Leo Perutz

<a href="https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Entheogens/conversations/topics/5114">https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Entheogens/conversations/topics/5114</a>

I  once interviewed him for many hours and learned more details about the 

history  of LSD than I had bargained for, the specifics of which consistently 

proved to  be accurate, based on my further research.

A friend has recently pointed  out a published interview that he gave on 

Australian ABC Radio in mid-1976, that  I thought might be of interest for the

list --

Q: If drugs played such a  big role in the sixties, how, as a matter of 

history, did the psychedelics come  to make their entry into popular culture 

during that period?

A: The story  really starts way back in 1935 with a group of followers of 

the German mystic  Rudolf Steiner who lived in a village in Southern Germany. 

 In 1935 a dark  cloud was over Europe so the members of this group set out 

deliberately to  synthesize chemicals which were like the natural vegetable 

substances which they  were well aware had been used in all the world's 

major religious traditions down  through the centuries.  By 1938 they had 

synthesized psilocybin, LSD and  about thirty other drugs.  Then they stopped to 

think about the  consequences of letting all of this loose, and decided 

against it.  They  decided that they were not sure what the negative effects of 

the drugs would be  and that it just wasn't a very wise thing to do.

Five years later, in  1943, when Europe was really in bad shape, they 

decided apparently that  possible negative consequences were nothing compared 

to the consequences of  not doing this.

Now, two members of this group, which lived in a very  tight religious 

community, were in the Sandoz chemical company -- that's partly  how this 

project came to be.  One of them was the chemist Dr. Albert  Hofmann.  He cooked 

up the newspaper story, that everyone has heard now,  about the accidental 

ingestion of LSD and the realization of what its properties  were after an 

amazing bicycle ride home and the visions and so on.  This  group quietly gave 

supplies of the chemical to a number of doctors around the  world -- in 

Europe and the United States and Canada -- and tried to explain to  them what it 

was they were on about.

["Beyond the Mechanical Mind: an  investigation by Peter Fry and Malcolm 

Long based on the ABC radio series '. . .  And Something Else is Happening'", 

p101-102, Australian Broadcasting Commission,  1977]

Another interesting piece of "documentary" evidence that there were  plans 

in the 1930's to produce an ergot-derived chemical with religious  

implications -- which ultimately became LSD -- is the novel titled "St. Petri  Schnee 

(St. Peter's Snow)" that was first published by Leo Perutz in 1933, and  

quickly banned by the Nazis.

As noted on the inside-cover of the 1990  English translation, the story 

revolves around a "secret experiment to make a  mind-altering drug from a 

white mildew occuring on wheat -- a mildew called  Saint Peter's Snow."

Mark Stahlman

Brooklyn NY  

"In a curious connection, Willis Harman, a senior social scientist at the Stanford Research Institute known as SRI International, and the initiator of the institute’s futures research program (and later the president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences), suggested, in an interview on ABC radio in 1977, that the origins of LSD began with an esoteric or mystical movement specifically following the twentieth century mystic Rudolf Steiner.<a href="http://www.rudge.tv/blog/psychoactivesubstances/#edn28" title="">[28]</a> As Harman explains, the story of LSD “really starts” in “1935 with a group of followers of [this] German mystic [and] members of this group set out very deliberately to synthesise chemicals which were like the natural vegetable substances which they were well aware had been used in all the world’s major religious traditions down through the centuries.” As Harman continues, “By 1938 they had synthesized psilocybin, LSD and about thirty other drugs.”<a href="http://www.rudge.tv/blog/psychoactivesubstances/#edn29" title="">[29]</a> Harman thus suggests that LSD had been deliberately synthesized for its connection to religiosity, and at least five years before our history records say that the substance was first administered to a human (by Hofffman to himself).<a href="http://www.rudge.tv/blog/psychoactivesubstances/#edn30" title="">[30]</a> More extraordinarily, Harmann’s remarks directly make the claim that psilocybin had been identified and isolated at least twenty years before the time on record in all of the histories of psilocybin about the first identification, isolation and chemical synthesis of this alkaloid, by Albert Hoffman and his colleagues in 1958, and at least seventeen years before the first western study of the use of magic mushrooms by R. Gordon Wasson in 1955.<a href="http://www.rudge.tv/blog/psychoactivesubstances/#edn31" title="">[31]</a> Harmann’s claims are not supported by any written evidence, so it would be irresponsible to speculate too long on the possibility that either LSD or psilocybin were developed chemically before the historically confirmed dates or to credit this proposition with having a basis in fact."

<a href="http://www.rudge.tv/blog/psychoactivesubstances/">http://www.rudge.tv/blog/psychoactivesubstances/</a>

Perutz' novels are short and are usually <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_novels" title="Historical novels" class="mw-redirect">historical novels</a> combining fast-paced adventure with a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics" title="Metaphysics">metaphysical</a> twist. They are influenced by the work of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.T.A.Hoffmann" title="E. T. A. Hoffmann">E. T. A. Hoffmann</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Schnitzler" title="Arthur Schnitzler">Arthur Schnitzler</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Hugo" title="Victor Hugo">Victor Hugo</a> (whose work Perutz translated into German). <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Perutz#cite_note-2">[3]</a> Austrian fellow novelist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Torberg" title="Friedrich Torberg">Friedrich Torberg</a> once characterized Perutz' literary style as the possible result of a little infidelity of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Kafka" title="Franz Kafka">Franz Kafka</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_Christie" title="Agatha Christie">Agatha Christie</a>. The Marquis of Bolibar features the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wandering_Jew" title="Wandering Jew">Wandering Jew</a> appearing during Napoleon's campaign in Spain. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Perutz#cite_note-fr-3">[4]</a> By Night Under the Stone Bridge is an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Episodic" title="Episodic">episodic</a> work whose separate stories are bound together by the illicit love shared, in their dreams, by a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jew" title="Jew" class="mw-redirect">Jewish</a> woman and the Emperor <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_II,Holy_Roman_Emperor" title="Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor">Rudolf II</a>. In the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posthumous_work" title="Posthumous work" class="mw-redirect">posthumously</a>-published Leonardo's Judas, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_da_Vinci" title="Leonardo da Vinci">da Vinci</a>'s quest for an appropriate face to give the betrayer in his <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Supper_%28Leonardo%29" title="The Last Supper (Leonardo)" class="mw-redirect">Last Supper</a> is interwoven with the squabble between an usurer and the merchant to whom he owes money. The title of Saint Peter's Snow, which is set in what was then the present day (1932), refers to a drug which induces religious fervour; the Nazis, understandably, did not care for it. The Master of the Day of Judgement is a decidedly different <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_fiction" title="Mystery fiction">mystery</a> story about the circumstances surrounding an actor's death in the early twentieth century, and Little Apple concerns a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_World_War" title="First World War" class="mw-redirect">First World War</a> soldier's obsessive quest for revenge.

In his discussion of German language fantastic literature, critic Franz Rottensteiner describes Perutz as "undoubtedly the finest fantasy author of his time". <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Perutz#cite_note-fr-3">[4]</a>

Leopold Perutz (November 2, 1882, Prague - August 25, 1957, Bad Ischl) was an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austria" title="Austria">Austrian</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novelist" title="Novelist" class="mw-redirect">novelist</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematician" title="Mathematician">mathematician</a>. He was born in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague" title="Prague">Prague</a> and was thus a citizen of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austro-Hungarian_Empire" title="Austro-Hungarian Empire" class="mw-redirect">Austro-Hungarian Empire</a>. He lived in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna" title="Vienna">Vienna</a> until the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism" title="Nazism">Nazi</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anschluss" title="Anschluss">Anschluss</a> in 1938, when he emigrated to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Mandate_of_Palestine" title="British Mandate of Palestine" class="mw-redirect">Palestine</a>.

According to the biographical note on the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcade_Publishing" title="Arcade Publishing">Arcade Publishing</a> editions of the English translations of his novels, Leo was a mathematician who formulated an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algebraic" title="Algebraic">algebraic</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equation" title="Equation">equation</a> which is named after him; he worked as a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistician" title="Statistician">statistician</a> for an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurance" title="Insurance">insurance</a> company. He was related to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biologist" title="Biologist">biologist</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Perutz" title="Max Perutz">Max Perutz</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Perutz#cite_note-0">[1]</a>

During the 1950s he returned occasionally to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austria" title="Austria">Austria</a>, spending the summer and autumn months in the market town of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Wolfgang" title="St. Wolfgang" class="mw-redirect">St. Wolfgang</a> in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salzkammergut" title="Salzkammergut">Salzkammergut</a> resort region and in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna" title="Vienna">Vienna</a>. He died in the Austrian spa town of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Ischl" title="Bad Ischl">Bad Ischl</a> in 1957. He wrote his first novel, The Third Bullet, in 1915 while recovering from a wound sustained in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_World_War" title="First World War" class="mw-redirect">First World War</a>. In all Perutz wrote eleven novels, which gained the admiration of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorge_Luis_Borges" title="Jorge Luis Borges">Jorge Luis Borges</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italo_Calvino" title="Italo Calvino">Italo Calvino</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Fleming" title="Ian Fleming">Ian Fleming</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Edward_Wagner" title="Karl Edward Wagner">Karl Edward Wagner</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Greene" title="Graham Greene">Graham Greene</a>. Wagner cited Perutz' novel The Master of the Day of Judgement as one of the thirteen best non-supernatural horror novels.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Perutz#cite_note-1">[2]</a>

<ul>

<li>The Marquis of Bolibar (1920)<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Perutz#cite_note-5">[5]</a></li>

<li>The Master of the Day of Judgement (1921)</li>

<li>Turlupin (1924)</li>

<li>Little Apple (1928)</li>

<li>Saint Peter's Snow (1933)</li>

<li>The Swedish Cavalier (1936)</li>

<li>By Night under the Stone Bridge (1952)</li>

<li>Leonardo's Judas (1959)</li>

</ul>

<h1>Leo Perutz Essay - Critical Essays</h1>

<h2 class="content-header"><a href="http://www.enotes.com/topics/leo-perutz#">Perutz, Leo</a></h2>

<h2 class="content-header"><a href="http://www.enotes.com/topics/leo-perutz#">Introduction</a></h2>

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Leo Perutz 1882-1957

(Full name Leopold Perutz) Austrian novelist, short story and novella writer, and dramatist.

Although Perutz's writings include short stories, novellas, and at least one published play, the international reputation he enjoyed during the 1920s and 1930s stemmed primarily from his novels, which include suspense-filled psychological dramas and meticulously constructed historical tales set in Europe during periods of political and cultural conflict. Forced into exile when Hitler came to power in Austria, Perutz published to a diminished audience following World War II, yet he remained convinced that his fiction would become widely read once again. Recent decades have proven him right: since the late 1950s, a growing number of Perutz's works have been translated and reissued to critical and popular acclaim.

Biographical Information

Perutz was born in 1882 to wealthy Jewish parents in Prague, when the city was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. When his father's business was destroyed by fire in 1889, the family emigrated to Vienna, Austria, where Perutz and a group of fellow students at the Erzherzog Rainer-Real-Gymnasium launched a literary club called the "Freilicht" (Free Light), which served as a forum for the reading and discussion of their writings. This early affinity for literature notwithstanding, Perutz studied mathematics before becoming a respected insurance actuary. In 1915 he published his first novel, Die dritte Kugel. Later that year, Perutz enlisted in the army. A chest wound cut short his active duty in 1916, and he served out his assignment writing war reports from the military press headquarters in Vienna. Perutz wrote prolifically during the next two decades, producing more than a dozen novels. Newspapers vied for the right to serialize his stories and novellas, and many of his works were translated into foreign languages. In 1938, upon Hitler's annexation of Austria to Germany, Perutz fled with other Jews to Tel Aviv, Palestine. The difficulties of writing in exile and his isolation from German-language readers severely affected Perutz's literary output and reduced his reading audience. He struggled to produce two more novels, only one of which was published during his lifetime. In 1957, while visiting friends in Austria, Perutz died of a heart attack; his final novel was published posthumously in 1959.

Major Works

Perutz's reputation as a writer of tightly constructed narratives placed in historical settings was established with the publication of his first novel. Set during the sixteenth century Schmalkadic War and imbued with elements of the fantastic, Die dritte Kugel was enthusiastically received. His second novel, Zwischen neun und neun (From Nine to Nine)—a tension-filled psychological thriller—appeared in 1918 and was as successful as his first. Two years later Perutz published Der Marques de Bolibar (The Marquis de Bolibar), a historical novel that traces a Spanish nobleman's commitment to restore his family's honor during the Napoleonic Wars. Over the next three decades, Perutz's published work included a dozen novels, a collection of novellas, and a play. His 1934 novel, St. Petri-Schnee (The Virgin's Brand; also translated as St. Peter's Snow), has been described as a reflection of Hitler's rise to power in its portrayal of a man's ability to influence others in his single-minded pursuit of victory. Perutz's novels uniformly feature retrospective narration by a character whose involvement in the story is deliberately left ambiguous. Other elements characteristic of his work include historically accurate accounts of political intrigue and military maneuvers, insightful psychological depictions of fictional and historical figures, and a recurring treatment of time as both a subjective and an objective reality. Perutz's frequent suggestion that supernatural phenomena can determine the destiny of his characters intensifies the sense of irresolvable uncertainty present in his narratives.

Critical Reception

Some critics minimize Perutz's accomplishments as a novelist, asserting that his literary reputation ensues from his least intellectual fiction—the commercially popular adventure tales he published during the 1920s. Others, including Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, laud Perutz's compositional style. The Austrian novelist Robert Musil, in recognition of Perutz's detailed and historically accurate narratives, credited him with developing a new genre that Musil termed "journalistic fiction." Friedrich Torberg, who once characterized Perutz's literary style as the "possible result of an illicit union of Franz Kafka with Agatha Christie," is among the critics who commend Perutz's ability to sustain narrative tension while enriching his fiction with both psychological insight and macabre mysticism. Perutz himself contributed to the apparent lack of serious critical attention given his fiction by claiming that his stories were not meant to be studied, but simply read and enjoyed. A resurgence of scholarly attention to Perutz's fiction during the 1950s and 1960s led to the reprinting, in 1975, of a large body of his work. In subsequent decades, selected novels have been issued in new translations in response to public and academic interest in Perutz and his works.

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<h2 class="content-header"><a href="http://www.enotes.com/topics/leo-perutz#">Principal Works</a> ▻</h2>

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Leo Perutz

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