Johann Strauss Jr. (1825-1899)

Johann Strauss Jr. was born on the 25th of October 1825, as the first son of Johann Strauss Sr. His father, a famous musician himself, forbid him a musical career. But Johann Strauss Jr. cared more for his violin lessons, than his schoolwork. In 1844 he performed his first concert at the Dommayer in Hietzing, a Viennese suburb. He was successful and soon rose to be the most dangerous competitor to his father.

When his father died in 1849, Strauss Jr. had already established himself as the Viennese Waltz King. He conquered big crowds of fans with his tours through Europe and America and trigged a world wide Strauss hysteria.

Jaque Offenbach's operettas inspired Johann Strauss Jr. to drift towards stagework himself categorizing his work as comical operas. His first operetta "Die Fledermaus" had its premiere in 1871, and in 1874 he released "Der Zigeunerbaron".

He was married three times, he wrote 17 operettas and an uncountable amount of waltzes and his "Schöne Blaue Donau" is kind of an unoffizial anthem for Austria to this day.