The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-10-27
LITERARY GOSSIP
 OF TIE OLD WORLD Famous Authors Birthplace
 Declines to Honor Him WRITERS IN PRISON Literature Is as Thorny Path in
WRITERS IN PRISON
Literature Is as Thorny a Path in Hungary as in Russia-Viennese Novelist Granted Ebner-
 Eschenbach Literary Prize
By BERNARD ASTON.


 Berlin, October Special. )-Ger- celebrate the fiftieth birthday of Ger hart Hauptmann, which falls on No- vember| Is. The small town of Salz- brunn, where Hauptmann was born in 1862. Is the only dissentient. Most of the town fathers were originally in favor of presenting Hauptmann with a gorgeous album, containing views of Salzbrunn and environs, and valued at the high figure of $4.75. But a strong minority foiled this plan
 Hauptmann, they protested. had never done anything for salzbrunn. therefore he could not be considered a good poet" When tho pro-gift fac ton asked what Hauptmann could pos sibly have done for Salzbrunn, the anti-gift men said that a real poet would have built a summer house in the park or given the town an ad- vertisement which would bring visitors This argument conquered. The album worth SAYS Is to be withheld; but any real poet can have it by giving Salz- brunn an advertisement.
 Critics, including the Austrian novel, ist Peter Rosegger, are Tn raptures over the posthumous poems of a young student named Ernst Coll. Coll when studying at Graz university killed him window. He left small number of original and extraordinary beautiful poems. Dr. Rosegger has published a few of them. One of them, "Abschied'' Farewell" was written immediate ly before Coils death. Good judges say that they are the finest lyrical poems written since Heine's days. An edition IS promised.
 Literature is as thorny a path in Hungary as in Russia. In Debreczil, the German Hung garian poet Arnold has been sent to jail for three months for sedition against the Hungarian state. His offense was small volume in which he said Germans have ruled all Europe and may rule it again." At Neusatz in south Hungary a German named Hess has been given four months for buying and reading Adam Mueller's Twilight of the Gods a book which describes bitterly the po- litical and social conditions of modern Hungary. The German literary papers are making angry protests
 Grand Duke Nikolai Michailovitch of Russia Is deep in the new history of Alexander l. He is writing 1t 10 correct the blunders. as he calls them, of the historian Schilder. of the novel, ist Dmitri Merezhkowski: and other writers on that epoch. The grand duke has just managed to save the Rus sian literary fund from suppression. The fund exists to help literary men. It has always been suspected M. Stolypin closed 1t temporarily on sus- picion that it had given money to po- litically doubtful persons. Now his suc- cessor M Maharoff, proposes to close il altogether. The grand duke has given his personal guarantee that the fund Is not meddling in politics, and he has managed to save it. For time, anyhow
 Emile Mataja, the Viennese novel, ist who writes under the pseudonym, "G. Marriott" has been granted the Ehner- Echenbach literary prize. Emilie Mataja, who was born in Vienna in 1855, has lived a life of strong soclal conflict. Her first book, The liar tenberg Family" published In 1888, dealt with the oppositions and con flicts of interest which arise in a mod
 
 shrinking love of truth.
 The Ebner- Eschenbach prize is a minor Nobel prize. It was founded in 1910 on the eighteenth birthday of Frau Ebner- -Eschenbach born Baroness Dubsky, who Is considered the great est living German woman writer and the greatest epic poetess in German literature. By birth Frau Ebner- Echenbach is a Moravian Szech. 
 A. O. Weber, the satirical versifier, is the most ltigious, most prosecuted man in literary history. He has had 32 lawsuits and four short terms of imprisonment during the last four years. Herr Weber increased his fame by marrying in London Frau " Schoen- ebeck, the heroine of the famous AL lcnstein military murder case He aft erward stated that he did not know whom he was marrying. Weber is a clever and not very proper writer. Most of his lawsuits have arisen out of his matrimonial affairs, and out of the fact that Frau Weber -Schoenebeclx s large fortune has been placed in chan cery. Weber's latest exploit is to get into Jail for charging editors with talk ing bribes
 furious storm is raging in Italy over the novel. "Oltri Midi" of Rosalsa Gwis Adami The novel is bold in cursion in a reactionary spirit Into the women's question. Signora Adami rep resents women as having no aim or use except as housewives and mothers. The men,' she says, represent intel lect; the women feeling" "Oltri 1 Nidi'' has called forth numerous protests. One is from Mathilde Serao, Italy's greatest living woman writer, who in the Naples "Il Guorna" defends "wom- an the creator. the doer. the in spirer."
 Alfred H. Fried, the Austrian peace writer, is being liberally honored by his countrymen. Last year Fried was given the Nobel prize for his services to peace. Now Austrians arc acclaim ing him. Professor Lammasch. who is q member of The Hague permanent