Hanns Heinz Ewers

Hanns Heinz Ewers (3 November 1871 – 12 June 1943) was a German actor, poet, philosopher, and writer of short stories and novels.

While he wrote on a wide range of subjects, he is now known mainly for his works of horror, particularly his trilogy of novels about the adventures of Frank Braun, a character modeled on himself.

Many were arrested and interned in prison camps by the British Navy; eventually, German volunteers often required false passports to reach Europe unmolested.

After the United States joined the war, he was arrested in 1918 as an "active propagandist," as the US government, as well as British and French intelligence agencies, asserted that Ewers was a German agent.

[3] This was followed in 1911 by Alraune, a reworking of the Frankenstein myth, in which Braun collaborates in creating a female homunculus or android by impregnating a prostitute with the semen from an executed murderer.

Ewers wrote numerous short stories, those in Nachtmahr ("Nightmare") largely concern "pornography, blood sport, torture and execution".

These included Die Ameisen, translated into English as The Ant People, Indien und ich, a travelogue of his time in India, and a 1916 critical essay on Edgar Allan Poe, to whom he has often been compared.

Ewers was one of the first critics to recognize cinema as a legitimate art form, and wrote the scripts for numerous early examples of the medium, most notably The Student of Prague (1913), a reworking of the Faust legend which also included the first portrayal of a double role by an actor on the screen.

Ewers was later commissioned by Adolf Hitler to write a biography of Wessel ("Horst Wessel- ein deutsches Schicksal"), which also was made into a movie.

During the last years of the Weimar Republic, Ewers became involved with the burgeoning Nazi Party, attracted by its nationalism, its Nietzschean moral philosophy, and its cult of Teutonic culture, and joined the NSDAP in 1931.

His last book Die schönsten Hände der Welt ("The most beautiful hands in the world") was published by the Zinnen Verlag (Munich, Vienna, Leipzig) in 1943.

Despite his great influence on 20th century fantasy and horror literature, Ewers remains out of favor in bourgeois literary circles (especially in the English-speaking world and Germany)[4] because of his association with the Nazis.

In March 2009, Side Real Press issued an English language collection of short stories including some newly translated material.

In 2016 Ajna Offensive published Markus Wolff's English translation of Ewers' 1922 novel Die Herzen der Könige (The Hearts of Kings).

[7] Ewers appears in Kim Newman's novel The Bloody Red Baron, as a predatory vampire who travels briefly with Edgar Allan Poe.