The German symbolist poet Stefan George (1868-1933) strongly influenced a group of brilliant and idealistic disciples, thus manifesting his revolt against the materialism of his time.

Born in Rüdesheim near Bingen on the Rhine, Stefan George graduated from a gymnasium in Darmstadt and spent several years traveling throughout western Europe. While in Paris in 1889, he was admitted to Stéphane Mallarmé's soirées, where he met Paul Verlaine, Émile Verhaeren, and Auguste Rodin; and in Berlin, as a student of Romance languages, he came to know Carl August Klein, who was the first to recognize him as a poet. With Klein's help he founded and edited Blätter für die Kunst (1892-1919; Periodical for Art), the mouthpiece for the distinguished George circle of esthetes. This intellectual élite included not only poets and critics such as Friedrich Gundolf...