Hermann Broch

Hermann Broch (November 1, 1886 - May 30, 1951) was an Austrian author. He belonged to a prosperous Jewish family and worked for some time in his family's factory, but at a point in life decided to follow a literary career. With the annexation of Austria by the Nazis (1938), Broch was arrested, but a movement organized by friends managed to have him released and allowed to emigrate – first to Britain and then to the United States.

His major work, The death of Virgil (Der Tod des Vergils), which he began to write while imprisoned in a concentration camp, was first published in the U.S., in an English translation, in 1945. This great, difficult novel, in which reality and hallucination, poetry and prose are inextricably mingled, reenacts the last hours of life of the Roman poet Virgil, in the port of Brundisium (Brindisi), where he accompanied Augustus, his decision to burn his Aeneid, frustrated by the emperor, and his final reconciliation with his destiny.

Other important works by Broch are The somnambulists (Die Schlafwandler, 1932), and The innocents (Die Schuldlosen,1950).

Hermann Broch died in 1951 in New Haven, Connecticut.