Wied, Martína

(pseudonym of Alexandrina Martína Augusta Schnabl; married name, Weisl). Born Dec. 10, 1882, in Vienna; died there Jan. 25, 1957. Austrian writer.

Wied received an education in philosophy and history at the University of Vienna. From 1938 to 1947 she taught in secondary schools in Scotland. A member of the Federation of Democratic Writers of Austria, she wrote the collections of poetry The Movement (1919) and Bridges to the Visible Distance (1952) and the dramas The Specter (1922), The Guest (1923), and The Mountain of Play (1924). In the novels Refuge With a Homeless Spirit (1934) and Smoke Over St. Florian (1936) and the novella The Wedding Ring (1954), Wied described the decay of the bourgeois family. The theme of the novel The Crow’s Nest (1951) is the moral and political disintegration of bourgeois society as a result of World War II. In the novel Story of a Rich Youth (1952), Wied’s positive heroes, who condemn war, escape into the world of art or religion.