author
Ernst Rosmer
1866–1949
A major playwright of the German-speaking stage around 1900, this Austrian-born writer published under a male pen name and helped create the fairy-tale world of Königskinder. Her life later took a devastating turn under Nazi persecution, and her memoir of Theresienstadt remains an important witness account.
1 Audiobook
Madonna: Novellen
by Ernst Rosmer
About the author
Born in Vienna in 1866 as Elsa Porges, she later became known in print as Ernst Rosmer. She grew up in Munich, was the daughter of musicologist Heinrich Porges, and built a successful literary career as a dramatist and writer in the German-speaking world.
Around the turn of the twentieth century, her plays were widely performed, and she became especially known for works such as Königskinder, the fairy drama that Engelbert Humperdinck turned into an opera. Writing under the name Ernst Rosmer, she moved through literary and artistic circles while creating dramas, poems, and prose.
Her later years were marked by persecution during the Nazi era. She was deported to Theresienstadt in 1942, survived, and afterward recorded those experiences in a memoir published after her death. She died in 1949, leaving behind both admired stage works and a powerful personal testimony.