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[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 …

[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 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 ( …

[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] 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 epitom…

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[German Version] I. Philosophy Naturalism is a polysemous concept; its meaning depends on whether it is used (1) affirmatively or (2) with critical intention, depending on the presupposed understanding of nature. ¶ 1. Affirmative naturalism. When (a) the one nature of all things is contained in God in such a way that nothing can be contrasted with it, the gods and human beings are also (and unconditionally) conceived of as parts of this whole. The gods are then identical with the forces of nature (as in Greek religion [Greece: I, 1]), human history is a part of natural history, culture is the most specifically “human” contribution to it, while nature beholds itself in art. Religious revelations, for their part, represent processes of natural history (as in B. Sp…

[German Version] (Sep 20, 1908, Ostrowo, Posen [Ostrów Wielkopolski] – Jan 29, 1984, Bern), German author. His novels, for example Die sterbende Kirche(1936) and …

[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 m…

[German Version] 1. Johann Christian ( Jun 3, 1712, Heilbronn – May 8, 1773, Stuttgart). In 1744 he was appointed deacon at the Leonhardskirche in Stuttgart and also court chaplain. In 1759 he was appointed preacher at the collegiate church and consistorial councilor; in 1765 he was appointed prelate of Herrenalb, in 1772 prelate of Alpirsbach. Storr was an independent representative of early Württemberg Pietism in the school of J.A. Bengel. He was critical, however, of Bengel’s interpretation of the…

[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 educat…

[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…

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[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 through his parent…

[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 friend…

[English Version] Weiß, Konrad (1.5.1880 Rauenbretzingen bei Schwäbisch Hall – 4.1.1940 München), dt. Schriftsteller und Kunstkritiker, dessen lit. Werk und gesch…