Hermann Bahr
Encyclopedia
Hermann Bahr was an Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

n writer
German literature
German literature comprises those literary texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German part of Switzerland, and to a lesser extent works of the German diaspora. German literature of the modern period is mostly in Standard German, but there...

, playwright, director, and critic.

Biography

Born and raised in Linz
Linz
Linz is the third-largest city of Austria and capital of the state of Upper Austria . It is located in the north centre of Austria, approximately south of the Czech border, on both sides of the river Danube. The population of the city is , and that of the Greater Linz conurbation is about...

, Bahr studied Philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

, Law
Law
Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...

, Economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...

 and Philology
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...

 in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

, Czernowitz and Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

. During a prolonged stay in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 he discovered his interest in literature and art. He then worked as an art critic first in Berlin, then in Vienna.

From 1906-1907, he worked as a director with Max Reinhardt
Max Reinhardt (theatre director)
----Max Reinhardt was an Austrian theater and film director and actor.-Biography:...

 at the German Theater in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

, and starting in 1918 he was a Dramaturg with the Vienna Burgtheater
Burgtheater
The Burgtheater , originally known as K.K. Theater an der Burg, then until 1918 as the K.K. Hofburgtheater, is the Austrian National Theatre in Vienna and one of the most important German language theatres in the world.The Burgtheater was created in 1741 and has become known as "die Burg" by the...

. Later, he found work as a reader with the S. Fischer Verlag, a German publishing company, where he befriended Arno Holz
Arno Holz
Arno Holz was a German naturalist poet and dramatist. He is best known for his poetry collection Phantasus .-Life and Works:...

.

Spokesman for the literary group Young Vienna
Young Vienna
Young Vienna was a society of fin de siècle writers who met in Vienna's Café Griensteidl and other nearby coffeehouses from 1890 until 1897...

, Bahr was an active member of the Austrian avant-garde, producing both criticism and Impressionist
Impressionism (literature)
Influenced by the Impressionist art movement, many writers adopted a style that relied on associations. The Dutch Tachtigers explicitly tried to incorporate impressionism into their prose, poems, and other literary works...

 plays. Bahr's association with the coffeehouse literati made him one of the main targets of Karl Kraus
Karl Kraus
Karl Kraus was an Austrian writer and journalist, known as a satirist, essayist, aphorist, playwright and poet. He is regarded as one of the foremost German-language satirists of the 20th century, especially for his witty criticism of the press, German culture, and German and Austrian...

's newspaper Die Fackel (The Torch) after Kraus's falling out with the group.

Bahr was the first critic to apply the label modernism
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...

 to literary works, and was an early observer of the Expressionism
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...

movement. His theoretical papers were important in the definition of new literary categories. His 40 plays and around 10 novels never reached the quality of his theoretical work.

Plays

  • The New People (Die neuen Menschen - 1887)
  • The Mother (Die Mutter - 1891)
  • Das Tschaperl (1897)
  • Der Star (1899)
  • Wienerinnen (1900)
  • Der Krampus (1902)
  • Ringelspiel (1907)
  • The Concert (Das Konzert - 1909)
  • The Children (Die Kinder - 1911)
  • Das Prinzip (1912)
  • Der Querulant (1914)
  • The Master (Der Meister - 1914)

Short stories and novellas

  • The School of Love (Die gute Schule. Seelenstände - 1890)
  • Fin de siècle (1891)
  • Die Rahl (1908)
  • O Mensch (1910)
  • Österreich in Ewigkeit (1929)

Essays


Books

  • Theater (1897)
  • Drut (1909)
  • Himmelfahrt (1916)
  • Die Rotte Korahs (1919)
  • Self-Portrait (Selbstbildnis - 1923), an autobiography

External links

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