Johannes Schlaf
Johannes Schlaf (21 June 1862 in
Querfurt – 2 February 1941 in Querfurt) was a German playwright, author, and translator and an important exponent of
Naturalism. As a translator he was important for exposing the German-speaking world to the works of
Walt Whitman,
Émile Verhaeren and
Émile Zola and is known as a founder of the "Whitman Cult" in Germany. His literary achievements lie foremost in the scenic-dialogue innovations of "sequential naturalism" and in the formalization of literary
impressionism. He also contributed to the emergence of the "intimate theater."
Some of his poems have been set to music by composers
Alban Berg and
Arnold Schoenberg.
He is sometimes mistakenly cited for coining the term "The Third Reich" in relation to Nazism because of his 1906 novel by that name. The Nazi use of the term comes from a 1923 book
Das Dritte Reich by
Arthur Moeller van den Bruck.
Provided by Wikipedia