Wikipedia:
Will Meisel, real name August Wilhelm Meisel (* September 17, 1897 in Rixdorf near Berlin; † April 29, 1967 in Müllheim (Baden)) was a German dancer, composer and founder of a publishing house.
Meisel's parents were the ballet master Emil Meisel and his wife Olga Meisel née Loepke. The family lived in Rixdorf near Berlin, Steinmetzstraße 20 (today Kienitzer Straße). Meisel later shortened the first names August Wilhelm to Will.
He attended the Albrecht Dürer secondary school in Berlin-Neukölln. From the age of 5 he learned music and dance and from the age of 10 was a member of the then Royal Court Opera in Berlin, Unter den Linden, as a dancer. From March 1915 to November 1918 Will Meisel was a soldier in World War I, was wounded at Ypres in 1917 and had to cure gas poisoning in the military hospital. After the war he was again a dancer at the Berlin State Opera from 1918 to 1923.
On May 15, 1926, he founded Edition Meisel & Co. GmbH and thus became a publisher. His first publishing title was "Ilona" with the text by his then wife Ilona von Fövenyessy von Hewi. This marriage broke up and was divorced in 1932. In March 1935 Will Meisel married the chamber singer Eliza Illiard, with whom he had two sons, Peter (b. June 22, 1935; † October 5, 2010) and Thomas (b. January 18, 1940; † May 26, 2014).
After the Nazis seized power, he joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1933 (membership number 2,849,490). Subsequently, he was active as a composer of film music and operettas, but also of Nazi propaganda pieces such as the March for a Vocal Voice and Piano or Salonorchester Deutschland den Deutschen (1934). In 1937 he "took over" in Groß Glienicke the fully furnished summer house of the Jewish doctor Alfred Alexander, who had been expelled from Germany. On November 23, 1938, a few days after the November pogroms, he wrote to Hans Hinkel expressing his interest in taking over an "Aryanized" publishing house, if possible Edition Peters. During World War II, Meisel was made "indispensable" (uk) as a publisher and composer.
In the fall of 1944, the family moved to Austria to their vacation home and did not return to Berlin until late summer 1946. After returning, Meisel also became active as a film producer. At his residence at Jonasstraße 22 in Berlin-Neukölln, he ran a dance school. He wrote the music for 44 sound films, 8 operettas as well as countless evergreens and songs (Berlin bleibt doch Berlin, Wir wollen Freunde sein fürs ganze Leben, Fräulein Pardon, Weekend and others). Meisel's operettas Königin einer Nacht and Die Frau im Spiegel were filmed.
Will Meisel and Eliza Illiard were buried at Wilmersdorf Cemetery.
