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EBNER-ESCHENBACH AND THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL MOVEMENT
latter’s refusal to offer him a position on the editorial staff of Hochland,
started to polemicise fiercely against him, against his journal, and against
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the writers he supported. Thus the Catholic literary debate moved into
its second stage, comprising the Kralik-Muth controversy and the clergy’s
polemics defending either Gral or Hochland. Kralik’s followers accused
Muth’s ecumenically-oriented programme of endangering Catholic art.
They denounced him as siding with supposedly antagonistic liberal Cath-
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olics and tried to eliminate his journal. Kralik, in turn, was described as a
Dilettant und ein mittelm a¨ ßiger Epigone’, possessed of a ‘pathologischen
‘
55
Schaffensdrang’. The Gral programme was charged with exacerbating
56
the rift between the German nation and ghettoised Catholicism.
The ‘Literaturstreit’ soon moved into the theological sphere and was
linked to the Catholic reform movement. Pius X, elected Pope in 1903,
was, like his predecessor, a staunch adherent of political and religious
conservatism. He not only reinforced obedience to Papal authority, but
mounted a campaign against theological liberalism, now decried as ‘Mod-
57
ernism’, with the aid of denunciation and spying. In 1909 Caspar Decurt-
ins, a close collaborator of Rome, claimed that Modernism had infiltrated
not only theology, politics and sciences, but even the field of literature.
To prove his point he cited the Austrian writer Enrica von Handel-Mazzet-
ti’s novel Jesse und Maria as an example of perilous religious subjectivism.
The editors of the Gral followed suit and accused Muth of likewise propa-
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gating modernist thought. Yet the latter and his collaborators held fast
to their goals, even though Hochland barely escaped being placed on the
Index, and continued sponsoring authors they regarded as true artists.
In 1910, at the height of the ‘Literaturstreit’, on the occasion of Ebner-
Eschenbach’s eightieth birthday, Muth wrote a tribute in Hochland, high-
lighting her artistry and pointing out that her liberal religious views had
59
brought her the open hostility of pastoral criticism. This statement irked
Hermann Herz, the militantly conservative editor of the journal now called
Die B u¨ cherwelt. He therefore decided to rebut Muth’s contentions by once
more scrutinising Ebner’s work. He was at odds with Muth, who had pre-
viously accused him of misjudging outstanding literature on account of
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his narrow, doctrinaire perspective. Convinced of the correctness of his
approach, Herz again took the strictest orthodoxy as his guideline.
After confirming Dransfeld’s evaluation, Herz focussed mainly on
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4
See Weitlauff, ‘Modernismus litterarius’, p. 141.
Josef Pfeneberger, ‘Kralik oder Muth?’, Frankfurter zeitgem a¨ sse Brosch u¨ ren, 29 (1910), 153–87
(
here p. 157).
Falkenberg, Katholische Selbstvergiftung, p. 29.
Johannes Mumbauer, ‘Ein literarisches Ghetto f u¨ r deutsche Katholiken’, quoted in Pfeneberger,
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‘
Kralik oder Muth?’, p. 161.
See Weiss, Modernismus, p. 52.
Weitlauff, ‘Modernismus litterarius’, pp. 150–1.
Muth, ‘Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach’, Hochland, 8 (1910–11), 116.
Muth, Wiedergeburt, pp. 118–27.
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Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2000.