author
Oskar Baum
1883–1941
A blind Prague writer, music teacher, and critic, he moved in the same close literary circle as Franz Kafka and Max Brod. His life and work were shaped by sharp observation, Jewish intellectual life in Central Europe, and a deep connection to music.
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Zwei Erzählungen
by Oskar Baum
About the author
Born in Pilsen in 1883, he wrote in German and became part of Prague’s remarkable early-20th-century literary world. As a boy he lost his sight, later trained in music, and went on to work as a teacher, critic, and author. He is often remembered as one of the members of the Prague Circle alongside Franz Kafka, Max Brod, and Felix Weltsch.
His writing included novels, stories, plays, and criticism, and friends in that circle took his work seriously enough to share drafts and argue ideas with him. Accounts of his life consistently point to music as central to both his livelihood and his artistic identity, which helps explain the unusual blend of discipline and sensitivity readers often associate with him.
He died in Prague in 1941. Although he is not as widely known today as some of his famous contemporaries, he remains an important figure in German-language Jewish literature from Bohemia and in the cultural history of Kafka’s Prague.