After his first piano and violin lessons at his father Bernard Knümann's music school, he performed publicly under the stage name "Wilhelmy" at the age of 9 and undertook his first concert tours abroad at the age of 11. In 1909 he came to the Cologne University of Music and studied piano with Carl Friedberg and composition with Ewald Strässer. In 1913 he moved to Berlin to the University of Music and played a successful concert there on October 2nd with the Blüthner Orchestra under the direction of Edmund von Strauß.A lively concert activity followed at home and abroad, including in front of the English King George V. From 1924 he concentrated on the area of light music. With his “orchestra without notes” he played in the leading coffee houses of the time such as the Café Vaterland in Berlin, the Café Wien am Ring in Cologne, the Hamburg Alsterpavillon, the Grand Hotel in The Hague, the Café Winke’s in Amsterdam and others. In 1935 he took over the musicians and repertoire of the orchestra of the Jewish musician Michael Schugalté, who had emigrated to Belgium. In his compositions, written primarily for salon orchestras, he, like Schugalté, liked to draw on folk music from various countries and gave the pieces appropriate titles such as “Hungarian”, “Russian”, “Romanian”, “Scottish”, “Arabic” and others. From 1942 onwards, the pieces were published by the music publisher Ries & Erler in Berlin, were recorded by record companies such as Electrola, Odeon, Columbia and Deutsche Grammophon and broadcast on the radio.Towards the end of the Second World War, Knümann was evacuated to Quedlinburg. In 1949 he went to West Germany. There he continued to work as an entertainment musician and took care of the printing of his pieces before he died in 1952 at the age of 57.Knümann's musical legacy is located in the German Composers' Archive in HELLERAU - European Center for the Arts Dresden.
