Ernst Lothar was born in Brünn, Austria-Hungary (now Brno in the Czech Republic) in 1890 and died in Vienna in 1974. He was a writer, theater director, and producer. In addition to The Vienna Melody, first published in the US in 1944 as The Angel with the Trumpet, his best-known works are The Prisoner and Beneath Another Sun. He was married to the Austrian actress Adrienne Gessner.
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Ernst Lothar
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It is 1889 Vienna. A world-famous piano-maker leaves a will, specifying that his heirs, if they are to receive their inheritance, must live together in the palatial family home. The house is rapidly converted into luxury apartments, where gripping incidents in the lives...— Daily Mail Online, Sep 3 2015![]()
Ernst Lothar, who fled Austria and settled in California after the 1938 Anschluss, was a writer, director and producer who married an actress. Small wonder, then, that much of his novel “The Vienna Melody” (first published in the United States in 1944) takes place in what...— The Washington Post, Aug 5 2015![]()
Review: 'The Vienna Melody,' by Ernst Lothar; family dissolves with Austria in 1930s FICTION: The fragmenting of an Austrian family in the 1930s mirrors the political upheaval in that country. First published in English in 1944, Ernst Lothar’s “Vienna Melody”...— Minneapolis Star Tribune, Jul 9 2015![]()
Christopher Alt makes the finest pianos in Vienna. He is very rich. His family thrives. Just one problem: his will insists that they all live in the same house.— The Irish Times, Jul 5 2015
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