author
Ernst Weiss
1882–1940
A doctor by training and a novelist by instinct, this Austrian writer brought sharp psychological insight to stories shaped by exile, war, and the political darkness of his era. He is best remembered today for The Eyewitness, a novel long associated with the rise of Hitler.
2 Audiobooks
Die Verdorrten
by Ernst Weiss
Der Fall Vukobrankovics
by Ernst Weiss
About the author
Born in Brno in 1882, he studied medicine in Prague and Vienna and worked as a physician before devoting himself more fully to literature. His life moved between medicine and writing, and that medical background helped give his fiction its close attention to minds under pressure.
He was part of the wider Central European literary world of the early 20th century and is often linked with Franz Kafka and the Prague circle. His novels explore identity, power, fear, and moral breakdown, with The Eyewitness becoming his best-known work.
As a Jewish Austrian writer, he was forced into exile after the Nazi rise to power and spent his final years in Paris. He died there in 1940, shortly after German forces entered the city, and his work has since been rediscovered as an important voice of European modern literature.