I was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1901. Furthermore, it was, and still is, the great metropolis of music and song. You might say that we grew up to the tunes of Haydn, Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, and Strauss. I have a vague feeling that this atmosphere of culture, music, and art, had much to do with my desire to write. At the age of eight or nine, while still a little boy in grammar school, I used to ask God daily in my evening prayer to "let me write books."