Emil Alphons Rheinhardt, born April 4, 1889 in Vienna, studied medicine there and initially worked as a doctor and psychoanalyst. His first poems appeared in 1913 under the title Hours and fates. From 1922 to 1926 Rheinhardt worked as an editor and translator. He achieved considerable success with historical novels. After 1926 he lived in Italy, from 1928 in southern France, where he was interned in 1940. After his release, Rheinhardt was arrested for alleged contacts with French communists. In the Dachau concentration camp, where he was deported in 1944, he succumbed to typhus on February 25, 1945.