- Paul's father wanted him to become a farmer, and he first studied agriculture at Mustiala Agriculture Center in Tammela. After three years of studies, Paul's father let Paul manage a farm the father owned on the Ruissalo island outside Turku. Soon growing bored with farming, Paul decided to become an artist.
- In Sweden, Paul was overshadowed by August Strindberg, his older friend whom he greatly admired and whose work influenced Paul's early novels. When Strindberg relocated to Berlin in 1892 after his divorce from Siri von Essen, Paul was the one who introduced him to everyone worth knowing and to the hangout Zum schwarzen Ferkel, where the artist community gathered. For a while the two writers boarded together.
- Between 1914 and 1919 Paul worked as a screenwriter and wrote scripts for some 14 films, including Die Teufelskirche. In 1919 he wrote a movie script for 'Die Tänzerin Barberina' starring August Strindberg's third wife Harriet Bosse.
- Studying at the Music Academy in Helsinki, he became a friend of Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. Both studied with the famous Italian composer and pianist Ferruccio Busoni, who brought them to Germany when he moved there from Helsinki in 1889.
- Paul, his older sister, a younger sister and seven younger brothers grew up on a large estate his father managed.
- In 1892 he published a collection of short stories called The Ripper, a title inspired by London serial killer Jack the Ripper. Albert Bonnier considered this book too indecent and refused to publish it and other books Paul later wrote about violence and sexuality. Instead, The Ripper was published by Grönlund in Turku, Finland, but the book was controversial and critics considered some of its content obscene.
- Paul's artist friend Axel Gallén-Kallela created the cover for one of his novels, Ein gefallener profet (A fallen prophet) in 1895. This novel was well received and so were Paul's early plays. At the Helsinki opening of the historic play Kung Kristian II in 1898, Paul received standing ovations and was crowned with a laurel wreath that he kept for the rest of his life. The royalties for his books and plays made sure his family had some steady income during the 25 years these lasted.
- In 1893, Paul published Herr Ludvigs, which is believed to be based on his father's misfortunes as a businessman. Wiedersheim-Paul had died in 1892 after losing most of his assets. The book contains interesting descriptions of Helsinki.
- In 1886, he began studying music in Helsinki. During this period he became a socialist and shed Wiedersheim from his surname.
- In addition to plays and film scripts he authored some 20 novels.
- Several of Paul's novels were considered obscene because of their violent and abnormal sexual content. In The Ripper, one of the stories was an imaginary diary of Jack the Ripper with graphic details. The Ripper was not the only novel banned as obscene. After the release of Die Madonna mit dem Rosenbush, (The Madonna with the rose bush) in 1904, the publisher was sued. The novel's main character is an artist who delivers a different work than the portrait he was commissioned to paint, enraging his client. The novel, which is set in 16th-century Lübeck, describes conflicts between Catholics and Lutherans and contains some debauchery.
- Paul was born on January 6, 1863, on Bromö, an island in lake Vänern in Sweden.
- Collaborating with Sibelius, Paul discovered he was better at composing plays and novels than music and after a concert in Helsinki in 1891 focused on his writing. That year he published his first novel, En bok om en menniska (A book about a man), which was published by Bonniers in Stockholm.
- His last name was Wiedesheim-Paul. The family name hailed from a Preussian Major named Ludwig von Wiedesheim, born in Anhalt-Kothen, Germany and an Italian earl named Fernando Pollini (Pollini became Paul in German). When Paul was nine years old, the family moved to Jokioinen in Finland and added an "r" to Wiedersheim.
- Paul is portrayed in Finnish artist Akseli Gallen-Kallela's The Symposium, as the man who has fallen asleep on the table after a night of drinking. In the sketches preceding the final version, Paul is still awake, sitting at the table focusing his stare to the left of the viewer.
- In 1937 the King of Sweden, Gustaf V, honored him with the Order of Vasa.
- Paul is depicted in one of Edvard Munch's paintings, The Vampire. The painting shows a red-haired woman bending her head over the neck of a man hiding his face in her lap.
- He lived most of his adult life in Berlin, Germany, where he was a friend of Swedish writer August Strindberg, Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, Norwegian painter Edvard Munch and Finnish artist Akseli Gallen-Kallela.
- Paul's 75th birthday in 1937 was celebrated with the publication of Das Lebenswerk Adolf Pauls, which covered his published and unpublished production over the years.
- When Paul first arrived in Berlin the city was a cultural center that drew artists from all over Europe. Since it was further north than Paris, the other artist Mecca at this time, many Scandinavian artists were drawn to Berlin. Paul joined the Scandinavian artist community where in addition to Sibelius he counted Norwegian painter Edvard Munch, Swedish writer August Strindberg and artist Albert Engström among his friends.
- Paul continued to work on plays and novels and his career waxed and waned over the years. One of his best known novels was his 1915 bestseller titled Die Tänzerin Barberina (Barberina, the dancer) whose main character was based on the dramatic life of Italian dancer Barbara Campanini (1721-1799), who was brought to Berlin by Frederick the Great of Prussia to become a highly paid dancer at the newly opened Berlin Opera and his lover. Literature critics considered Paul's psychological portrayals of Voltaire in Ormen i paradiset and Napoleon in S:t Helena among his literary highlights.
- Paul married Natalie Brehmer on August 18, 1897, when she was 18 and he was 34. She came from a family of senators, lawyers and mayors. Her father was a wealthy merchant in Lübeck. Intelligent, artistic and beautiful, Natalie Paul was her husband's muse and many of Paul's artist friends dedicated works to her. "There was just something very special about her", one of her granddaughters recalls. Adolf and Natalie Paul had five children, twin daughters and three sons; the oldest son died after a childhood accident.
- Adolf Paul - who lived from the late 1890s in Germany - never returned to settle in Scandinavia did not give up his Swedish citizenship.
- In the late 1890s, Paul's bohemian circle of artist friends dissolved and Paul settled down and started a family. After moving to Berlin, Paul had adapted to German circumstances and was writing in German, reaching a larger audience than possible when writing in Swedish.
- In 1931, when Germany faced mass unemployment, being Swedish citizens enabled two of the younger children to move to Sweden and find employment. And after Paul died on 30 September 1943, his widow and two remaining children, a son with his family and a daughter, were evacuated to Sweden where they remained for the rest of their lives.
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