Career
Born in Iaşi, Romania, Lateiner got his start writing for theater in Iaşi around the start of 1878, when Israel Grodner, having left Abraham Goldfaden"s Bucharest company, needed a playwright. He added some topical material to a comic German story Nathan Schlemiehl, and came up with a play Die Tzwei Schmil Schmelkes (The Two Schmil Schmelkes). He translated and "Yiddishized" plays from Romanian and German.
His more than 80 plays included Mishke and Moshke: Europeans in America (or The Greenhorns), "Satan in the Garden of Eden", and "The Jewish Heart.
By showing that Goldfaden was not the only person who could write a successful play in Yiddish, he opened the floodgates for other Yiddish playwrights.
