Kerr was born in Breslau, Silesia, the son of Helene (Calé) and Meyer Emanuel Kempner, who was a wine trader.

He had one sister always known as Annchen: she married Siegfried Ollendorf and ultimately left Germany for Palestine.

[2] Alfred Kerr worked as a theatre critic for Der Tagesspiegel and later for the Berliner Tageblatt.

As his fame grew he engaged in polemics, with the critics Maximilian Harden, Herbert Ihering and Karl Kraus[4] in particular.

In 1948 he visited Hamburg at the start of a planned tour of several German cities but suffered a stroke, and then decided to end his own life via an overdose of Veronal, procured for him by his wife.

[8] An eight volume edition of his works has been published by S. Fischer,[9] there is an extensive literature devoted to Kerr.