Background
Reportedly a descendant of Johann Heinrich Voss, Urban was raised in Berlin and emigrated to the United States in 1887.
Reportedly a descendant of Johann Heinrich Voss, Urban was raised in Berlin and emigrated to the United States in 1887.
He was naturalized as a United States. citizen in 1899 in New New York In the following years, he reported on life in America, often in a critical vein, as a freelance correspondent for the newspapers Berliner Tageblatt and Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger as well as for the weekly magazines Jugend and Simplicissimus. His comedy Der Froschkönig, loosely derived from the Brothers Grimm fairy tale "The Frog Prince", was staged at the Irving Place Theatre in 1918.
An outspoken critic of the women"s suffrage movement, he was primarily known in Germany for a satirical novel about naive German immigrants eager to strike it rich in "Dollarland" America and for collections of his humorous narratives, a number of which have been reissued since the 1980s.