Emil Ludwig (originally named Emil Cohn) was born in Breslau (now Worcaw, Poland) in 1881. He studied law, but chose writing as a career. He began as a dramatist and mainly wrote plays and novellas, while also working as a journalist. In 1906, he moved to Switzerland. During World War I, he worked as a foreign correspondent for the Berliner Tageblatt in Vienna and Istanbul. In the 1920s, he became well-known for his biographies, which combined fact, fiction and psychological analysis. His subjects included Goethe (1920), Bismarck (1922-1924), Napoleon (1925), and Michelangelo (1930). He also achieved international fame, and his novels were translated into 25 languages. Joseph Goebbels, who mentioned him in his journal, considered his writings dangerous. Consequently, Ludwig's books were amoung those burned by the Nazis on May 10, 1933.
In 1940, Emil Ludwig immigrated to the United States, where he continued to write. During his time in New York, he published The Mediterranean (1942), How to Treat the Germans (1943), and The Moral Conquest of Germany (1945). He returned to Switzerland after the war and died in Moscio, Italy, in 1948.
From the guide to the Emil Ludwig Collection, 1925-1962, bulk 1925-1948, (Leo Baeck Institute)
