Raoul Auernheimer (1876–1947)

Raoul Auernheimer was born in Vienna, Austria. His parents were Charlotte (Büchler), a Hungarian Jew, and Johann Wilhelm Auernheimer, a German businessman. After receiving his Abitur, Auernheimer studied law at the University of Vienna, where he earned a doctorate in 1900. Under the aegis of his mother's cousin Theodor Herzl, Auernheimer became a journalist with the Neue Freie Presse, Vienna's leading newspaper. His theater reviews regularly appeared on the front page during the years 1906 to 1938. At the same time, he wrote novels, short stories, and essays under his own name and under the pseudonyms Raoul Heimern and Raoul Othmar. His plays, mostly light comedies, were performed frequently in Austria and Germany. In 1922, he became chairman of the Austrian PEN Club, serving until 1927, and then was vice-president. During Nazi Germany's Anschluss (annexation) of Austria in March 1938, Auernheimer was among the first prominent citizens of Vienna to be arrested. He was deported to the concentration camp at Dachau, where he spent five months at hard labor before being released through the intervention of friends and the American chargé d'affaires in Berlin, on condition that he leave Austria. He emigrated to the USA with his family and settled first in New York City and then in Hollywood, California. There he wrote biographies of Prince Metternich and of the Austrian playwright Franz Grillparzer. Auernheimer's autobiography, Das Wirtshaus zur verlorenen Zeit (The Tavern at Lost Time), was published posthumously in 1948. His correspondence with his friend Arthur Schnitzler, which spanned the years 1906-1931, was published in a volume with Auernheimer's aphorisms in 1972.