Schöpfung aus Liebe

In 2018, the sensational publication of over a thousand pages of erotica from the estate of Rudolf Borchardt (1877-1945) provoked a considerable response in the arts pages. The pornographic style of the autofictional novel 'Weltpuff Berlin' seemed strange, and the portrayal of Rudolf Borchardt as a hypersexual womanizer was incompatible with the staging he otherwise cultivated as an elitist 'poeta doctus' who sought to renew Western culture through a 'creative restoration'. This study is the first to systematically examine the depiction of physical love and the underlying concepts of love in Borchardt's work and situates the 'Weltpuff' novel as a supposed foreign body within it.