Hugo von Hofmannsthal is generally considered the most important Austrian writer of the early twentieth century; among German-speaking writers of this period only Thomas Mann and Franz Kafka have generated more commentary. At the same time, Hofmannsthal's place in the annals of modernism is surrounded by more controversy than are those of Mann and Kafka. Some critics think of him as a "genialer Jüngling" (brilliant youth), others belittle him as a "konservativer Ästhet" (conservative aesthete); for some he is a "Götterbote" (messenger of the gods), for others the "Museumsdirektor der Kultur" (director of the museum of culture). He burst onto the literary scene in Vienna in the early 1890s as a precocious and enormously gifted writer of poetry, verse plays, and essays. After 1900 he turned almost exclusively to writing comedies, dramas which were based for the most part on already existing plays, and libretti for operas by Richard Strauss. Those who had seen in the young Hofmannsthal one of the most promising lyric poets ever to have emerged in Austria looked at this shift in interest with misgivings.
