The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Bahr, Hermann

Born July 19, 1863, in Linz; died Jan. 15, 1934, in Munich. Austrian writer.

After a trip to St. Petersburg, Bahr published A Journey to Russia (1893). He defended the principles of impressionism in the theoretical articles “To the Criticism of Modernism” (1890) and “Overcoming Naturalism” (1891) and the principles of expressionism in “Essay” (1912) and “Expressionism” (1914). The problem of marriage and art is central to his comedies and dramas—for example, The Tschaperl (1898), Viennese Women (1900; Russian translation, 1912), The Master (1903; Russian translation, 1905), and The Concert (1909; Russian translation, 1910)—and to his novels— Near Love (1893) and Theater (1897), for example.

Bahr’s creative work criticized bourgeois society from the position of unlimited individualism. His late novels— Ascension (1916) and Austria in Eternity (1929)—are permeated with mysticism and chauvinism.

WORKS

In Russian translation:
Na gastroli. St. Petersburg, 1910.
Ottsy i deti. Moscow, 1910.
Fata-Morgana. St. Petersburg, 1911.
Napoleon i Zhozefina,2nd ed. St. Petersburg, 1911.

REFERENCES

Handl, W. Hermann Bahr. Berlin, 1913.
Kindermann, H. Hermann Bahr. . . . Graz-Cologne, 1954.

Mentioned in

Bahr, Hermann

References in periodicals archive

Teresa Vinardell highlights the issue of exclusion in the work of Casellas and Werfel, and there are reception studies centring on Joseph Roth, Hermann Bahr, and Hofmannsthal.

Transkulturelle Beziehungen: Spanien und Osterreich im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert

In her first chapter, Gunnemann examines the shift from Mann's early espousal of the aestheticist position many associated with Nietzsche, and his support for Hermann Bahr's critique of naturalism--in 1931, Gottfried Benn still celebrated in Mann die Kunst, das Ja uber diesen Abgrunden, seine stromende, schopferische Lust--to the view, held from about 1904 on, that the purpose of art was fundamentally educational and democratic: an understanding of art which achieved definitive formulation in his two essays of 1910, 'Geist und Tat' and 'Voltaire-Goethe'.

Heinrich Mann's Novels and Essays. The Artist as Political Educator

As a self-taught young writer Salten was befriended by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Arthur Schnitzler, and Hermann Bahr. A journalist at 18, he became an influential theater critic.

Salten, Felix

He has selected the writings of eight representatives of the Viennese coffeehouse culture: Hermann Bahr, Karl Kraus, Peter Altenberg, Felix Salten, Egon Friedell, Alfred Polgar, Anton Kuh, and Edmund Wengraf.

The Vienna Coffeehouse Wits: 1890-1938

As long ago as 1908, the Viennese art critic Hermann Bahr had noted a certain diremption of the task of modern painting: along with any specifically formal and artistic problems it negotiates, it is also called upon "to be its own poster." It must advertise its own esthetic project and make the problems it addresses seem like the desirable ones with which to be dealing.

Matthew Weinstein

Taking 'decadence' as a form of literary modernism, however, Kafitz argues that Fontane nevertheless adhered to many of its aesthetic principles, as understood by Baudelaire, Nietzsche, Bourget, and Hermann Bahr: the primacy of the aesthetic; the sense of fragmentation; the emphasis on individual detail at the expense of the whole; linguistic self-consciousness; irony.

'Die Decadence ist da': Theodor Fontane und die Literatur der Jahrhundertwende. Beitrage zur Fruhjahrstagung der Theodor Fontane Gesellschaft vom 24. bis 26. Mai 2001 in Munchen

Ward traces Hofmannsthal's response to the theoretical writings on tragedy by Nietzsche, Hermann Bahr, and others, and claims that in about 1906 Hofmannsthal realized that the reasons for Goethe's 'avoidance of tragedy' would probably defeat him also.

Hofmannsthal and Greek Myth: Expression and Performance