The Brockhaus encyclopedia of 1896 referred to the decadent literary movement as "a symptom of today's nervous, senile, fragmented society which is impervious to anything healthy and natural" -- and which is primarily French. But beneath the brash and pompous exterior of the German Empire, decadent literature thrived, fueled by the music of Wagner, the paradoxes of Nietzsche, and the writings of Thomas Mann, the movement's self-styled chronicler and analyst. This analogy collects works by Sacher-Masoch, Trakl, Leppin, Przybyszewski, Mann, and other, demonstrating that Berlin, Vienna and Prague served equally with Paris as hosts for this provocative European cultural movement.
