SOURCE: "Richard Beer-Hofmann," in Commentary, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1946, pp. 45-50.

In the following excerpt, Kahler discusses the religious themes in Beer-Hofmann's work.

Beer-Hofmann's first great book, Der Tod Georgs (The Death of George), published in 1900, has for its theme the chain of reflections that a friend's death gives rise to in a young man; death reveals to him the nature of life, of his own life and human life in general. "George was dead to him. Yet all searching into George's possible fate had only been an anxious questioning of his own.…Much of his own anguish and confusion had been tranquillized by verbalization; so that he had disburdened himself of his own restless and questioning thoughts by casting them upon George, whence they echoed back in altered form, strange only as some favorite song is that we sang just a moment ago, and which now returns to...