Ernst Weiss

Dr Ernst Weiss (German: Weiß, August 28, 1882 – June 15, 1940) was a German-speaking Austrian author of Jewish descent. He is the author of "Der Augenzeuge" (The Eyewitness), a novel dealing with the Hitler period.

Biography

Ernst Weiss was born in Brno, Moravia, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now the Czech Republic) to the family of a prosperous Jewish cloth merchant.S. Saur, Pamela. "Ernst Weiss". The Literary Encyclopedia. 23 September 2006. Accessed 22 June 2008. [http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=11735] En icon] After his father died when he was four, he was brought up by his mother Berta, née Weinberg, who led him to art. However after completing his secondary education in Brno, Litoměřice and Hostinné,Ernst Weiß – Kurzer Lebensabriß, [http://golm.rz.uni-potsdam.de/Seghers/marseille/ewbio.htm] De icon] he came to Prague to study medicine. In 1908 he finished his studies in Vienna and became a surgeon. He practiced in Berne, Vienna, and Berlin but he got tuberculosis and tried to recover as a ship doctor on a trip to India and Japan in 1912. In 1913 he met Rahel Sanzara, a dancer and actress and their relationship lasted until she died of cancer in 1936. In the same year he met Franz Kafka and they became close friends. Kafka wrote in his "Diaries 1914": "January 2. A lot of time well spent with Dr. Weiss".M.A.Orthofer: Ernst Weiß: A Preliminary Survey, Complete Review, Volume II, Issue 4, November, 2001, [http://www.complete-review.com/quarterly/vol2/issue4/eweiss.htm] En icon] Weiss was in touch with a lot of other writers of Prague Circle such as Franz Werfel, Max Brod, and Johannes Urzidil.Encyklopedie dějin města Brna, [http://www.encyklopedie.brna.cz/home-mmb/?acc=profil_osobnosti&load=2020] Cs icon] In 1914 Weiss returned to Austria to start a military physician career. Near the end of World War I he received a golden cross for bravery. After the war he lived in Prague, then the capital of Czechoslovakia. He gave up medical career in 1920 when he finished working in a Prague hospital. In 1921 he moved to Berlin but in 1933 he returned to Prague to care for his dying mother. He could not enter Nazi Germany and so he left for Paris in 1934. There he lived a poor life dependent on the help from authors such as Thomas Mann and Stefan Zweig. [Dominique Fliegler: Doslov k Jarmile, Praha 1998, ISBN 80-901626-6-5 Cs icon] He applied for, but did not receive, a grant from the so-called [http://golm.rz.uni-potsdam.de/Mexiko/FluchtnachMexiko/AGGCF.htm American guild for German cultural freedom] . He committed suicide on 14 June 1940 when German troops invaded the city. His attempt to deal with poison in his hotel room did not succeed immediately, but he died as a result only in the following night in a Paris hospital.

Work

His work is influenced by Sigmund Freud, his friend Franz Kafka, and authors of then-modern literary Expressionism. He often hints at medical cases and ethics in his novels and stories.

*"Die Galeere" (1913); rejected by twenty-three publishers; Franz Kafka helped to edit it
*"Der Kampf" (1916)
*"Tiere in Ketten" (1918)
*"Mensch gegen Mensch" (1919)
*"Stern der Dämonen" (1920)
*"Nahar" (1922)
*"Männer in der Nacht" (1925)
*"Boetius von Orlamünde" (1928, retitled "Der Aristokrat" in 1966); awarded a silver medal in the literary competition at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics and the Adalbert Stifter prize
*"Georg Letham. Arzt und Mörder" (1931)
*"Der Geisterseher" (1934)
*"Der Gefängnisarzt" (1934, reprinted 1969)
*"Der arme Verschwender" (1936, reprinted 1965)
*"Der Verführer" (1937).
*"Der Augenzeuge" (published posthumously in 1963); published as "Ich, der Augenzeuge" because of copyright proceedings about Alain Robbe-Grillet's "Le Voyeur" which was published under the same title

Reference

* [http://aeiou.iicm.tugraz.at/aeiou.encyclop.w/w341569.htm profile] De icon
* [http://golm.rz.uni-potsdam.de/Seghers/marseille/ewbio.htm Bio] De icon