Oskar Panizza

Who was Oskar Panizza?

Leopold Hermann Oskar Panizza was a German psychiatrist and avant-garde author, playwright, novelist, poet, essayist, publisher and literary journal editor. He is best known for his provocative tragicomedy, Das Liebeskonzil, for which he served a one-year prison sentence after being convicted in Munich in 1895 on 93 counts of blasphemy. Upon his release from prison, he lived for eight years in exile, first in Zürich and later in Paris.

His deteriorating mental health forced him to return to Germany, where he spent his last sixteen years in an asylum in Bayreuth. The scandal-ridden Panizza suffered more than any other German author under the repressive censorship imposed during the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm II.