Robert Neumann (1) (1897–1975)

Robert Neumann was born in Vienna, Austria, to a family of Jewish ancestry. He studied chemistry and literature in Vienna, and obtained a Ph.D. with a thesis on Heinrich Heine. After losing money in the post-World War I Depression, he worked at various jobs, including seaman. In 1919, he married Stefanie Grünwald, with whom he had a son. He published some early poetry in 1919 and 1923, and established his literary reputation with the satire collection Mit fremden Federn (With Borrowed Plumes) in 1927. He quickly published other works, including the anti-Nazi novels Sintflut (1929) and Die Macht (Mammon, 1932), and another book of parodies, Unter falscher Flagge (Under False Flag, 1932). In addition, he lectured and worked as a literary critic for German-language periodicals. His books were banned and burned by the German Nazi regime in 1933 and that year he left Austria for exile in the UK. In 1936 he wrote the screenplay for the British film Abdul the Damned. After the Anschluss (annexation) of Austria by Germany in 1938, he organized the Free Austrian PEN Club in London to help writers threatened by the Nazis to leave their country. After the start of World War II, he was interned for a few months as an "enemy alien." Beginning with Scene in Passing in 1942, he published three novels in his adopted language of English. As an editor and part owner of a publishing house, he published translations that introduced the British public to German writers in exile such as Arnold Zweig and Heinrich Mann. In 1947, he was named honorary president of the revived Austrian PEN Club. After divorce from his first wife, he remarried to Lore Franziska Stern (Rolly Becker), a German writer and translator, and then to Evelyn Hengerer, a dancer known as Mathilde Walewska, with whom he had another son. After 1958, he lived in Switzerland, where he continued to work as a novelist, political journalist and literary critic, producing several works on the Holocaust. In 1960, he married his fourth wife, Helga Heller. He wrote an autobiography, Mein altes Haus in Kent, published in 1957.