Uriel Birnbaum

Uriel Birnbaum was an Austrian painter, caricaturist, writer and poet.

Biography

Birnbaum was the youngest son of Nathan Birnbaum, a Jewish philosopher, and Rosa Korngut. Reportedly, his art education consisted of only one month at a Berlin art school in 1913. He served in the Austro-Hungarian Common Army during World War I as a lieutenant in the k.u.k. Feldjäger Battalion No. 17, and was severely injured during the Eleventh Battle of the Isonzo where he completely lost one foot, and "shattered" the other; he used a wheelchair thereafter.
He illustrated a number of books, including works of Edgar Allan Poe, Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, and his own Weltuntergang.
Birnbaum survived the Nazi period at first due to the special status conferred to him by his non-Jewish wife, and then by going into hiding from 1943 until the end of the war in 1945.