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[German Version] (Jul 13, 1773, Berlin – Feb 13, 1798, Berlin), German art theorist and writer, whose conception of art made him the forerunner of German Romanticism. At the Gymnasium he attended from 1786 to 1792, he formed a friendship with Ludwig Tieck (1773–1853); while studying law at Erlangen and Göttingen, he regularly attended lectures on art history and cultural history, immersing himself in the aesthetics of antiquity as mediated by Johann Joachim Winckelmann, the painting of the Italian…

[German Version] (Sep 15, 1885, Halle – Oct 2, 1974, Ebenhausen, near Munich), German writer. Seidel was the niece of Heinrich Seidel ( Leberect Hünchen, 1882–1890; ET: Leberecht Hünchen, 1913), an author noted for his middle-class (Biedermeier) idylls, whose son Heinrich Wolfgang, a pastor and writer, she married in 1907. She lived in Munich, Berlin, Eberswalde, and after 1934 in Starnberg. Her works, characterized by a predilection for neo-Romanticism and nature mysticism, are written in a conventionally appealing style. Her early poetry ( Gedichte, 1914) is full of euphoria…

[German Version] (May 18, 1887, Kleinort, a forester’s lodge near Sensburg [Mrągowo, Poland] – Aug 24, 1950, Uerikon), German writer, whose fundamental humanistic and ethical position made him a moral authority during the Third Reich and the early postwar period. Wiechert, the son of a forester, studied at Königsberg (Kaliningrad). In 1911 he became a high school teacher, and in 1914 he volunteered for military service. After the war, he worked as a Gymnasium teacher in Königsberg and Berlin-Charl…

[German Version] (Nov 25, 1878, Magdeburg – Jun 4, 1945, Ascona), wrote more than 70 dramas and is considered one of the most prolific playwrights of the 20th century. He was one of the most staged authors of the 1920s and an important representative of Berlin's literary intellectualism, but sank into oblivion after 1933. From a thematic and formal point of view, Kaiser's dramas are strongly influenced by Expressionism. In his two-part drama Gas (1918/1920), he denounces the exploitation and functionalization forced upon the human being by modernism and industrializa…

[German Version] (Sep 14, 1817, Husum [then under Danish rule] – Jul 4, 1888, Hademarschen), German poet and novelist, whose North Frisian background left an enduring mark on his work. His upbringing was vague on all issues of religion; as a consequence, he turned his back on Christianity and developed instead a humanistic commitment to life in this world, which nevertheless had melancholic and sometimes pessimistic elements occasioned by its denial of transcendental hopes. After studying law at K…

[German Version] (Jan 9, 1890, Berlin – Dec 21, 1935, Hindås, near Göteborg), German writer and journalist, whose many publications made him the critical chronicler of the Weimar Republic. Born to an upper-class Jewish family – his father, Alex Tucholsky, was a bank manager –, after his Abitur in 1909 he studied law in Berlin; in 1915 he received his doctorate from the University of Jena and was then drafted into military service. In 1907 he had already begun publishing art and theater criticism, especially in Die Schaubühne (after 1918 Die Weltbühne), which soon became an important o…

[German Version] also known as “Weimar Classicism,” refers to a period in the history of literature which is primarily represented by the mature works of J.W. v. Goethe and F. v. Schiller, and is thus generally dated from 1786 (the beginning of Goethe's first journey to Italy) to 1805 (Schiller's death). In a wider sense, the literary classics also include authors such as H. v. Kleist, Jean Paul, and F. Hölderlin; however, the poetic and aesthetic-philosophical writings of the “Dioscurian pair” Goethe and Schiller undoubtedly epitomized the style, essence, and thought of what ¶ would lat…

[German Version] (Nov 18, 1768, Königsberg [Kaliningrad] – Jan 17, 1823, Vienna), German writer and Catholic priest. His father, professor of history at Königsberg, died early; the enthusiastic Pietism of his mother exercised a powerful influence on him. He began to study law and finance in 1784; in 1793, without concluding his studies, he entered Prussian government service. He led an unsteady life, fluctuating between an idealistic image of the artist, motivated by Christianity, and the unrestra…

[German Version] (May 1, 1880, Rauenbretzingen, near Schwäbisch Hall – Jan 4, 1940, Munich), German writer and art critic, whose literary works and meditations on the philosophy of history reflected a conservative Catholic stance. The oldest of ten children of a peasant family, he attended the Catholic boarding school in Ehingen. After passing his Abitur, he studied theology in Tübingen as well as Germanic philology and art history in Munich and Freiburg im Breisgau. From 1904 to 1920, he was on the editorial staff of the Catholic cultural journal Hochland; in 1920 he became the art…

[German Version] (Sep 20, 1908, Ostrowo, Posen [Ostrów Wielkopolski] – Jan 29, 1984, Bern), German author. His novels, for example Die sterbende Kirche(1936) and Die Freiheit des Gefangenen (1950), informed by his Christian faith, deal with the testing of individuals in a morally indifferent world, in which borderline situations are understood as opportunities for inner transformation and spiritual renewal. His works, popular in the postwar period, are today largely forgotten. Matthias Hurst Bibliography I. Sonderegger-Kummer, Transparenz und Wirklichkeit. Edzard Schap…

[German Version] (orig. Netty Reiling, married Radványi; Nov 19, 1900, Mainz – Jun 1, 1983, East Berlin), German writer of Jewish background. In her novels and short stories, she focused on the fate of ordinary workers and social outcasts against the background of political developments in Germany during the Weimar Repub-¶ lic, National Socialism, and the postwar period. She combined an austere, episodic narrative style with mythical and Christian motifs to great effect. In 1928 she joined the German Communist Party; in 1933 she emigrated to Fra…

[German Version] (Jul 2, 1724, Quedlinburg – Mar 14, 1803, Hamburg), epic poet, lyricist and dramatist with significant influence on 18th-century German literature, obtained a comprehensive humanist education at the Princes' School in Pforta, which he attended from 1739 to 1745. In 1745, he took up the study of theology and philosophy at the University of Jena, and transferred in 1746 to Leipzig. With the publication of the first three songs of the verse epic Der Messias in 1748, Klopstock immediately attained widespread fame and popularity. In 1750, he traveled to Züri…

[German Version] (Feb 3, 1887, Salzburg – Nov 3, 1914, Krakow), Austrian poet, whose work, under a pall of pessimism and pervaded by enigmatic symbolism, left a permanent mark on German-language lyric poetry (Lyricism). Trakl, the fourth of seven children of Tobias Trakl, an ironmonger, and his wife Maria Catharina, grew up in Salzburg. He matriculated at the Staatsgymnasium there in 1897 but left without graduating in 1905 on account of poor grades. In the same year he began to work as a pharmaci…

[German Version] ( Jul 5, 1886, Lier, Belgium – Jan 24, 1947, Lier), Flemish writer, painter, and illustrator. Between the wars, Timmermans was one of the most popular authors of Flemish literature; he was esteemed as a regional writer, who vividly depicted the bond between human beings and nature in simple but expressive language, refining it into a simple philosophy of life. In his novels Pallieter (1916; ET: Pallieter, 1924) and Boerenpsalm (1935), love of nature, in whose beauty God reveals himself to us, combines with sensuous delight, conviviality, and relig…

[German Version] (Oct 23, 1805, Oberplan, Bohemia [now Horní Planá, Czech Republic] – Jan 28, 1868, Linz), Austrian writer and landscape painter. With a humanistic cultural ideal and anthropology rooted in the Enlightenment, he overcame Romanticism and designed a blissful utopian existence whose harmonizing tendencies contained an implicit criticism of the social reality of the 19th century. He discovered his interest in literature, painting, and natural science during his school years at the Bene…

[German Version] (Jul 2, 1877, Calw – Aug 9, 1962, Montagnola, Switzerland), one of the best-known 20th-century German authors. Hesse's life and work were decisively impacted by the dynamic combination of the two cultural spheres that influenced him while he was still living with his parents: the strict faith of Swabian Pietism, which became, for him, a paradigmatic model of a repressive upbringing and an unworldly devoutness, and the influence of Far Eastern culture and philosophy he received thr…

[German Version] (Jun 21, 1879, Reval [Tallinn] – Jun 20, 1973, Gauting), German writer whose work was increasingly informed by a Christian perspective. After earning a degree in law in Leipzig and doing an internship, from 1906 to 1910 Taube studied art history in Leipzig, Berlin, and Halle. From 1918 on, he lived in Gauting, near Munich, as a freelance writer. In 1936 he joined the Confessing Church; after 1945 he held the office of reader in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria. With his …

[English Version] Stifter, Adalbert (23.10.1805 Oberplan, Böhmen – 28.1.1868 Linz), östr. Schriftsteller und Landschaftsmaler, der, einem humanistisch-aufgeklärten Bildungsideal und Menschenbild verpflichtet, die Romantik überwand und die Utopie eines Lebensglücks entwarf, in deren Harmonisierungstendenzen sich implizit eine krit. Haltung gegenüber der gesellschaftlichen Realität des 19.Jh. mischt. Seine Interessen für Lit., Malerei und Naturwiss. entdeckte er während seiner schulischen Ausbildung …

[English Version] Wackenroder, Wilhelm Heinrich (13.7.1773 Berlin – 13.2.1798 ebd.), dt. Kunsttheoretiker und Schriftsteller, der durch seine Kunstauffassung zum Wegbereiter der dt. Romantik wurde. Auf dem Gymnasium, das er von 1786 bis 1792 besuchte, schloß er Freundschaft mit Ludwig Tieck (1773–1853) und hörte, während er in Erlangen und Göttingen Jura studierte, regelmäßig Vorlesungen über Kunst- und Kulturgesch., beschäftigte sich intensiv mit der durch Johann Joachim Winckelmann vermittelten Äs…

[English Version] Trakl, Georg (3.2.1887 Salzburg – 3.11.1914 Krakau), östr. Lyriker, dessen von Pessimismus überschattetes und von rätselhafter Symbolik durchleuchtetes Werk die deutschsprachige Lyrik nachhaltig beeinflußte. T., das vierte von insg. sieben Kindern des Eisenhändlers Tobias T. und dessen Frau Maria Catharina, wuchs in Salzburg auf. Das Staatsgymnasium, das er ab 1897 besuchte, verließ er wegen schlechter Zensuren nach der siebten Klasse und begann 1905 ein Apothekenpraktikum; hier k…