Hugo von Hofmannsthal

Hugo Laurenz August Hofmann von Hofmannsthal was born 1 February 1874. He worked as a novelist, librettist, poet, dramatist, narrator, and essayist, operating at the center of Austrian letters during a period when the empire's cultural capital was in flux. The range was the point: he didn't settle into one genre but carried his sensibility across all of them. He died 15 July 1929, leaving behind a body of work that defied easy category.