Edmund Meisel

Edmund Meisel (14 August 1894 – 14 November 1930) was an Austrian-born composer. He wrote the score to Walter Ruttmann's Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis, The Battleship Potemkin (1925), and other films of Sergei Eisenstein. Meisel was one of the more important and pioneering figures in film music. He began composing incidental music for the stage in the 1920s. Early credits included the scoring of plays by Bertolt Brecht. His acquaintance with Erwin Piscator led to him writing music for films soon after. Meisel quickly came to be considered a talented composer, capable of working in a different styles, encompassing expressionism and jazz, as well as traditional orchestral modes.

Meisel wrote full scores for Arnold Fanck's The Holy Mountain in 1926 and in 1927, was the composer on Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis, writing a score to be played by an orchestra of 75 musicians. Meisel was so influential, he was sometimes credited simply with his last name.

His widow Else went on to marry Ludwig Blattner.

Meisel's niece was the writer and member of the German Resistance, Hilde Meisel.

Selected filmography

Battleship Potemkin (1925) The Holy Mountain (1926) Superfluous People (1926) Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis (1927) October: Ten Days That Shook the World (1928) Deutscher Rundfunk (1928) The Crimson Circle (1929) The Blue Express (1929)