Salus, Hugo
SALUS, HUGO
SALUS, HUGO (1866–1929), Prague poet who wrote in German. A native of Česká Lípa, Salus was a gynecologist by profession, practicing in Prague. Between 1898 and 1928 he published volumes of impressionistic verse and was considered by contemporary critics as the foremost German lyricist.
Outstanding among his works are Ehefruehling (1900), Trostbuechlein fuer Kinderlose (1909), and Die Harfe Gottes (1928). Salus was a militant protagonist of German liberalism and Jewish assimilation. His views on the Jewish question are quoted in J. Moses' Die Loesung der Judenfrage (1907). Jewish themes appear in his poems "Ahnenlied" (about his grandfather, a peddler), "Der hohe Rabbi Loew," "Ahasver," "Sulamith," "Simson," and "Talmudische Legende," and in a short story, Die Beschau (1920). Salus was influenced by Rainer Maria Rilke and Hugo von *Hofmannsthal and, in his turn, influenced Max *Brod.
bibliography:
Jews of Czechoslovakia, 1 (1968), 477–8; F.R. Tichy, in: Zeitschrift fuer die Geschichte der Juden, 3 (1966), 230–2; M. Brod, Streitbares Leben (1969), index; idem, Der Prager Kreis (1966), index.