Alexander Lernet-Holenia

Alexander Lernet-Holenia (1897–1976) was an Austrian poet, novelist, playwright, and screenwriter known for blending realism and fantasy in his works. Born in Vienna as Alexander Marie Norbert Lernet, he added his mother’s aristocratic surname after being adopted by her relatives in 1920.

He served as a lieutenant in World War I, during which he began writing poetry and became a protégé of Rainer Maria Rilke. Lernet-Holenia wrote psychological novels, often exploring unreal or otherworldly experiences within reality, as well as screenplays and recreational films.

During World War II, he was drafted for the Invasion of Poland, inspiring his novel Die Blaue Stunde (Mars im Widder), considered one of the few Austrian resistance novels. Though he worked in the film industry under the Third Reich, he maintained distance from Nazism and later avoided combat with the help of resistance networks.

After the war, his works were adapted into films, and he co-edited the cultural magazine Forum. In 1969, he was elected president of the Austrian PEN Club but resigned in protest over the Nobel Prize awarded to Heinrich Böll.

Originally Protestant, he converted to Catholicism in 1923. He lived in Vienna for most of his later life and became known as a conservative and aristocratic figure in Austrian literature. He died of lung cancer in 1976, shortly after publishing his final novel Die Beschwörung (The Conjuration).