The theme of the water woman has a very long tradition, ranging from Greek myth, which is teeming with nymphs, naiads, nereids and mermaids, to the sea fairies of the ancient French legend about the beautiful Melusina, and is taken up in many different ways in German literature, from which authors of all eras have drawn. The water woman particularly appealed to the Romantics, and from them the theme passed on to the poets and writers of the last fin de siècle, who fascinated Rainer Maria Rilke, Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Stefan George, ....

Following the epic "Undine", Gabriella Rovagnati has published an edition of Rudolf Pannwitz's aphorisms. The majority of the material presented in this volume is published here for the first time from the material held in the German Literature Archive in Marbach and makes it possible to illustrate a new aspect of the extensive, largely unpublished work of this poet and thinker, who is regarded as a successor and continuator of Nietzsche inclusive. The title of the volume refers to the human and artistic ambivalence of Pannwitz, which is illuminated from various perspectives in the introductory essay - above all with regard to his intense but brief friendship with Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Pannwitz's aphorisms confirm his aristocratic-intellectual encyclopaedism, but dispel some prejudices; many of his sayings show an unexpected openness, both politically and aesthetically, and dispel the suspicion that Pannwitz was a conservative chauvinist.

Edited by Gabriella Rovagnati. The press and the public reacted extremely indignantly to the first edition of "Reigen" in 1903. A trial for "serious harassment" after the Berlin première in 1920 caused tempers to flare and led to arguments in the Vienna Kammerspiele. DIE ERSTE, which was discovered in the Bibliotheca Bodmeriana in Cologne/Geneva Schnitzler hurriedly wrote the manuscript version on paper in the winter of 1896/97. From the very first corrections, he was evidently anxious to eliminate even potentially offensive passages by reformulating entire scenes, such as the precursors to the last two show dialogues. The editor makes the newly discovered material accessible through a critical apparatus and comments on it in the introductory section Studio.

Gerhart Hauptmann and Rudolf Pannwitz never met. Nevertheless, their correspondence is one of the most remarkable testimonies to the history of Hauptmann's influence, in that the work of the great naturalist is appropriated and (re)interpreted by a Nietzsche student and George as a "Dionysian festival of the many spheres" - the phrase used by Pannwitz in one of Hauptmann's weaker plays, published for the first time by Gabriella Rovagnati, which Pannwitz uses for one of Hauptmann's weaker plays in the correspondence published for the first time by Gabriella Rovagnati, could be applied to the "Heretic of Soana" with even greater justification than Hauptmann's perhaps more concise attempt to poetically depict ancient natural piety and pagan sensuality. Based on the manuscripts and books used by Hauptmann, Thurit Kriener documents the long history of the fairy tale's creation and uncovers hidden layers of meaning and diverse intertextual references.