Friedrich Huch, once a well-known and esteemed writer, has largely been forgotten; only his novel Pitt und Fox: Die Liebeswege der Brüder Sintrup (Pitt and Fox: The Paths of Love of the Sintrup Brothers, 1909) is republished from time to time. Huch has retained a certain historical significance, however, because he exemplifies a form of antibourgeois protest characteristic of the turn of the century. Combining elements of aestheticism and aristocratic gentility, Huch's protest concludes in decadent passivity and isolation. His main concern--and this too is characteristic of the period--is the psyche of the suffering child. Huch is not able to counter the superficial verbosity of the bourgeois world he depicts with a significance and a meaningful language of his own. His style is conventional, blandly smooth--at times all too smooth, mannered, and occasionally trivial in its sentimentalism; it is at its best when it is satirical. An...