Blei, Franz (Vienna, 1871-1942, New York), emigrated to the USA in 1933. An essayist of great diversity and an accomplished ironist, his chief interests were the erotic and the religious. His collections include Hippolyt (1903), Die galante Zeit (1904), Von amoureusen Frauen (1906), Die Puderquaste (1909), Der Geist des Rokoko (1923), Glanz und Elend berühmter Frauen (1927), Frauen und Männer der Renaissance (1927), Das Erotische (1927), and Männer und Masken (1930). He also wrote a number of stories and plays, including the text for a one-act opera (Marionettenspiel) by Hindemith (Das Nusch-Nuschi, 1921), but he is best known for his satirical Bestiarium literaticum (1920), written under the pseudonym Steinhövel, which in 1924 appeared as Das große Bestiarium der modernen Literatur. He translated works by Claudel, Oscar Wilde, Walt Whitman, Molière, among others, and was well known as the editor of periodicals, including the almanac Hyperion (1909-11, with C. Sternheim, whom he promoted as a theatre critic) and Die Rettung (1918-20, with A. P. Gütersloh). A bibliophile, he issued in 1910-13 a beautifully produced 5-volume edition of the works of J. M. R. Lenz; others include Stendhal, Goethe, Baudelaire, and G. G. Casanova (Memoiren, 2 vols., 1915).

Erzählung eines Lebens (1930) is an autobiography. Vermischte Schriften (6 vols.) appeared 1911-12, a selection, Schriften in Auswahl (postscript by Gütersloh) in 1960, Porträts in 1986, and correspondence, Briefe an Carl Schmitt 1917-1933, in 1995.

The Oxford Companion to German Literature. Copyright © 1976, 1986, 1997, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.