The crisis of the modern age is first and foremost a crisis of bios – this being the alienation of mankind from nature through the social impact of industrialization. As a reaction, modern literature evolved into what Adorno called “Mimesis ans Verhärtete und Entfremdete”, meaning the aesthetic adaptation to the fragmented environment.
Opposing this progressive approach, antimodernists tried to regain the lost sense of wholeness by developing an aesthetic of “Transfragmentarism”, merging insights of natural science and monistic philosophy with romantic traditions. Literature following this biopoetic strategy to strengthen the mental fitness of its readers was exceptionally successful after World War I. Nevertheless, it couldn’t achieve canonisation in German literature and from today’s perspective could be regarded as a failed method to cope with the evolution of art. The following article will pursue the aim of portraying the implications of this process by examining Erwin Guido Kolbenheyer’s main work, his "Paracelsus-Trilogie" (1917-1926). As a typical antimodernist he considered his writing to be a tribute to the survival of an imagined German Volk and thereby overestimated the healing influence of his art on the country’s shattered post-war society.
