Leon Jessel

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Memorial plaque on the house at Düsseldorfer Straße 47 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf (the actress Lilian Harvey later lived in this house )

Leon Jessel (born January 22, 1871 in Stettin , † January 4, 1942 in Berlin ) was a German composer . He mainly composed operettas .

biography

The son of a merchant, who emigrated from Poland to the USA and later returned to Europe with his wife Mary , worked as a conductor from 1891, first in Gelsenkirchen and Mülheim an der Ruhr , and later also in Freiberg , Kiel , Stettin and Chemnitz . In 1896 he married Clara Luise Grunewald. From 1899 to 1905 Jessel worked as Kapellmeister at the Wilhelm Theater in Lübeck and was then director of the Liedertafel of the Lübeck Trade Union. His daughter Eva Maria was born in 1909, and the family moved to Berlin in 1911. The first marriage was divorced in 1919, and in 1921 he married his second wife Anna.

During his time in Berlin from 1911 onwards, Jessel increasingly turned to composing operettas and singspiele, which were premiered primarily in Berlin and later in Munich , Hamburg and Königsberg . He celebrated his greatest success with the operetta Das Schwarzwaldmädel (libretto by August Neidhart ), which premiered in 1917 at the Komische Oper Berlin (at the Weidendammer Bridge). The great success of the Black Forest girl can be gauged from the fact that it was performed around 6000 times over the next 10 years, including in 1922 at the Teatro Coliseo in Buenos Aires . He celebrated a second great success in 1921 with the operetta Die Postmeisterin .

Jesse's most popular work is probably the parade of the wooden soldiers . The piece, composed in 1905, served as the theme song in the Paramount cartoon The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers in 1933 . Jessel was one of the co-founders of a Gema predecessor organization.

At first apparently rather benevolent towards the National Socialists due to his German national views, Jessel asked after the seizure of power to be admitted to Alfred Rosenberg's Combat League for German Culture . However, he was rejected and a little later banned from performing because of his Jewish descent, although he had resigned from the Jewish community in 1894 and converted to the Christian faith. On December 15, 1941, Jessel was summoned to the Gestapo control center in Berlin-Mitte and arrested. The reason was a letter to his librettist Wilhelm Sterk in Vienna , written in 1939 and found during a house search , in which Jessel had written: “I cannot work at a time when Jewish baiting threatens to destroy my people, when I don't know when the gruesome thing will happen Fate will knock on my door too. ”Jessel was so badly mistreated by the Gestapo in a basement of the police presidium on Alexanderplatz that he died on January 4, 1942 in the Jewish Hospital in Berlin .

Commemoration

His grave in Berlin-Wilmersdorf
Leon-Jessel-Platz in Berlin-Wilmersdorf

Leon Jessel was first buried in the south-west cemetery Stahnsdorf and in 1955 reburied in the Wilmersdorf cemetery in Berlin.

The Wilmersdorf district office of Berlin named a square after him, whereupon the name Jesselkiez became natural for the surrounding streets .

Works

He composed 29 operettas between 1913 and 1936. The Black Forest Girl and Parade of Tin Soldiers are among his most successful operettas.

  • The two hussars (operetta; text: Wilhelm Jacoby and Rudolf Schanzer, world premiere: February 6, 1913 in the Theater des Westens , Berlin)
  • Whoever Laughs Last (musical comedy, text: Arthur Lippschitz and A. Bernstein-Sawersky, premiere: December 31, 1913 in the Komische Oper at the Weidendammer Bridge in Berlin)
  • Das Schwarzwaldmädel (operetta, text: August Neidhart, world premiere: August 25, 1917 in the Komische Oper Berlin)
  • A modern girl (operetta, text possibly Fritz Grünbaum and Wilhelm Sterk , premiere: June 28, 1918, Volkstheater Munich)
  • Swallow Wedding (operetta, text: Pordes-Milo, world premiere: January 28, 1921 in the Theater des Westens, Berlin)
  • Die Postmeisterin (operetta, text: August Neidhart, world premiere: February 3, 1921 in the Central-Theater , Berlin)
  • The king's neighbor (Singspiel, text: Fritz Grünbaum and Wilhelm Sterk, premiere: April 15, 1923, Wallner-Theater , Berlin)
  • Die goldene Mühle (Singspiel, text: Wilhelm Sterk, partly based on Carl Costa, premiered in 1936 in Olten , Switzerland , since Jessel was no longer allowed to be played in Germany)
  • Meeting point Tegernsee (operetta, text: Aksel Lund and Erik Radolf , world premiere: April 12, 2009 in the Stadttheater Neuburg an der Donau by the Neuburger Volkstheater eV)

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Leon Jessel  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dieter Schnabel: Sometimes someone has to be there to commemorate - Pages of Remembrance for Composers, Writers and Actors , 2003, ISBN 3-8330-0015-5 , p. 31
  2. ↑ Leon Jessel's grave at knerger.de
  3. ↑ Wilhelm Zentner and Anton Würz (eds.): Reclam's opera and operetta guide. Philipp Reclam jun., Stuttgart 1962, article by Leon Jessel, p. 177.
personal data
SURNAME Jessel, Leon
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German composer
DATE OF BIRTH January 22, 1871
PLACE OF BIRTH Szczecin
DATE OF DEATH January 4, 1942
Place of death Berlin