Eduard Ludwig Alexander was born in Essen in the Prussian Rhine Province (now North Rhine-Westphalia); his father was an office manager.

Between 1921 and 1925, he was a city councillor in Berlin while simultaneously serving, under the pseudonym Eduard Ludwig, as head of the press service of the KPD and financial editor of Die Rote Fahne.

At Pentecost in 1923, he and his wife Gertrud participated in the Marxist Work Week (Marxistische Arbeitswoche) and founded the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research.

In 1927 he was a co-founder of the Marxist Workers' School, where he taught with Hermann Duncker, Jürgen Kuczynski, Georg Lukács and Karl August Wittfogel among others.

[1] On 22 August 1944, Eduard Ludwig Alexander was arrested as part of the "Aktion Gitter" campaign and transferred to Sachsenhausen concentration camp.