Background
Emil Ludwig was born on January 25, 1881 in Breslau, Germany.
Emil Ludwig was born on January 25, 1881 in Breslau, Germany.
Educated at Rutgers University, 1931.
Ludwig left Germany in 1907, and became a Swiss citizen with the rise of Nazism. He lived in Ascona, in the Italian part of Switzerland. After Hitler's rise to power, he was declared an enemy of the Nazi state and his books were burned.
Ludwig wrote extensively from the age of twenty-five, after a brief career as a lawyer. He first wrote plays and poems, only later turning to other genres, including political essays and the novel, he also wrote historical and geographical studies one of his famous studies is The Nile (1937). However, he became most famous for his colorful biographies and character sketches, which involved a deep understanding of the social and historical conditions in which his subjects lived.
Ludwig’s first biography was a three-volume study of Goethe (1920), followed shortly after by a biography of Bismarck. The dramatized version of this work was banned in Berlin, but an appeal to the courts led to a repeal of the ban, and the play ran for over 1,000 performances.
He often worked on two or three books simultaneously. At the time of his death he had been researching King David, and writing biographies of Alexander and Karl Wilhel von Humboldt.
Born Emil Cohn in Breslau (Wroclaw), the son of a famous Jewish ophthalmologist, he was baptized and raised as a Christian. His parents changed his surname to Ludwig in order to prevent anti-Semitic discrimination. However, he became involved in Judaism, and finally renounced Christianity following the murder of the Jewish German statesman Walther Rathenau in 1922.
Married Elga Wolff, 1906. Children: Andrew, Gordon.