LUDWIG, EMIL (1881— ), German author and play wright, was born in Breslau on Jan. 25, 1881, of a Jewish family named Cohn. As a young man he practised law, and also had some practical commercial experience ; but from a very early age was engaged in literary productions, mainly dramatic, in prose and verse. A number of these works were staged; they include Ein Friedloser, Ein Untergang, Napoleon, Die Borgia, Tristan und Isolde, Atalanta and Ariadne (ballet). Ludwig spent some time in England shortly before the World War, studying modern tendencies, and during the war was employed by the German Government as a journalist in the chief political centres of Ger man-speaking Europe. During this period he wrote novels (Man fred and Helena; Diana) and sketches (An die Leisterer), besides more dramatic pieces (Friedrich Kronprinz von Preussen; Leda). He now began to indulge his real bent for "humanizing" his torical biography in a series of biographies, in which the main emphasis was laid on the psychological motive, represented in a vivid and flamboyant style. His subjects were Goethe (192o and
1923), Wagner, Bismarck (a trilogy: Volk und Krone and Die Entlassung, 1922, Genie und Charakter, 1923) ; Napoleon (1924) ; Wilhelm II. (1925), and Christ (Menschensohn) (1928). Of these the works on the emperor William and Bismarck were written with considerable inside political knowledge and in a stimulating and controversial fashion, and aroused great interest, especially in England, where a series of his works were translated (Wilhelm II. and Bismarck, 1926; Napoleon and Goethe, 1927; The Son of Man, 1928). The works on Napoleon, and still more that on Christ, revealed, on the other hand, an essentially meretricious and unhistorical manner, not redeemed by their psychological insight. Ludwig left Germany in 1933.