Background
Baum was born in Vienna on January 24, 1888.
(A grand hotel in the center of 1920s Berlin serves as a m...)
A grand hotel in the center of 1920s Berlin serves as a microcosm of the modern world in Vicki Baum’s celebrated novel, a Weimar-era best seller that retains all its verve and luster today.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1590179676/?tag=2022091-20
1929
(Vicki Baum's evocative historical novel recounts the live...)
Vicki Baum's evocative historical novel recounts the lives of peasants and nobles in colonial Bali, reared against a backdrop of bloodshed and cultural invasion. Dutch imperialism brings upheaval and revolution to the beautiful island, and the Balinese rebel in what would become a powerful and poignant example of symbolic resistance. A Tale from Bali culminates with the historic Battle of Badung, in which thousands of Balinese soldiers, clothed in white and armed only with daggers, threw themselves upon the merciless efficiency of the Dutch guns.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/9625935029/?tag=2022091-20
Baum was born in Vienna on January 24, 1888.
She was educated at a music school and made her first appearance as a harpist at the age of eleven. She played in various theater orchestras in Vienna for the next several years.
At the age of eighteen she married a writer, but they soon separated and she moved to Germany, where she continued playing the harp and taught music. She met the conductor Richard Lert while playing for the Darmstadt orchestra, but when she married him in 1916, she gave up her musical career.
Always a compulsive writer, she published her first story under a pseudonym when she was fourteen. Her first book, "Falling Star", was published only after a friend accidentally discovered her manuscripts in 1920.
In 1921 she began working as an editor for the Ullstein publishing house. Some of her novels were later serialized in illustrated weeklies also published by Ullstein. In 1928, she published "Helen Willfür", this was followed in 1929 by "Menschen in Hotel" ("Grand Hotel"), which made her internationally famous.
"Grand Hotel" was staged as a play, first in Berlin and then all over Europe and the United States, published as a novel in English, and made into a successful film in the United States starring Greta Garbo.
She visited New York in 1931, planning to stay for two weeks and see the play, but instead decided to remain, bring her family over, and settle
in California.
In 1938 she became an American citizen. She continued to write in German, but with the advent of the Nazi regime in 1933, her works were banned in Germany and began to be published in Amsterdam. Altogether she published twenty-five novels.
She is praised particularly for her intense emotional portrayals, which made her characters larger than life, and for her vibrant style, which presented a kaleidoscopic view of their interrelated lives.
(Set against the backdrop of the Dutch invasion of Bali ju...)
(A grand hotel in the center of 1920s Berlin serves as a m...)
1929(Vicki Baum's evocative historical novel recounts the live...)