Early years Ralph Korngold was born in
Warsaw, Poland, in 1882, the son of ethnic
Jewish parents. His father was a
diamond merchant from the
Netherlands, while his mother hailed from
Poland. Included in the family were one brother and two sisters. In 1912, he married a fellow Socialist Party member, Janet Fenimore, with whom he had one child, Arnold "Bud" Dresden. Korngold was made the head of the Socialist Party's Literature Department in 1914, an operation run out of party headquarters in
Chicago. He was also the business manager of the party's weekly newspaper,
The American Socialist, from the time of its establishment in 1914.
Writer Korngold left the Socialist movement some time shortly after the onset of
World War I. He entered the world of business, becoming at one point the president of a successful cutlery business, bankrolling enough capital to pursue his passion for writing. In 1924 the family went abroad, with Korngold hoping to become a successful fiction writer living the
French Riviera, however his wife was unable to become acclimated to life in Europe. The couple split in 1926, with Janet returning with son Bud to America. Financial troubles associated with the
Great Depression forced Korngold to leave France for America again in 1930, where he returned to Chicago and the world of business. He returned to France three years later, shifting his literary work from fiction to the writing of a biography of
Maximilien Robespierre. In
Paris Korngold met a
Hungarian woman named Piri Helen Ozer, whom he married in 1936 following the finalization of his divorce. In that same year he published his Robespierre biography,
Robespierre, the First Modern Dictator. The
Fall of France to
Nazi Germany in 1940 forced Korngold to make a hasty departure from Europe. Korngold returned to the United States and a career in business until a 1946
heart attack forced his retirement.
Death and legacy Following his retirement from commerce, Korngold and his wife moved to
Santa Barbara, California, where Ralph resumed his writing career. He ultimately published seven works of historical biography beginning with his 1936 Robespierre book. Ralph Korngold died October 27, 1964. Korngold's papers are held by the
Newberry Library in Chicago, Illinois. ==Footnotes==