District Personalities
Ernest Landauer -- Poet, Actor & Community Activist
Ernie Landauer, in the late fifties, as Prometheus in a U.C. Berkeley Production of “Prometheus Bound”
Image: Courtesy of Landauer FamilyThe two houses at 2422 and 2424 McGee Avenue
were purchased in 1952 by Ernest and Alice Landauer.
Ernie was a mover and shaker in the city of Berkeley
for some fifty years. He co-founded the Actors
Ensemble in 1957 which celebrated its 50th
anniversary in 2007. He also helped found the
Ecology Center, the Bay Area Funeral Society, and
Commonarts. He was instrumental in starting the
Berkeley city camps, helped run the Flea Market on
Ashby and MLK for years, and was active also as a
poet and teacher. Ernie came to Berkeley from
Germany in 1933 at the age of 6 with his family. His
father Carl Landauer had been a prominent economist
in Germany and was a professor at UC Berkeley for
years. Ernie died in 2006.