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Time has not been kind to Ludwig Lewisohn. Though he would have been pained by the knowledge that he would not be fondly remembered, Lewisohn would hardly have been surprised, since he had resigned himself at an early stage in his career to being reviled for his advocacy of unpopular causes. That he would scarcely be remembered at all, however, would have been inconceivable to Lewisohn, who had belligerently thrust himself into the center of many of the major intellectual controversies of the twentieth century.
The author of thirty-five books and several hundred articles, Lewisohn achieved greatest prominence as a literary critic, translator and novelist. From 1919 to 1924 he was drama critic of The Nation, and a close associate of Henry Mencken, Sinclair Lewis and Theodore Dreiser. A leading authority on European, and especially German, literature, Lewisohn, through his translations first acquainted Americans with the works of such authors as Gerhart Haupmann, Jacob Wasserman and Franz Werfel. Lewisohn's contributions to literary scholarship were matched on a popular level by a series of novels, including The Case of Mr. Crump, The Island Within, Stephen Escott and Renegade, that climbed to the top of best seller lists. In addition to his literary accomplishments Lewisohn was one of the foremost spokesmen for American Zionism, an articulate anti-Communist, and an important forerunner of Neo-Orthodoxy. Nonetheless, little more than a decade after his death, Lewisohn is virtually forgotten.