Sebastian Brunner

In the revolutionary year, 1848, he founded the Wiener Kirchenzeitung, which he edited until 1865, and in which he satirised what he saw as the Josephinist bondage of the Church.

He wrote some ascetical books and many volumes of sermons, also a biography of Clemens Maria Hofbauer, the patron saint of Vienna.

Some of his writings in the Kirchenzeitung were described as antisemitic, and this was the subject of libel cases which he launched against Ignaz Kuranda and Heinrich Graetz.

His books of travel dealing with Germany, France, England, Switzerland, and especially Italy, include observations on men and manners, art and culture, and most of all on religion, and are thus connected closely with his apologetic and controversial writings.

In his later years he turned his satirical pen against what he saw as the undiscriminating worship of modern German literary celebrities.