Will Meisel

{{Short description|German composer}}

{{Infobox person

| name = Will Meisel

| image = Grab Will Meisel, Friedhof Wilmersdorf (cropped).jpg

| imagesize =

| caption = Grave of Will Meisel, Berlin-Wilmersdorf

| birth_date = 17 September 1897

| birth_place = Berlin, German Empire

| death_date = {{death-date and age|29 April 1967|17 September 1897}}

| death_place = Müllheim, Baden-Württemberg
West Germany

| othername =

| occupation = Composer

| yearsactive = 1930-1955 (film)

}}

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).Grange p.343 In 1926, he founded German music publisher Edition Meisel & Co.{{cite magazine|last=Kersten|first=Peter|title=50 Years And Still No. One|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PkUEAAAAMBAJ&dq=The+Hit+Factory+-+Chronicle+of+a+Berlin+music+publisher&pg=PT67|magazine=Billboard|date=22 January 1977|access-date=8 April 2024}}

He was a member of the Nazi Party from 1933.{{cite book | last=Harding | first=Thomas | title=The House by the Lake | publisher=Random House | date=24 September 2015 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=D9rvCAAAQBAJ|access-date=27 March 2025| isbn=978-1-4735-0655-8 }} 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.{{cite web | last=Morrison | first=Rebecca K | title=The House by the Lake by Thomas Harding review – the German 20th century story told through a single building | website=the Guardian | date=16 January 2016 | url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/16/house-by-the-lake-thomas-harding-review-german-history | access-date=27 March 2025}}