LANDSBERGER, ARTHUR

LANDSBERGER, ARTHUR (1876–1933), German novelist and editor. Born into a well-to-do Protestant Berlin family of Jewish descent, Landsberger studied law, but decided to devote himself to literature and art. In 1907 he helped found Der Morgen, a periodical devoted to art and general culture. He wrote many exciting, but ephemeral, detective and adventure stories. His heroes and heroines are often satanic types, Landsberger being most at home among the nouveaux riches and demimondaines of Berlin's Kurfuerstendamm. In his popular novel Wie Hilde Simon mit Gott und dem Teufel kaempfte (1911), he introduced Jewish themes, as also in the novel Berlin ohne Juden (1925; modeled on a similar book on Vienna, Die Stadt ohne Juden (1922) by hugo bettauer ). Landsberger's Juedische Sprichwoerter (1912) pioneered in the German translation of Yiddish works. In 1914 he edited Das Ghettobuch, a collection of stories of East European Jewish life taken primarily from the Yiddish classics. A second volume, Das Volk des Ghetto, appeared in 1916. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Landsberger committed suicide. -ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: C. Schwarz, in: W. Killy (ed.), Literatur Lexikon, 7 (1990), 132. (Rudolf Kayser)