Paul Kornfeld (11 December 1889 – 25 April 1942) was a Prague-born German-language Jewish writer whose expressionist plays and scholarly treatises on the theory of drama earned him a specialized niche in influencing contemporary intellectual discourse.

A subsequent expressionist drama, Himmel und Holle [Heaven and Hell] presented even more abstract ideas, but in a vein that was, to a greater degree, lyrical and ecstatic.

Der ewige Traum [The Eternal Dream] (1922), which held up a jaundiced mirror to reflect upon monogamous and polygamous relationships, Palme, oder Der Gekränkte [Palme, or The Offended One] (1924), which spotlighted a character of comically extreme sensitivity and Kilian, oder Die gelbe Rose [Kilian, or The Yellow Rose] (1926), all enjoyed audience approval as did his collaboration with Max Reinhardt on a 1925 Berlin theatrical production.

Written in 1929 and staged in 1930, his final Berlin play, Jud Süß [Suss, the Jew, generally known under its literal translation, Jew Suss], presented a highly nuanced and objective portrayal of the controversial 18th century Jewish financier Joseph Süß Oppenheimer whose story had already been depicted a century earlier in Wilhelm Hauff's 1827 novella and, again, only four years before his own work, in Lion Feuchtwanger's 1925 historical novel.

Hitler's coming to power in 1933 put an end to Kornfeld's Berlin odyssey and forced him back to Prague, no longer a gathering hub of German-language culture but, since October 1918, the capital of the new republic of Czechoslovakia.