In 1946 Ernst Kreuder's Die Gesellschaft vom Dachboden (The Society of the Attic; translated as The Attic Pretenders, 1948) was hailed as the most important book to appear in postwar German literature, but today his work has been all but forgotten. The 1960s and 1970s were not kind to the author sometimes referred to as a "modern Novalis." Kreuder's romantic insight into nature, however, may prove attractive to the German ecologists of the 1980s; his time might still come, just as Hermann Hesse suddenly became popular in the 1960s.

Kreuder was born in Zeitz on 29 August 1903 but spent his formative years in Offenbach, where he attended the Oberrealschule (high school). After a brief period as a bank clerk Kreuder attempted in 1921 to join the French Foreign Legion, but the physical examination in Griesheim found him unsuitable for service. He then supported himself as a construction and transportation worker and studied...