From 1906, Emil Ludwig lived in Moscia, in the Swiss municipality of Ascona. After becoming a Swiss citizen in 1932, he spent the first years of the Nazi dictatorship in Switzerland. However, after the German armed forces invaded Poland in September 1939, and in view of the campaign in the West that would start in the spring of 1940, Ludwig no longer felt safe in Switzerland, especially as he was widely known as a Jew and anti-Fascist who had been officially ostracised by the Nazis since 1933 and was living close to the Italian border. Mindful of the destruction of his books during the book burnings of 1933, mindful of his inflammatory, much-celebrated political speech as one of the two main representatives of the German writers’ delegation at the PEN in Exile congress in Buenos Aires in September 1936, and mindful of the publication of his book Der Mord in Davos [The Davos Murder] that same year, a work which met with strong condemnation by the Nazis, Ludwig felt himself to be “No. 1 on the proscription list of the countries surrounding the Alpine Republic”. Ludwig decided to flee to the USA, for which he had developed a certain sympathy, particularly since spending time at the Oval Office and having several conversations with President Franklin D. Roosevelt He had written a biography of Roosevelt in 1938. In May 1940, Emil and Elsa Ludwig escaped to New York via London and from there went on to California, where they lived as “resident aliens” until 1945. For some of this time, they were neighbours of Thomas Mann and Lion Feuchtwanger in Pacific Palisades. Ludwig did not maintain particularly close contact with émigré circles, but benefited from a strong media presence and the continuing success of his books in the USA. For a short time, he even served President Roosevelt as a special envoy for German political affairs.

Further reading:
Fuhrer, Armin: Emil Ludwig. Verehrt, verfemt, verbrannt. Eine Biografie [Emil Ludwig. Celebrated, Ostracised, Incinerated. A Biography]. Reinbek: Lau-Verlag 2021, here p. 466.