Leon Jessel

Who was Leon Jessel?

Leon Jessel, or Léon Jessel was a German composer of operettas and light classical music pieces. Today he is best known internationally as the composer of the popular jaunty march "The Parade of the Tin Soldiers," also known as "The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers." Jessel was a prolific composer who wrote hundreds of light orchestral pieces, piano pieces, songs, waltzes, mazurkas, marches, choruses, and other salon music. He achieved considerable acclaim with a number of his operettas — in particular Schwarzwaldmädel, which remains popular to this day.

Because Jessel was a Jew by birth, with the rise of Nazism in the late 1920s, his composing virtually came to an end, and his musical works, which had been very popular, were suppressed and nearly forgotten.