Heros und Messias

"In his TU dissertation, painstakingly researched and composed in the dense style of a scientific treatise, Robert Charlier takes on a formidable task thus far not attempted in the enormous body of scholarship concerning Friedrich Hölderlin. By tracking markers of Jewish an pre-Christian influence within Hölderlin's poetic corpus, he aims to demonstrate that the "messianic idea" inherent in the conceptual framework of the poet's writings and embodied in the mystic figures that inhabit them produces a unique model of religious redemption and speculative progess influenced not only by Christian typology but also by Judaic thought. This messianic idea expresses itself, according to Charlier, through a complex progression of images that Hölderlin confronts throughout his productiv life." (Therese Ahern Augst, Princeton University, The German Quarterly, vol. 74.1 [2001.2], pp. 208-10; http://www.jstor.org/pss/3072849)