ABSTRACT
Co-founder, with Otto zur Linde, of the journal Charon and editor from 1904 until its demise during the First World War, Rudolf Pannwitz worked as a private tutor before devoting his life to study and scholarship. His writings on European civilization (Die Krisis der europäischen Kultur (1917); Der Nihilismus und die werdende Welt (1951); Beiträge zu einer europäischen Kultur (1954)) are much indebted to Nietzsche, whom he revered (Nietzsche being ‘mein einziger Freund’). Nietzsche’s dithyrambic style is also seen in Pannwitz’s Prometheus (1902) and the Dionysische Tragödien (1913) and Die Erlöserinnen (1922). The verse Mythen (1919-21) are characterized by a diffuse and high-flown rhetoric. The second mentor was Stefan George; Pannwitz had been a close associate of Karl Wolfskehl before joining Otto zur Linde and tirelessly extolled George’s discipline and order (‘George bändigte das chaos und schuf normen’) and kept his orthography and punctuation. Similarly to Mombert and Däubler, Pannwitz experienced Venice as a myth rather than reality; he lived on the Dalmatian island of Koločep before moving to Switzerland. An autobiography, Nach siebzig Jahren (1951), is included in Über den Denker Rudolf Pannwitz (U. Rukser, 1970).
