Born: 24 January 1888, Austria
Died: 29 August 1960
Country most active: Germany, United States
Also known as: Hedwig Baum, Hedwig Lert, Vicki Prels, Vicki Prels-Baum, Frau Lorl, Vicky/Wicki/etc.
The following bio was written by Emma Rosen, author of On This Day She Made History: 366 Days With Women Who Shaped the World and This Day In Human Ingenuity & Discovery: 366 Days of Scientific Milestones with Women in the Spotlight, and has been republished with permission.
Vicki Baum was a renowned Jewish writer known for her impressive literary career. Despite facing personal challenges, including her mother’s mental illness and her father’s tragic death in 1942 during the Hungarian occupation, Baum pursued her artistic journey. Initially, she started as a musician, mastering the harp and studying at the Vienna Conservatory.
Later, she transitioned into journalism as a journalist for the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung magazine in Berlin. Baum’s career as a writer began after the birth of her first son, and her first book, “Early Shadows: The Story of a Childhood,” was published when she was 31. She went on to write over 50 books, with at least ten adapted into motion pictures in Hollywood.
Vicki Baum displayed a unique interest in boxing during the late 1920s. She trained with Turkish prizefighter Sabri Mahir at his Berlin Studio for Boxing and Physical Culture. In her memoir “It Was All Quite Different,” she recounted her experiences as a “New Woman” in the traditionally male boxing domain, emphasizing her quest for independence and challenging gender stereotypes.
One of her most famous works is the 1929 novel “People at a Hotel” (“Menschen im Hotel”), which introduced the ‘hotel novel’ genre. This novel was adapted into a successful stage play in Berlin and won an Academy Award as the film “Grand Hotel” in 1932. Due to the rise of National Socialism in Germany, her works were banned in the Third Reich from 1935 onwards.
Baum’s career took her to the United States, where she settled in the Los Angeles area and worked as a screenwriter for ten years. She became an American citizen in 1938. Baum’s early works exemplify the New Objectivity movement in contemporary mainstream literature, especially her early ones. Despite facing a decline in her reputation following World War II, Vicki Baum continued to make a lasting impact on the literary world until her death from leukemia in Hollywood, California, in 1960 at the age of 72.