author

Ernst Bernhard Joseph Theodor Schwitzky

b. 1884

Best known for an early 20th-century novel inspired by the Mona Lisa theft, this German-language writer also published a legal-historical study on George of Poděbrady’s European peace plan. Very little biographical detail appears to be readily documented online, which gives his surviving books an extra air of mystery.

1 Audiobook

Das Geheimnis der Gioconda: Das Tagebuch des Diebes

Das Geheimnis der Gioconda: Das Tagebuch des Diebes

by Ernst Bernhard Joseph Theodor Schwitzky

About the author

Project Gutenberg and Internet Archive both preserve Das Geheimnis der Gioconda: Das Tagebuch des Diebes, a German novel attributed to Ernst Bernhard Joseph Theodor Schwitzky and originally published in 1914. The story is tied to the famous disappearance of the Mona Lisa and presents the mystery through the diary of a thief, giving his work a lively place between popular fiction and headline-inspired storytelling.

A much earlier work, Der europäische Fürstenbund Georgs von Poděbrad: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Weltfriedensidee, was published in 1907 and is listed as the work of Dr. jur. Ernst Schwitzky. That suggests a writer with interests beyond fiction, reaching into legal and historical questions about European peace projects.

Beyond these publications, confirmed personal information is scarce in the sources I could find. Even so, the record that remains points to a versatile author whose name survives through a mix of historical scholarship and dramatic fiction.