Vicki Baum

Her mother Mathilde (née Donath) suffered from mental illness, and died of breast cancer when Vicki was still a child.

[2][3] Her father, described as "a tyrannical, hypochondriac" man, was a bank clerk who was killed in 1942 in Novi Sad (present-day Serbia) by soldiers of the Hungarian occupation.

Her first, short-lived marriage, in 1906, was to Max Prels, an Austrian journalist who introduced her to the Viennese cultural scene;[5] some of her first short stories were published under his name.

Although the studio was open to men and women, Baum writes in her memoir, It Was All Quite Different (1964), that only a few women (including Marlene Dietrich and Carola Neher) trained there: “I don’t know how the feminine element sneaked into those masculine realms, but in any case, only three or four of us were tough enough to go through with it.”[7]: 3  Positioning herself as a “New Woman,” she asserted her independence in the traditionally male domain of boxing and challenged old gender categories.

Punching the ball was okay, though, to develop a pretty mean straight left, a quick one-two; a woman never knew when she might have to defend herself, right?”[7]: 5  While training with Mahir, Baum mastered a rope-jumping routine that was designed for German heavyweight champion Franz Diener.

Her first book, Frühe Schatten: Die Geschichte einer Kindheit (Early Shadows: The Story of a Childhood, 1919), was published when she was 31.

[3] Baum is considered one of the first modern bestselling authors, and her books are seen as exemplifying New Objectivity within contemporary mainstream literature.

[3] It was made into a stage play in Berlin in 1929, directed by Max Reinhardt,[3] and an Academy Award winning film, Grand Hotel, in 1932.

Baum visited Mexico, China, Egypt and Bali in 1935;[5] and became close friends with the painter Walter Spies.