Hermann Bahr was one of the protean figures of his generation, virtually omnipresent on the Austrian and German cultural scene through his public readings and lectures, performances of his plays, and his outpouring of writings in a wide variety of forms: dramas, novels, short prose, narrative tales, literary and political essays, theater and book reviews, and, finally, his diary, installments of which he published weekly in the newspaper Neues Wiener Journal from 1905 to 1933. He was one of the most prolific authors of his era; his more than one hundred books represent virtually a cultural history of Vienna from the turn of the century until the advent of Hitler in 1933. No other author of his time devoted such attention and effort to revitalizing Austria and helping it make the transition from the stagnation of the late nineteenth century to the progressiveness of the twentieth. After studying in Berlin and...