Louis Wertheimber

Born in 1820 and died in 1893, Louis Wertheimber was a German banker from a Jewish family with roots in Fürth and Frankfurt am Main. Historical records from Fürth describe him as a co-founder of the banking firm L. & E. Wertheimber and note his involvement in civic life during the revolutionary year 1848.

He is also remembered as the author of A Muramasa Blade: A Story of Feudalism in Old Japan, published in Boston in 1887. The novel reflects a late-19th-century European fascination with Japan and stands out for bringing samurai culture and legend to English-language readers through an adventurous historical tale.

Little widely available biographical material survives about his literary life, so his reputation now rests mainly on that unusual novel and the contrast it reveals: a Frankfurt banker writing imaginatively about medieval Japan.