Ernst Weiss

Dr Ernst Weiss (German: Weiß, August 28, 1882 – June 15, 1940) was an Austrian physician and author of Jewish descent. He is the author of Ich, der Augenzeuge (The Eyewitness), a novel dealing with the Hitler period.

Biography Ernst Weiss was born in Brünn, Moravia, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Brno in the Czech Republic) to the family of a prosperous Jewish cloth merchant. After his father died when he was four, he was brought up by his mother Berta, née Weinberg, who led him to art. he came to Prague to study medicine. In 1908 he finished his studies in Vienna and became a surgeon. He practiced in Bern, Vienna, and Berlin but he developed tuberculosis and tried to recover as a ship doctor on a trip to India and Japan in 1912. Weiss was in touch with other writers of the Prague Circle such as Franz Werfel, Max Brod, and Johannes Urzidil. In 1914 Weiss returned to Austria to start a military physician career. He served for the duration of World War I on the Eastern Front, ultimately earning a golden cross for bravery. He applied for, but did not receive, a grant from the American guild for German cultural freedom.

Weiss committed suicide on 14 June 1940 when German troops invaded the city. His attempt to deal with poison in his hotel room did not succeed immediately, but he died as a result only in the following night in a Paris hospital.

Based on thorough research on Hitler and his story at Pasewalk clinique psychologist David Lewis in his book The Man Who Invented Hitler tells also the story of Ernst Weiss and his book on Hitler using pseudonym A.H.

Work

His work is influenced by Sigmund Freud, his friend Franz Kafka, and authors of then-modern literary Expressionism. and the Adalbert Stifter prize Georg Letham. Arzt und Mörder (1931) Der Geisterseher (1934) Der Gefängnisarzt (1934, reprinted 1969) Der arme Verschwender (1936, reprinted 1965) Der Verführer (1937). Der Augenzeuge (published posthumously in 1963); published as Ich, der Augenzeuge because of copyright proceedings about Alain Robbe-Grillet's Le Voyeur which was published under the same title