Hermann Broch (November 1, 1886 - May 30, 1951) was a 20th century Austrian writer, considered one of the major Modernists.

Life

He was born to a prosperous Jewish family and worked for some time in his family's factory, though he maintained his literary interests privately. He was acquainted with Robert Musil, Rainer Maria Rilke, Elias Canetti, Franz Blei and others. He commenced on a full-time literary career only around the age of 40.

With the annexation of Austria by the Nazis (1938), Broch was arrested, but a movement organized by friends - including James Joyce - managed to have him released and allowed to emigrate; first to Britain and then to the United States.

Hermann Broch died in 1951 in New Haven, Connecticut.

Work

His major work, The Death of Virgil (Der Tod des Vergils), which he began to write while imprisoned in a concentration camp, was first published in the U.S., in an English translation, in 1945. This great, difficult novel, in which reality and hallucination, poetry and prose are inextricably mingled, reenacts the last hours of life of the Roman poet Virgil, in the port of Brundisium (Brindisi), where he accompanied Augustus, his decision to burn his Aeneid, frustrated by the emperor, and his final reconciliation with his destiny.

Other important works by Broch are The Sleepwalkers (Die Schlafwandler, 1932), and The Innocents (Die Schuldlosen, 1950).

Bibliography

Selected titles translated into English:

• Die Schlafwandler: Ein Romantrilogie: Passenow; oder, Die Romantik - 1888, 1931; Esch; oder, Die Anarchie - 1903, 1931; Huguenau, oder, Die Sachlichkeit - 1918, 1932 - Sleepwalkers: A Trilogy
• Die unbekannte Grösse, 1933 - The Unknown Quantity
• Der Tod des Vergil, 1945 - The Death of Virgil (trans. by Jean Starr Untermeyer )
• Die Schuldlosen, 1950 - The Guiltless (trans. by Ralph Manheim )
• Short Stories, 1966
• Hofmanstahl und seine Zeit, 1974 - Hugo von Hofmanstahl and His Time
• Die Vierzauberung, 1976 - The Spell
• Geist and Zeitgeist: The Spirit in an Unspiritual Age, 2003

For a more complete listing, see the MLA bibliography

External links

• Excellent overview
• IN SEARCH OF THE ABSOLUTE NOVEL - 1985 review of The Sleepwalkers by Theodore Ziolkowski
• - Hermann Broch archive at Tale University
• Some Broch quotations
• Another review of The Sleepwalkers, with useful links
• Review of Geist and Zeitgeist
• Review of Death of Virgil
• A personal home page about Broch