Friedrich Theodor Vischer, whom contemporaries called "V-Vischer" to distinguish him from the Heidelberg philosopher Kuno Fischer, was one of the most important and influential aestheticians, cultural critics, and academics in the second half of the nineteenth century. While the Swiss realist writer Gottfried Keller revered him as "der große Repetent deutscher Nation für alles Schöne und Gute, Rechte und Wahre" (the great tutor of the German nation for all that is beautiful and good, right and true), the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche criticized him as a "Bildungsphilister" (cultural philistine). The Hungarian Marxist literary historian György Lukács regarded him as a key figure in the development of irrationalism and fascism. Vischer's novel Auch Einer (Also One, 1878; excerpt translated as "A Rabid Philosopher," 1892) was elevated by some readers to the status of "Gebetbuch" (prayer book), while others were appalled by its...