author
Adolf Schwayer
1858–1922
Remembered as an Austrian writer who balanced literature with a long career in the railway service, he built a surprisingly wide body of work from life in Lower Austria and Linz. His writing ranged from poems and stories to stage plays, several of which were performed in his lifetime.
1 Audiobook
Weihnachtserzählungen
by Adolf Schwayer
About the author
Born on August 12, 1858, in Ketzelsdorf near Poysdorf in Lower Austria, Adolf Schwayer was the son of a miller. After attending commercial school, he briefly worked as a substitute teacher, then spent time in banking before entering the Austrian state railway service in Vienna in 1882. He later lived and worked in Linz, where he rose to the rank of railway inspector, and he died there on May 16, 1922.
Alongside his civil-service career, he wrote steadily and across many forms. Sources describe him as a dramatist, storyteller, and poet, with a large output that included hundreds of poems as well as prose and numerous plays. Among the works associated with him are Ostern, Bürgermeister Bojer, Die Sittennote, Die dunkle Macht, and Zur Lieb' und Treu', and several of his plays were staged in Linz.
Though he is less widely known today, Schwayer left enough of a mark that streets in Linz and Poysdorf were named for him, and his literary papers were preserved in the Upper Austrian literary archive at the Adalbert-Stifter-Institut. That surviving record suggests a writer who stayed deeply committed to literature even while working within the routines of public service.