Hermann Bahr: Österreichischer Kritiker europäischer Avantgarden ed. by Martin Anton Müller, Claus Pias, and Gottfried Schnödl (review)

In volume 35 of Modern Austrian Literature (2002), Paul Dvorak reviewed Donald Daviau’s Understanding Hermann Bahr, a collection of essays originally published between 1958 and 1998. The review attests to the pivotal role in Bahr scholarship played by Daviau, who also served as editor of mal for over two and a half decades. Much has changed in the field with the expiration of the copyright of Bahr’s papers in 2005. A new generation of scholars is productively collaborating through a research website (Hermann Bahr Projekt) managed by this book’s editors: http://www.univie.ac.at/bahr/. Despite their critique of elements of Daviau’s research, the editors of this new study on Bahr acknowledged Daviau’s role, as “die verbindende Figur [. . .], die Bahr von den Sechzigerjahren an die Schwelle des zweiten Jahrtausend getragen hat” (8). The articles included in this book were originally presented at a symposium of the same name in May 2013 in Berlin. Arranged more or less chronologically, the articles cover a broad view of Bahr’s activities as a cultural critic, beginning with his university years as a student of national economy, continuing with his early involvement with journalism, progressing to his years in Vienna as a cultural and theater critic including his conflict with Karl Kraus, and concluding with his later years and his autobiography. The articles are impressively researched and documented with ample footnote commentaries and extensive bibliographies, making them valuable resources for scholars interested in topics beyond the essay’s particular subject. The best example of this is Stephanie Marchal’s article on the context of Bahr’s art criticism, which provides a five-page bibliography and 110 footnotes outlining the contemporary theories and literature on art criticism. While the article topics seem wildly divergent and specific to disparate activities of Bahr’s multifaceted career, there is a sense of interconnectivity to the point that the articles even reference each other. For example, Gottfried Schnödl’s opening article “Vom ‘Zusammenhang im All’-Hermann Bahr als Student der Nationalökonomie” traces how Bahr’s economic and scientific studies led to the development of his search for a universal constant of organic growth, which, in turn, informed his future approach to art. In his argument, Schnödl references Martin Anton Müller’s “Das Selbstbildnis als Quelle,” one of the last articles of the book, acknowledging Müller’s conclusion of the unreliability of Bahr’s statements in his autobiography. Another example is Marchal’s contribution “‘Generation Kautschukmann’: Hermann Bahrs Kunstkritik im Kontext,” which argues that Bahr is not the “neuer Kritiker” per se, but rather a representative of a generation of critics responding to new art forms. The article ends with a Bahr quotation from his 1916 essay on Expressionism: “Impressionist ist der zum Grammophon der äußeren Welt erniedrigte Mensch” (130). Jutta Müller-Tamm’s article “Impressionismus zwischen Griechentum und Grammophon Klassik als typologische Kategorie bei Hermann Bahr” opens with the expanded quote from the Expressionism essay as she explains Bahr’s contradictory value statements about Impressionism and Classicism. Gerd-Hermann Sisen’s “‘Das Alte kracht in allen Fugen!’ Hermann Bahr und die Freie Bühne für modernes Leben” shows how the scholarly assumptions about Bahr’s relationship to this journal, based as they are on statements in “Das Selbstbildnis als Quelle,” do not hold up to a rigorous investigation of the facts, and thus Sisen reinforces Müller’s article. Elsbeth Dangel-Pelloquin’s “‘Mondaine Stimmungsakrobaten’: Bahrs und Hofmannsthals Kreation der Moderne am Beispiel von Eleonora Duse und Isadora Duncan” traces the two writers’ parallel responses to the two artists through time and relates them to their evolving view of Modernism. In a spark of playful creativity, Dangel-Pelloquin structures her article in the format of a five-act classical tragedy. Tangentially, her article connects with Alfred Dunshirn’s...