Hermann Stehr was a highly regarded author during the first decades of the twentieth century. In his nine novels, thirty-one narratives, and hundreds of poems he revealed hidden aspects of human nature and proposed answers to age-old religious and philosophical questions. Some of his novels and novellas were translated into French, Norwegian, Czech, and even into Celtic and Japanese, but no English translations appeared, though an American school edition of his story Der Geigenmacher (The Violin Maker, 1926) did come out in 1934. Of his novel Der begrabene Gott (The Buried God, 1905) Hugo von Hofmannsthal said in a review: "One word I must use in describing it is grandeur. And another is reverence, and awe." Recognition also came in literary honors: Stehr received the Bauernffeld Prize in 1907, the Fastenrath Prize in 1911, and the Schiller Prize in 1913. When the Ministry of Culture established a literary academy in 1926, it invited Stehr, as...