Berthold Viertel

Born June 28, 1885, in Vienna; died there Sept. 24, 1953. Austrian writer and stage and film director.

At first Viertel wrote poems that were influenced by expressionism. In 1923 he founded a theater with a modern repertoire in Berlin, where he staged his own works and those of such playwrights as F. Wolf, G. Kaiser, and E. O’Neill. In 1934 he emigrated to England, and in 1938 he moved to the USA, where he directed antifascist films and plays. In 1949 he returned to his homeland and worked primarily in the theater.

Viertel also wrote prose works, including the biography Karl Kraus (1921), the novel about theatrical life Bread of Charity (1927), and numerous autobiographical essays.