born March 10, 1873, Fürth, Bavaria
died Jan. 1, 1934, Altaussee, Austria
German novelist.
After an unsettled youth he achieved success with such works as Die Juden von Zirndorf (1897), Caspar Hauser (1908), and Christian Wahnschaffe (1919). His popularity was greatest in the 1920s and '30s, when he wrote The Maurizius Case (1928), treating the theme of justice with the carefully plotted suspense of a detective story, and extended the tale of a post-World War I youth into a trilogy with Etzel Andergast (1931) and Kerkhoven's Third Existence (1934). He is frequently compared to Fyodor Dostoyevsky in both his moral fervour and his sensationalizing tendency.