Leo Ascher

Leo Ascher (17 August 1880 – 25 February 1942) was an Austrian composer of operettas, popular songs and film scores. Ascher was born in Vienna. His father, Moritz Ascher, was a local umbrella manufacturer. Leo wrote his first composition, a waltz at the age of 13 in 1893. He studied law at the University of Vienna where he received his doctorate in 1904. He also attended the Vienna Conservatory from 1898 and studied composition under Robert Fuchs and Franz Schmidt. He married Luise Frankl and they had one daughter, the writer Franzi Ascher-Nash, who was born in Vienna on 28 November 1910 and died in Millersville, Pennsylvania, on 1 September 1991.

Ascher was briefly arrested during the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938; once released, he left Austria forever. Via France and England he emigrated to the US, where he lived from December 1939 until his death in New York City in 1942.

His artistic estate is kept at the Leo Ascher Centre of Operetta Music at Millersville University of Pennsylvania, which also provides the Leo Ascher Music Award of up to $1000 to undergraduates. The Aschergasse (Ascher Lane) in Vienna Hitzing is named after him.