Otto Erich Hartleben

Among his youthful acquaintances there were Karl Henckel, Arthur Gutheil and the future industrialist and politician Alfred Hugenberg and together they published a volume of poetry Quartett in 1886.

Giving up his legal studies, he returned to Berlin where he lived as a freelance writer, eventually moving to Munich in 1901.

After the death of his grandfather in 1893, Hartleben inherited 80,000 marks and on 2 December married his lifelong companion, ex-waitress “little mop” Selma Hesse.

Here he founded in 1903 the Halkyone Academy for the Pure Sciences, which included among its members Peter Behrens, Otto Julius Bierbaum, Franz Blei, Gerhart Hauptmann, Alfred Kubin, Emil Orlik and Ferdinand Pfohl, and which boasted just two rules: "§ 1.

He also co-produced the weekly journal Die Jugend (“Youth”), in which he made humorous jibes at contemporary society and its morals.