Gustav Meyrink

Born Jan. 19, 1868, in Vienna; died Dec. 4, 1932, in Starnberg. Austrian writer.

Meyrink graduated from a business academy in Prague. In 1903 he began to write for the journal Simplicissimus. His short story collections The Hot-tempered Soldier (1903) and Orchids (1904) were reissued in the three-volume compendium The Middle-class German’s Magic Horn (vols. 1–3, 1909–13). Meyrink’s other short story collections include The Violet-colored Death (1913; Russian translation, 1923) and Bats (1916; Russian translation, 1923).

Meyrink’s works combine a passion for the mystical, grotesque, and fantastic with satirical parodies of bourgeois life, such as his novel The Golem (1915; Russian translation, 1922). In his later works, including the novel Angel From the West Window (1920), Meyrink completely departed from realism. His enthusiasm for the occult and theosophy is evident in On the Threshold of the Other World (1923).