[16][17][18] After finishing school, Lang briefly attended the Technical University of Vienna, where he studied civil engineering and eventually switched to art.

[19] At the outbreak of World War I, Lang returned to Vienna and volunteered for military service in the Austrian Army, fighting in Russia and Romania.

Lang was wounded four times and lost sight in his right eye,[20] when he then saw a Max Reinhardt show for injured soldiers and played in a Red Cross revue.

Lang briefly acted in the Viennese theater circuit before being hired as a writer at Decla Film, Erich Pommer's Berlin-based production company.

On 13 February 1919, in the Marriage Registry Office in Charlottenburg, Berlin, Lang married a theater actress named Elisabeth Rosenthal,.

Rosenthal died of a single gunshot wound in their bathtub on September 25, 1920, the shot[22] deemed to have been fired by Lang's World War I Browning revolver[23].

His first "talking" picture, considered by many film scholars to be a masterpiece of the early sound era, M is a story of a child murderer (Peter Lorre in his first starring role) who is hunted down and brought to justice by Berlin's criminal underworld.

Two of his lovers of these years included Gerda Maurus, the leading actress in Lang's last silent films Spione(1928) and Woman in the Moon(1929), and Lily Latte in 1931.

Lang claimed that, after selling his wife's jewelry, he fled by train to Paris that evening, leaving most of his money and personal possessions behind.

[39] Lang made twenty-two features in his 20-year American career, working in a variety of genres at every major studio in Hollywood, and occasionally producing his films as an independent.

[43][44] By the time Fury was released, Lang had been involved in the creation of the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, working with Otto Katz, a Czech who was a Comintern spy.

Man Hunt, wrote Dave Kehr in 2009, "may be the best" of the "many interventionist films produced by the Hollywood studios before Pearl Harbor" as it is "clean and concentrated, elegant and precise, pointed without being preachy.

Lang, as his health worsened with age, found it difficult to find congenial production conditions and backers in Hollywood and contemplated retirement.

Following the production, Brauner was preparing for a remake of The Testament of Dr. Mabuse when Lang approached him with the idea of adding a new original film to the series.

On February 8, 1960, Lang received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to the motion picture industry, located at 1600 Vine Street.

[51][52] Lang's American and later German works were championed by the critics of the Cahiers du cinéma, such as François Truffaut and Jacques Rivette.

[54] Geoff Andrew of the British Film Institute believed he set the "blueprint for the serial killer movie" through M.[55] In December 2021, Lang was the subject for BBC Radio 4's In Our Time.