Robert Michel (writer)

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Edith Barakovich : Robert Michel, around 1918
Anton Josef Trčka : Robert Michel (1926)

Robert Michel (born February 24, 1876 in Chaberschitz (Chabeřice), Kuttenberg district , Austria-Hungary , † February 12, 1957 in Vienna ) was an Austrian writer .

Life

Robert Michel came from a middle-class German-Bohemian family and was the son of an imperial administrator in Bohemia. He attended the German grammar school in Prague and entered the infantry cadet school there in 1890. During this time he often visited the theater and published his first prose and poetry in the Prager Tagblatt .

In 1895 Michel came to Vienna as a lieutenant . Here he met Leopold Andrian , with whom he entered into an intimate relationship and who introduced him to the authors of Junge Wien who frequented Café Griensteidl. Hugo von Hofmannsthal's friendship and support were of particular importance to him.

In 1898 Michel was transferred to Mostar in Herzegovina . This time there provided him with material for a number of stories and novels that portray the foreign Muslim world of the Balkans. From 1900 to 1908 Michel taught German and French at the cadet school in Innsbruck . There he married Eleonore Sniźek, with whom he would have three children. Working in the magazine Der Brenner developed an intensive friendship with its publisher Ludwig von Ficker .

From 1911 to 1914 he worked at the war archive in Vienna, in 1914 Michel worked in Vienna for the kuk war press quarter together with other well-known authors such as Franz Karl Ginzkey , Stefan Zweig and Alfred Polgar . In addition to war reporting, Michel wrote stories and novels during this period that were to be among his most successful, including The Houses on Džamija , for which he received the Kleist Prize . From 1915 to 1917 he was Adlatus of the Mission of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the occupied areas in Poland and for Galicia , from 1917 to 1918 he served at the front. In the last two months before the end of the war in 1918, Michel became director of the Burg- und Akademietheater in Vienna together with Hermann Bahr and Max Devrient . At the end of the war he gave up his profession as an officer.

From then on, Michel lived as a freelance writer in Vienna, but suffered from constant financial worries. For these same reasons he initially worked more in film than as a writer and was also active as a translator and editor of Slavic literature. In 1933 he took over a feature section selling the work of Austrian writers, but also of Hermann Hesse , to newspapers and magazines. He ran this agency together with Cäcilie Tandler until her death in 1946.

After Austria's annexation to the German Reich in 1938 , Michel contributed to the "Confession Book of Austrian Poets" (published by the Association of German Writers in Austria ), which enthusiastically welcomed the annexation.

A few last novels followed, which are set in the Bohemian Forest . In 1951 he received the Medal of Honor of the Federal Capital Vienna and the title of "Professor". Shortly afterwards Robert Michel suffered a stroke and died in Vienna in 1957. He was buried in the Grinzinger Friedhof (group 31, row 9, no. 12).

Honors

Works

Robert Michel is one of the forgotten Austrian writers of the 20th century. He mainly wrote prose which, in the typical spirit of an old Austrian officer, represents a supranational point of view and tries to mediate between the German and Slavic culture of the monarchy. His works are usually set in the Bohemian Forest. The depiction of the landscape also played a special role in Michel's novels, for which he was compared to Adalbert Stifter during his lifetime and which earned him the Adalbert Stifter Prize. Michel also received the State Prize of the Czechoslovak Republic for German Literature in Bohemia.

  • The veiled (novellas, 1907)
  • The stone man (novel 1909)
  • Mejrima (drama 1910)
  • Tales of Insects (1911)
  • The last weeping (story 1912)
  • Journeys in the Reichslanden (1912)
  • On the south-east bastion of the empire . Leipzig, Insel Verlag 1915 ( Austrian Library No. 11)
  • The houses on the Džamija (novel 1915)
  • Letters from a captain to his son (1916)
  • The white and the black Beg (comedy 1917)
  • Letters from a Landsturm lieutenant to women (1918)
  • Saint Candidus (Drama 1919)
  • God and the Infantryman (Legend 1920)
  • Jesus in the Bohemian Forest (novel 1927)
  • The beloved voice (novel 1928)
  • People in Flames (1929 story)
  • The castle of women (novel 1934)
  • From Hanswurst to the first man in the state (Potemkin novel 1935)
  • Crescent moon over the Narenta (novellas 1940)
  • Slavic Sages (1940)
  • Slovak fairy tales (1941, new and expanded 1947)
  • The Ringel Game (1943)
  • The eyes of the forest (novel 1946)
  • The Most High Woman (novel 1947)
  • The vanished star (story 1948)
  • The Wila (novel 1949)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Association of German writers Austria (ed.): Confession book of Austrian poets . Krystall Verlag, Vienna 1938

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Michel, Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian writer
DATE OF BIRTH February 24, 1876
PLACE OF BIRTH Chaberschitz (Chabeřice), Kuttenberg District , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH February 12, 1957
Place of death Vienna