Maria Leitner
Born on 19 January 1892Died on 14 March 1942Writer, JournalistMaria Leitner first had to flee into exile at the beginning of the 1920s. After the abolition of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, she emigrated via Vienna to Berlin.
Lotte Lenya
Born on 18 October 1898Died on 27 November 1981Actress, SingerLotte Lenya began her acting and dancing career under her birth name of Karoline Blamauer in Zurich. There she shared the stage with Elisabeth Bergner.
Jean Leppien
Born on 8 April 1910Died on 19 October 1991PainterThe former Bauhaus student, born Kurt Leppien, left Berlin under the name Kurt Leppien in 1933. The painter's circle of friends included many communists and Jews who had already left Berlin.
Heinz Liepman
Born 27.08.1905Died 06.06.1966Writer, Dramatist, JournalistAs a young man, Heinz Liepman was already working as a journalist, playwright and writer. Some of his novels such as Die Hilflosen or Der Frieden brach aus, both published in 1930, were translated into English and French and gained international recognition.
Peter Lorre
Born on 26 June 1904Died on 23 March 1964Actor, Screenwriter, Film directorUntil 1931, when the film director Fritz Lang gave him his signature role in M, except for two small supporting roles in silent films, Peter Lorre had only acted in the theatre. He had contracts in theatres in Wroclaw, Zurich, Vienna and Bertolt Brecht's theatre on the Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin.
Peter Lotar
Born on 12 February 1910Died on 12 July 1986Actor, Conductor, WriterPrague-born actor and writer Peter Lotar left his native city during the German annexation of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 and fled through German territory to Switzerland, where he lived until his death in 1986. Lotar was raised bilingually in a Jewish home in Prague under his real name Lotar Chitz.
Emil Ludwig
Born on 25 January 1881Died on 17 September 1948WriterOne figure who featured largely in the history of exile literature was Emil Ludwig, who achieved worldwide fame and enjoyed huge print runs of his psychologically and psychopathologically accentuated historical biographies of Bismarck, Goethe, Wilhelm II and Napoleon. These were written for a fashionable readership during the years of the Weimar Republic.
Leo Maillet
Born on 29 March 1902Died on 8. März 1990PainterAfter completing a commercial apprenticeship and working in his father’s business in Frankfurt am Main for several years, Leopold Mayer began studying art in 1923. In 1930, he was admitted to Max Beckmann’s masterclass at the Städelschule academy of art.
Erika Mann
Born on 9 November 1905Died on 27 August 1969Journalist, Actress, WriterIn exile, Erika Mann, the oldest daughter of Thomas Mann, became an eloquent, tireless campaigner against the ideology and crimes of National Socialism. As a drama pupil of Max Reinhardt, Erika Mann enjoyed numerous engagements at theatres in the Weimar Republic from the mid-1920s.
Heinrich Mann
Born on 27 March 1871Died on 11 March 1950WriterAfter starting his career as editor of the conservative monthly Das zwanzigste Jahrhundert [The twentieth century], Heinrich Mann advanced from his beginnings in an upper middle class merchant family from Lübeck to become one of the most influential critics of Wilhelmine Germany.
