Erika Mitterer (1906–2001)

Erika Mitterer was born in Vienna, Austria, the daughter of a railway architect and his wife. She attended a private girls' school and was an avid reader of world literature. In 1924, she trained to become a social worker and was assigned to posts in the Tyrol and other parts of Austria. In 1927, she traveled to Germany, where she befriended artists and writers. She worked as a translator at the 1928 International Social Worker Congress in Paris, and also translated poems by Anna de Noailles into German. Her first published work, the poetry collection Dank des Lebens (Thanks for Life), appeared in 1929. She completed her first major novel, Wir sind allen (We Are Alone) in 1934, but the Nazi regime made it impossible for her to publish it until after World War II. In 1937, she married Fritz Petrovsky, a lawyer, with whom she had three children. Her most famous novel, Der Fürst der Welt (The Prince of Darkness), ostensibly about life under the Inquisition in 16th-century Germany, was a barely concealed critique of Germany of her own time. It was published in Norway in 1940 to great success, After the war, she received numerous awards and prizes, including the Literaturpreis der Stadt Wien (City of Vienna Prize for Literature) in 1948. In 1950, some of the numerous letters in poems that she had exchanged with Rainer Maria Rilke were first published; the complete correspondence was not published until 2001. Erika Mitterer also wrote plays, including dramas and comedies. Today she has mostly fallen into obscurity. Her son Martin Petrovsky wrote two books about her life and work.