“Only conformity to the rules and achievement paid off in hard currency.” Later, in her somewhat subjective memoirs, she showed gratitude for this harsh upbringing, which she claimed had strengthened her character. She learned this lesson well and was motivated her whole life to earn her own money. Her father would have preferred to have had a son-he would have been called “Viktor”-and raised his daughter to be tough: she wasn’t allowed to cry and or have sweets, but was rewarded for good behavior or outstanding accomplishments with money. As a child Vicki longed for the love of her nervous, often absent and narcissistic mother and felt isolated and an outsider at school. She suffered from the contemporary malady “hysteria” among other things and spent several months in the sanatorium in Inzersdorf (where “Anna O.” was also hospitalized). Her mother, Mathilde Donath, came from a wealthy family and had entered into a marriage of convenience with the businessman Hermann Baum. Her childhood was marked by the illness of her depressed mother and the tyranny of her excentric, hypochondriac father. Translations from the German, including especially from Baum’s memoir, are my own.)īaum was the only child of well-to-do Jewish family in Vienna. Eine Biographie, as well as the article by Lynda King in the DLB and the essay by Katharina von Ankum. (The following sketch relies chiefly on the excellent new biography by Nicole Nottelmann, Die Karrieren der Vicki Baum. Moreover, the story of her life and work in three different countries is an impressive example of energy, tenacity and an overwhelming drive to remain self-sufficient. Baum’s literary career is a fascinating case study for the interaction of literature, marketing and reception (K 44). More recent scholarship, with its renewed interest in Weimar culture and in women’s literature, has begun to revise this view. In her memoir Es war alles ganz anders (1962 It Was All Quite Different, 1964), Vicki Baum ironically refers to herself as a “first-class writer of the second rank.” The best-selling author at the German publishing house Ullstein during the Weimar Republic (and later at Doubleday in the U.S.) was well aware of the high quality of her craft, but also disappointed that some of her works were not also acknowledged as “serious literature.” Made known the world over as the author of Menschen im Hotel (filmed in 1932 with Garbo and other stars as Grand Hotel), Baum never really transcended this early reputation despite dozens more novels over the course of her lifetime, and she was long dismissed or ignored as an author of “Trivialliteratur” (popular fiction).

Name variants: Hedwig Baum Hedwig Lert Vicki Prels Vicki Prels-Baum Frau Lorl other spellings of her first name (Vicky, Wicki …)

Menschen im Hotel by Vicki Baum