A Ghetto Violet: From "Christian and Leah"

Leopold Kompert (May 15, 1822 – November 23, 1886) was a Bohemian Jewish writer. He was born in Mnichovo Hradiště (German: Münchengrätz), Bohemia, and died in Vienna. Kompert began his literary activity in the Pressburger Zeitung. From 1848 to 1852 he was editor of the Österreichischer Lloyd. As creator of ghetto literature he was called The Auerbach of the ghetto. His stories depicting the life, customs, and manners of the Bohemian Jews have become classical and have found many imitators. Kompert’s first story, Der Schnorrer, appeared in 1846 in Ludwig August Frankl’s Sonntagsblatt, No. 7. In Franzi und Heini, a picture of Vienna society, the Jewish peddler Perl Blüthenstern plays an important part. Some of these stories were first published in Wertheimer’s Jahrbuch für Israeliten. A complete edition of Kompert’s works in eight volumes appeared in Berlin, 1882–83, and a new edition in Leipzig, 1887.