Ödön von Horváth
Edmund Josef von Horváth (9 December 1901, Sušak, Rijeka, Austria-Hungary – 1 June 1938, Paris France) was an Austro-Hungarian playwright and novelist who wrote in German, and went by the name of "nom de guerre" Ödön von Horváth. He was one of the most critically admired writers of his generation prior to his untimely death. He enjoyed a series of successes on the stage with socially poignant and romantic plays, including "Revolte auf Côte 3018" (1927), "Sladek" (1929), "Italienische Nacht" (1930), "Hin und Her" (1934) and "Der Jüngste Tag" (1937). His novels include "Der ewige Spießer  (1930), Ein Kind Unserer Zeit" (1938) and "Jugend ohne Gott" (1938). Early life and education. Ödön von Horváth was the eldest son of an Austro-Hungarian diplomat of Hungarian origin from Slavonia, Edmund (Ödön) Josef Horváth, and Maria Lulu Hermine (Prehnal) Horváth, who was from an Austro-Hungarian military family. From 1908, Ödön attended elementary school in Budapest, and later attended the "Rákóczianum", where his education was in the Hungarian language. In 1909, his father was ennobled and assigned to Munich, unaccompanied. In 1913, Horváth attended secondary school in Pressburg and Vienna, where he learned German as a second language , and earned the "Matura" (secondary school diploma) then reunited with his parents at Murnau am Staffelsee; from 1919, Horváth studied at the Ludwig Maximilians University, in Munich. Later life and death. He started writing as a student, from 1920. Quitting university without a degree in early 1922, he moved to Berlin. Later, he lived in Salzburg and Murnau am Staffelsee in Upper Bavaria. In 1931, he was awarded, along with Erik Reger, the Kleist Prize. In 1933, at the beginning of the Nazi regime in Germany, he relocated to Vienna. Following Austria's Anschluss with Germany in 1938, Horváth emigrated  to Paris. Ödön von Horváth was hit by a falling branch from a tree and killed during a thunderstorm on the Champs-Élysées in Paris, opposite the "Théâtre Marigny", in June 1938. Ironically, only a few days earlier, von Horváth had said to a friend: "I am not so afraid of the Nazis...There are worse things one can be afraid of, namely things one is afraid of without knowing why. For instance, I am afraid of streets. Roads can be hostile to one, can destroy one. Streets scare me." And a few years earlier, von Horváth had written poetry  about lightning: "Yes, thunder, that it can do. And bolt and storm. Terror and destruction." Ödön von Horváth was buried in Saint-Ouen cemetery in northern Paris. In 1988, on the 50th anniversary of his death, his remains were transferred to Vienna and reinterred at the Heiligenstädter Friedhof. Literary themes. Important topics in Horváth's works were popular culture, politics and history. He especially tried to warn of the dawn of fascism and its dangers. Among Horváth's more enduringly popular works, "" ("Youth Without God") describes the youth in Nazi Germany from a disgruntled teacher's point of view, who  initially is an opportunist, but is helpless against the racist and militaristic Nazi propaganda that de-humanizes his pupils. The title of his novel "Ein Kind unserer Zeit" ("A Child of Our Time") was used in English by Michael Tippett for his oratorio (1939–1941), composed during World War II. Bibliography. Balme, Christopher B., "The Reformation of Comedy Genre Critique in the Comedies of Odon von Horvath" University of Otago, Dunedin 1985