Richard Beer-Hofmann

A thorough account of Richard Beer Hofmann's profound influence on Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Arnold Schnitzler, and other turn-of-the-century Viennese writers' lives and work has not appeared in nearly fifty years. This book fills that lacuna, placing Beer-Hofmann (1866–1945), the central member of the literary ground known as "Young Vienna," in the context of his time and furnishing a fine critical discussion of all his major works. Beer-Hofmann's metamorphosis from a "'decadent young dandy and aesthete" into an artist "whose Jewishness was central to his life and thought" is described in the biographical first chapter; this growth provides the unifying thread for subsequent chapters, which focus on his prose and dramatic works.

This edition is not for Germanists alone; its ample quotations followed by English translations finally make Beer-Hofmann's work accessible to readers who have little or no command of the German language.