The publication of this book is a literary event. It is the first full-scale biography of Stefan George in any language that was not written by a disciple or friend or follower (xv). As a comprehensive, fact-filled treatment of the poet’s life and times, it provides a large fund of information about George and his circle. The author has done an enormous amount of research and has organized it chronologically into an impressive account. A brief review can touch on only a few aspects of this rich though overwritten book.

The author’s thesis is that Stefan George and his circle “significantly contributed to the creation of a psychological, cultural, and even political climate that made the events in Germany leading up to and following 1933 not just imaginable, but also feasible” (xvi). The thrust of the book is political; in his preface Norton makes clear that he is more concerned with George’s political influence on Nazi Germany than with the poet George (xvi-xvii). He cites George’s Führer-like stance vis-à-vis his disciples, his use of a swastika as the emblem for books published under his aegis, the prophesies of death and destruction in some of his poems, the poet’s remarks about the superiority of the “white race” (534), and his saviour complex. And he interprets George’s ambivalent statement, in which he rejected the Nazi government’s offer of an honorary position in the newly nationalized Dichterakademie but acknowledged “being the forefather of the new national movement” (729), as the poet’s blessing on the new regime.

In this reviewer’s opinion, Norton overstates Stefan George’s fame and politicizes him unduly. Undoubtedly the poet was authoritarian in his efforts to control the lives of his disciples. The swastika was an ancient symbol, which George, through his publisher, disclaimed as a political symbol in 1928 (586). The war poems tend to be visionary and may not refer directly to historical events. And though he had numerous Jewish disciples he may well have been a racist. Most of George’s statements cited in this book occur in conversations reported by his friends; it is difficult to know how accurately they were recorded and how seriously he meant them at the time. He himself wrote down very few opinions. His written response to the Nazi regime’s offer shows that he was aware that “the laws of the spiritual and the political realms are certainly very different” (729). (Unfortunately, this text and all others are given in translation only.) Since George died in December 1933, he could not know what lay ahead. But I agree with Norton that George’s trip to Switzerland in the fall of 1933 was probably not made as a protest against the Nazis. I think that he left for health reasons, that he felt honoured by the attentions of Nazi officials (he was extremely vain), but that he retained some doubts about them. Still, his comments of 19 September 1933 to his Jewish friend Edith Landmann – that his views resonated with the new government, that politics was rough, and that the Jewish issue was “not so important” in light of Germany’s next fifty years – are certainly objectionable.

Stefan George embodies certain recurring cultural tendencies in Germany: the concern with authority, loyalty, obedience; a strongly didactic strain; the obsession with ancient Greece; male domination; substitute religions; youth movements; secret societies. It is his appearance at a volatile moment in German history that gives him a trans-literary status.

Norton handles the more sensitive aspects of George’s life with refreshing forthrightness. His account includes a chilling seduction by the poet of a twenty-eight-year-old student of art history, Ernst Glöckner – all the more shocking because Glöckner was Ernst Bertram’s companion. The affair raises serious questions about the professed spirituality of George’s “Secret Germany.” Of the disciples, about whom this book contains valuable information, Ernst Kantorowicz was one of the most interesting and his book on the medieval emperor Frederick II a particularly distinctive work to come from the George circle.

The biographical sections of the book are superior to the discussion of the poetry. One problem is the lack of the German originals. Another is the author’s tendency to analyse those poems that fit his argument. And even in these poems he sometimes skips around, explaining individual lines and not providing full references. Though he is aware that George’s cycles of poems are highly structured, his treatment does not give full attention to the formal aspect. For example, in the cycle Algabal, which Norton rightly considers an important work, I did not find any mention of the final poem, “Vogelschau,” without which the cycle is incomplete. “Vogelschau” shows the poet emerging from Algabal’s realm, freed from his demons and clarified; he has left this part of him behind (at least for now). Stefan George’s poetic work develops in stages that he has to pass through; the strict organization suggests that the poet needs a strong form to hold his inner turmoil in check and rise above it.

It is as a poet that Stefan George should be remembered. There is every reason to be grateful to Robert Norton for enlightening us about this strangely mesmerizing figure.

HENRY A. LEA University of Massachusetts-Amherst