Maria Leitner
Writer, 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
Actress, 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
PainterThe 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
Writer, 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.
Hilde Loewe-Flatter
Henry LoveComposerIn 1920s Vienna, Hilde Loewe-Flatter was much in demand as a pianist who was able to switch effortlessly between classical music and light entertainment. As a composer, she wrote numerous ballads and popular songs under the pseudonym Henry Love.
Peter Lorre
Actor, 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
Actor, 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
WriterOne 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
PainterAfter 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
Journalist, 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.
