"We all do not know how often we have been driven into that strange state, and perhaps it is really an everlasting trick of scared, weak souls to escape responsibility by such a confusion of their inner existence." (25)
Four short stories mainly set in late nineteenth century Silesia.
- The Shimmer of the Assistant: a surreal story about a clerk who fails to get a pay-rise.
- The Last Act: a banker's past deeds come back to haunt him over an evening in a tavern.
- The Grandmother: a grandmother with a reputation for saving dying people tries to save her grandson in the face of her son-in-law's obstruction.
- The Spirit of the Father: an explorer in the Orient receives a visitation from his dying father.
Hermann Stehr (1864-1940) was a Silesian author of over thirty novels and novellas. He was awarded the Bauernfeld Prize (1910), the Fastenrath Prize (1919), the Schiller Prize (1919), the Rathenau Prize (1930), the Wartburg Rose (1932), the Goethe Medal for Art and Science (1932) and the Goethe Prize of Frankfurt-am-Main (1933), and appointed as a founding member of the Prussian Literary Academy (1926).
"His people talk with their hearts and breathe with their souls; whoever listens to them, hears sounds meant for the ears of God." - Walther Rathenau
