Arthur SchnitzlerFraulein Else
A young woman is contacted by her mother, begging her to save her father from debtor's jail by visiting an elderly acquaintance in order to borrow money.
Arthur Schnitzler was an Austrian author and dramatist.The son of a prominent Hungarian-Jewish laryngologist Johann Schnitzler and Luise Markbreiter (a daughter of the Viennese doctor Philipp Markbreiter), was born in Vienna in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and began studying medicine at the local university in 1879. He received his doctorate of medicine in 1885 and worked at the Vienna's General Hospital, but ultimately abandoned medicine in favour of writing.His works were often controversial, both for their frank description of sexuality (Sigmund Freud, in a letter to Schnitzler, confessed "I have gained the impression that you have learned through intuition — though actually as a result of sensitive introspection — everything that I have had to unearth by laborious work on other persons")[1] and for their strong stand against anti-Semitism, represented by works such as his play Professor Bernhardi and the novel Der Weg ins Freie. However, though Schnitzler was himself Jewish, Professor Bernhardi and Fräulein Else are among the few clearly-identified Jewish protagonists in his work.
