author
Louis Wertheimber
1820–1893
A 19th-century banker who also turned his imagination toward fiction, he is best remembered for A Muramasa Blade, a historical novel set in feudal Japan. His unusual path from finance to storytelling gives his work an extra layer of curiosity.
1 Audiobook
A Muramasa blade : A story of feudalism in old Japan
by Louis Wertheimber
About the author
Born in Fürth, Germany, on August 12, 1820, Louis Wertheimber later became a banker in Frankfurt am Main. Reference works on German biography describe him as the son of Isaac Emanuel Wertheimber and note that he founded a bank in Frankfurt in 1854; his brother Emanuel joined the business in 1867, after which it operated as L. & E. Wertheimber.
Wertheimber is also remembered as the author of A Muramasa Blade: A Story of Feudalism in Old Japan, published in Boston in 1887. In the book's preface, he presents it as an original tale of old Japan, written from a viewpoint meant to feel close to Japanese storytelling, which helps explain the novel's distinctive atmosphere.
He died in Frankfurt am Main on December 7, 1893. Although little biographical detail about his literary life is easy to confirm, the contrast between his career in banking and his surviving fiction makes him an especially intriguing figure for readers of unusual historical novels.