The Swedish Nightingale (film)

The Swedish Nightingale (Die schwedische Nachtigall) is a 1941 German musical film directed by Peter Paul Brauer and starring Ilse Werner (singing sequences with Erna Berger's voice), Karl Ludwig Diehl, and Joachim Gottschalk. The film is based on a play by Friedrich Forster-Burggraf set in nineteenth century Copenhagen. It portrays a romance between the writer Hans Christian Andersen and the opera singer Jenny Lind, the "Swedish Nightingale" of the title.

It was shot at the Terra Studios in Berlin. The film's sets were designed by the art directors Robert Herlth and Heinrich Weidemann. Made on a budget of around one and half million Reichsmarks, it was a major commercial success on its release across Europe.

At the time when the film was made, Germany was keeping Denmark under military occupation but attempting a relatively conciliatory attitude towards the occupied Danes. Germany was also making an effort to keep good relations with the neutral Sweden. The theme of the film – made at a time when Joseph Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry kept tight control of the German film industry – fit well with these policy aims.