Landshoff counted among her friends Ernst Toller, Bertolt Brecht, Thomas Mann and Albert Einstein.

Landshoff appeared as Ruth in Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's landmark silent film Nosferatu in 1922.

In the same year she made a brief appearance in The Search (Die Gezeichneten) by Carl Theodor Dreyer.

In 1933 she emigrated from Nazi-Germany to France, then to the United Kingdom, then to Switzerland and finally in March 1937 to the US, where she worked until her death as a writer and translator in New York City.

[2][1] Her bequest, the Ruth Yorck Archive, is located in the Department of Special Collections/Mugar Memorial Library of Boston University.