Arthur Schnitzler

Arthur Schnitzler (1862 to 1931) was an Austrian author and dramatist, and one of the most significant representatives of Viennese Modernism. Trained as a physician in Vienna, he gave up medicine for writing and produced psychological dramas and narratives that dissected the bourgeois life of the city around 1900. A member of the avant-garde group Young Vienna, he was the first to write German fiction in stream-of-consciousness narration, in the 1900 novella Lieutenant Gustl. He specialized in novellas and one-act plays, though he also wrote two full-length novels, and his best known works include the play Reigen and the novella Fräulein Else. His frank treatment of sexuality and his stand against antisemitism made his work controversial or banned in his time, and he kept a detailed diary from the age of seventeen until two days before his death.