Stumbling Stones in Chemnitz

Leon Jessel

Born: 22 January 1871

Died: 04.01.1942

At the end of the 19th century, Leon Jessel was not only the second conductor at the Chemnitz City Theatre, but also the choir director. As a composer of operettas and musical comedies, he earned himself lasting merits in the history of music. Between 1913 and 1936 alone, he composed 29 operettas.

He was the son of the Jewish merchant Samuel Jessel, who had lived in the USA for a time with his wife Mary Brock. The couple returned to Europe and initially lived in Stettin, where their son was born. From 1891, as a young man, he toured the German theatre scene and earned his living by conducting and composing, initially working in Gelsenkirchen and Mülheim an der Ruhr. In the years that followed, he worked as a conductor in Freiberg, Kiel and Stettin, among other places. During this time, he converted to the Christian faith. In 1896, he married Clara Auguste Luise Grunewald.

From 1897 to 1900, Leon Jessel worked at the municipal theatre in Chemnitz. He lived at Börnichsgasse 1 in 1897-98, at Friedrichplatz 6 in 1898-99 and at Klosterquergasse 4 in 1899-1900. After his engagement in Chemnitz, Jessel moved to Lübeck. There he was Kapellmeister at the Wilhelmtheater and director of the trade union's Liedertafel. Their daughter Eva Maria Elisabeth was born in the Hanseatic city on 13 May 1909. The family moved to Berlin in 1911. The marriage ended in divorce in 1919. On 15 April 1921, Jessel married Anna Maria Johanna Gerholdt, 19 years his junior, in Berlin. From then on, the couple lived in Berlin-Wilmersdorf. During his time in Berlin, Jessel increasingly focussed on composing operettas, which were premiered mainly in the capital and later also in Munich, Hamburg and Königsberg.

He celebrated his greatest success with the operetta "Das Schwarzwaldmädel", which premiered at the Komische Oper in Berlin on 25 August 1917. The great success of "Das Schwarzwaldmädel" can be seen from the fact that it was performed around 6000 times by 1927 alone - including in Chemnitz. The first performance took place on 29 December 1917 at the "Central-Theater" on Zwickauer Straße. The operetta ensemble of the municipal theatre was brought in for the performance. This made the Chemnitz theatre the first provincial theatre to stage this play - and this in the middle of the First World War. On 21 April 1921, the 100th performance took place in Chemnitz, which was even conducted by Jessel himself. He celebrated a second major success in 1921 with the operetta "Die Postmeisterin".

The seizure of power by the National Socialists also had drastic consequences for Jessel, although he had long since broken with Judaism and saw himself first and foremost as a German. However, his German national confession did not help him to become a member of the "Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur", which had already been founded in 1929. His extremely popular works were only allowed to be performed in the Reich until 1937. In Chemnitz, there were still occasional performances of "Schwarzwaldmädel" in 1934-35, before the repertoire was "de-Jewified".

Leon Jessel was arrested by the Secret State Police in Berlin-Mitte on 15 December 1941. The reason for this was a letter to his Viennese librettist, written in 1939 and found during a house search, in which the desperate composer had noted: "I cannot work at a time when Jew-baiting threatens to destroy my people, when I do not know when the cruel fate will also knock on my door." Leon Jessel was so badly mistreated in a cellar of the police headquarters on Alexanderplatz that he died in the Jewish Hospital in Berlin on 4 January 1942. The official cause of death given by the authorities was "pneumonia". His mortal remains were initially buried in the Südwestkirchhof cemetery in Stahnsdorf before being moved to the Wilmersdorf cemetery in Berlin in 1955.

It is a project against forgetting: stumbling stones have been laid in Chemnitz every year since 2007.

Embedded in the pavement, the memorial stones commemorate the tragic fates of fellow citizens who were persecuted, deported, murdered or driven to their deaths during the National Socialist regime.

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