Works
Although Grimm’s South African sojourn lasted only fourteen years, from 1897 to 1911, it had a profound effect on him: with few minor exceptions all his literary work - several collections of short stories and novels - is set in Southern Africa. His most famous novel is Volk ohne Raum (1926). The programmatic title "A people without space" indicates Grimm's belief that Germany's problems, exacerbated by defeat in the First World War, were caused by its lack of space at home or in overseas colonies: individuals, and therefore the nation, were unable to develop to their fullest potential. The novel established him as one of Germany’s leading writers and demonstrated clearly his political sympathies with the political Right in Weimar Germany, and the title became a popular slogan of the National Socialist movement. The commercial success of this work – sales of the single volume edition amounted to 500,000 by 1943 - clearly shows the extent to which it struck a chord with German readers in the 1920s and 1930s.
From a strictly literary point of view - and leaving their ideological bias to one side - the most readable of Grimm's works are, however, his Novellen and short stories, in which the discipline imposed by restricted space forces him to abandon the discursive wordiness of Volk ohne Raum (1344 pages in the one-volume edition).
Read more about this topic: Hans Grimm
Famous quotes containing the word works:
“I lay my eternal curse on whomsoever shall now or at any time hereafter make schoolbooks of my works and make me hated as Shakespeare is hated. My plays were not designed as instruments of torture. All the schools that lust after them get this answer, and will never get any other.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“The discovery of Pennsylvania’s coal and iron was the deathblow to Allaire. The works were moved to Pennsylvania so hurriedly that for years pianos and the larger pieces of furniture stood in the deserted houses.”
—For the State of New Jersey, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“The works of women are symbolical.
We sew, sew, prick our fingers, dull our sight,
Producing what? A pair of slippers, sir,
To put on when you’re weary or a stool
To stumble over and vex you ... “curse that stool!”
Or else at best, a cushion, where you lean
And sleep, and dream of something we are not,
But would be for your sake. Alas, alas!
This hurts most, this ... that, after all, we are paid
The worth of our work, perhaps.”
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)