15 Facts About Arthur Schnitzler

Arthur Schnitzler was an Austrian author and dramatist.

Arthur Schnitzler was born at Praterstrasse 16, Leopoldstadt, Vienna, capital of the Austrian Empire.

Arthur Schnitzler was the son of a prominent Hungarian laryngologist, Johann Schnitzler, and Luise Markbreiter, a daughter of the Viennese doctor Philipp Markbreiter.

In 1879 Schnitzler began studying medicine at the University of Vienna and in 1885 he received his doctorate of medicine.

Arthur Schnitzler began work at Vienna's General Hospital, but ultimately abandoned the practice of medicine in favour of writing.

On 26 August 1903, Arthur Schnitzler married Olga Gussmann, a 21-year-old aspiring actress and singer who came from a Jewish middle-class family.

Arthur Schnitzler died on 21 October 1931 in Vienna of a brain hemorrhage.

In 1938, following the Anschluss, his son Heinrich went to the United States and did not return to Austria until 1959; he is the father of the Austrian musician and conservationist Michael Arthur Schnitzler, born in 1944 in Berkeley, California, who moved to Vienna with his parents in 1959.

However, although Arthur Schnitzler was Jewish, Professor Bernhardi and Fraulein Else are among the few clearly identified Jewish protagonists in his work.

The film achieved considerable success in the English-speaking world, with the result that Arthur Schnitzler's play is better known there under its French title.

Arthur Schnitzler specialized in shorter works like novellas and one-act plays.

Arthur Schnitzler's works were called "Jewish filth" by Adolf Hitler and were banned by the Nazis in Austria and Germany.

In 1933, when Joseph Goebbels organized book burnings in Berlin and other cities, Arthur Schnitzler's works were thrown into flames along with those of other Jews, including Einstein, Marx, Kafka, Freud and Stefan Zweig.

Olga, Arthur Schnitzler's divorced wife, donated the documents when she had in fact no right to do so.

Thomas Trenkler wrote in an article in the newspaper, Kurier, that the acquisition of the documents by British forces was not legitimate and that the documents should be handed to Arthur Schnitzler's remaining family in 2015.