Julius Gundling
Julius Anton Gundling was a Czech writer and journalist from the Gundling scholarly family, which originated in the Nuremberg area. The family also included the brothers Nikolaus Hieronymus Gundling and Jacob Paul Freiherr von Gundling.
He wrote under the pseudonyms Lucian Herbert and Julius von Mergentheim.
Life
Born in Prague, he was son of Anton Gundling, an ironmonger living on Wenceslas Square in Prague, with his home becoming a meeting place for university professors, journalists and the nobility where the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung was discussed on a daily basis. Anton's brother was the state lawyer Eduard Gundling, a law professor at the Charles University in Prague, who also gave German-Czech lectures on music history.Julius worked as a writer and journalist from his youth onwards, initially as editor of the humourous magazine Rübenzahl, then as a contributor to the Prague Morgenpost and lastly from 1876 to 1877 as founder, editor and drama critic of the Prager Tagblatt. He also served as a correspondent for newspapers such as the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung. His Schwarz-gelben Bilder aus Alt- und Neu-Oesterreich, which he published in this newspaper, were later printed in book form. He was also a popular novelist in his time.
During his studies he became a member of the Old Prague Teutonia Burschenschaft and from 1848 to 1849 of the Prague Markomannia Burschenschaft. Like his father, Gundling completed his legal studies as iuris utriusque cultor, enabling him to take up a position as a municipal official in Prague. He retired into private life aged only 35 to devote himself to literary work. On 19 February 1852 in Prague he married Maria Magdalena Ballasko, daughter of the royal and imperial state accounting officer Jakob Ludwig Ballasko. They had two daughters, Amalia and Katharina, the latter becoming one of the first women students at university, in her case studying philosophy at the University of Zurich.