ABSTRACT
Well-known to the leading Austrian and German intellectuals, writers, and artists of his day—his acquaintances included Robert Musil, Thomas Mann, Hugo von Hofmannstahl, Sigmund Freud, Oskar Kokoschka, and Stefan Zweig—the Viennese prose poet Peter Altenberg (1859-1919) was then forgotten during the five decades following his death. During the late 1960s and 1970s, however, this “freest soul of the epoch,” as satirist Karl Kraus defined him, suddenly reappeared in German-speaking countries. In 1968, Reclam issued a popular paperback selection (Sonnenuntergang im Prater) of his characteristic short prose texts, a form that he had perfected into a highly personal mode of expression. To this handy selection were added Das große Peter Altenberg Buch (1977) and a two-volume Ausgewahlte Werke (1979). Finally, in 1984, the useful Peter Altenberg: Leben und Werk in Texten und Bildern was brought out by Altenberg’s long-time publisher, Fischer. Focused on both the life and the writing, this album consists of illustrations, letters, contemporane ous critical commentary about Altenberg, and prose pieces that had previously been overlooked. Interestingly, during the same period, translations appeared in France and were widely discussed. Unfortunately, this unclassifiable writer whose stated ideals comprised “the adagios in the violin sonatas of Beethoven, speckled tulips, solo asparagus, new potatoes, Carolina rice, the blue pen ‘Kuhn 201,’ ketchup, money, and Hansy Klausecker (thirteen years old),” remained undiscovered in English-speaking countries.
