Schöneberger Sängerknaben
German boys' choir
The Schöneberger Sängerknaben were a German boys' choir, named after the Schöneberg district of Berlin. The choir was in existence between 1947 and 2011, and performed with about 30 boys at a time. They wore short black trousers, black blazers with emblems, white shirts and white knee socks. The repertoire initially included German folk songs, Berlin popular songs and Schlager, later also opera choruses and other classical works.
Career
The Schöneberger Sängerknaben was founded by Gerhard Hellwig on 12 November 1947. Hellwig trained the boys and initially sang with them in old people's homes, hospitals and in Berlin squares. Only two years after its foundation, the then manager of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Heinz Tietjen, brought the choir into his opera house and engaged it for the performance of the opera Tannhäuser by Richard Wagner. This was the prelude to more than 3100 opera performances in over 50 different productions in several languages, including, from 1954, the Bayreuth Festival, whose artistic organisation office Gerhard Hellwig headed from 1959.
In 1956, the young singers were featured in the film Hochzeit auf Immenhof and a year later also in Ferien auf Immenhof with songs by Hans-Martin Majewski. In 1958, the choir sang the first song of the Deutsche Fernsehlotterie, Kleine Leute, große Reise.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1727293. VIAF identifies the subject as 142051541. The Library of Congress control number is n81027610. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1947, 2011, 1954 and 1959.
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This entry incorporates text from “Schöneberger Sängerknaben” 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.