Stefan George

Stefan George was the most important lyricist of the German Symbolist movement. After the turn of the century, he was at the intellectual centre of a circle of friends and disciples who saw themselves as »geheimes Deutschland« (secret Germany). Kauffmann describes George’s life and work and strives to make a just assessment of his multifaceted personality. George himself had a stylised image of his own life, seeing it as dominated by a poetic mission. This is qualified by examining several different kinds of human relationships in detail: his deeprooted ties with his Bingen family, close friendships, for example with Albert Verwey and Friedrich Gundolf, or the remarkably relaxed flatshare with Clotilde Schlayer in Minusio, the place where he died at the age of 65.

The biographical narrative is interspersed with passages outlining George’s poetry volumes as stations in a historical œuvre beginning with »L’art pour l’art« and leading on to ideological poetry. The book contains a large number of photographs, most of them previously unpublished, which also add several new aspects to the narrow picture of Stefan George.


Stefan George (1868–1933) is one of the most important and influential German-language lyricists. He translated all the great European authors and opened up German lyric poetry to the European modern age. With his will to establish the philosophy of »Art for art’s sake«, a creed he followed in his work and his life, he soon became the centre of a »circle« of friends who wished to join him in the renewal of German lyric poetry.

Kai Kauffmann, born in 1961, professor of modern German literature at the University of Bielefeld since 2005. Vice chairman of the Rudolf Borchardt Society. Main areas of research: literary and cultural history, literature of the 18th century, around 1900 and after 1945.