Paul Devrient
German singer, opera singer and music educator (1890–1973)

Paul Devrient, real name Walter Stieber, also Paul Stieber-Walter (17 November 1890 – 5 November 1973) was a German operatic tenor and theatre director. He was considered a renowned Verdi and Mozart interpreter. He also gained notoriety as Adolf Hitler's voice coach and speech teacher in 1932.
Life
Stieber was born in Wandsbek near Hamburg one of four sons of the lawyer Paul Stieber (1856-1944) and his wife Elsbeth (Else) (1861-1940), née Biermann. His elder brother Hans Stieber (1886-1969) became a conductor, composer and violinist. Stieber attended grammar school in Halle an der Saale, where his father last worked as 1st director of the North German Knappschafts pension fund. His great-grandmother was the Berlin court actress Friederike Komitsch, née Schaffner, who was married in her first marriage to the famous actor Ludwig Devrient. His grandfather Wilhelm Stieber, a lawyer and criminologist, served as head of the Central-Nachrichten-Bureaus at the Preußisches Staatsministerium in Berlin.
He studied at the universities of Leipzig and Berlin. During his studies, he became a member of the Leipziger Universitäts-Sängerschaft zu St.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Paul Devrient” as german singer, opera singer and music educator (1890–1973). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as german singer, opera singer and music educator (1890–1973). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 8, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q2059281. VIAF identifies the subject as 56314006. The Library of Congress control number is no2003128399. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1890, 1973, 1932 and 1856.
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This entry incorporates text from “Paul Devrient” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.