Hugo von Hofmannsthal

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Hugo von Hofmannsthal, 1910
Hofmannsthal Signature.gif

Hugo Laurenz August Hofmann, Edler von Hofmannsthal (called Hugo von Hofmannsthal ; born February 1, 1874 in Vienna , †  July 15, 1929 in Rodaun near Vienna) was an Austrian writer , playwright , lyric poet , librettist and co-founder of the Salzburg Festival . He is considered one of the most important representatives of the German-speaking fin de siècle and Viennese modernism .

Life

origin

Birthplace in Vienna

Hugo von Hofmannsthal had Bohemian , Jewish and Lombard ancestors. His Jewish Orthodox great-grandfather Isaak Löw Hofmann (1759–1849) was ennobled by Ferdinand I in 1835 as a successful industrialist . He had introduced the silk industry in Austria and made a considerable fortune for his large family. His son and heir Augustin Emil von Hofmannsthal (1815–1881) converted to Catholicism and in 1850 married the bourgeois Italian Petronilla Ordioni (1815–1898).

Hugo August Peter Hofmann, Edler von Hofmannsthal (1841–1915), the writer's father, was born out of wedlock and was only legitimized when his parents married . He studied law at the University of Vienna , where he received his doctorate on November 27, 1865. iuris, was promoted to director of the Oesterreichische Central-Boden-Credit-Bank and married Anna Maria Josefa Fohleutner (1849– March 22, 1904), daughter of a notary . In the founders' crash of 1873 , during the honeymoon in which Hugo junior was conceived, they lost all their family assets. The family was therefore dependent on the father's income.

Hugo von Hofmannsthal therefore had to earn his own money and lived with a constant fear of impoverishment - whereas the public mostly assumed that he lived on his family's assets. While he always saw himself as a Catholic aristocrat and allowed himself to be carried away with anti-Jewish remarks, he was often referred to as a “Jewish” intellectual by both friends and foes ( literature : Weinzierl 2005).

youth

Memorial plaque at the Academic Gymnasium Vienna

Hofmannsthal's family attached great importance to education. Hugo, an only child, was first brought up by private teachers and from 1884 attended the Academic Gymnasium in Vienna , an elite school of the Danube Monarchy. Among other things , he learned Italian , French , English , Latin and Greek . He read a lot, was precocious in communication and intellect, and an excellent student.

Hugo began to write his first poems influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche at an early age. Since he was not allowed to publish as a pupil, they were printed under the pseudonyms Loris , Loris Melikow and Theophil Morren in the newspaper Die Presse . Within a short time he was counted among the literary young Vienna , a group of writers as diverse as Hermann Bahr , Arthur Schnitzler , Felix Salten ; he also got to know old Henrik Ibsen and Gerhart Hauptmann . In 1891 he met Stefan George for the first time , who was formative for his work. His early fame as a poet and playwright quickly spread beyond his hometown; for a long time his later works were measured against him.

In his memoir Die Welt von Gestern (1942), Stefan Zweig described Hofmannsthal's strange influence on his generation:

“The appearance of the young Hofmannsthal is and remains memorable as one of the great miracles of early completion; In world literature I know of no example of similar infallibility in the mastery of language in such youth, except in Keats and Rimbaud , no such breadth of ideal exuberance, no such penetration with poetic substance down to the most accidental line, as in this great genius, which already is in its sixteenth and seventeenth years inscribed itself in the eternal annals of the German language with indelible verse and prose that is still unsurpassed today. His personal beginning and at the same time being already perfected was a phenomenon that hardly occurs a second time in a generation. "

- Stefan Zweig : Die Welt von Gestern , Frankfurt am Main 1986, pp. 63–64

Studies (1892–1900)

Hugo von Hofmannsthal at the age of 19

In 1892 Hofmannsthal graduated with "distinction". Under pressure from his father, he began studying law at the University of Vienna . After the first state law examination, he interrupted his studies to voluntarily do a year of military service with the Sixth Dragoons Regiment in Brno and Göding ( Moravia ). After a trip to Venice he returned to the university, dropped out of law studies and studied French philology . During his studies he met the poet Leopold Andrian , with whom he remained good friends all his life.

In 1898 Hofmannsthal received the academic degree of Doctor with the dissertation on the use of language among the poets of the Pléjade . For the next two years he traveled, wrote a post-doctoral thesis, and made some of the most important friendships of his life. In autumn he traveled to Venice , in spring 1899 to Paris , where he met Maurice Maeterlinck and Auguste Rodin . In the same year he made friends with Rainer Maria Rilke and Rudolf Kassner , with whom he had a close correspondence throughout his life. In 1900 he got to know the composer Richard Strauss , at that time Kapellmeister at the Berlin Court Opera - one of Hofmannsthal's most artistically fruitful friendships.

Starting a family (1901–1913)

In 1901 Hofmannsthal submitted the post-doctoral thesis Study on the Development of the Poet Victor Hugo to the University of Vienna in order to gain the right to teach . A short time later, however, he decided against the civil profession of professor and decided to become a freelance writer. On June 1 of the same year he married the 21-year-old Gertrud Schlesinger ("Gerty"), the younger sister of his friend Hans Schlesinger and, like him, the child of a Viennese banker; her mother Franziska (Fanny) came from the well-known industrial family Kuffner . Gerty Schlesinger , a Jew, converted to Christianity before she married. They moved to Rodaun , a suburb of Vienna, in a baroque castle (now called Hofmannsthal-Schlössl ). Their three children were born in the following years, Christiane (1902–1987), Franz (1903–1929) and Raimund (1906–1974).

Hofmannsthal's views on marriage were conservative; for him the "holy marital status" was the core and symbol of the social order. As a “poet's wife”, Gerty Hofmannsthal had to keep her husband free from the trivialities of everyday life and occasionally had letters dictated to her. "Marriage is a sublime institute and stands in our poor existences like a castle made of a single rock", Hofmannsthal said to Carl Jacob Burckhardt ( lit .: quoted in Weinzierl 2005, p. 213). In his correspondence he cultivated some intimate "soul friendships" with women writers, including the noblewoman Helene von Nostitz , the dancer Grete Wiesenthal and the young widow Ottonie von Degenfeld-Schonburg (1882–1970). However, neither his pen pals with women nor his marriage really fulfilled him:

“Friendship between men cannot form the content of life, but I believe it is the purest and strongest that life contains; for me it is probably the only thing besides my innate job that I could not imagine life without, and I think I would have looked for it, whatever status I would have always been born in. "

In the years around 1900 Hofmannsthal went through a deep inner crisis that was nourished by his doubts about the expressiveness of language. During this time, the family was certainly an emotional hold for him. The birth of children and new friendships, for example with the theater maker Max Reinhardt and the writers Rudolf Borchardt and Rudolf Alexander Schröder , helped him to regain confidence. With Reinhardt and Richard Strauss he brought his great dramatic works to the stage in the following years. At the end of 1903 and beginning of 1904, Karl Gustav Vollmoeller and Hofmannsthal made personal contact. First supported by Arthur Schnitzler , then by Max Reinhardt and especially by Alfred Walter Heymel , they built a strange friendship. While Vollmoeller adored Hofmannsthal and his work and saw him as an equal friend and colleague, Hofmannsthal followed Vollmoeller's work and work with mistrust and envy. The decades of close collaboration between Vollmoeller and Max Reinhardt was a thorn in Hofmannsthal's side throughout his life. Nevertheless, or precisely because of this, the work of both so dissimilar writers and dramatists in the years 1903 to 1914 shows a wealth of parallels and mutual fertilization.

In 1907 Hofmannsthal took over the editing of the poetry section of the weekly newspaper Morgen . That year the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna archived his voice while reciting the poem Manche . This sound recording was known for a long time as the oldest surviving recording of a German-language poet's voice.

In 1908 Hofmannsthal traveled to Greece with Count Harry Kessler and Aristide Maillol . In addition to his travels, he maintained correspondence with numerous intellectuals and artists, including Carl Jacob Burckhardt , Thomas Mann , Arthur Schnitzler , Richard Beer-Hofmann and Alfred Walter Heymel . The intellectuals he patronized also included the philosopher Rudolf Pannwitz and figures from the far right of the political spectrum, such as the later Nazi Germanist Josef Nadler and the writer Max Mell .

First World War and the post-war years (1914–1929)

Portrait photo from the 1920s

On July 28, 1914, the First World War broke out. Hofmannsthal was 40 years old at the beginning of the war, married and in poor health. After being called up, he initially worked as a storm officer in Istria . But before Hermann Bahr's martial greeting to Hofmannsthal , printed on August 26, 1914 in the New Vienna Journal , could reach him, Hofmannsthal, who was hardly fit for the front, was transferred to a position in the War Welfare Office of the Ministry of the Interior. Two years later, Karl Kraus caricatured the open letter in the torch in his greeting to Bahr and Hofmannsthal . Having escaped from being deployed at the front, Hofmannsthal wrote war propagandistic texts, which he had mainly printed in the Neue Freie Presse , at that time the largest liberal-bourgeois newspaper in Vienna.

In 1915 he published Grillparzer's “political testament”, the first of only 26 volumes in the Austrian Library . This was by him together with the publisher Kippenberg as a companion piece to the since 1912 successfully installed in German-speaking Island Library - in Hofmannsthal with the titles The Goal and the death and the death of Titian and The Small World Theater or The lucky was represented - was conceived in order to offer a representative cross-section of Austria's history and intellectual life in the long term and on a large scale with this paperback series by Insel Verlag . The hoped-for success on the book market failed, however, so that it was discontinued in 1917.

During the war Hofmannsthal repeatedly traveled abroad to give lectures and highlighted Austria-Hungary as an outstanding cultural nation. In the War Welfare Office he was entrusted with cultural-political tasks; he wrote patriotic essays and gave speeches. During the following two years of the widening war, he made several business trips to Krakow , Brussels and Berlin . The world war ended in 1918 with the fall of the Danube monarchy . For the conservative patriot Hofmannsthal, this was a personal blow from which he never fully recovered. Nevertheless, the years after the war were very productive as a writer and continued the earlier work almost seamlessly. For financial reasons, Hofmannsthal now had to accept work as editor.

In 1919 Hofmannsthal was first proposed for the Nobel Prize in Literature . Another three nominations followed, but Hofmannsthal was never awarded the prize. Each nomination was mainly overturned by the vote of the Swedish writer Per Hallström , who put forward the “lasciviousness” of plays like Der Rosenkavalier against the Austrian , but was also successful with anti-Semitic arguments.

In the years 1920 to 1927 Hofmannsthal made numerous trips, including to Berlin, Warsaw , Scandinavia , and several times to Italy and Switzerland . In 1925 he traveled to Paris, Morocco , London and Oxford , and the following February to Sicily . He was particularly interested in Italy, as he, like many Austrian upper-class citizens, sympathized with the fascism that had ruled under Mussolini since 1922 . In 1925 he wrote the screenplay for the first film adaptation of Rosenkavalier (1926) together with Louis Nerz and the film director Robert Wiene .

death

Grave site in the Kalksburg cemetery

Hofmannsthal's son Franz shot himself to death on July 13, 1929 at the age of 26. The artistically unambitious son had returned to his parents after unsuccessful employment. Two days after his son's suicide, Hofmannsthal died of a stroke when he was about to leave for his son's funeral.

Hofmannsthal was buried in the Kalksburger Friedhof (group 1, number 49) in an honorary grave . Since he felt connected to the Third Order of the Franciscans (membership is not clearly documented), he was buried in the habit of a Franciscan, according to tradition and his own wish . Many artists and politicians as well as thousands of Viennese citizens were present at his funeral. Hofmannsthal had willingly forbidden all speeches at his grave.

The grave monument is adorned with an inscription with the closing lines from his poem Some : "And my part is more than this life a slim flame or a narrow lyre."

Fate of the family

With the so-called “Anschluss” of Austria to the German Reich on March 12, 1938, the family was forced to emigrate . The property of the Hofmannsthals was confiscated by the National Socialists. Maria Grengg , who was loyal to the regime , moved into the Fuchsschlössl .

Gerty von Hofmannsthal lived in Oxford from July 1939 and became a British citizen in 1947. She stayed in England until her death on November 9, 1959.

Raimund von Hofmannsthal had been married to the American Ava Alice Muriel Astor since 1933, the only daughter of the wealthy John Jacob Astor IV . She had met Raimund von Hofmannsthal through his fatherly friend and patron Karl Gustav Vollmoeller , who had been friends with John Jacob Astor IV at the beginning of the century and had maintained contact with his widow and daughter. Vollmoeller had helped Raimund von Hofmannsthal behind his father's back in the twenties out of financial difficulties. In 1939 Raimund married his second wife, Lady Elizabeth Paget, of British nobility. He died on March 20, 1974.

His sister Christiane had married the Indologist Heinrich Zimmer (1890–1943) in 1928 , with whom she lived in Heidelberg and emigrated to New York in 1940 because he had lost his teaching license as the husband of a non-Aryan woman . Christiane Zimmer studied social sciences at Columbia University and later became an assistant professor at Fordham University . Her house in New York has long been a meeting place for American and European artists and intellectuals. She died in New York in 1987.

Plant and environment

Early work

In the early days Hofmannsthal, like other poets of his generation, orientated himself towards French symbolism ; his early works can be assigned to literary art nouveau or literary impressionism . The 17-year-old Hofmannsthal stylizes himself as a nostalgic whose true form of existence is loneliness:

“At the age of eight, he found the greatest attraction in the scent of half-forgotten days and did some things only with the dull instinct of sowing beautiful memories in the future. So he got used to resigned himself to expect the value and charm of the present only from the past. "

- Age of Innocence , 1891

This attitude, "to expect the value and charm of the present only from what has become the past (present)", describes in a certain sense his early poetry. She emphatically conjures up “loneliness”, “life” and death; death lies in beauty and beauty lies in death, in decay. Where life is empty, decay harbors a promise of renewal, "transfigured possibilities", as the first punch of the poem Leben (1892) shows:

The sun sinks in the lifeless days
And sinks the city gilded and mighty,
Just as it sank in time, which had much to say
and much to give, in many forms.
And shadows seem to carry the golden air of
sunken days, pale and delicate,
And every hour that glides by,
a breath of transfigured possibilities conceals .

The lyric I has receded entirely; the world of impressions lies in things. Things are symbolically charged: the sun, the city, the time, the shadows; all of them are mythical in size. Feelings do not have to be described, they do not lie in the subject, but in the things themselves ( Ghasel , 1891):

In the poorest little violin lies the harmony of the universe,
lies ecstatic deepest moans, shouts of sweet sound;
In the stone by the way lies the spark that ignites the world.
The force of the terrible, lightning-like impact lies hidden.
In the word that has been picked up, there is what some are searching for in thought:
A truth hidden with the clarity of shining crystal ...
Lures the tones, stings the truth, throws the stone with tremendous forces !
Perfection has been hidden from our sight since the day of the fall.

His early work falls into a time when young literary talents by the dozen were hailed as geniuses. However, only a few could meet this claim; many disappeared from the scene as quickly as they came. Hofmannsthal himself was long measured by the fame of his early poems and fragments of drama. Joseph Gregor's drama guide from 1953 still calls Der Tor und der Tod , which Hofmannsthal wrote at the age of 18, "his most popular play", there are "not a few who claim to be his best" (p. 274). He himself had to struggle a long time to get out of this shadow.

“Even after Hofmannsthal had turned away from the linguistic magic of the lyric in 1910 and hardly wrote any more poetry, the image of the author in the literary public continued to be shaped by this early lyrical work, 300 copies of which were published in 1903 in the Selected Poems published by Verlag der Blätter for art and in 1907 in The collected poems. "

- Walter Schmitz

Poetry theory

Hofmannsthal's relevance to literary history is also based on the fact that he took a position on his poetry in poetological reflections from an early age. As was generally the case at the turn of the century, he did not have a systematically elaborated literary theory, but scattered essays and literary theoretical reflections in literary form. His early views differ greatly from his late skepticism about language , just as his poetry itself is undergoing a profound change.

The young Hofmannsthal conformed entirely to Stefan George's aestheticism : poetic language should be differentiated from everyday language; it should form a closed "whole", a self-contained art world with its own laws. Art must not serve any external purposes - for example entertainment (in the words of Théophile Gautier : " l'art pour l'art ").

“There is no direct path from poetry into life, and from life into poetry. The word as the carrier of a meaning in life and the dreamlike brother word, which can be in a poem, strive apart and float strangely past each other, like the two buckets of a well. "

- Poetry and Life , 1896

He is referring to an essay by Stefan George in which he writes:

“The value of the seal is not determined by the sense (...) but the form d. H. absolutely nothing external but that deeply arousing in measure and sound, which at all times has differentiated the original masters from the descendants of the artists of the second order. (...) The strictest measure is at the same time the highest degree of freedom. "

- About poetry , 1894

The “measure”, the rhythm, the sound, the “own tone” distinguish the work of art from non-art, not its content or the underlying intention.

Unlike George, Hofmannsthal emphasizes that the poem is related to moods, fantasies and experiences; it does not completely negate “life”, but indirectly leads back to it. Poetry and life are paradigmatically linked in the metaphor and in the symbol (two concepts that can certainly merge into one another). In the metaphor, “whole world contexts can become visible”, just as “the symbol is virtually identical with life and with the experience of this life” (Koopmann 1997; p. 47). Hofmannsthal himself speaks of the “strangely vibrating state [...] in which the metaphor comes to us in a shower, lightning and storm; of this sudden, lightning-like illumination, in which we for a moment suspect the great world context, shuddering to feel the presence of the idea ”( Philosophy of the Metaphorical , 1894).

A short poem called poetry (1898) recognized the problem of sealing so:

This art is terrible! I spin the thread
out of my body, And this thread is also my way through the air.

The poet is a kind of tightrope walker; but the rope - actually just a thin thread - he pulls out of himself. He does not spin it out of the mind, but out of the body - where “life” sits and the noises of sensation play out. Fixed, sometimes exotic rhyme schemes such as the terzine , the ghazel , the punch are intended to ensure that the balancing act succeeds.

The task of poetry is neither to objectify the world from the secure base of the viewer, as in bourgeois realism , nor to collect subjective impressions that literary impressionism pursues. Rather, "language itself" is the thread on which the poet steps.

A short time later this extremely tense thread, which the poet spun from himself, breaks. On October 18, 1902, a letter ("Chandos-Brief") appears in the Berlin literary magazine Der Tag . The text shows the doubts out of which Hofmannsthal abandoned the poetology of his youth; dressed in a fictional letter to an addressee who will never answer, he speaks very eloquently of the impossibility of speaking:

“I have completely lost the ability to think or speak coherently about anything. (...) I felt an inexplicable unease just to say the words 'mind', 'soul' or 'body' (...) the abstract words, which the tongue naturally has to use to express any judgment, fell apart in my mouth like moldy mushrooms. "

- A letter , 1902

The Chandos letter marks a break in Hofmannsthal's concept of art. In retrospect, the previous life appears as a seamless unity of language, “life” and me. But now life can no longer be represented by words; rather, it is directly present in things:

"Namely because the language in which I might be given not only to write but also to think is neither Latin nor English, nor Italian or Spanish, but a language in which mute things sometimes speak to me, and in which I will perhaps answer in the grave before an unknown judge. "

- ibid.

The “new language” should be immediate, not mediated by the signs. It is “revelation”, not rhetoric. The letter does not say how this requirement can actually be met; it ends with the narrator falling silent. Nevertheless, Hofmannsthal finally emancipated himself from Stefan George and from aestheticism.

Hofmannsthal later found a position in which he reconciled himself with language; but this conception is specifically related to the theater, to which he is turning more and more. In the unwritten epilogue to “Rosenkavalier” (1911), he understands language (and at the same time music) as “fluid”, “from which all life flows into the figures”. The language, he writes in a later foreword to the Rosenkavalier , is "like everything in the play - at the same time real and invented (...), full of allusion, full of double meaning" - an "imaginary" language that simultaneously reflects social class and time characterized.

“Dramatic structures of this great and simple kind have truly emerged from the people. Before whom should they turn before the people? (...) How, however, that we brought the dead, the untimely before them! Too much of our time is being made in our time. (...) What is beneficial for the poet lies in contrasting unspeakably broken conditions with an unbroken relationship to the world, which in its innermost being is identical to that. "

- The Game Before the Crowd , 1911

Poetry was now to be given a new task: the “creative restoration” of a semi-fictional aristocratic society ( European Review 1, 1925).

Dramas

The Everyman on Cathedral Square, 1920

Mystery games

The mystery play actually comes from the late Middle Ages. It was taken up again in Goethe's Faust ; Hoffmann von Fallersleben and Karl Immermann continued it in the 19th century. Joseph von Eichendorff's transmissions of the mystery games (auto sacramental) of the Calderón de la Barca were decisive . Here Hofmannsthal found a valid solution to the theological problem of free will , which was to determine all of his dramatic work. Hofmannsthal saw the form of the mystery play as an opportunity to demonstratively return to the roots of German literature and at the same time to make the audience themselves "German people" again:

“Audience is wavering, short-headed and moody; the people are old and wise, a gigantic body, which well knows the food that gets them. It understands and receives in a great way and communicates the most sacred of its possessions to the individuals who emerge from it pure and conscious. "

- The Game Before the Crowd , 1911

The present therefore only finds itself in its own projection, in what is actually out of date. The decisive stylistic device is allegory, because it can "condense the dissolving world being in such a way into fixed opposites (...)" ( The old game of everyone , 1911). That is why allegory is becoming a contemporary means of making the confused world of the present comprehensible again in the first place.

Hofmannsthal's great mystery plays are Jedermann (1911) and The Salzburg Great World Theater (1922). The Everyman is since 1920 the hallmark of the Salzburg Festival , the Salzburg Great World Theater has been going from Max Reinhardt as part of the Salzburg Festival premiered, but has not been successful.

Tragedy (1920–1927)

The central work of the last creative years was the tragedy The Tower , for whose valid shape and stage-appropriate form the poet struggled in ever new attempts from summer 1920 to late autumn 1927. Several versions were published during the author's lifetime. In the two first published, Sigismund hands over rule to a mythical child king who founded a kingdom of peace. In the third and final version, the rebel Olivier triumphs at the end, who insidiously murdered Sigismund and established a tyranny. With the tragedy Hofmannsthal attempts to poetically design and interpret aspects of the political and social reality of his time. At the heart of the work, which is based on the experience of the First World War, are the conflict of mind and power and the problem of legitimate rule. The action is embedded in a - temporally remote - historical-mythical event. As a result, the piece takes on that specific form that Hofmannsthal himself allowed to speak of the “superhistorical aspect of this tragedy”, of the “hovering between a past and a present”. The starting point for the design is Calderon's play Das Leben ein Traum , which Hofmannsthal has dealt with repeatedly since 1901. The formal aesthetic conception of the drama is based more on the Baroque tragedy than on the classical tragedy, as Walter Benjamin first pointed out in a review.

Task of the theater

Because the real value of theater lies in its ability to make everyone understand their position in the world and society:

“The theater also exercises the same inexorable and, I believe, marvelously moral discipline as love on the greatest who wants to deal with it; it does not accept any special cases; Both initially postulate the tallest and the smallest as a sociable person and tolerate no dignity; Both show the individual and the original the limit of his pride and his right to a life of his own and make him understand the wholesome doctrine that it means nothing to be special in what distinguishes one from humanity, that the only criterion is Greatness lies in the nature and power of what is shared with all of humanity. "

- The Game Before the Crowd , 1911

The task of the theater is therefore to represent the order of society and at the same time to establish it: Because the individual is not allowed to place himself above society, the theater must show him his place.

“If you deal with the theater, it always remains a political issue. One acts by stepping in front of a crowd, because one wants to work on them. ”( The game before the crowd , 1911)

There are controversial opinions about Hofmannsthal's practical aptitude for the medium of theater. While Rolf Badenhausen claims to have recognized him as the “ideal European theater director of the first half of the 20th century”, Konstanze Heininger would like to conclude from his connection with the “theater maker Max Reinhardt ” that “despite all the programmatic skills that Hofmannsthal certainly had, he would never have been able to cope with the requirements of the practical side of the theater business ”.

Political and constitutional writings

Hofmannsthal's constitutional and political stance was monarchist and conservative from the start . The Danube Monarchy, with its old, far-reaching, unifying and balancing traditions and its Catholic worldview between earthly joys and the certainty of transience seemed to him, especially after the First World War, the fulfillment of a political utopia.

His attitude to the Danube Monarchy was critical even before the First World War; From his point of view, political and moral problems were too clearly to be solved. During the Balkan War in 1913, in which Austria-Hungary, to the displeasure of many, including artistic contemporaries, did not take part militarily, but only issued ultimatums or threatened interventions and then "only" mobilized them, he wrote:

"I have completely lost the trust I had in front of the highest class, the high nobility, the trust that they have, especially in Austria, to give and mean something, and with that my respect for the class as such (...) But nowhere do I see the stand, not even elements of the stand that could replace this in the tour. "

- to Leopold von Andrian, August 24, 1913

Hofmannsthal was also moved by the enthusiasm for the war in 1914 and the victory of the Danube monarchy seemed certain to him.

At the same time as Friedrich Naumann , Hofmannsthal, despite all doubts, developed the idea of ​​a German-speaking supranational empire that was supposed to connect the peoples of the Danube region in order to play a comprehensive mediating role (the “Austrian idea”) between Latin, Germanic and Slavic civilization. Hofmannsthal saw only the Habsburg Monarchy as the direct heir of the Holy Roman Empire, which died out in 1806, with its incorruptible bureaucracy and broad roots and connections, capable of dealing with these problems . Hofmannsthal increasingly recognized the positive plurality of the Habsburg monarchy, especially in contrast to the German Empire, and acquired (also through Hermann Bahr) a great understanding of the many nationalities, especially the Czech-Bohemian culture. At the same time, his literary work and his political utterances formed a plea for an “Austrian identity” and, after the First World War, his thoughts on Central Europe developed into a European idea. Because according to Hofmannsthal the old empire (the Danube Monarchy ) was nothing more than a "Europe in miniature".

Hofmannsthal also worked out the dividing line between Austrians and Prussians on the basis of historical developments since Prince Eugene of Savoy and Empress Maria Theresa and from this developed the model of the “Theresian people” living in Central Europe. Hofmannsthal's “Theresian man” is a Catholic pan-European, a servant of Habsburg or the Habsburg idea and an incorruptible supranational mediator between languages ​​and traditional ethnicities. According to Hofmannsthal, Austria's Theresian mission consisted of not only applying the Habsburg principle “Live and let live!” But also to soften the hyper-Protestant austerity of Prussia. This “Theresian man”, perceived historically and sociologically by the sensitive Hofmannsthal in the years around 1910, is reflected in the “Habsburg effect”, which was only statistically proven a hundred years later. Claudio Magris has worked out the "Habsburg myth in Austrian literature" from the works of Hofmannsthal and Franz Grillparzer . After the defeat of 1918 Hofmannsthal reaffirmed the ongoing and now particularly necessary mission of the “Theresian people” as co-heirs of the Holy Roman Empire and the Danube Monarchy to further mediate between the European ethnicities through the application of knightly pan-European Habsburg values. In line with this vision, Hofmannsthal co-founded the Salzburg Festival in 1920.

From his appointment to the Reich Ministry of Welfare at the beginning of the First World War, Hofmannsthal - by far not the only intellectual - began to agitate politically in newspapers, mostly in the Neue Freie Presse , the newspaper of Austria's bourgeois-liberal elite. If it were purely political propaganda, it would be rather uninteresting in literary history; Hofmannsthal always speaks at the same time about the role of poetry and the spirit.

In his first editorial, Appeal to the Upper Classes (September 8, 1914) he wrote: “The monstrous numbs every mind, but it is within the power of the mind to shake off this paralysis again. (...) But now we have to go on living while this monstrosity is happening around us. It is important to live as if a day were like every day. ”It is the duty of the upper classes to“ live and let live. (...) Now, reducing the household size is only to be recommended to a very limited extent, and to renouncing the superfluous only to a very limited extent. (...) Ostentation, otherwise so repulsive, now it becomes high decency. ”Maintaining the social order, otherwise just“ empty fuss ”, is now the highest duty. For Hofmannsthal, the war was at the beginning the renewal and revitalization of the tired monarchy:

"Spirit and morality (...) are rampant and the mood behind this army has something brave in the morning, something not entirely European, but beyond that, something colonial in a high sense, with a touch of the future."

- The affirmation of Austria , November 1st, 1914

The war seemed to him to be the beginning of a new era, a "tremendous spiritual upheaval". A “new Europe” was to emerge in which a new authority of the spirit, a new reverence for “spirit and spiritual passion” should arise ( War and Culture , 1915).

His ideal was a political unity that should also be a spiritual unity. Hofmannsthal did not change this ideal after the war, but inevitably he had to adjust his hopes for its fulfillment to the circumstances. His social class ideas had already been fulfilled in the Danube Monarchy ; with its end, Hofmannsthal lost this anchor. A new unity, a new nation had to be found. With these considerations he found himself in the middle of an intellectual current of his time, the Conservative Revolution .

In contrast to other designs, however, his political model was not shaped by mythical-biological terms such as “blood”, “race” or “people”; the admirer of the multi-ethnic state Austria-Hungary had never placed any value on such designs. His ideal was the “German”, understood as the “ spiritual space of the nation ”. The fact that Hofmannsthal, as an Austrian, speaks of “German” must only be superficial here. What is meant is the unity of the nation not as territory (Germany), but through language and especially through literature . This “kingdom” was to be established by the poets: “Everything in the outer fissured area must be torn into its own interior and there be sealed into one, so that outside becomes unity, because only the whole in itself becomes external unity”, as he said in the literature formulated.

While Friedrich Schlegel had spoken of the high status of language, of its unity, which was "the most intimate and natural means of connection" and which held the nation together with the "equality of customs", Hofmannsthal also regarded it as an essential link of the nation. After the other ties (of sociability) were broken and even religion no longer brought them together, it was only the language of literature in which one could find the nation again, a thought that pervaded his essay Wert und Ehre German . From the language, “the enigmatic national face can still be seen from a dark mirror background.” In contrast to other peoples, the Germans did not have a cohesive history, because until the sixteenth century there were no “common deeds and sufferings; and also the spiritual that stands behind suffering “do not connect. Hofmannsthal saw it as his task to make language visible as a spiritual connection, the actual spiritual body of the nation, and to preserve it.

This political stance also explains why many of his dramas and comedies defend marriage and why the social hierarchy - even if it may be temporarily reversed , as in the incorruptible (1923) - ultimately anchored in the metaphysical . The chaos that is created in his comedies is often used to put dissolute people in their place and restore order to the world. Where this attitude is not represented in the play itself, there are always individual characters who - as questionable as their actions are - insist on order.

Relationship with Stefan George

Stefan George 1910

Hofmannsthal's meeting with Stefan George, six years his senior, in Vienna in 1891 remained of lasting importance for him. George studied Romance studies in Vienna and had just returned from Paris; Hofmannsthal, who was just 18 years old, approached him in the Viennese Café Griensteidl , one of the meeting places for literary youth.

The encounter with the famous George intimidated and emotionally captivated him. Under the title "The Prophet (An Episode)" he noted the events of the following weeks in his diary. George picked up his younger admirer from school every day and had conversations with him about learned subjects. Hofmannsthal wrote him poems and dedicated a play to him ( Der Tod des Tizian , 1892):

Then a quiet, easy walk frightens me,
And my friend the poet steps out of the bay window.
And kisses me with a strange smile on the forehead
And says, and his voice is almost serious:
"Actors of your self-created dreams,
I know, my friend, that they call you liars
And despise you who do not understand you,
But I understand you, o my twin brother. ”
And smiling strangely he went away quietly,
and later he gave me his piece.

Hofmannsthal was allowed to publish his poems and literary critical essays and reviews in George's magazine Blätter für die Kunst .

George was demanding and authoritarian from the start; he demanded unconditional dedication from Hofmannsthal. George's erotic desire may have played a part; even more, his idea of ​​friendship, which should be service and voluntary submission. Hofmannsthal found himself torn between aversion and submission. His college friend Leopold Andrian later claimed that Hofmannsthal himself was bisexual and had only suppressed his homosexual desire through self-discipline.

The main differences, however, were artistic. George only accepted formally strict lyric poetry as art that was reserved for an elite circle of select listeners; Hofmannsthal, on the other hand, was looking for an audience and soon began to discover the popular medium of drama for himself. The increasing independence of Hofmannsthal outraged George, who in life as in poetry demanded subordination and formal rigor. George insisted that poetry negates life and should be closed to life; Hofmannsthal looked for ways to understand poetry and life in an interrelated relationship.

Nevertheless, until 1899 they conducted an intensive correspondence, chained together by the isolation of their avant-garde attitude. Hofmannsthal writes to George: "How lonely we are in Germany and how deeply we point to each other". The points of contention were irreconcilable, so that from 1899 they broke off completely. Hofmannsthal's dramatic draft for Jedermann from 1905 contains a settlement with his friend: “Never again your eye in mine, your answer to my question. Never again! (…) Between us there is fornication and shit. It was foolishness, a dreary to-and-fro movement. Something like desecration of a corpse. ”At the end of the dialogue, everyone hands their friend a cut lute .

The reconciliation after a chance meeting was short-lived. In March 1906, after a heated argument over Hofmannsthal's latest dramas, George ended the friendship; they never met again afterwards.

Collaboration with Richard Strauss

Richard Strauss

In 1899 Hofmannsthal met Richard Strauss , who was 35 years old at the time, at a company in the house of the Berlin poet Richard Dehmel . When they met again in Paris, Hofmannsthal suggested that they produce a ballet together; Hofmannsthal's design, The Triumph of Time , did not inspire Strauss. Even Gustav Mahler , which he offered it, doubted the theatrical quality of the work. Only the composer Alexander von Zemlinsky agreed to bring it to the stage.

But after Strauss had seen Hofmannsthal's play Elektra in Berlin in 1903 , this time he suggested a collaboration. Hofmannsthal then wrote the libretto for Strauss on the basis of his piece for his opera Elektra , which was premiered in 1909 (see there for the history of its genesis). This was followed by Der Rosenkavalier (1911) and Ariadne auf Naxos (1912), and in the post-war period Die Frau ohne Schatten (1919), Die Ägyptische Helena (1928) and Arabella (1933).

Their human relationship was not free of conflict due to the harsh and demanding nature and certain literary inadequacies of the composer on the one hand and the literary demands of the subtle and highly educated poet on the other. Hofmannsthal's cultured taste and refined disposition led to occasional controversies and misunderstandings, as the informative correspondence between the two of them shows. In a letter dated October 9, 1912, the angry Hofmannsthal wrote about the “provincial nonsense” of a planned banquet that was to take place after the performance of Ariadne and in which anyone could participate for 10 marks: “For my part, I refuse tonight, an evening of which the memory should be precious to me, to spend in the intimacy of newspaper smearers and Stuttgart philistines who offer you and me the you over champagne. "

However, their artistic collaboration was more fruitful and successful than few in opera history. Hofmannsthal attached importance to the fact that the work should be in the foreground when looking at it: “A work is a whole and the work of two people can also become a whole. Much is common to those who live at the same time, also of their own. Threads run back and forth, related elements come together. He who separates will do injustice. (...) The music should not be torn from the text, the word from the animated image. "

Hofmannsthal and Strauss, together with the theater maker Max Reinhardt and the opera director Franz Schalk , tried to set up an annual theater and opera festival from 1917. In 1920 the Salzburg Festival could take place for the first time. Hofmannsthal's Jedermann under Reinhardt's direction opened the first festival, was then also in 1921 and has been played there every year since 1926 - but not between 1938 and 1945. In 1945 Hofmannsthal's The Gate and Death was shown instead of Jedermann .

Hugo von Hofmannsthal initially employed a friend from Vienna as a set designer, after disappointing results he commissioned Panos Aravantinos from 1920 , who had previously worked for Richard Strauss.

estate

A part of Hugo von Hofmannsthal's literary estate is in the German Literature Archive in Marbach . Documents from his estate can be seen in the permanent exhibition of the Marbach Museum of Modern Literature .

Works (selection)

20 shilling coin (1999)

UA = world premiere; EA = first edition. The years indicate the year of the first edition, unless otherwise stated.

Dramas

The Emperor and the Witch , illustrated by Heinrich Vogeler , 1900
  • Yesterday . 1891. EA Vienna (Verlag der Modernen Rundschau) 1891 (under the pseudonym Theophil Morren). WP (reading performance) March 25, 1928 Vienna (Die Komödie)
  • The death of Titian
  • First version (fragment) 1892
  • Revised (dramatic fragment) 1901. EA Berlin (Verlag der Insel bei Schuster and Loeffler) 1901; Premiere February 14, 1901 Munich (Künstlerhaus; as a funeral for Arnold Böcklin )
  • Ascanio and Gioconda (fragment). 1892
  • Idyll . 1893. Premiere 1898 Munich (?)
  • The fool and death . March / April 1893. World premiere November 13, 1898 Munich ( Theater am Gärtnerplatz ; director: Ludwig Ganghofer ; with Max Bayrhammer [Claudio])
  • Alcestis . 1893/1894. EA Leipzig (Insel) 1911. Premiere April 14, 1916 Munich ( Kammerspiele )
  • What the bride dreamed . 1896. Premiere January 15, 1897 Vienna (private)
  • The woman in the window . 1897. Premiere May 15, 1898 Berlin ( Free Stage , Deutsches Theater ; dramatized a ballad under the title Madonna Dianora ; Dramaturgy: Otto Brahm )
  • The small world theater . 1897. EA Leipzig (Insel) 1903. Premiere 6 October 1929 Munich (Residenztheater)
  • The wedding of the Sobeide . 1897. Premiere March 18, 1899 Berlin (Deutsches Theater; dramaturgy: Otto Brahm) and Vienna (Burgtheater)
  • The white fan . September 1897. EA Leipzig (Insel) 1907, with woodcuts by Edward Gordon Craig . Premiere May 6, 1927 Vienna (Akademietheater)
  • The emperor and the witch . November / December 1897. EA Berlin (Verlag der Insel bei Schuster and Loeffler) 1900. Premiere 16 December 1926 Vienna (Urania)
  • The adventurer and the singer . 1898. Premiere March 18, 1899 Berlin (German Theater; Dramaturgy: Otto Brahm) and Vienna ( Burgtheater )
  • The mine at Falun . 1899. EA Vienna (Bibliophile Society) 1933. Premiere March 4, 1949 Konstanz (Deutsches Theater)
  • Elektra . September 1901 to September 1903. EA Berlin (Fischer) 1904. Premiere October 30, 1903 Berlin (Kleines Theater; Direction: Max Reinhardt ; with Gertrud Eysoldt [Elektra])
  • Venice saved . August 1902 to July 1904. EA Berlin (Fischer) 1905. Premiere January 21, 1905 Berlin (Lessingtheater; dramaturgy: Otto Brahm)
  • Oedipus and the Sphinx . July 1903 to December 1905. EA Berlin (Fischer) 1906. Premiere February 2, 1906 Berlin (Deutsches Theater; director: Max Reinhardt)
  • King Oedipus (after Sophocles ). 1905. Premiere September 25, 1910 Munich ( Neue Musikfesthalle ; Direction: Max Reinhardt)
  • Cristina's journey home . July 1907 to December 1909. EA Berlin (Fischer) 1910. Premiere February 11, 1910 Berlin (Deutsches Theater; director: Max Reinhardt)
  • The unwilling marriage (after Molière ). Premiere September 20, 1910 Munich (artist theater; director: Max Reinhardt)
  • Everyone . April 1903 to September 1911. EA Berlin (Fischer) 1911 ( digitized ). Premiere December 1, 1911 Berlin (Schumann circus; director: Max Reinhardt; set design: Alfred Roller ; with Alexander Moissi [Jedermann], Eduard von Winterstein [good fellow], Gertrud Eysoldt [good works]); in a new version August 12, 1920 Salzburg (Domplatz)
  • The annoying ones . Comedy in one act based on Molière. Premiere April 26, 1917 Berlin (Deutsches Theater; Director: Max Reinhardt)
  • Lady Kobold (freely based on Calderón ). 1918. Premiere April 3, 1920 Berlin (Deutsches Theater; Direction: Max Reinhardt)
  • The difficult one . June 1910 to November 1919. EA Berlin (Fischer) 1921. Premiere November 7, 1921 Munich (Residenztheater; director: Kurt Stieler )
  • The Salzburg great world theater . September 1919 to June 1922. Premiere August 12, 1922 Salzburg (Kollegienkirche; Director: Max Reinhardt)
  • The incorruptible . May to October 1922. Premiere 1923 Vienna (Raimund Theater; director: Max Reinhardt; with Max Pallenberg ). EA Frankfurt (Fischer) 1956
  • The tower
  • First version October 1918 to October 1924. EA Munich (Verlag der Bremer Presse) 1925. Premiere June 10, 1948 Vienna (Akademietheater)
  • New version 1926. EA Berlin (Fischer) 1927. Premiere 4 December 1928 Munich ( Prinzregententheater ; director: Kurt Stieler )

Libretti

  • First version 1911. Premiere 25 October 1912 Stuttgart (Royal Court Theater, Kleines Haus; Director: Max Reinhardt)
  • Second version 1913: Opera in one act and a prelude. EA Berlin (Fürstner) 1916. Premiere October 4, 1916 Vienna ( Hof-Operntheater )

Stories and made up conversations

Novel fragment

Essays, speeches and prose pieces

Poems

Letters

In addition to lyrical, theatrical and works of the highest prosaic content, Hofmannsthal's extensive correspondence amounting to around 9,500 letters to almost 1,000 different addressees has been handed down.

Work editions

  • 1924: Collected works, 6 volumes. Berlin: S. Fischer
  • 1945–1959: Collected works in individual editions . 15 volumes, ed. by Herbert Steiner. Bermann-Fischer, Stockholm / S. Fischer, Frankfurt a. M.
  • since 1975: Complete Works: Critical Edition , ed. by Rudolf Hirsch et al., 42 volumes. S. Fischer, Frankfurt a. M. (41 volumes were published until 2017)
  • 1979: Collected Works . 10 vols., Ed. by Bernd Schoeller. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt a. M.
  • 2000; Works in ten volumes , ed. by Lorenz Jäger. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt a. M.

editor

Supplementary texts

Commemoration

The Hofmannsthal house at Reisnerstrasse 37

In Vienna, the Hofmannsthal family tried to get the poet and his works received.

There are memorial plaques on the house where he was born in Salesianergasse, there with a portrait relief, and on the house where he died, the Hofmannsthal-Schlössl . At the entrance to the theater in der Josefstadt , two commemorative rosettes with three-dimensional head representations of Hofmannsthal and Max Reinhardt were placed in a prominent place . At the house at Kaltenleutgebner Strasse 1 in Vienna-Liesing there is a wall relief with motifs from Ariadne auf Naxos , Jedermann and Der Rosenkavalier . A plaque from the Austrian Society for Literature at the Academic Gymnasium in Vienna commemorates Altenberg , Beer-Hofmann , Hofmannsthal and Schnitzler , all of whom were students at the Gymnasium. At the Dichtersteinehain in Zammelsberg there is a memorial plaque with the Hofmannsthal quote: "From poetry there is no direct path into life, from life no one leads into poetry".

The scout group Vienna 55, which was founded in Liesing in the year of death, bears the name Hugo von Hofmannsthal.

A number of traffic routes were named after the poet, including Hugo-von-Hofmannsthal-Strasse in Salzburg-Parsch and St. Pölten , Hofmannsthalstrasse in Ingolstadt , Hofmannsthalgasse in Vienna and Perchtoldsdorf , and Hugo-von-Hofmannsthal-Weg in Bad Aussee and in Kapfenberg as well as the Hofmannsthalweg in Linz .

Literature (selection)

bibliography
General

The Hofmannsthal yearbook has been published annually since 1993, bringing together contributions to both the work and the environment.

Individual representations
  • Hermann Broch : Hofmannsthal and his time - a study. Edited and with an afterword by Paul Michael Lützeler . Library Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 978-3-518-22342-0 (written 1947/1948, first publication 1955).
  • Elsbeth Dangel-Pelloquin (ed.): Hugo von Hofmannsthal. New ways of research. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2007.
  • Elsbeth Dangel-Pelloquin (eds.): Hugo and Gerty von Hofmannsthal- Hermann Bahr . Correspondence 1891–1934. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-8353-1217-3 .
  • Ilija Dürhammer / Pia Janke : Richard Strauss. Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Images of women. Edition Praesens, Vienna 2000.
  • Ilija Dürhammer: Homoerotic subcultures in the Schubert circle, with Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Thomas Bernhard. Böhlau, Vienna 2006.
  • Antonia Eder: The pact with myth. Hugo von Hofmannsthal's “destructive quoting” from Nietzsche, Bachofen, Freud. Rombach, Freiburg i. Br. 2013, ISBN 978-3-7930-9755-6 .
  • Günther Erken : Hofmannsthal's dramatic style. Studies on symbolism and dramaturgy. Niemeyer, Tübingen 1967.
  • Gerald Funk: Building dams in the Heraklit river. The horror of time in Hofmannsthal's fairy tale of the 672nd night. In: Quarber Mercury. 88, Franz Rottensteiner's literary magazine for science fiction and fantasy, Passau 1999, ISBN 978-3-932621-15-4 .
  • Anna-Katharina Gisbertz: Mood - Body - Language. A configuration in Viennese modernism. Fink, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-7705-4855-2 .
  • Ralph Gleis , Maria Obenaus (ed.): Rodin - Rilke - Hofmannsthal. Man and his genius. Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-95732-297-5 .
  • Heike Grundmann: “To experience my life like a book”: Hermeneutics of remembering with Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Königshausen and Neumann, Würzburg 2003, ISBN 978-3-8260-2494-8 ( dissertation Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg 2002).
  • Wilhelm Hemecker / Konrad Heumann (eds.): Hofmannsthal. Locations: 20 biographical explorations. Zsolnay, Vienna 2014, ISBN 978-3-552-05699-2 .
  • Marlies Janz : marble pictures. Femininity and death with Clemens Brentano and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Athenaeum, Königstein / Ts. 1986, ISBN 3-7610-8336-X .
  • Jakob Knaus: Hofmannsthal's way to the opera “The woman without a shadow” - considerations and influences on music. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1971, ISBN 3-11-001865-9 .
  • Helmut Koopmann : German literary theories between 1880 and 1920. An introduction. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1997, ISBN 3-534-08033-5 .
  • Claudio Magris: The Habsburg Myth in Modern Austrian Literature. Paul Zsolnay Verlag, Vienna 2000, ISBN 3-552-04961-4 ; Giulio Einaudi editore spa, Turin 1963, 1988 and 1996.
  • Ursula Renner (ed.): Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Friendships and encounters with German contemporaries. Königshausen and Neumann, Würzburg 1991, ISBN 3-88479-561-9 .
  • Ursula Renner: "The magic script of pictures". Fine arts in Hofmannthal's texts. (Litterae 55 series). Rombach, Freiburg 2000, ISBN 3-7930-9191-0 .
  • Jens Rieckmann: Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Stefan George. Significance of an "episode" from the turn of the century. Francke, Tübingen / Basel 1997, ISBN 3-7720-2169-7 .
  • Peter Schäfer: Interpretation of signs. On the figuration of a figure of thought in Hugo von Hofmannsthal's “Invented Conversations and Letters”. Aisthesis Verlag, Bielefeld 2012, ISBN 978-3-89528-898-2 .
  • Marie Luise Wandruszka: The adventurer and the singer. About Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Passagen-Verlag, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-85165-701-2 .
  • Ulrich Weinzierl : Hofmannsthal - sketches for his picture. Zsolnay, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-552-05340-9 (on this: Joachim Kaiser : Demontage eines Dichters. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , No. 217, September 20, 2005, p. 22)
  • Bernd Wildermuth :  Hofmannsthal, Hugo von. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 2, Bautz, Hamm 1990, ISBN 3-88309-032-8 , Sp. 978-982.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )
  • Gotthart Wunberg : The early Hofmannsthal. Schizophrenia as a poetic structure. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1965.
  • Gotthart Wunberg: Hofmannsthal in the judgment of his critics. Documents on the history of Hugo von Hofmannsthal's impact in Germany. Athenäum-Verlag, Frankfurt 1972.
  • Gotthart Wunberg (Ed., With the collaboration of Johannes J. Braakenburg): Die Wiener Moderne. Literature, art and music between 1890 and 1910. Reclam, Stuttgart 1981 (Universal Library No. 7742), ISBN 3-15-007742-7 .
  • Hugo Wyss: The woman in Hofmannsthal's poetry. A study on the Dionysian world experience. Max Niehans, Zurich 1954.
  • Torsten Zeiß: priests and victims. Hofmannsthal's Oedipus from the perspective of René Girard's myth theory. Tectum Verlag, Marburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-8288-2596-3 .
  • Kai Nonnenmacher: Form and Life between Positivism and Idealism. In: Romance Studies . No. 1, 2015, pp. 171–190. ( online ).
  • Wilfried Kuckartz: Hugo von Hofmannsthal as an educator. Verlag Adolf Bonz, ISBN 3-87089-360-5 .
  • Mario Zanucchi: Critique and philosophy of life reshaping of symbolism under the sign of Nietzsche: Hugo von Hofmannsthal's "Selected Poems". 1903. In: Ders .: Transfer and Modification - The French Symbolists in Modern German-Language Poetry (1890–1923). De Gruyter 2016, ISBN 978-3-11-042012-8 , pp. 423-516.
  • Max Reinhardt : Director's book for Hugo von Hofmannsthal's "Jedermann". Volume I: Facsimile. Edited by the Salzburg Festival Fund. Volume II: Edition & Comments. Edited by Harald Gschwandtner, Evelyn Annuß, Edda Fuhrich and Norbert Christian Wolf for the Salzburg Festival Fund. Hollitzer Verlag, Vienna 2020 ISBN 978-3-99012-622-6 .
Hofmannsthal in literature

References and comments

  1. ^ UA Vienna, Jurid. Rig.-Prot. J 12.8, p. 207.
  2. ↑ † Director Dr. Hugo v. Hofmannsthal. In:  Neue Freie Presse , December 10, 1915, p. 12 (online at ANNO ).Template: ANNO / Maintenance / nfp
  3. ↑ And not, as often wrong, 1852. Cf. Taufbuch, Wieden (Paulaner) Book 18, Folio 23.
  4. ↑ ANNO, Neue Freie Presse, 1904-03-24, page 18. Retrieved on March 18, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Catalog page University Library Vienna
  6. ^ The expelled Kuffner family . Association Kuffner Sternwarte (Ed.), Klaudia Einhorn, Vienna 2017; accessed on August 20, 2017.
  7. ↑ Georg Gaugusch : Who once was. The upper Jewish bourgeoisie in Vienna 1800–1938 . Volume 1: A-K . Amalthea, Vienna 2011, ISBN 978-3-85002-750-2 , p. 1219.
  8. ↑ on the relationship with Ottonie v. Degenfeld: http://www.wienerzeitung.at/frameless/lexikon.htm?ID=7031 ( Memento from November 3, 2004 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ^ Hermann Bahr: Greetings to Hofmannsthal . In: Neues Wiener Journal . tape 22 , no. 7483 . Vienna August 26, 1914, p. 6 .
  10. ↑ textlog.de
  11. ↑ Ulrich Weinzierl: Hofmannsthal - sketches for his picture. P. 41.
  12. ^ Message of death Christiane Zimmer, American Journalism Review, Vol.XLII, March 3, 1987 ( Memento of February 1, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 5.04 MB) p. 15.
  13. ↑ In: Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Ed.): Kindlers Literatur Lexikon . 3rd, completely revised edition. 18 vols. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2009, ISBN 978-3-476-04000-8 , vol. 7, here p. 563.
  14. ↑ Source text in the Gutenberg Collection
  15. ^ Rolf Badenhausen: Hugo von Hofmannsthal and the theater , in: A theater man - theory and practice: Festschrift for the 70th birthday of Rolf Badenhausen , ed. by Ingrid Nohl, Munich 1977. Digitized manuscript: https://www.badenhausen.net/dr_rolfb/manuscripts/rbi_lec-372_in1977-1.pdf ,
    see Konstanze Heininger: "A dream of great magic": The collaboration of Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Max Reinhardt (Diss. 2013), Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-83164426-1 , pp. 319-320.
  16. ↑ see Lothar Höbelt: Escape to the front. In: Die Zeit from June 12, 2014.
  17. ↑ see Thomas Thiel: Hugo von Hoffmannsthal in the First World War - Requiem on a fragile idea. In: FAZ of April 18, 2014.
  18. ↑ Kurt Ifkovits in: Hofmannsthal. Places (Eds. Hemecker / Heumann, 2014), p. 336 ff.
  19. ↑ cf. in detail: Jacques Le Rider: Mitteleuropa (1994), p. 55 ff.
  20. ↑ quoted from: Thomas Thiel: Hugo von Hofmannsthal in the First World War - Requiem for a fragile idea. In: FAZ of April 18, 2014.
  21. ↑ cf. in detail: William M. Johnston: Zur Kulturgeschichte Österreichs und Ungarns 1890–1938 (2015), p. 46 ff.
  22. ↑ The Habsburg Effect. How the lost empire still shapes the relationship between the citizens and their state institutions today , see also Sascha O. Becker, Katrin Boeckh, Christa Hainz and Ludger Woessmann: The Empire Is Dead, Long Live the Empire! Long-Run Persistence of Trust and Corruption in the Bureaucracy. In: The Economic Journal (Volume 126, Issue 590, pp. 40-74) February 2016.
  23. ↑ see Hilde Spiel: Glanz und Untergang - Vienna 1866 to 1938 (1987), p. 81 ff.
  24. ↑ cf. in detail: William M. Johnston: Zur Kulturgeschichte Österreichs und Ungarns 1890–1938. (2015), p. 49.
  25. ^ Das Weltblatt from Vienna, Fichtegasse number 11 Die Presse , June 7, 2018
  26. ↑ Quoted from: Werner Volke: Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Rowohlt, Hamburg 1994, p. 140.
  27. ^ Richard Strauss - Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Briefwechsel , Ed. Willi Schuh, Piper, Munich 1990, p. 201.
  28. ^ Unwritten afterword to Rosenkavalier , 1911.
  29. ^ Hugo von Hofmannsthal: Friendships and encounters with German contemporaries. Eds. Ursula Renner , Gisela Bärbel Schmid, p. 242.
  30. ↑ digitized version
  31. ^ First print in: Neue Freie Presse (Vienna), March 27, 1921.

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personal data
SURNAME Hofmannsthal, Hugo von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hofmannsthal, Hugo Laurenz August Hofmann, Edler von; Loris; Melikow, Loris; Morren, Theophil
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian writer, playwright, poet and librettist
DATE OF BIRTH February 1, 1874
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH July 15, 1929
Place of death Rodaun