Alexander Baumgartner

Some of his poetry was written for special occasions, including Festspiel zur Calderonfeier (1881), which appeared first in the Stimmen aus Maria-Laach, but was soon, owing to repeated requests, published in book form with a brief biography of the Spanish poet Pedro Calderón de la Barca. A translation into Spanish by Juan Manuel Ortí y Lara of the artistic work soon followed. His Lauretanische Litanei in fifty-nine sonnets was also written for a special occasion and was printed for the first time in 1883 and translated into Dutch in 1890. He also translated foreign poetry, for instance, in 1884, an Icelandic poem of the fourteenth century to the Virgin Mary, Die Lilie. He also wrote numerous articles on the history of literature in the Stimmen aus Maria-Laach, which were collected and issued in 1912 as a supplementary volume to his Geschichte der Weltliteratur, all written with the intent that they should form part of his larger history and life work. In earlier years, as preparatory writings, he had issued Lessings religioser Entwicklungsgang (1877), Longfellow (1887), an appreciation of the poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow which passed into a second edition ten years later, Joost van den Vondel (1882), a biography of the Dutch author translated four years later into Dutch, and lastly a biography of Goethe in three volumes (1879). In addition he published two works as expressions of gratitude and religious piety: Erinnerungen an Bischof Greith (1884), and Gallus Jakob Baumgartner (1892). Two years previously he had issued the unfinished work of his father, Die Geschichte des Kantons St. Gallen, in three volumes. The six volumes of his history of the literature of the world are: • Westasien und die Nillander (1897) • Indien und Ostasien (1897) • Die klassische Literatur der Griechen und Römer (1900) • Die lateinische und griechische Literatur der christlichen Volker (1900) • Die französische Literatur (1905) • Die italienische Literatur (1911) The thoroughly Catholic point of view in all his works is self-evident. His strong religious convictions led him to take part in the dispute over Catholic literature by the publication of the pamphlet Die Stellung der deutschen Katholiken zur neueren Literatur.