Meisel, Will

Will Meisel (17 September 1897 – 29 April 1967) was a German composer, who wrote more than fifty film scores during his career. He also wrote several operettas including A Friend So Lovely as You (1930) (Eine Freundin so goldig wie du). In 1926, he founded German music publisher Edition Meisel & Co.. He was a member of the Nazi Party from 1933. He benefitted from the Nazi policy of aryanisation, buying the Alexander Haus for a quarter of its value, after its owners, the Alexander family, had fled the country. After the Second World War, his application for denazification was rejected, and he was barred from running his business until 1951. His life is described in The House by the Lake (2015) by Thomas Harding, a non-fiction book about the Alexander House and the families who lived there.