Meyrink, Gustav

Meyrink, Gustav (gs`täf mī`rĭngk), 1868–1932, German author, b. Vienna. His original name was Gustav Meyer. A staff member of Simplicissimus from 1902, he became famous for his sketches, parodies, and comedies. His novels, including The Golem (1916, tr. 1928), about an artificial man who runs amok, and Walpurgisnacht (1917), have a surrealistic blend of comedy, grotesquerie, and symbolism.

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Meyrink, Gustav 

Born Jan. 19, 1868, in Vienna; died Dec. 4, 1932, in Starnberg. Austrian writer.

Meyrink graduated from a business academy in Prague. In 1903 he began to write for the journal Simplicissimus. His short story collections The Hot-tempered Soldier (1903) and Orchids (1904) were reissued in the three-volume compendium The Middle-class German’s Magic Horn (vols. 1–3, 1909–13). Meyrink’s other short story collections include The Violet-colored Death (1913; Russian translation, 1923) and Bats (1916; Russian translation, 1923).

Meyrink’s works combine a passion for the mystical, grotesque, and fantastic with satirical parodies of bourgeois life, such as his novel The Golem (1915; Russian translation, 1922). In his later works, including the novel Angel From the West Window (1920), Meyrink completely departed from realism. His enthusiasm for the occult and theosophy is evident in On the Threshold of the Other World (1923).

WORKS

Gesammelte Werke, vols. 1–6. Leipzig, 1917.

REFERENCES

Jung, C. G. Die Gestaltungen des Unbewussten. Zurich, 1950.
Frank, E. G. Meyrink. Budingen-Gettenbach, 1957.