Although his reputation as the creator of expressionist prose has been called into question, Kasimir Edschmid's early novellas and manifestos maintain a secure place in the expressionist canon. In 1950 Frank Thieß wrote in a special volume celebrating Edschmid's sixtieth birthday that few readers of Edschmid's books would know that their author was once the leading revolutionary expressionist; today few readers of Edschmid's expressionist works are aware that he ever wrote anything else.

The bulk of Edschmid's work, however, can scarcely be called expressionist. The most complete bibliography of his writings lists over ninety stories, novels, collections, and travelogues written after the mid 1920s, by which time Edschmid had clearly distanced himself from his earlier expressionist style. Literary histories scarcely mention Edschmid's postexpressionist works, which at best are called "gehobene Unterhaltungsliteratur" (sophisticated light literature). Edschmid the sportsman and gentleman author, whom Thieß praised, has slowly disappeared. Only...