Paul-Louis Landsberg (3 December 1901 – 2 April 1944) was a twentieth century Existentialist philosopher who is known for his works The Experience of Death and The Moral Problem of Suicide.
He was a pupil of Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl and Max Scheler, continuing their work in Phenomenology to tackle several vital subjects, including personal identity, death and suicide.
He was captured by the Gestapo and deported to Oranienburg Concentration Camp towards the end of the war and died there of physical and mental exhaustion in April 1944.
His parents had him baptized as a Protestant but later on he turned towards Catholicism and allied himself with the benedictine liturgical movement centered around Maria Laach.
[6] With the coming of the Civil War in Spain, Landsberg transferred to Paris where he began giving courses at the University of the Sorbonne on the Meaning of Existence.
[3] Landsberg became close friends with the Personalist philosopher Emmanuel Mounier, whose themes bore a similarity to those explored in his own works.
Unfortunately, Landsberg was for a long time persecuted by the Gestapo and it was clear that they were intent on having him put away, if not least for his Anti-Nazist views but also for his essentially Jewish parentage.
He succeeded in joining an Anti-Nazi military group which provided him with official papers, enabling him to take shelter at several locations (Vendôme, Orléans, Lyon) yet always without any news of his wife.