Das Haus der Träumer; Indische Flamme; Kronprinz Rudolf. Das Leben eines merkwürdigen Mannes. These are but a few of the works from the prolific pen of Viennese writer Erwin Weill, an oeuvre whose creation was abruptly cut short by the National Socialist regime and whose creator lost his life at the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1945. Erwin Weill also taught at the State Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, now the mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna.
Origins and Literary Successes
Erwin Weill was born in Vienna to Irma (née Heim) and Sigmund Weill on 2 November 1885. Following graduation from a commercial school, he first studied art history in Zurich before pursuing further studies in London and Munich. Weill published his first volume of poetry as a 24-year-old in 1909. He started writing for the newspaper Neues Wiener Journal in 1913, and in 1920 there began a period of rich literary output: alongside poetry collections and novellas, he authored numerous mainly historical and biographical novels—and multiple poems of his were also set to music. Among the best-known such works from this period is the popular song “Da draußen in der Wachau” (1921, music: Ernst Arnold), whose refrain extolls the Wachau region and romantic love. Regarding Weill’s novel In einem kühlen Grunde. Der Roman des jungen Eichendorff, the journal Moderne Welt published a review in 1926 that concluded with the following words: “Nobody will want to put down this pure, noble book, which shall retain its timelessness beyond all the aberrations of our present day. Every German must read it.” But just 19 years later, the recipient of this praise was to perish at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Alongside his activities as an author, Erwin Weill also worked in the Viennese theatrical scene as a dramaturge, a stage director, and an artistic co-director of the short-lived Modernes Theater as well as in radio. In 1928, Weill was awarded the qualification needed to teach literary history—and it was around this time that he also began giving tours to various sights in Vienna: he first did so as part of the drama courses offered by the Komödie (successor to the Modernes Theater) and later on as part of a course offered by the private conservatory Neues Wiener Konservatorium.
“Artistic versatility married to a particularly strong sense of musicality and formal beauty are significant characteristics essential to Erwin Weill’s poetic output,” wrote journalist Lothar Ring in the weekly print publication Radio Wien.
Erwin Weill at the mdw
In 1933, Weill began giving lectures for the Volkstümliche Kurse [Popular Education Courses] offered to the general public by what is now the mdw. The summer semester of 1936 then saw him begin teaching a course at our institution entitled “A Survey of Austrian Artistic and Cultural Locations”.
Due to his Jewish family background (the family had, by that time, converted to Catholicism), Weill was “put on leave” effective 15 March 1938—as one finds stated in the annual report on that academic year. In actual fact, the affected instructors had been ordered to apply for leave themselves. Weill’s contract was terminated as of the end of July 1938, though a formal error entailed that final termination of the employment relationship only occurred at the end of March 1939. At that point in time, Weill—who had given up his apartment and moved in with his mother at the end of March 1938—was no longer in the country, having fled to Prague, Czechoslovakia at the end of August 1938.
Victim of the Shoah
Erwin Weill was deported from Prague to the Theresienstadt concentration camp (in Terezín, then-Czechoslovakia) on 30 November 1941. On 9 January 1942, he was transferred from there to the ghetto in Riga, Latvia and then to the ghetto in Kauen (today’s Kaunas), Lithuania. A transport that departed from there on 29 July 1944 then brought him to the Dachau concentration camp on 1 August, following which he was ultimately taken to the Auschwitz concentration camp (in today’s Oświęcim, Poland) on 25 October. An eyewitness report documents Erwin Weill’s death there, his strength entirely depleted by the strain to which he had been subjected, in early 1945. His father had already died in 1915, while his mother and brother Otto (*1893) also fell victim to the Shoah.
By Doris Piller after Erwin Strouhal’s biography of Erwin Weill in: Gedenkbuch für die im Nationalsozialismus verfolgten Angehörigen der mdw – Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien, vol. 2, Studien zur Geschichte der mdw – Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien, 2023.
