Ludwig Goldscheider was born into a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria-Hungary (now Austria) in 1896 and studied art history at the University of Vienna, afterwards working in various publishing houses. In 1923 he co-founded (with Béla Horovitz) Phaidon Verlag, which became known throughout Europe for its inexpensive high-quality books about art and architecture. After the Anschluss (Nazi annexation of Austria) in 1938, they both fled to London, where they re-established Phaidon Press; Goldscheider authored many art historical monographs and they worked with prominent art historians including Ernst Gombrich, Sir Kenneth Clark, Bernard Berenson and Rudolf Wittkower.
Publisher, art historian, poet and translator, Ludwig Goldscheider was born to Jewish parents – Wilhelm Goldscheider, a clockmaker from Galicia, and his first wife Julie (Itte) Goldscheider (née Lifschitz) – in Vienna, Austria-Hungary (now Austria) in 1896. After serving as an officer in the First World War, he studied art history at the University of Vienna under Julius von Schlosser and worked in various publishing houses. His first book, Die Wiese (The Meadow), an anthology of lyric poetry, was published in 1921. In 1923 he co-founded Phaidon Verlag, with his schoolfriend Béla Horovitz and Fritz Ungar. Named after Socrates' pupil and a speaker in Plato's dialogue on the immortality of the soul, Phaidon rapidly became known throughout Europe for its inexpensive high-quality books about art and architecture, distinguished by large formats and abundant high-quality illustrations (many chosen by Goldscheider), which did much to determine the development and general style of the modern form of the popular art book.
In 1938, following the Anschluss (Nazi annexation of Austria), Goldscheider and Horovitz both immigrated to England, settling in London, actively assisted by the British publisher, Sir Stanley Unwin of George Allen and Unwin Ltd, in transferring their activities to England to avoid Nazi Aryanisation. The pair re-established Phaidon – renamed Phaidon Press – and distributed through George Allen and Unwin Ltd for the next 14 years. They expanded the large-format series, which included many titles authored or edited by Goldscheider, notably on Italian Renaissance artists including Leonardo da Vinci (1943) and Michelangelo (1953), as well as moderns including Van Gogh (1945), and contemporaneous artists, including Austrian émigré artist Oskar Kokoschka. and also commissioned and published German-Jewish émigré art historian Ernst Gombrich's The Story of Art, which went on to become the best-selling art book ever published. In a letter to Gombrich in 1948, Goldscheider listed the book's target audience as: '(1) Everybody, (2) The Young, (3) What I always call 'The Innocent Readers', (4) The Children, (5) The Americans, (6) The Grown-ups as well' (Nyburg, 2014). Other eminent clients included Sir Kenneth Clark, Otto Benesch, Bernard Berenson, Anthony Blunt and Rudolf Wittkower. One of Goldscheider's aims as an art historian was to demonstrate a continuity between Modernism and the art of the past and he was acknowledged as a connoisseur by and advisor to many fellow European and American scholars, collectors, dealers, and museum specialists. After Horovitz's death in 1955, Goldscheider took over the general management of the company. Ludwig Goldscheider died in London, England in 1973, only a few months after attending the opening of Phaidon's Golden Jubilee celebrations in honour of the firm's fiftieth anniversary.