Ludwig Marcuse (1894 – 1971) was born in Berlin. Immediately after the Reichstag fire he emigrated first to France, then to the USA, became a US citizen in 1944. After years of destitution he became professor for philosophy and German literature at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. As a brilliant stylist he suffered the fate of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche: Philosophers saw him as a writer, and writers considered him to be a philosopher. After becoming an emeritus professor, he returned to Germany in 1963.