The Dedalus Book of German Decadence (37 page)

Heym, Georg
(Hirschberg, Silesia 1887 – Berlin 1912)

Son of a lawyer, Georg Heym embarked on legal studies in Würzburg but soon took up writing: a longing for violent catastrophe characterized his work from its beginnings. Attempts at historical drama were unsuccessful and Heym’s literary breakthrough came with an introduction to the avant-garde
Neuer Club
in Berlin. Heym excelled at highly structured portrayals of apocalyptic horror; there are traces of Baudelaire in his poetry and word paintings akin to Van Gogh.
The Autopsy
demonstrates Heym’s brilliant (and morbid) imagination, with echoes of Edgar Allan Poe. He was drowned in a skating accident on the Wannsee.

Hille, Peter
(Erwitzen/Höxter 1854 – Berlin 1904)

Peter Hille is known primarily as an arch-Bohemian and vagabond (the poetess Else Lasker-Schuler propagated the legend). He studied briefly in Leipzig, then attempted journalism and finally turned to writing; he lived in the slums of Whitechapel, worked sporadically in the British Museum and visited Swinburne (with an introduction from Victor Hugo). Hille attempted novels and plays but was not successful in sustaining a narrative thread and was not at ease with conventional drama, preferring sketch, impression and aphorism. Impoverished, he often slept in the open, frequently in the Tiergarten, Berlin. His
Heriodias
is an example of the German contribution to portrayals of that fascinating figure which haunted the imagination of the decadents.

Holitscher, Arthur
(Budapest 1869 – Geneva 1941)

Holitscher was born in Budapest as the son of a Jewish businessman. He turned from banking to literature and published his first book in 1893 (the influence of Knut Hamsun is apparent). In 1896 he settled in Munich and worked as a publisher’s reader:
Der vergiftete Brunnen
(
The Poisoned Well
), his most famous novel, appeared in 1900 (Thomas Mann had recommended it). After World War One Holitscher became increasingly disenchanted with Bohemian attitudes and became active in left-wing politics; sympathy for the Soviet Union became manifest in many of his writings. He was in Paris in January 1933 and moved to Ascona, later Geneva, where he died. Robert Musil spoke at his grave.

Leppin, Paul
(Prague 1878 – Prague 1945)

Born into an impoverished lower middle-class background, Paul Leppin worked until 1928 as a clerk in the Post and Telegram service in Prague. His writing is very much of its time in the morbid (and frequently lascivious) atmosphere evoked; he became part of the literary bohême of the city and achieved notoriety with
Severins Gang in die Finsternis
(
Severin’s Journey into Darkness
) of 1914, where a sultry sexuality prevails. Greatly influenced by Meyrink, he became a spokesman of the mysterious and the erotic atmosphere of old Prague, of which he became the ‘Troubadour’. He was arrested by the Gestapo in 1939 and suffered two strokes after his release: he died as a result of syphilis. The novel
Blaugast. Ein Roman aus dem alten Prag
(
Blaugast. A novel from Old Prague
) was written in 1932 and published posthumously in 1948.

Mann, Thomas
(Lübeck 1875 – Kilchberg/Zürich 1955)

Thomas Mann is one of the greatest twentieth century German novelists; his magisterial stance, immense erudition, psychological finesse and ironic subtlety have little equal in world literature. As a young man he was fascinated by the phenomenon of decadence and observed the literary scene in Munich most keenly, claiming that his own work derived much from the awareness of degeneration.
Wälsunägenblut
was originally meant to appear in 1906 but was withheld from publication for many years because of certain objections and reservations on the part of Thomas Mann’s father-in-law. It appeared in 1921 as a bibliophile edition with lithographs by Th. Th. Heine. It has been included in this anthology as it is one of the stories of Thomas Mann which most blatantly portrays the dubious influence of Wagner, one of Thomas Mann’s ‘trinity of eternally united spirits’ (the others being Schopenhauer and Nietzsche).

Martens, Kurt
(Leipzig 1870 – Dresden 1945)

Martens was the son of an eminent civil servant in Leipzig, and studied law there, also in Heidelberg and Berlin. He turned to writing and made his name with the novel
Roman aus der decadence
(
A Novel from the Age of decadence
) in 1898. He lived from 1899 to 1922 in Munich where he contributed to the literary journal
Die Jugend.
He was a friend of Thomas Mann who wished to use the title of Marten’s novel as a subtitle for his own
Buddenbrooks.
Martens wrote other novels and plays which met with little success. His autobiography (1921-1924) gives a memorable account of the literary vie de bohême in Munich. He witnessed the air raid on Dresden in February 1945 and committed suicide afterwards.

Przybyszewski, Stanislaus
(Lojewno, Prussian Poland 1868-Jaronty/Hohensalza 1927)

Przybyszewski studied medicine and architecture in Berlin before publishing pseudo-psychological studies on Chopin and Ola Hansson. He became the centre of Berlin’s bohême, an habituè of the wine cellar ‘Zum schwarzen Ferkel’ where he consorted with Edvard Munch and Richard Dehmel. As a ‘satanist’ and ‘androgynist’ he is the most
outré
of the German writers of decadence, an intensely subjective individual whose writing probed sub-rational darkness and exulted in wild, chaotic descriptions of hyperbole and uproar. He made an indelible impression on his German contemporaries and is frequently portrayed in the literary works of the day. He lived in Munich from 1906-1919 before moving to independent Poland. His works in Polish are less significant: he became a member of the Young Polish Movement and edited the literary journal
Zycie .
He was married to Dagne Juel whom Edvard Munch frequently painted; she was later murdered in Tiflis.

Sacher-Masoch, Leopold von
(Lemberg 1836 – Lindheim/Hessen 1895)

Born in Ruthenia, i.e. Western Galizia, as the son of a senior police official, Sacher-Masoch studied law in Prague and Graz before devoting himself entirely to literature. He edited the ‘Gartenlaube für Österreich’ and later, in Leipzig, the literary journal ‘Auf der Höhe’. His earlier novels extol the Carpathian landscape and the rich confusion of races in the Bukovina; the later work, including
Venus im Pelz
(
Venus in Furs
) (originally part of a series of novellas called
Das Vermächtnis Kains
(
The Legacy of Cain)
explores the world of sexual fantasy and perversion. It was Krafft-Ebing’s
Psychopathia Sexualis
(1886) which coined the term ‘masochism’ and made the author notorious; his wife Wanda sought later to cash in on this notoriety by her own anthology
Damen im Pelz (Ladies in Furs
).

Trakl, Georg
(Salzburg 1887 – Cracow 1914)

Georg Trakl is the poet of decay par excellence; his slender
oeuvre
is suffused with an awareness of transience and putrefaction. Addicted to drugs at an early age (he studied pharmacy in Salzburg) he adopted the pose of the
poète maudit
and was drawn into an incestuous relationship with his sister. Like many others of his generation he was fascinated by the poetry of Baudelaire and may have known Baudelaire’s (and Mallarmé’s) translations of Edgar Allan Poe.
Verlassenheit
(
Desolation
) is very reminiscent of
The Fall of the House of Usher.
Trakl wrote many poems of haunting euphony but was also keenly aware of sin and damnation. He committed suicide in the psychiatric wing of the military hospital in Cracow.

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Publishing History

First published by Dedalus in 1994

First ebook edition in 2012

Compilation & Introduction copyright
©
Ray Furness 1994

Original translations copyright © Ray Furness and Mike Mitchell1996

Blaugast by Paul Leppin copyright © Langen Müller in der F.A. Herbig

Verlagsbuchhandlung GmbH, Munchen

Blood of the Wälsungs by Thomas Mann copyright © Reed Book Services

The right of Ray Furness to be identified as the editor of this work and the right of Ray Furness and Mike Mitchell to be identified as the translators of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

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