Oskar Panizza

Leopold Hermann Oskar Panizza (12 November 1853 – 28 September 1921) was a German psychiatrist and avant-garde playwright, novelist, poet, essayist, publisher and literary journal editor. He is best known for his provocative tragicomedy, Das Liebeskonzil (The Love Council, 1894), 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.

Early years

Panizza was born in Bad Kissingen, northern Bavaria (Lower Franconia), to Karl (1808–1855) and Mathilde Panizza, née Speeth (1821–1915). Karl was descended from a family of Italian fishermen on Lake Como. Mathilde, herself a prolific writer under the pseudonym Siona, was descended from an aristocratic Huguenot family by the name of de Meslère. Oskar's four siblings were Maria (1846–1925), Felix (1848–1908), Karl (1852–1916) and Ida (1855–1922).

Religious friction between Oskar's parents began even before their marriage. When Oskar was two years old, his Catholic father died of typhoid. On his deathbed, Karl granted Mathilde permission to raise their five children in the Protestant faith, despite the fact that they had all been baptized Catholic at his insistence. It was only after years of struggling and several lost trials that King Maximilian II of Bavaria finally granted Mathilde permission to educate her children in the Protestant faith.