The circle of like-minded litterati that formed around the poet Stefan George (1868-1933) at the turn of the century represented one of the most outspoken and controversial responses to what at the time was widely seen as the 'crisis' of modernism. The lifestyle it propagated, a mixture of the aesthetic and the heroic, embodied an alternative not only to traditional social forms prevalent during the German Empire but also to established patterns of interpreting art and history. With its thoroughgoing synoptic view of the history of literature and the history of science, the study inquires into the program underlying the cohesion of this literary coterie and the resonances it set up in various sectors of society.