(Here is the story of Elisabeth, the divine drudge and of ...)
Here is the story of Elisabeth, the divine drudge and of the little town of Lohwinkel, where humdrum life is suddenly interrupted by four enchanting strangers marooned there by accident.
(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.
(Set against the backdrop of the Dutch invasion of Bali ju...)
Set against the backdrop of the Dutch invasion of Bali just over a century ago, and the resulting "mass suicides" of the Balinese royalty, the moving story unfolds of the peasant Pak and his family and friends, and the tragedy that is their shared fate.
Written within living memory of the bloody events called the puputan (the "ending"), Love and Death in Bali is the story of a passionate yet peaceful and deeply spiritual people who defy the Dutch imperial forces through an act that would bring them certain death—and certain rebirth.
The looting of a Chinese trading ship gives the Dutch colonial forces the perfect excuse to intervene in island affairs, but they encounter astonishing resistance. In the battle of Badung, wave upon wave of Balinese clothed in white ceremonial garb charged into the blazing Dutch guns, kris daggers in hand, prepared to die. Who among them will survive, and how will their lives be forever changed?
Love and Death in Bali, first published in German in 1937, is considered by many to be the finest novel ever written about this island paradise where everyone, regardless of caste or position, is woven into the fabric of an ancient culture, connected by customs and, above all, by strong religious beliefs. now reissued in a completely re-edited edition under its original title, with an introduction by anthropologist and award-winning author Nigel Barkley.
(Vicki Baum, author of the acclaimed Grand Hotel, visited ...)
Vicki Baum, author of the acclaimed Grand Hotel, visited Shanghai in 1937. Her many friends there provided her with a wealth of information about China's convoluted politics, and the secret life and unique personalities of Shanghai--material she used as the basis of Shanghai '37. The hotel depicted in the novel was the Cathay, which, on August 14, 1937, following the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, was attacked by a bomb. This incident, known as "Bloody Saturday," caused considerable damage and the deaths of many people. It forms the climax of Shanghai '37, a story that follows the lives of nine people to Shanghai and the hour of their death. This book, the second of Baum's "hotel" novels, was first published in America in 1939.
(Ever since her childhood in Vienna, Katja Milenkaya had b...)
Ever since her childhood in Vienna, Katja Milenkaya had belonged to the world of ballet. it was a world of paradox- black shadows and white-hot lights, warm laughter and icy despair, intoxicating trimph and heartbreaking oblivion.
(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. Among the guests of the hotel is Doctor Otternschlag, a World War I veteran whose face has been sliced in half by a shell. Day after day he emerges to read the paper in the lobby, discreetly inquiring at the desk if the letter he’s been awaiting for years has arrived. Then there is Grusinskaya, a great ballerina now fighting a losing battle not so much against age as against her fear of it, who may or may not be made for Gaigern, a sleek professional thief. Herr Preysing also checks in, the director of a family firm that isn’t as flourishing as it appears, who would never imagine that Kringelein, his underling, a timorous petty clerk he’s bullied for years, has also come to Berlin, determined to live at last now that he’s received a medical death sentence. All these characters and more, with all their secrets and aspirations, come together and come alive in the pages of Baum’s delicious and disturbing masterpiece.
Hedwig ("Vicki") Baum was an Austrian-born writer. Many of her novels were made into films and musicals.
Background
Hedwig Baum was on January 24, 1888, in Vienna, Austria, the only child of Herman Baum and Mathilde Donat. She was named Hedwig but called Vicki for Victor because her father wanted a boy. Although her family provided the creature comforts of a Jewish bourgeois home, her early life was oppressive. Her mother was institutionalized as a psychotic for much of Vicki's childhood; her father, a cold, overbearing bookkeeper, frequently returned to his parents' home. Vicki escaped into her own world of fantasy and read voraciously - at the risk of constant recrimination from her father. In her autobiography she recalled her childhood as "a hell too hot to bear. "
Education
Hedwig Baum attended grammar school in Vienna and studied the harp at the Vienna Konservatorium from 1904 to 1910, making her first concert appearance at eleven.
Career
Vicki’s life revolved around an intimate group of young intellectuals who frequented the coffeehouses of Vienna, and her career as harpist centered at the Deutsches Theater and at the Vienna Konzert Verein (later the Vienna Symphony Orchestra). She also taught at the musical high school in Darmstadt, Germany. In 1906 Vicki Baum married Max Prels, a poet. They enjoyed a casual Bohemian life, but constant financial troubles and the strain of launching an unsuccessful literary magazine ended the marriage four years later. During this period she published several short stories under her husband's name in Monatshefte, a popular German magazine.
On July 17, 1916, at the height of her musical career, Vicki married Richard Johannes Lert, conductor of the orchestra she played with in Darmstadt. The Lerts led a nomadic life, because of her husband's musical positions in Kiel, Hanover, Mannheim, and Berlin. She gave up her musical career to raise two sons and often wrote late at night while they slept. During World War I two Baum books were published by Erich Reiss. One was the story of her childhood, Fruehe Schatten ("Early Shadows, " 1919), a partial attempt at self-analysis. Verlag Ullstein of Berlin published her first novel in paperback, Der Eingang zur Bohne ("Stage Entrance"), in 1920. She received 5, 000 marks and first prize in a contest for Der Weg ("The Road, " 1925); one of the judges was Thomas Mann.
From 1926 to 1931 Baum edited magazines issued by Ullstein, the largest publishing house in Germany, and also contributed to Ullstein periodicals, including Dame, a woman's magazine similar to Vogue. Some of her early novels appeared in these magazines in serialized form. After a fourteen-hour day of editing, Baum wrote late at night in quiet and solitude. At the time, Berlin was a city of intellectual ferment and cultural and political diversity. These were the "happiest, most interesting and most fruitful years" of her life. Her novel Stud. chem. Helene Willfuer ("Helen Willfur, Chemistry Student"), published in 1928, was the story of an innocent young girl's struggle in amoral Berlin of the 1920's and was adapted for the screen.
Baum's best-known novel, Menschen im Hotel ("Grand Hotel, " 1929), was written in six weeks and first appeared in installments in the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung. An immediate success, it was soon dramatized and initially produced under Max Reinhardt's auspices at the Theater am Nollendorfplatz in Berlin in 1929. Translated into English as Grand Hotel, it was a best-seller in the United States and a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. In November 1930 the play began a thirteen-month run in New York at the National Theater, grossing more than one million dollars. As a movie (1932) it starred Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, John and Lionel Barrymore, Wallace Beery, and Jean Hersholt. Later it inspired the Hollywood musical Weekend at the Waldorf (1945) as well as the stage musical At the Grand (1958) starring Paul Muni. At the height of her career Baum came to see a Broadway performance of Grand Hotel.
Baum and her family soon moved to southern California, where she wrote film scripts for various movie companies, including Paramount and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, in addition to two unsuccessful Broadway plays, Divine Drudge (1933) and Summer Night (1939). Her husband became conductor of the Pasadena Symphony Orchestra. However, she considered her Hollywood screen writing a failure. In 1938 she became an American citizen. She died of leukemia in Hollywood, California.
Achievements
Vicki Baum was considered one of the first modern bestselling authors who introduced the genre of the 'hotel novel'. During her carrier she published more than 50 books, at least ten of which were adapted as motion pictures in Hollywood.
Vicki Baum's major books: Pause in the Dance (1926); Helene (1928); Grand Hotel (1929); Love and Death in Bali (1937); The Big Break (1939); It Began On Board 91940); The Weeping Wood (1943); Mortgage on Life (1946); Deer Warning (1951); It Was All Quite Different (1962), etc.
Small and slight, Baum weighed less than one hundred pounds. She dressed stylishly, neither smoked nor drank, but loved to dance.
Interests
Among Vicki's hobbies were boxing and gardening.
Connections
In 1906 Vicki Baum married Max Prels, a poet. In four years they divorced. On July 17, 1916, at the height of her musical career, Vicki married Richard Johannes Lert, conductor of the orchestra she played with in Darmstadt.
