ABSTRACT
Normally, but unjustly, regarded as a writer of light, sentimental novels, Vicki Baum worked in the editorial office of Ullstein in Berlin and soon reached a wide readership with the publication of Die Tänze der Ina Raffay in 1921. Welt ohne Sünde (the ‘Roman einer Minute’ (1922)) demonstrated that the authoress was able to handle the technique of interior monologue; Hell in Frauensee (1927), subtitled ‘Ein Sommerbuch von Liebe, Sport und Hunger’ is a by no means trivial analysis of interpersonal relationships. The erotic is handled with sensitivity and skill in Vicki Baum’s more successful novels, and the social scene, together with contemporary problems, is also invoked, as in Stud. chem. Helene Willfüer (1929). That same year saw the publication of Menschen im Hotel, one of the most characteristic novels of the Weimar Republic. A thinly veiled description of the Hotel Adlon, it cleverly enmeshes the destinies, pathetic and frequently sordid, of the guests staying beneath its roof. Filmed in America as Grand Hotel it consolidated Vicki Baum’s success; she settled in America and died in Hollywood in 1960. She wrote her later novels in English: Berlin Hotel (1943) attempted unsuccessfully to regain the popularity of the earlier novel, although the descriptions of air-raids over Berlin have a certain graphic quality. Her autobiography Es war alles ganz anders appeared in 1962.
