Baum, Oscar
BAUM, OSCAR
BAUM, OSCAR (1883–1941), Czechoslovak author who wrote in German. Baum was a member of the Prague circle of Max *Brod and Franz *Kafka. Losing his sight as a boy, Baum was trained at the Vienna Institute for the Blind as an organist and pianist and subsequently became a music critic. Brod took down in shorthand his first short stories and persuaded Baum to publish them. Uferdasein (1908), Das Leben im Dunkeln (1909), and Nacht ist umher (1929), hailed by Stefan *Zweig as the "most moving document in German from the lightless world" were all taken from the life of the blind. They reflect his opposition to the compassion displayed by society and his call for equality of opportunity, which influenced modern education of the handicapped. Baum's Die boese Unschuld (1913) has acquired significance as a document of Jewish life in Bohemia against the background of the Czech-German nationality struggle. Baum also wrote a drama, Das Wunder (1920). His last novel, Das Volk des harten Schlafes (1937), ostensibly a story about the Jewish kingdom of the *Khazars, actually deals with problems of Jewry in the first years of Nazi rule. It was dedicated to Baum's "son and friend" Leo, who was later killed in the King David Hotel explosion in Jerusalem (1946).
bibliography:
M. Brod, Der Prager Kreis (1966), 118–32; A. Schmidt, Dichtung und Dichter Oesterreichs im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, 1 (1964), index.