Rudolf Nassauer
German novelist and wine merchant
Rudolf Nassauer (8 November 1924 – 5 December 1996) was a German novelist and wine merchant best known as the author of The Hooligan (1960), a novel which explores the nuances of Nazi psychology by following protagonist Andreas Felber as he transforms from the Head Clerk of his local Town Council into the deputy commandant of a concentration camp. Nassauer also wrote the novels The Cuckoo (1962) and Kramer’s Goats (1986), among others.
Life
Early life
Nassauer was born on 8 November 1924, to a wealthy family of Jewish wine merchants in Frankfurt, Germany. His father and sister fled to London after Kristallnacht, leaving Nassauer and his mother to settle the family’s business affairs before they, too, escaped to England in 1939. Known as Rudi by his friends and family, Nassauer attended St. Paul’s School in London before taking over the family business, Nassauer Bros., which specialized in the trade of German wine.
Marriage to Bernice Rubens
In 1947, Nassauer married Welsh novelist Bernice Rubens, with whom he had three children. The couple became friends with various writers and intellectuals including Elias Canetti, Peter Vansitta, and Angus Wilson. During this time, Nassauer continued to work as a wine merchant and wrote fiction during his free time.
Nassauer and Rubens became divorced in 1967, though they remained close friends.
The public source identifies “Rudolf Nassauer” as german novelist and wine merchant. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Rudolf, Nassauer and German.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q108812228. VIAF identifies the subject as 92250608. The Library of Congress control number is n50028101. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1924, 1996, 1960 and 1962.
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This entry incorporates text from “Rudolf Nassauer” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.