Stefan George
born July 12, 1868, Büdesheim, near
Bingen, Hesse [Germany]
died Dec. 4, 1933, Minusio, near
Locarno, Switz.
lyric poet responsible in part for the
emergence of Aestheticism in German
poetry at the close of the 19th century.
After attending a Gymnasium in
Darmstadt, George traveled to England,
Switzerland, and France. He studied
philosophy and the history of art in
Paris, becoming associated with the poet
Stéphane Mallarmé and others in the
Symbolist movement. Returning to
Germany, where he divided his time
between Berlin, Munich, and Heidelberg,
he founded a literary school of his own,
the George-Kreis, held together by the
force of his personality. Many
well-known writers (e.g., Friedrich
Gundolf, Karl Wolfskehl, and Georg
Simmel) belonged to it or contributed to
its journal, Blätter für die Kunst,
published from 1892 to 1919. The chief
aim of the journal was to revitalize the
German literary language.
George aimed for new aesthetic forms
in German poetry, avoiding impure rhymes
and metrical irregularities. Vowels and
consonants were arranged with precision
to achieve harmony. The resulting
symbolic poem was intended to evoke a
sense of intoxication. These poetic
ideals were a protest not only against
the debasement of the language but also
against materialism and naturalism, to
which George opposed an austerity of
life and a standard of poetic
excellence. He advocated a humanism
inspired by Friedrich Hölderlin, which
he hoped would be realized in a new
society. His ideas, and the affectations
into which they led some of his
disciples, his claim of superiority, and
his obsession with power were ridiculed,
attacked, and misused by those who
misunderstood them. But George himself
was strongly opposed to the political
developments—above all, the rise of
Nazism—which his ideas are sometimes
thought to reflect. When the Nazi
government offered him money and
honours, he refused them and went into
exile.
George’s collected works fill 18
volumes (Gesamtausgabe, 1927–34),
including five of translations and one
of prose sketches. His collections of
poetry, of which Hymnen (1890),
Pilgerfahrten (1891), Algabal (1892),
Das Jahr der Seele (1897), Der Teppich
des Lebens (1899), Der siebente Ring
(1907), Der Stern des Bundes (1914), and
Das neue Reich (1928) are the most
important, show his poetic and spiritual
development from early doubts and
searching self-examination to confidence
in his role as a seer and as leader of
the new society he projected.
Personally, and spiritually, he found
the fulfillment of his striving for
significance in “Maximin” (Maximilian
Kronberger [1888–1904]), a beautiful and
gifted youth whom he met in Munich in
1902. After the boy’s death George
claimed that he had been a god,
glorifying him in his later poetry and
explaining his attitude to him in
Maximin, ein Gedenkbuch (privately
published, 1906).
