Vicki Baum: Edition. Vol. 3: Menschen im Hotel

Vicki Baums novel Menschen im Hotel (1929) established her worldwide fame and enabled her to emigrate early to the USA. Baums previously unpublished theater version of the novel, which provided the basis for the Oscar-winning Hollywood film adaptation Grand Hotel (1932), also played a part in this success. While the multi-perspective form of the group novel in combination with a collage of different narrative genres proves to be adequate for the fragmentary, fleeting juxtaposition and coexistence of urban hotel life in the novel, Baum explored the possibilities of contemporary theater with the rapid transitions in her theatrical version, which resemble film editing. For the first time, this volume offers a reliable and complete textual basis, supplemented by the original, (self-)ironically commenting subtitle Ein Kolportageroman mit Hintergründen (A sensational novel with backgrounds) and the first publication of the theatrical version, as well as an extensive contextualizing commentary section with a bibliography.