He sold his father's factory and studied philosophy: Who is Hermann Broch?
Upon his father's request, he completed his vocational education as a textile engineer in 1907. His family was of Jewish origin. He became a Catholic in 1909. He worked as a manager in his father's factory until 1927, when he sold the factory that year.
He was born in Vienna on November 1, 1886. Upon his father's request, he completed his vocational education as a textile engineer in 1907. He became a Catholic and got married in 1909, but this marriage, in which he also had a child, ended in divorce in 1923.
The date of his first literary publication is 1913. He worked as a manager in his father's factory until 1927, when he sold the factory and decided to study mathematics, philosophy, and psychology at the University of Vienna.
He was forty-five years old when his first novel, Die Schlafwandler [The Sleepwalkers], was published. He was friends with many names such as Robert Musil, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Elias Canetti.
Hermann Broch (1 November 1886 – 30 May 1951) was an Austrian writer, best known for two major works of modernist fiction: The Sleepwalkers (Die Schlafwandler, 1930–32) and The Death of Virgil (Der Tod des Vergil, 1945). Broch was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, to a prosperous Jewish family and worked for some time in his family's factory, though he maintained his literary interests privately.
During the annexation of Austria by the Nazis in 1938, he was arrested by the Gestapo for having a socialist magazine with him.
Thanks to the initiative of James Joyce and his friends, he took refuge in the USA. He was a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950. He died on May 30, 1951 in New Haven, Connecticut.
His main works include books such as The Death of Virgil, Unknown Value, Psychological Autobiography, The Innocents, and Fascination.