Vicki Baum: Edition. Bd. 5: Marion lebt

Vicki Baum`s novel Marion lebt was published in 1942 by the Stockholm exile publisher Bermann-Fischer. The text was originally written in English and published in the same year under the title Marion Alive by the New York publishing house Doubleday. Vicki Baum, who was born in Austria and emigrated to the USA in 1932, is one of the few German- language authors who continued her literary work in exile exclusively in English. In Marion lebt, the Vienna-born protagonist looks back on an eventful life: Marion`s memories from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the First World War are mainly set in Austria and Germany, while memories of the interwar period are partly set in the USA and the Soviet Union. Her memories of the past are connected to a framework story set in the Swiss Alps on 14 June 1940. Referring to central stages of Vicki Baum`s life the text mixes fact and fiction. Descriptions of the Viennese society around the 1900 are particularly autobiographical, with numerous references to music, literature and art, giving a detailed picture of the time. With the plot and the characters, drawn with psychological details, individual characteristics and ambivalences, Baum`s contemporary novel also integrates discourses of nationalism, anti-Semitism, exile, alterity and gender. This volume presents the edited first translation of the novel and, in a commentary, analyzing the references to Baum`s biography and her literary work, as well as other topics and the history of the novel`s publication and reception. This volume is presenting an important text by Vicki Baum that until now has received little research attention.