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Baum Vicki
(1888—1960)

Hedwig (Vicki) Baum was an Austrian writer. She is known for "Menschen im Hotel" ("People at a Hotel", 1929), one of her first international successes. Baum was born in Vienna into a Jewish family. She began her artistic career as a musician playing the harp. She studied at the Vienna Conservatory and played in an orchestra in Germany for three years. She later worked as a journalist for the magazine Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung, published by Ullstein-Verlag in Berlin. She was married twice: first, from 1914, to an Austrian journalist who introduced her to the Viennese cultural scene; and, from 1916, to Richard Lert, a conductor and her best friend since their childhood days. During World War I she worked for a short time as a nurse. Baum began writing in her teens. Her first book, Frühe Schatten, was published when she was 31. She is most famous for her 1929 novel Menschen im Hotel which was made into an Academy Award winning film, Grand Hotel. Her memoir, It Was All Quite Different, was published posthumously in 1964. She wrote more than 50 novels, and at least ten were adapted as motion pictures in Hollywood. Vicki Baum is considered one of the first modern best sellers authors, and her books are reputed to be among the first examples of contemporary mainstream literature.

Maldives, 1986, Statue of Liberty; Vicki Baum