SOURCE: "The Motive of Fear in German Literature," in Arizona Quarterly, Vol. 20, No. 2, Summer, 1964, pp. 147-63.

In the following essay, Eickhorst surveys fear in German literature from the thirteenth century to the mid-1960s, highlighting works by Johann von Schiller, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Rainer Maria Rilke, Franz Kafka, Ernst Barlach, Thomas Mann, Gottfried Benn, Hermann Hesse, and Friedrich Dürrenmatt, among others.

No other word denoting a state of mind has been allotted more synonyms by standard dictionaries than fear. The most frequently employed terms among these synonyms are anxiety, terror, and fright—all designating that painful emotion experienced when one is confronted by impending danger, imaginary or real. In modern German writings Angst (anxiety) is usually the expression for this sensation rather than Furcht (fear), unless the reference is to Gottesfurcht (fear of God). In the intellectual and religious realms anxiety is thought of as a...