author
Hans Kaltneker
1895–1919
An Austrian writer of rare intensity, he packed poetry, stories, and plays into a life cut short at just 24. His work is often linked with Austrian Expressionism and carries the charge of talent interrupted too soon.
1 Audiobook
Die Liebe: Novelle
by Hans Kaltneker
About the author
Born on February 2, 1895, in Temesvár in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Timișoara, Romania), he later moved with his family to Vienna, where he attended the Hietzing Gymnasium and began writing early. While still a student, he took part in a small literary circle with Paul Zsolnay and Hans Flesch-Brunningen, publishing poems and short prose in the magazine Das neue Land.
He is remembered as an Austrian dramatist, lyric poet, and storyteller, and is often described as an important Austrian voice of literary Expressionism. His writing career was brief but remarkably productive, and his work continued to circulate after his death, including in editions prepared by his friend Felix Salten.
Kaltneker died of tuberculosis on September 29, 1919, in Gutenstein, Lower Austria, when he was only 24. That early death has become part of how readers remember him: as a gifted young author whose promise was unmistakable, even in a very small body of work.