Egon Friedell

[1] Friedell was the second child of Jewish parents, Moriz Friedmann and Karoline (née Eisenberger), who were running a silk manufactory in Mariahilf.

After his father's death in 1889, Friedell lived with his aunt in Frankfurt am Main, where he would attend school, until he was expelled for unruly behaviour three years later.

After graduation, he enrolled in Heidelberg University to study under the historian of philosophy and follower of Hegel, Kuno Fischer.

Children have the right instincts: they know that life is not serious, and treat it is a game..." In the following issue he published Die Lehrmittel and Das schwarze Buch, which was co-authored with Peter Altenberg.

[1] There, he staged plays by August Strindberg, Frank Wedekind and Maurice Maeterlinck and brought them to the audience in Vienna for the first time.

Between 1908 and 1910 Friedell worked as the artistic director of the Cabaret Fledermaus [de], named after the Johann Strauss operetta.

Most pieces were written either by Peter Altenberg or jointly by Friedell and Alfred Polgar, who were nicknamed the "Polfried AG".

[6] Fritz Lang described his impressions of the Fledermaus: "There, amid Jugendstil decor, Kokoschka mounted his Indian fairy tale "Des getupfte Ei" ["The Dotted Egg"] on slides, writer Alfred Polgar [...] read his short prose and caustic commentary, and Friedell and other authors of rising repute presented their sketches and short plays.

The parody Goethe im Examen, written jointly Alfred Polgar, in which he also played the leading role, made him famous in German speaking countries and got mentioned in the Sunday Times.

Fischer, who had expected something light, was unsatisfied with Friedell's analysis and critique of culture titled Ecce poeta, and the book was not promoted in any way.

Friedell was enthusiastic about the beginning of World War I, as were many of his contemporaries, and volunteered for military service but was rejected for physical reasons.

Between 1919 and 1924, Friedell worked as a journalist and theatre critic for various publishers including Die Schaubühne, Der Merker and Neues Wiener Journal.

[1] After 1927, health problems prevented any permanent commissions, and he worked as an independent essayist, editor and translator in Vienna.

[11] During the early 1920s, Friedell wrote the three volumes of his Cultural History of the Modern Age, which describes events from the Black Death to World War I in an anecdotal format.

Every trace of nobility, piety, education, reason is persecuted in the most hateful and base manner by a bunch of debased menials".

On the occasion of the Anschluss of Austria, anti-semitism was rampant: Jewish men and women were being beaten in the streets and their businesses and synagogues ransacked or destroyed.

Friedell told his close friend, Ödön von Horváth, in a letter written on 11 March: "I am always ready to leave, in every sense."

"[13] Friedell, of whom Hilde Spiel said "in him, the exhilarating fiction of the homo universalis rose once again", was interred in the protestant cemetery in Simmering in Vienna.