bavarikon4UDescription
Adalbert Stifter (1805–1866) was one of the greatest stylists of German literature. He began his career in the spirit of Austrian Biedermeier by writing stories for the bourgeois reading public. The theme of these stories, which first appeared in popular journals and almanacs, was often the humanization of the elemental. Stifter later thoroughly revised these works, which led to their publication in his Studien of 1844–50 and Bunte Steine of 1853. After the revolutionary upheavals of 1848, Stifter distanced himself from contemporary trends. Der Nachsommer (Indian summer), the first great work of his later period, depicts an idyllic world in which the traditions of classical antiquity are linked with medieval romanticism in a utopian antithesis to the urban civilization of Stifter's time. The Bavarian State Library acquired the long-lost manuscripts of Der Nachsommer, Bunte Steine, and seven stories from the Studien in 1964. The manuscripts offer new insights into the work of Stifter as a stylist, and their reappearance led to the publication of a new historico-critical collected edition of his works.