, "Lili Marlene" (1 text, 1 tune)
Fuld-BookOfWorldFamousMusic, pp. 331-332, "Lili Marleen"
ADDITIONAL: Carlton Jackson, _The Great Lili_, Strawberry Hill Press, 1979, pp. 10-11, "(no title)" (1 German text with line-by-line English translation); p. 13 shows Hans Leip's original scrawled melody; p. 52 has the official Tommy Connor English translation; p. 71 is a Japanese translation with one German verse; p. 72 includes German sheet music; the book also comes with one of those plastic micro-recordings which has Leip singing his melody, Andersen singing her version, and the "Axis Sally" version
Roud #15402
RECORDINGS:
Marlene Dietrich, "Lili Marlene" (Decca 23456, 1945)
SAME TUNE:
The D-Day Dodgers (File: SBoA358)
Onwards to the Po (File: Hopk111)
417's Lament (File: Hopk048)
Oh Mr. Fraser (File: Clev 114)
Non Capisce (File: Clev115)
23rd Flotilla (File: Hopk112)
When I Am LOB (File: Hopk114)
Orders Came for Sailing (File: Tawn015)
There Is a Bomber Squadron (File: WJL222A)
Down by the Bahnhoff (Liel Leibovitz and Matthew Miller, _Lili Marlene: The Soldiers' Song of World War II_, W. W. Norton & Company, 2009, p. 157; Carlton Jackson, _The Great Lili_, Strawberry Hill Press, 1979, p. 75)
Oh, Mr. Truman, Won't You Send Us Home? (Liel Leibovitz and Matthew Miller, _Lili Marlene: The Soldiers' Song of World War II_, W. W. Norton & Company, 2009, p. 157; Carlton Jackson, _The Great Lili_, Strawberry Hill Press, 1979, p. 75)
Lili Marlene (Axis propaganda version: "Listen to this bugle, clear as I recall") (Carlton Jackson, _The Great Lili_, Strawberry Hill Press, 1979, pp. 39-41)
Lili Marlene (Allied Stalingrad surrender version: "My heart is sad and weary as I write this today") (Carlton Jackson, _The Great Lili_, Strawberry Hill Press, 1979, pp. 41-42)
Lili at the Traffic Circle (by Dert Beladen-Otto) (English translation in Carlton Jackson, _The Great Lili_, Strawberry Hill Press, 1979, p. 94)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
Lili Marleen
NOTES [4274 words]: The poem underlying this song is properly known as "Leid ein jungen Wachtposten," or "Song of a Young Sentry," but this title is hardly ever mentioned. The song is either "Lili Marleen" (the usual German spelling) or "Lili Marlene" (English).
There are a several book specifically about this song, in English and German; the English books include Jackson and Leibovitz/Miller, cited below. - (RBW)
The song was enormously popular among German soldiers during World War II, and was picked up by British and American soldiers in the European theater. It was so popular that it was satirized by the Stars and Stripes cartoonist Bill Mauldin, whose drawing (reprinted in his book Up Front) showed two American GIs in a foxhole, one playing a harmonica. The caption reads, "The Krauts ain't following ya too good on 'Lili Marlene' tonight, Joe. Think somethin' happened to their tenor?" Singer Marlene Dietrich recorded the song for American propaganda broadcasts to German soldiers, and a recording of the song by her became a hit in the USA and UK; in later years it became a central part of her repertoire. Is it a folk song? Arguably, it became one among Allied troops; it even spawned the parody "The D-Day Dodgers" among British troops in Italy (see notes under that song). -PJS
Bierman/Smith, p. 84, describe how, during the North African campaign, the British adopted this German song: "Broadcast to the German troops [near Tobruk] but heard across the desert silence at night by the British and Australians too, the smoky voice of a Bremerhaven-born nightclub singer named Lale Andersen evoked an immediate response. She sang a ballad of longing and separation entitled 'Lili Marleen,' about a young woman waiting under a street light outside barracks for her soldier lover.... In their foxholes, the grimy front-line defenders of Tobruk pricked up their ears and called out, 'Louder, please, louder!' And a twentieth-century musical legend was born."
Lamb, p. 157, writes of its role in the Normandy landing of June 1944, "And through it all, like a kind of theme, ran 'Lili Marlene.' The Allied Forces radio seemed to play nothing else; on the popular Mailbag show a dozen different renditions, with a dozen different singers, gave us Lili's haunting ballad. But the German rendition, with the husky-voiced Lale Anderson, a bass chorus, and all those marching feet in the background, was by far the best. The Germans played it incessantly, and so did we; it had been the song of the desert armies, and now it became the melody of the invasion."
It is perhaps not too surprising that there are many World War II parodies of this, the majority of which seem to have arisen from the Italian Campaign. In addition to "The D-Day Dodgers," see e.g. "Onwards to the Po," "417's Lament," "Non Capisce," "Oh Mr. Fraser," and probably "When I Am LOB," although the latter is not very specific to Italy. These parodies seem to come from all over the Commonwealth, which again speaks to the popularity of the original song.
Spaeth, p. 555, comments that "The war ended without producing any significant songs, unless one should except the German Lili Marlene, which actually became a favorite of the allied armies as well."
According to Leibovitz/Miller, pp. 7-11, Hans Leip was the son of a soldier who had served in the Franco-Prussian War. Shortly before World War I began, Leip had gotten a job as a teacher of art. When the war came, he wanted to join the navy, but was rejected. So he entered the army -- and dumped his girlfriend of many years; as an officer candidate, he apparently hoped to play the field. "Lili Marlene" borrows the names of two different girls -- Betty, the niece of Leip's landlady, the literal Girl Next Door, whom a friend of Leip's nicknamed Lili based on a character in Goethe (Jackson, pp. 5-7; Leibovitz/Miller, pp. 11-13), and a much more elegant girl, Marlene, whom Leip had met and courted at a museum (Jackson, pp. 7-8; Leibovitz/Miller, pp. 13-14). One day, he kissed "Lili," then made a move on Marlene -- and his landlady caught them and chased them out of the apartment. Alone after that, Leip started scribbling his poem (Leibovitz/Miller, pp. 14-17).
(In World War II, various women claimed to be "the" Lili Marleen; of course none of them were. Later, a German newspaper tried to find the two girls, but Leip would not help, so the real "Lili" and "Marleen" remain unknown; Jackson, p. 12. Jackson, p. 14, says Leip never found either girl after the war.)
Leip showed the poem to his roommates the day he wrote it. They liked it, so Leip set a melody (Leibovitz/Miller, p. 18. It was not, of course, the melody that became famous.
Soon, Leip and his roommates shipped out. One was killed almost at once. Leip, who found the front immensely depressing, took a fall after a few weeks of active service, hurt his spine, and was retired. He went home to the girl he had dumped, and married her -- though the marriage proved short-lived (Leibovitz/Miller, p. 19). He then fixed his attention on a married woman, and she and her husband took him into their house for years (Leibovitz/Miller, pp. 20-21). Constancy just doesn't seem to have been in Leip's nature. He wrote several successful novels (Leibovitz/Miller, p. 21), went after several more girls, married again, had more children, and seemed to be bound for great things in a German culture that seemed to know it was doomed (Leibovitz/Miller, p. 22).
Then Hitler took over Germany, and Leip's wild ideas were no longer welcome. He found himself doing artistic grunt work. He did get the chance to publish an anthology of his writings, and in preparing it, came across his long-forgotten text of "Lili Marlene." He hesitated about publishing such a personal poem, but the publisher said he should, so it was included, and the public first learned of the poem's existence (Leibovitz/Miller, pp. 23-24).
The name "Lili Marlene," as we saw, is a combination of two women's names, one of them a pseudonym. Ironically, the woman who made it famous was also known by a pseudonym. Elizabeth Carolotta Helena Eulalia Bunterberg, after she married, had used the name Liselotte Wilke. Marriage didn't suit her; she really wanted a career in show business (serious show business; she had begged for volumes of Shakespeare and Schiller while in school; Leibovitz/Miller, p. 34), and when she left her husband and children behind because of her love for performing, she decided she needed a new name. Having once been nicknamed "La La," she christened herself "Lale Andersen" (Jackson, p. 18; Leibovitz/Miller, pp. 25-30). She tried to make a living as an actress and singer over the next several years; she had little success (Leibovitz/Miller, pp. 31-41).
Leip had written a tune for "Lili Marlene," but it was not published. Norbert Schultze (born 1911) was a young musician hanging around Berlin's cabarets in 1932 (Leibovitz/Miller, p. 42). Like everyone in this story, he used a pseudonym when performing, "Frank Norbert" (Leibovitz/Miller, p. 53). Even though this was around the time of his marriage (Leibovitz/Miller, p. 53), he was intrigued by Liselotte Wilke/Lale Andersen (Leibovitz/Miller, p. 43, says this was because of her looks, but the photos I've seen of Andersen don't make her look very attractive, and she was a lot older than Schultze). He claimed a romantic encounter that very night, which she never confirmed (Leibovitz/Miller, p. 44; given his record, I incline to believe her over him). Whatever happened, they knew each other only casually and briefly. Schultze struggled over the next several years before finally putting out a hit comic opera -- only to have Joseph Goebbels shut down everything Schultze was up to as part of the Nazi takeover of politics (Leibovitz/Miller, pp. 54-58). With little else to do, Schultze wandered into a cabaret he had once frequented. It was very much changed from what he remembered, but a performer there, Jan Behrens, handed Schultze Hans Leip's book Die kleine Hafenorgel with the suggestion that Schultze might set tunes for some of the poems. Jackson, p. 15, claims he set ten of them.
Ironically, Behrens didn't like Schultze's settings (Leibovitz/Miller, p. 60). So Schultze sent copies around -- and as an afterthought, sent copies to Lale Andersen even though he had earlier criticized her voice and she wasn't particularly interested in seeing him (Jackson, pp. 18-19. Part of his problem may have been that she didn't have an operatically trained voice, but he also thought her voice too high). By an odd coincidence, she was already singing the song, with a melody not by Leip or Schultze but by Rudolf Zink. She agreed to sing both versions for an audience and see which they liked better. Schultze's tune won easily (Leibovitz/Miller, pp. 60-61).
When Andersen and Schultze went to record companies, they turned it down, but Schultze rearranged it with a bugle call to conform to Nazi militarist prejudices, and the Electrola record company bought it (Leibovitz/Miller, p. 61). The "Song of a Young Sentry" did not sell well and at first received little radio play (Leibovitz/Miller, pp. 62-63). Andersen, needing work, put behind much of her life (including a relationship with a Jewish artist), started to act more Aryan, and went to work doing the sort of singing that the Nazis liked (Leibovitz/Miller, pp. 78-79). Schultze was even more willing to collaborate with the Nazis; being desperately afraid of the draft, he actually set the music for a poem by Joseph Goebbels himself entitled "Bomben auf Engellland" -- "Bombs over England" (Leibovitz/Miller, pp. 79-85). Not long after, he formally joined the Nazi party (Leibovitz/Miller, p. 86). Thereafter, he continued to compose Nazi music (Leibovitz/Miller, p. 191). He survived the war without ever being drafted into the German army -- and was treated as a Nazi after the war; he was forbidden from entertaining for three years (Leibovitz/Miller, pp. 192-196). On the whole, I'd say he got off lightly. He tried to avoid his association with "Lili" after the war (Leibovitz/Miller, p.197).
The song became a hit more by luck than anything else. When Germany conquered Yugoslavia, they wanted a radio station to support the occupation. But Radio Belgrade was run on a shoestring, and it had only a few dozen recordings available. The manager sent a soldier to try to get more in Germany, but he returned with only a handful. Andersen's unpopular recording was one of the handful. With the more popular discs going to pieces, the Andersen recording of "Lili Marlene" started getting airplay (Leibovitz/Miller, pp. 97-101).
Radio Belgrade had the range to reach North Africa, and the Germans there fell in love with the song. It was frequently requested, and when the station manager tried to cut it from the schedule, tens of thousands of protests came in. Finally station manager Karl-Heinz Reintgen had to concede -- but he gave the song its own special spot, right before the 10:00 p.m. news, as part of a requests program, with most of the requests being soldiers asking for a dedication to people at home (Leibovitz/Miller, pp. 100-105). And the British in North Africa were hearing the same music as the Germans. The German broadcasters actually got occasional requests for British soldiers (!), and both sides typically stopped firing at each other at 9:57 p.m. to hear "Lili" (Leibovitz/Miller, pp. 106-107).
Goebbels didn't like "Lili," and eventually banned the song -- even ordering the original matrix to be destroyed. (Jackson, p. 22, claims there were two master matrices, one in Germany, one in Switzerland, and the one in Switzerland survived. I strongly suspect this is wrong -- either the matrix was smuggled to Switzerland and Goebbels destroyed a fake, or the one in Switzerland was second generation. But I don't know which) But since Schultze was his pet composer, Goebels allowed an instrumental version to circulate -- and, of course, that let people sing the words themselves (Leibovitz/Miller, p. 111). And Radio Belgrade, an army radio station and outside Germany proper, continued to play it (Leibovitz/Miller, p. 112). What's more, it is claimed that Goebbels's own children sang the song, and that Hermann Göring's performed it, badly (Jackson, p. 27).
The Germans eventually came up with an English "translation" (printed on pp. 39-41 of Jackson), designed to make the British soldiers homesick and probably think that their girls were untrue; it was sung by "Lowell Anderson" (yes, really) and broadcast by the infamous "Axis Sally" (Jackson, p. 39).
The British command was none too happy to find their men listening to an Axis radio station, and supposedly realized that the BBC needed more music and less propaganda talk. Something had to be done -- they either had to beat "Lili" with a better song or find a way to co-opt it. Given the problems of artificially creating a hit, they chose the latter course (Bierman/Smith, p. 85). They had a songwriter named Tommie Connor (also responsible for "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus") create an English translation (although, according to Jackson, pp. 49-51, most of the actual writing was done by J. J. Phillips, whose pen name John Turner appears on the copyright along with Connor's although only Connor's name appears on the sheet music). Fourteen-year-old pop singer Anne Shelton was chosen to record it (Leibovitz/Miller, p. 119). The proper title was apparently "My Lili of the Lamplight," and it was not really a translation but rewrite to eliminate hints that Lili might have been a prostitute. It gave it a different feel Jackson, p. 60, says that "The English link was the woman back home; the German link was the personal life as it had been," making the German version more unusual and poignant.
Jackson, p. 55, says that half a million copies of the British sheet music sold, which is astounding for that period. Vera Lynn also recorded it, and Marlene Dietrich (Leibovitz/Miller, p. 120, although Jackson, p. 83, says that Dietrich recorded a faulty American version, not the German or the official British version).
Connor would eventually crank out something called "The Wedding of Lili Marlene," and induced Andersen to record it after the war (Jackson, p.77), but I for one don't want to hear it....
Eventually the song was also translated into French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish (Bierman/Smith, p. 86; Jackson, p. 11, says there were translations into forty different languages! Indeed, there was a claim that floated around for some time that the song was actually French in origin; Jackson, pp. 43-44). Little wonder, when the troops in Italy wrote their protest about Lady Astor accusing them of shirking the Normandy landing, they used the tune of "Lili" for "The D-Day Dodgers" (Leibovitz/Miller, p. 155).
Lale Andersen, while this was going on, was making a living performing for German soldiers. It was a decent living, but unexciting -- and when the soldiers started calling her "Lili" instead of "Lale," equating her name with her song, it made her famous but also left her irked; she wanted to be someone in her own right (Leibovitz/Miller, pp. 124-126). And although she had not opposed the Nazis, their propaganda machine didn't trust her, and in time tightly controlled her every move (Leibovitz/Miller, pp. 129-132). Finally -- having seen the horrors of the Warsaw ghetto and broken down -- the control reached the stage of attempted sexual assault by her minder; Andersen saw no choice but to give up her cushy job and attempt to flee (Leibovitz/Miller, pp. 134-139). Caught, she was banned from the entertainment industry in 1942 (Leibovitz/Miller, pp. 168-169). In April 1943, she swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills -- but she vomited some of them up, and her son and a friend found her in time to save her life, though she was in a coma for several days (Leibovitz/Miller, pp. 171-173). Ironically, it probably saved her: When the BBC got word of her fate and broadcast it, Goebbels realized he had to produce her alive (Leibovitz/Miller, pp. 174-175). When she recovered, she was allowed to perform again, as long as she didn't sing "Lili," though there were few venues still open in bombed-out, impoverished Germany (Leibovitz/Miller, pp. 179-182); eventually she went to an island and tried to stay out of sight. After the war, although the Allies put her through a close examination, they concluded she was not a Nazi and allowed her to resume her career (Leibovitz/Miller, pp. 206-207) -- indeed she was more successful than ever before, dying in 1972 after a sold-out concert (Leibovitz/Miller, p. 208).
Hans Leip was apparently never fond of the Schultze setting of "Lili" (Leibovitz/Miller, p. 190), but that didn't make him popular with the Nazis, since he refused to join the party. In better shape than Andersen, he eventually went to a country home and, in effect, hid (Leibovitz/Miller, p. 191). But he was the only person associated with "Lili" to really gain any benefit from his part in the song: When, after the war, he went to his house in Hamburg, he found it occupied by a British officer -- but that officer cleared out immediately after Leip arrived; he said he did not want to occupy the house of someone whose song had been such a comfort to British soldiers (Leibovitz/Miller, p. 198). Royalties from the song helped keep him comfortable until his death in 1983 at the age of ninety.
Our trail of pseudonyms still isn't complete. The woman who would record the version best known in America (although not elsewhere; Jackson, p. 78) was born Maria Magdalena Dietrich in Germany on December 27, 1901 (Riva, p. 6). Her family called her "Lena" (Riva, p. 7), and she informally signed herself "Leni" -- just as well, because a woman less like the German notion of a good wife/mother/domestic Magdalena is hard to imagine. By 1914, she was no longer satisfied with her birth name; she experimented with, then adopted, the name "Marlene" (Riva, p. 15). Not long after, her father was killed in the Great War, leaving her family impoverished (Riva, pp. 20-21); her mother found another husband, only to have him killed before the war's end as well (Riva, p. 29, which adds that Lena never even mentioned her stepfather's death in her diary). Lena was getting hard to control; eventually, her mother sent her off to boarding school (Riva, p.36) -- where her violin teacher promptly got the hots for her (Riva, p. 37) -- and, being the wild child that she was, she gave in to him, didn't enjoy it, and started thinking about acting rather than music (Riva, p. 38). Oddly, the wild child proved incredibly disciplined in pursuit of her career (Riva, p. 41). By 1922, she was auditioning for small parts in films -- and caught the eye of director Rudolf Sieber; they married May 17, 1923 (Riva, pp. 44-45). With his support, her career was nearly assured. They were soon married, and had a daughter Maria -- and they stayed married even though Marlene apparently stopped sleeping with him after that (and was constantly involved with other men). The little girl was born in December 1924 (although Marlene later started pretending her daughter was born later so Dietrich could lie about her own age; Riva, p. 53).
In 1930, Marlene was given the role of Lola Lola in the movie "The Blue Angel," which made her a star; it was the first full-scale German "talkie" (Riva, pp. 70-71). But it was shot in both English an Germany, so her fame went beyond Germany. (There was a lot of behind-the-scenes drama to all this, which I won't try to retell; it's worth reading the Wikipedia article if you care. Dietrich, for starters, by this time had started her habit of trading in lovers every year or two.) The movie also established her as a singer and gave her a theme song, "Falling In Love Again." Even though it foreshadowed her constant quest for new relationships, she complained about it (Riva, p. 73) -- but as best I can tell, she griped about everything. (She seems to have had a lot of obsessions and compulsions, e.g. she was an extreme germophobe -- Riva, p. 104 -- and she was a control freak and sex addict; later, she became an alcoholic and opiate addict who refused to accept any evidence that she was aging and refused to listen to the advice of doctors).
That was later. In 1930, she was healthy, clean, and the hottest property in Germany Soon she received an offer from Hollywood. She complained about it -- but after a lot of debate, she took it (Riva, pp. 75-78). It was in her first American film, "Morocco," that Dietrich first appeared in pants (Riva, p. 96, 101), which became another trademark. On the whole, though she starred in several films, her American stay was only moderately successful, and in 1937 she was declared "Box Office Poison" (Riva, p. 435). But she was watching what was happening in Germany, and was deeply concerned; she became an American citizen in June 1939 (RIva, p. 479). She was still spending much of her time in Europe -- but, somehow, at the time Germany was preparing its invasion of Poland, she and her family (including then-lover Erich Maria Remarque) were warned to get out of France, and sailed out of Cherbourg on September 2, 1939 (Riva, pp. 487-488). She worked in Hollywood for a while after war began, and started meeting with the troops after the United States joined (Riva, p. 525). Later, she was given an official place in the USO (though she largely rejected their uniform, preferring to wear service uniforms, Riva, p. 539). Along with comedian Danny Thomas and others, she headed overseas to entertain the troops (Riva, p. 537). She also met hospitalized troops individually, and apparently sang "Lili Marlene" to some of them (Riva, p. 541); certainly she sang it in her USO shows (Jackson, p. 73). She remained in Europe until July 1945 (Riva, p. 555).
After the war, she went back to Hollywood, and was involved with so many men that I couldn't track them, as well as maintaining an extraordinarily troubled relationship with her daughter. But she had already by then recorded her "American" version of "Lili," and she sang it as part of her show for many years. Probably there were more copies made of the Dietrich recording than of the Andersen version, although it wasn't heard by as many listeners. She helped keep it alive until she started to collapse in the 1970s (though she didn't die until 1992; it sounds to me as if she could have performed for at least five more years if she hadn't refused to listen to doctors, her daughter, or anyone else within spitting distance of sanity).
After the war, an astonishing array of performers recorded the song, including Mel Tormé, Perry Como, and Frank Sinatra (Leibovitz/Miller, p. 204). But it wasn't the same. A crooner couldn't very well give the impression of a soldier thinking about either his sweetheart or the prostitute he would like to engage!
Oddly, for a song that everyone knew, "Lili" doesn't seem to have been very popular in tradition; there aren't a lot of field collections.
Although there are only a handful of books about the song in English and German, it seems to have inspired a lot of book titles. Guus Van Waveren and Hen Van Gedder published Lili Marleen: Ein Lied über Verlangen in 2003. Ruth Yorck's Lili Marlene and Kathleen Lindsay's Lili Marleen were earlier; both apparently detail wartime experiences but aren't about Lili as such (Jackson, pp. 36-37). James Wakefield Burke's Fraulein Lili Marlene seems to convert Lili to an actual character; Jackson, p. 37, says it "was not so much about the song itself as about the poignant conditions which the war produced." Many other works also refer to the song without being about it; most are in German but it appears one or two are in Spanish. A British film unit released something called "The True Story of Lili Marlene" in 1943 (Jackson, p. 41, notes that it has a lot of things wrong -- it dates Leip's poem to 1923 rather than 1915, and thinks that Lale Andersen was Swedish rather than German; it was more a propaganda piece than actual research). M. A. McCartney published two volumes of Lili Marlene, Twentieth Century Military And Political Battles.
The song was used in several movies apart from "The True Story," including "Bell for Adono" and "Judgment at Nuremberg" (Jackson, p. 53; on p. 96, he reports that there were 39 different television and movie uses by 1973, with a list on pp. 109-110).
There is a German biography of Lale Andersen: Gisela Lehrke, Wie einst Lili Marleen. Das Leben der Lale Andersen (2002), and Andersen herself authored Der Himmel hat viele Farben: Leben mit einem Lied (1972; apparently reissued 1984; I can't help but wonder if the single song of the title is "Lili"). Her diaries are found in Litta Magnus Andersen, Lale Andersen: Die Lili Marlene: D. Lebensbild e. Künsterlin: Mit Auszügen aus bisher unveröffentlichten Tagebüchern, 1981. All seem to be in German; there are no English books.
There are many books by and about Hans Leip, including Helmut Glagla, Hans Leip: Schriftsteller, Maler, Graphicker (1983); again, they all seem to be in German.
Norbert Schultze in 1995 published Mit dir, Lili Marleen: Die Lebenserinnerungen den Komponist Norbert Schultze. He lived until 2002, although he never seems to have accepted the fact that, being a Nazi, he had helped support a system of mass murder and oppression (Leibovitz/Miller, p. 210).
There are, of course, numerous books about Marlene Dietrich, and even more about the North African campaign that made this song famous. - RBW
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