- Following the outbreak of the Second World War, Lania was interned by the Daladier government. Lania subsequently made his way to the United States via Spain and Portugal.
- He produced the screenplay for G. W. Pabst's The Threepenny Opera (1931).
- With the help of a forged letter of recommendation from Benito Mussolini's brother Arnaldo, disguised as an Italian fascist, he succeeded in gaining access to Adolf Hitler in Munich in 1923.
- Lania's play Konjunktur (Oil Boom) premiered in Berlin in 1928, directed by Erwin Piscator, with incidental music by Kurt Weill. Three oil companies fight over the rights to oil production in a primitive Balkan country, and in the process exploit the people and destroy the environment. Weill's songs from this play, like "Die Muschel von Margate" are still performed.
- After the first World War he became increasingly involved with far-left politics and political theatre. In Germany he worked for the Communist-affiliated Prometheus Film and wrote The Shadow of a Mine (1929) for the Volksfilmverband.
- Willy Brandt, mayor of Berlin at that time, made sure, that he received when he died in 1961, an urn grave of honor at the Zehlendorf forest cemetery in Berlin.
- He wrote a biography on Ernest Hemingway.
- Following the United States' entry into the war, Lania was employed by the Office of War Information. He later returned to Germany and settled in Munich.
- Lania was forced to emigrate from Germany following the Nazi takeover in 1933. He eventually settled in France.
- Lania published one of the first internationally acclaimed interviews with Hitler.
- He was a journalist, playwright and screenwriter.
- Leo Lania's estate is maintained by the Wisconsin Historical Society Archives.
- Lania, the son of the doctor and university professor Friedrich Salomon Hermann and Myra Mintz, was of Jewish origin.
- Although born in Russian Empire, Lania emigrated to Vienna and served in the Austro-Hungarian Army during the First World War.
- He documented his experiences as an early investigative journalist with the emerging Nazi movement in the books Die Totengräber (Gravediggers) Deutschlands (1924) and The Hitler-Ludendorff Trial (1925).
- After attending the Vienna Commercial Academy, Herman Lazar became a journalist and author and chose the pseudonym Leo Lania.
- During the late Weimar era, Lania worked with the celebrated theatre directors Max Reinhardt and Alexis Granowsky.
- In his book Gewehre auf Reisen (1924), he warned of the dangers of clandestinely arming the Wehrmacht. He was then charged with treason. Following this process, the Reichstag passed the so-called Lex Lania to protect journalistic professional secrecy.
- In 1959 he wrote y as a ghostwriter an autobiography for Willy Brandt, then Governing Mayor of Berlin.
- He worked on several screenplays, including fellow emigre Robert Wiene's Ultimatum (1938).
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