Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Erik von
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1909-1999) Austrian political philosopher, journalist and author, in the UK and US between 1935 until after World War Two; although he was highly (if eccentrically) conservative, his comments on Nazi Germany – he felt that the philosophy underlying all twentieth-century revolutionary tyrannies was nothing but a corroded form of democratic modernity – had made him persona non grata in German-speaking lands. Of sf interest is Moscow 1979 (1940) with Christianne von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (his wife), in which a ferociously redemptive Catholicism, governed from San Francisco (see California), is all that stands between a Near Future world and the devastations of the modern as exemplified by a triumphalist USSR. Fortunately the Church possesses a Death Ray, which will soon be used to topple the Soviet Dystopia. [JC]
Erik Maria Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
born Tobelbad, Austria: 31 July 1909
died Lans, Tyrol, Austria: 26 May 1999
works
- Moscow 1979 (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1940) [hb/uncredited]
links
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