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ix Foreword It is a great pleasure for the editors of Central European Studies to be able to publish this volume in the series. It includes the most significant and interesting of the great Austrian writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s essays on Austria, the relationship of Austria to Germany and of Austria and Germany to the rest of Europe. Only a few of these pieces have ever been published in English before. David S. Luft, a highly accomplished scholar of modern Austrian and Central European intellectual and cultural history, has selected, translated, and annotated the essays. He has also provided a thoughtful and lucid introduction to their significance and their place in the larger body of Hofmannsthal’s work. The translations present the essays in idiomatic modern English, which still captures much of the beautiful literary style of the German original. We think of Hofmannsthal as a masterful author of poetry, stories, plays, and opera libretti; but he was also a dedicated essayist who wrote on a considerable range of topics. It is lamentable that only a small portion of those essays has been translated into English up to now. Those included in this volume remind us that Hofmannsthal retained a strong engagement in the cultural and social issues of the world in which he lived, even if much about the political life of his day frustrated him. His engagement in contemporary affairs grew particularly strong during World War I, when he served as something of a cultural ambassador for Austria and gave public lectures in many places. The essays presented here, however, focus on the Austrian idea, and what Hofmannsthal saw as the intellectual, cultural, and spiritual role of Austria in European history and its mediating role between Germany, particularly modern Germany and its nationalism, and the European peoples to the east. In these essays we find many of Hofmannsthal’s same concerns about language, culture, and aesthetics, which are familiar from his literary works, refracted through the prism of his searching reflections on Austria’s role in Europe, both past and present. Both those readers interested in Hofmannsthal’s literary works and those with broader interests in early twentiethcentury European cultural history will find much to ponder and savor in these wonderful essays. —Gary B. Cohen Series Editor ...

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