THEODOR DAÜBLER

Theodor Däubler (1876-1934) was the author of more than twenty books of poetry, prose, and art criticism, including The Starchild (1916) and The Starlit Path (1915/23). A native of Trieste, which was then part of Austria-Hungary, he grew up speaking both German and Italian. After serving a year in the Austrian army and several more touring major Mediterranean cultural centers, he moved to Berlin upon the outset of the First World War, published art criticism in various magazines and eventually travelled as a cultural correspondent. A champion of German Expressionism, his essay “Simultaneity” seeks to reconcile notions of tradition across Futurist and Classicist frameworks. Among others, his works include With Silver Sickle, Hymn to Italy, The New Standpoint, and The Auroras, a mythic fantasia and crucible of an epic that Däubler drastically edited and republished twice. His likeness is depicted in the visual arts by the likes of Heinrich Maria Davringhausen, Paul Klee, Otto Dix, and Ernst Barlach. Däubler served as the chair of the German PEN club and was awarded the Goethe Medal. Three of the poems in The Starchild were set to music by Theodor Adorno.