Biography
Heimito von Doderer was born on 5 September 1896 in Hadersdorf-Weidlingau near Vienna. During the First World War he was taken prisoner by Russian forces in 1916 and did not return from Siberia until 1920; he then studied history and psychology and earned his doctorate in 1925. In 1933 he joined the Nazi party, which was soon banned in Austria, but later turned away from it and converted to Catholicism around 1940. After the war he achieved his breakthrough with the novel The Strudlhof Steps (1951), centred on a flight of outdoor stairs in Vienna's Alsergrund district; it was followed in 1956 by The Demons, regarded as his main work. Other novels include Every Man a Murderer, The Merovingians and The Waterfalls of Slunj. Doderer received the Grand Austrian State Prize for Literature in 1957 and died in Vienna on 23 December 1966.
On Stagelog
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