Trivia

Member of the jury at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1960

He began his film career as a composer when he was hired by producer Erich Pommer as an assistant to the musical director at UFA Studios in 1925.

Considered to be one of the most important composers in German cinema in the ''20s and '30s.

He worked as a composer for cabarets in Berlin, among them "Schall und Rauch" directed by Max Reinhardt. Later he took over the direction of the cabaret himself.

He attended the Königliche Hochschule for music in Berlin, where he was taught by Paul Juon.

Beside his numerous film compositions, he also wrote a number of scores for the studios that were called Additional Music or Stock Music. This was used in many productions without his being credited.

When the Nazis came to power in Germany, that signaled the end of his carer in that country because of his Jewish ancestry, and he shortly emigrated to Paris. Not long after that he went to Hollywood but had trouble finding work. He returned to Paris and wrote some more movie compositions, among them the scores for Caravane (1934) and Symphonie D'Amour (1936).

He once summed up his thoughts: "I love my wife, my child, the world, eating, drinking, smoking, driving. I love freedom. I hate dictatorship, godlessness, writing scores, wool next to my skin, and stones in my shoes. I hope for a United States of Europe".

Nominated for a total of four Oscars, but never won one.

On his second journey to the US, in 1937, he managed to establish himself and began writing scores for many popular films.

In 1951 he returned to Germany, and the next year wrote the music for a stage version of The Blue Angel (1930).

He wrote numerous evergreens.

His memoirs, recorded on tape during his last years, were published as an autobiography in Germany in 2001.

Beside his work for movies he also left musical contributions like the so-called Serious Music (e.g. "Rhapsodische Sinfonie"), operettas (e.g. "Florestan I. Prince de Monaco" and "Trente et Quarante"), hits and cabaret music (e.g. for "Schall und Rauch", "Cabaret Grössenwahn", "Die Rampe" and "Die Wilde Bühne").

Fellow émigré German director Ernst Lubitsch got him to work on five of his classic American comedies. He also scored two films by another comedy director, Preston Sturges.

When World War I broke out he served as a soldier in the German army for a short time before being released because of illness.

At age 12 he played the violin for the Königsberger Philharmonic Orchestra.

A documentary film about his career, So wie ein Wunder - Das singende Kino des Herrn Heymann (2012), featuring his daughter Elisabeth Trautwein-Heymann and directed by New German Cinema auteur Helma Sanders-Brahms, was shown on German television in 2012.