Der Dieb

On first reading these seven stories, about contagious disease, social revolt, unhappy love, and the criminally insane, their eventual publisher expressed fears that the grim nature of their subjects would put off potential readers. Georg Heym replied that his subjects had chosen him as much as he had chosen them. This special, compulsive relationship with his material is reflected in the mesmeric, spellbinding character of the stories which have become classics of German Expressionist prose, the equivalent in their violent imagery of the Expressionist paintings of the time, prefiguring the great era of Expressionist film that was to follow. On publication they were compared to the tales of Edgar Allan Poe and the prose pieces of Baudelaire, and they have been acclaimed ever since for their power and formal beauty.