Keyserling, Eduard, Graf von (Schloß Paddern, Kurland, 1855-1918, Munich), a descendant of an ancient noble family originating in Westphalia, grew up in his native Latvian countryside, studied at Dorpat University, but was forced to leave following an incident that made him an outcast from aristocratic circles. He resumed his studies in Vienna where his contacts included Anzengruber and P. Altenberg and, having familiarized himself with the social ideas of Naturalism, began to write his first novels, Fräulein Rosa Herz. Eine Kleinstadtliebe (1887) and Die dritte Stiege (1892); both were reissued (with postscr. by F. Martini) in 1983. He subsequently worked as manager on his mother's estates, and in 1895 moved to Munich, where he remained except for a stay in Italy (1899-1900). He found new friends in the city's literary and artistic circles, among them L. Corinth, M. Halbe, R. Kassner, and F. Wedekind, who in 1902 took the leading part in Keyserling's (lost) one-acter Die schwarze Flasche at the cabaret Die Elf Scharfrichter. His other plays include Ein Frühlingsopfer (1900), Der dumme Hans (1901), Peter Hawel (1904), and Benignens Erlebnis (1906). However, it was as a narrator that he was soon recognized as one of the finest stylists of the period, who has been ranked with writers like Turgenev and Chekhov, as well as Fontane. An outstanding feature of Keyserling's prose is its subtle interplay of realism and the Impressionist mode that reflects his sensuous perception of nature, his portrayal of erotic experience, of dreams of happiness, and of anguish and despair, all of which centres on characters whose lives are hemmed in by the strict aristocratic conventions of his homeland. Though living outside the ‘cold barrier’ enclosing this narrow world, conveyed by his exquisite irony as well as his melancholy, he at the same time creates in his fiction a piece of its cultural history, of its great houses and garden architecture, aware of the decadence and decline of this heritage, as exemplified in the novel Abendliche Häuser (1914, ed. W. Kisten 1970). Those who knew Keyserling commented on his gentle personality, remarkable self-discipline, and wit, though he suffered from the late 1890s from syphilis, went blind in 1908, and during his last years was confined to bed.

Beate und Mareile (1903), the first of Keyserling's Schloßgeschichten, introduces ‘the little toy world’ (‘die kleine Spielzeugwelt’) in and around which a (characteristic) triangular situation unfolds, inducing a truer sense of self-awareness and human worth. It was followed by the collections of Novellen Schwüle Tage (1906, including Harmonie, 1905) and Bunte Herzen (1909), the novels Damals (1908), Wellen (1911, with postscr. by P. Härtling, 1971), Fürstinnen (1917, with postscr. by R. Brinkmann, 1989), and Feiertagskinder (posth., 1919). Gesammelte Erzählungen (4 vols.), ed. E. Heilborn, appeared in 1922 (2nd edn., 2 vols., 1933), the selection Schwüle Tage, ed. O. von Taube, in 1954, and Werke, ed. R. Gruenter, in 1973.

The philosopher Graf Hermann Keyserling was the author's nephew.

The Oxford Companion to German Literature. Copyright © 1976, 1986, 1997, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.