Wilhelm Eduard Schmid better known as Willi Schmid, was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 music critic, and an accidental victim of the Night of the Long Knives

Night of the Long Knives

The Night of the Long Knives , sometimes called "Operation Hummingbird " or in Germany the "Röhm-Putsch," was a purge that took place in Nazi Germany between June 30 and July 2, 1934, when the Nazi regime carried out a series of political murders...

 in a case of mistaken identity.

Schmid studied music under Christian Döbereiner, and founded the Munich Viol Quartet. He was also a well-respected music critic, and wrote for the Münchener Neueste Nachrichten. He was killed by the Nazi SS during the Night of the Long Knives because he had a similar name to one of the intended targets, apparently either an SA

Sturmabteilung

The Sturmabteilung functioned as a paramilitary organization of the National Socialist German Workers' Party . It played a key role in Adolf Hitler's rise to power in the 1920s and 1930s...

 leader named Willi Schmidt, or an associate of Otto Strasser

Otto Strasser

Otto Johann Maximilian Strasser was a German politician and 'left-wing' member of the National Socialist German Workers Party. Strasser was part of the ‘left-wing’ faction of the party, along with his brother Gregor Strasser, and broke from the party due to disputes with the ‘Hitlerite’ faction...

 named Ludwig Schmitt. William Shirer's account in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is a 1960 non-fiction book by William L. Shirer chronicling the general history of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945...

mentions that Schmid was playing the cello

Cello

The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...

, with his wife and children in the adjacent room, when Nazi agents knocked on the door and took him away. His body was later sent to his widow in a casket, with written instructions from the SS not to open it under any circumstances. Rudolf Hess

Rudolf Hess

Rudolf Walter Richard Hess was a prominent Nazi politician who was Adolf Hitler's deputy in the Nazi Party during the 1930s and early 1940s...

visited the family a few days later to express condolences for the mistake and offer his widow a pension.