author
Arnold von der Passer
1851–1917
Best known under a pen name, this German engineer-turned-writer imagined Europe centuries into the future in a late-19th-century speculative novel. His work mixes technical curiosity, social ideas, and a strikingly early vision of future history.
1 Audiobook
Mene tekel! Eine Entdeckungsreise nach Europa
by Arnold von der Passer
About the author
Writing as Arnold von der Passer, Franz Lewy Hoffmann was a German engineer and author born in Dresden on June 28, 1851, and he died in Meran on October 17, 1917. Reference sources identify Arnold von der Passer as his pseudonym, and his surviving reputation today rests mainly on a small but intriguing body of writing.
He is especially remembered for the 1893 novel Mene Tekel!: Eine Entdeckungsreise nach Europa, a speculative work that looks far ahead into Europe’s future. Science-fiction reference works note the book for its long-range historical imagination and for the way it frames future Europe through a voyage of discovery, giving modern readers a glimpse of how ambitious late-19th-century future fiction could be.
Hoffmann also appears in literary and library records as the author of works beyond fiction, including writing connected with the poet Hermann von Gilm. Taken together, the record suggests a technically minded writer with broad cultural interests, moving between engineering, literary study, and early speculative storytelling.