 Emil
Ludwig (originally named Emil Cohn) was born in Breslau, now part of
Poland. Ludwig studied law but chose writing as a career. At first he
wrote plays and novella, but also worked as a journalist. In 1906 he
moved to Switzerland but during World War I he worked as a foreign
correspondent for the Berliner Tageblatt in Vienna and
Istanbul. He became a Swiss citizen in 1932, later emigrating to the
United States in 1940. He returned to Switzerland after the war and died
in 1948, in Moscia, near Ascona.
During the 1920s he achieved international fame for
his popular biographies which combined historical fact and fiction with
psychological analysis. After his biography of Goethe was
published in 1920, he wrote several similar biographies, including one
about Bismarck (1922-24), |
Napoleon (1925), Michelangelo (1930),
and Cleopatra (1937).
As Ludwig's biographies were popular outside of
Germany and were widely translated, he was one of the fortunate émigrés
who had an income while living in the United States.
When he was 21, Ludwig converted to Catholicism but in
1922 renounced his conversion following the murder of foreign minister
Walter Rathenau. His abhorence of the National Socialist regime led him
to work for the U.S. government in 1940 writing anti-fascist pamphlets.
(University of California) |
