Peter Gotthardt (born 22 August 1941) is a German composer, musician and publisher. Film melodies composed by him (more than 500 in total) are known to a wide audience, including major successes such as the pieces Wenn ein Mensch lebt and Geh zu ihr performed by the Puhdys from the 1973 DEFA feature film The Legend of Paul and Paula, directed by Heiner Carow.
Born in Leipzig, from 1961 to 1966, Gotthardt studied piano, correpetition, conducting and composing at the Hochschule für Musik "Hanns Eisler" in Berlin. In 1965, he wrote his first composition for a documentary film by Winfried Junge . A year later, he wrote his first orchestral work. In 1968, he began his first collaboration with Heiner Carow for the DEFA film The Russians Are Coming, which resulted in five joint films in the following years. From 1975 to 1976, he was also head of incidental music at the Rostock Volkstheater.
He has worked as a freelance composer since 1976. In 1991, he founded his own music publishing company and has subsequently also written various compositions for industrial films. In 2018, he received the Honorary Award of the Deutscher Filmmusikpreis . [1]
Gotthardt has lived in Berlin-Mahlsdorf since 1975. [2]