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PARTISAN REVIEW
Wolters wrote close on six hundred large pages of social
history without supplying either an index or a detailed table of
contents. Since he is not an orderly writer-the rough chronologi–
cal order of the facts is the reader's only guide-there is no alter–
native to reading this dull book from cover to cover, compiling
one's own index by the way. Wolters is the chief source-book, but
an enormous haystack has to be searched for a handful of needles.
All this is by way of apology for the present essay. Nothing
like the amount of material is available which the student expects
in the case of a twentieth-century writer. Much has been published
but little has been said. The most valuable information comes
from conversations with Germans now in the United States. One
cannot now communicate with Germany, and if one could one
would learn as much falsehood as fact. Nevertheless I can claim
that this. essay presents the story of George for the first time in
something like its true proportions. And unlike Wolters' distortion,
the true story is not dull.
Stefan George, born in 1868, was the son of an innkeeper at
Biidesheim near Bingen. His ancestry was either French or Ger–
man or Walloon or a mixture, hut, unlike many writers on the
subject, I am not one to argue these points. The important fact is
that while his parents were not rich enough to provide George with
an aristocratic home they were not poor enough to deny him a
more or less aristocratic education, first at the Realschule at Bin–
gen, later at the Ludwig-Georg Gymnasium at Darmstadt. George's
lifelong hatred of the small bourgeoisie (Kleinbiirgertum) was a
masochistic attempt to flee his own heritage and early environment.
The modern philosopher of artistocracy is seldom an aristocrat.
Reverse the values of Kleinbiirgertum and you will have the
values of Nietzsche and George. Seeking refinement, nobility, and
religion, Nietzsche and George were of necessity very lonely men.
They yearned for stronger bonds than the love of women. They
yearned to lead men and to be led.
Hence George has been thought a supreme egotist. As a boy
he sketched a language of his own, and a kingdom. As a man he
established himself as a literary dictator. When Herbert Steiner,
torlay editor of the Swiss magazine
Corona,
visited him thirty years
ago, George was wearing a toga. The table was covered with ivy.
Even George's posture was Roman: he was reclining propped on
