Friedrich Wallisch
(1890-1969)
Bewildering Stories biography
Friedrich Wallisch was born in what was then Mährisch-Weißkirchen in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and is now Hranice in Northern Moravia (Czech Republic). He died in Vienna. His father was a well-to-do dentist and he served during World War I in the Royal and Imperial Navy in Albania. After 1918 he studied medicine and graduated with a medical degree in 1922.
He never actually worked as a doctor but founded a publishing house in Vienna in 1923 and dedicated himself thereafter to writing in a number of genres: poetry, essays, stories, biographies, travel guides and plays. He also wrote carefully and elegantly plotted novels. In 1929 he founded the Austrian-Albanian Society and in 1954 the Association for the Protection of Austrian Writers.
Although he briefly, in 1938, became a member of the Nazi party, he was found to be half-Jewish and his membership was terminated in 1941. “Das Bild der Martina” (“The Portrait of Martina”) was the final story in a collection entitled Die Rosenburse - Historische Novellen aus Österreich (“The Rose Hostel - Historical Tales from Austria”) published in Vienna in 1946.
Copyright © 2024 by Michael Wooff
