this study represents the first fundamental work on the literary scholar Max Kommerell (1902?1944), a representative of intellectual life in Germany. Due to his contacts to the Stefan George circle and to Frankfurt and Marburg university life of the 1930s and 1940s, he was firmly rooted in the network of the intellectual discourse of that time. Being exceptionally talented, both as a writer and scholar, Kommerell represents a highly important chapter of German and European cultural and intellectual history of the first half of the 20th century which thus far has only been partially researched.