Early works Born in
Düsseldorf, Ewers started to write poetry when he was 17 years old. His first noticed poem was an obituary tribute to the German Emperor
Frederick III. Ewers earned his
Abitur in March 1891. He then volunteered for the military and joined the
Kaiser-Alexander-Gardegrenadier-Regiment Nr. 1, but was dismissed 44 days later because of
myopia. Ewers' literary career began with a volume of satiric verse, entitled
A Book of Fables, published in 1901. That same year, he collaborated with
Ernst von Wolzogen in forming a literary vaudeville theatre before forming his own such company, which toured
Central and Eastern Europe before the operating expenses and constant interference from censors caused him to abandon the enterprise. A world traveler, Ewers was in South America at the beginning of
World War I, and relocated to New York City, where he continued to write and publish. Ewers' reputation as a successful German author and performer made him a natural speaker for the Imperial German cause to keep the United States from joining the war as an ally of Britain. Ewers toured cities with large
ethnic German communities and raised funds for the
German Red Cross. During this period, he was involved with the "
Stegler Affair". American shipping companies sympathetic to the fight against Imperial Germany reportedly aided the British in identifying German-descended passengers traveling to Germany to volunteer for the Kaiser's army. Many were arrested and interned in prison camps by the
British Navy; eventually, German volunteers often required false passports to reach Europe unmolested. Ewers was implicated as a German agent by one of these ethnic Germans,
Richard Stegler. After the United States joined the war, he was arrested in 1918 as an "active propagandist," as the US government, as well as British and French intelligence agencies, asserted that Ewers was a German agent. They evidenced his travels to Spain during 1915 and 1916, both with an alias using a falsified Swiss passport. Later, a travel report in the archives of the
German Foreign Office was discovered indicating that he may have been traveling to
Mexico, perhaps to encourage
Pancho Villa to hamper the U.S. military by an attack on the United States. Ewers is associated with the pro-German
George Sylvester Viereck, son of the German immigrant and reported illegitimate
Hohenzollern offspring
Louis Sylvester Viereck (a
Social Democrat famous for sharing a prison cell with
August Bebel), who was a member of the same Berlin student corps (fraternity) as Ewers. Ewers' activities as an "Enemy Alien" in New York were documented by
J. Christoph Amberger in the German historical journal
Einst & Jetzt (1991). Amberger indicates arrival records which demonstrate that Ewers entered the United States in the company of a "Grethe Ewers," who is identified as his wife.
Enemy Alien Office records refer to a recent divorce. The identity of this otherwise undocumented wife has never been established, with reference to her missing from most biographies. As a German national he was sent to the internment camp at
Fort Oglethorpe,
Georgia. Ewers was never tried as a German agent in the United States. In 1921, he was released from the internment camp and returned to his native Germany.
Frank Braun trilogy Ewers's first novel,
Der Zauberlehrling (''
The Sorcerer's Apprentice''), was published in 1910, with an English translation published in America in 1927. It introduces the character of Frank Braun, who, like Ewers, is a writer, historian, philosopher, and world traveler with a decidedly
Nietzschean morality. The story concerns Braun's attempts to influence a small cult of
Evangelical Christians in a small Italian mountain village for his own financial gain, and the horrific results which ensue. During the time Ewers was writing his major horror stories, he was also giving lectures (between 1910 and 1925) on the topic
Die Religion des Satan (
The Religion of Satan), inspired by
Stanisław Przybyszewski's 1897 German book
Die Synagoge des Satan (
The Synagogue of Satan). He died on June 12, 1943, in his
Berlin apartment. His ashes were buried on October 15 of the same year in the Düsseldorf North Cemetery (Nordfriedhof, Field Nr. 78, 55235-WE). In 1938, Ewers compiled his estate, which is now kept at the Heinrich Heine Institute in Düsseldorf. == Movie work ==