Masters in modern German literature

The word modern has a specific meaning in the German art and literature of the last generation. There were and there still are people who associate with it an absurdly tasteless kind of furniture and architecture; or "ugly" pictures of cabbage-fields and cow-barns, or immoral and degenerately pessimistic poems, novels, dramas. On the other hand there are people for whom the same word means a wealth of radiant light and color, of grand, and delicate, and joyous beauty; of an art and literature, simple, natural, and true in its mode of expression, dignified and noble in its effect, bravely affirmative in its philosophy. Schiller was "modern," when he published The Robbers and was condemned as a maniac by some, hailed as a German Shakespeare by others. Heinrich von Kleist was "modern," when Goethe timidly turned away from him and Tieck recognized his genius. And so forth to Hebbel and Wagner and Ibsen and Boecklin and Hugo Wolf and Whistler until this very day. The word modern, just as the word romantic, means everything and nothing and was, like this, used as a program. Contents: Modern Literature in Germany, Detlev von Liliencron, Richard Dehmel, Gerhart Hauptmann, Arno Holz, Heinrich Mann, Thomas Mann