Walter Landauer was born in Berlin on 31-8-1902 into a German-Jewish family of merchants. His father was a co-founder of a ready-to-wear clothing company and died when Walter was 14 years old. After studying law, he worked as an editor at the Berlin publishing house Die Schmiede before moving to Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag in 1928, which was forced to cease operations following the Nazis’ rise to power. On 1-4-1933, the day of the boycott against Jews, he emigrated from Germany.
Landauer initially lived in Paris and, in the autumn of 1933, took over as head of the German publishing department at Allert de Lange in Amsterdam. There, he published books by authors who had also emigrated, such as Joseph Roth, Irmgard Keun, Gina Kaus, Adrienne Thomas, Annemarie Selinko, Bertolt Brecht, Ödön von Horváth, Alma Mahler and Stefan Zweig.
Following the German invasion of the Netherlands on 10-5-1940, he remained in Amsterdam and went into hiding when, as a Jew, he was ordered to report to Westerbork. Whilst attempting to flee to Switzerland, he was arrested and taken to the Westerbork police transit camp on 31-7-1943. From there, he was transferred on 11-1-1944 to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where he awaited an exchange. He did not live to see it. Weakened and ill, he died on 20-12-1944 in Bergen-Belsen.
