A selection of Hofmannsthal's most important stories. In addition to the fairy tale of the 672nd night, the equestrian story and the experience of the Marshal von Bassompierre, there are also the soldier's story, the moments in Greece or the woman without a shadow, which Hofmannsthal also adapted into an opera libretto.

Expelled from his parents' house as a 'good-for-nothing' by his father, the dreamy miller's son travels the world with nothing but his violin in his luggage, in search of freedom, individuality and artistry. On his travels he meets the love of his life, is disappointed and moves on. But a love letter calls him back... will his dream come true now? The musical novella is considered a masterpiece...

In 1929, Tucholsky spent the summer vacation with his girlfriend near Gripsholm Castle in Sweden. The stay inspired him to write a summer story about the success and failure of love and the illusion of being able to escape from reality.

With the Radetzky March, Joseph Roth published his first Austria novel in 1932 and had international success with it: the novel about the decline of the Danube monarchy ended in 1916 with the death of Emperor Franz Joseph I. This farewell to the k . u.k. Roth added monarchy to the Capuchin Crypt in 1938. In the form of the first-person narrative, he chose the perspective of a demoralized member...

Job was Roth's first resounding success as an author - and together with the Radetzky March, which appeared a year later, also formed the artistic highlight of his work: the little teacher Mendel Singer experienced great suffering, turned against his God and only found his way back to America at the end of his life the wondrous reunion with his son, who he believed dead, returned to his faith....

Roth's great novel established his world literary reputation: in an inimitable way he drew a careful portrait of that bygone era, which even gains amiable features from the weaknesses and mistakes of the declining monarchy, but at the same time shows the meaninglessness and rigidity of the society, which was almost entirely geared towards the military. The novel is accessible in this edition in...

The leviathan, the legendary, huge fish of the Old Testament, ultimately derived from pagan mythology, also received the supervision of the coral from God. Roth's novel of the same name revolves around the life of the small coral trader Nissen Piczenik, who in the end, after losing his business, increasingly disengages from his small village home and his faith and finally dies in the sea. The...

'The appearance of the following scenes is excluded for the time being,' Schnitzler himself wrote about his comedy. Indeed, the first edition (1903) unleashed a wave of outrage. The first performance (1920) was disrupted by controlled demonstrations; further performances were banned, two actors were reported for 'indecency'.

'Stupid boy.' Those two words, uttered by a baker, are enough to destroy Lieutenant Gustl. His honor cannot be restored because his opponent is not capable of satisfaction. With death as the only way out, Gustl wanders through the streets of Vienna. Arthur Schnitzler's novella, designed as an inner monologue, gives direct insight into the consciousness of the (anti)hero who, controlled by...

Professor Unrat torments his students, even follows them privately - right into a nightclub. There, however, he succumbs to the charms of a ding-a-ling singer, and the end of the tyrant is heralded. Heinrich Mann writes about the main character of his novel that she is 'a new expression of the phenomenon that has so often shaken me, power'. With the film The Blue Angel, in which Marlene...

A young couple and three days of happiness - the little prose idyll about the lovers Claire and Wölfchen, who try to escape the everyday life of Berlin's big city, made Kurt Tucholsky famous overnight. His first and lightest book. A wonderful summer read, not only for lovers.