Ludwig Suthaus was a stonemason's apprentice when his singing talent was first discovered. He subsequently started his voice studies at the age of seventeen in his hometown of Cologne. His teacher, Julius Lenz, originally mistook him for a baritone, but in 1928 Suthaus debuted as a tenor in Aachen in the role of Walther von Stolzing in Richard Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. From 1932 to 1941, he was engaged in Stuttgart, but was fired in 1942 because he would not join the Nazi party. Suthaus subsequently got a new contract at the Berlin State Opera. After the war, in 1949, he switched from the State Opera - now based in East Berlin - to the "Städtische Oper" which was based in West Berlin, and remained a member of that company until the end of his career. Since the end of the forties, Suthaus appeared regularly at the Vienna State Opera and as guest at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, London, La Scala, Milan, in Paris, Stuttgart, the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, in San Francisco and at Hamburg State Opera. Beginning in 1943, he regularly appeared at the Bayreuth Festival where he sang Loge in "Das Rheingold", Siegmund in Die Walküre and Walther von Stolzing in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, which was recorded (1943), Hermann Abendroth conducting. Suthaus was one of Wilhelm Furtwängler's favorite singers toward the end of Furtwängler's life. With Furtwängler, Suthaus sang (Berlin, 1947) and recorded Tristan und Isolde (1952); Der Ring des Nibelungen as Siegfried (1953); and Die Walküre as Siegmund (1954) (Furtwängler's last opera recording).