Sheet Music Signed by Composer Leon Jessel

Authors

Object ID

2015.2.28

Object Name

Music, Sheet

Files

Content Warning

The Bulmash Family Holocaust Collection consists of images, documents, and artifacts related to the Holocaust. The collection contains materials that depict a number of topics that may be difficult for viewers to engage with, including: antisemitic descriptions, caricatures, and representation of Jewish people; Nazi imagery and ideology; descriptions and images of German ghettos; graphic images of the violence of the Holocaust; and the creation of the State of Israel. For more information, see our policy page.

Description

Front: Tan paper with three printed music staffs, and handwritten music notes/writing beneath each staff. Title and other information on top. Back: Tan paper with three printed music staffs. The top two staffs include notes and writing beneath those notes, but the third staff is blank. Beneath the third staff is Jessel's seignature, and a purple hand stamp with his name.

Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:

Leon Jessel was a Jewish composer who composed numerous operettas, classical music pieces, as well as popular music, including Schwarzwaldmadel, Parade of the Tin Soldiers, etc. Despite converting to Christianity, his music was suppressed by the Nazis. In December 1941, Jessel was arrested by the Gestapo after a search of his apartment had revealed what had been interpreted as anti-Nazi sentiments in a letter to his librettist, in which he had written that "I cannot work at a time when hatred of Jews threatens my people with destruction, where I do not know when that gruesome fate will likewise be knocking at my door." Taken to police headquarters in Berlin at Alexanderplatz, he was tortured by Gestapo, and died soon thereafter in Berlin's Jewish hospital.

Dimensions

6 3/4 x 10 3/4"

Keywords

Music, Composer, Operetta, Schwarzwaldmadel, Parade of the Tin Soldiers, Christian, Gestapo, Berlin, Alexanderplatz, Berlin's Jewish hospital, Leon Jessel

Subcollection

Early

Recommended Citation

"Sheet Music Signed by Composer Leon Jessel" (2015). Bulmash Family Holocaust Collection. 2015.2.28.
https://digital.kenyon.edu/bulmash/151