Hugo Salus

Hugo Salus (3 August 1866 in Česká Lípa – 4 February 1929 in Prague) was a doctor, writer and poet.

Salus studied medicine in Prague and established a practice in gynaecology there from 1895 onwards. Apart from his professional activities as a doctor, he published numerous volumes of poetry and short stories, and was one of the more important exponents of German literature in the Prague of his day. A prolific author, he soon became 'the acknowledged arbiter of Prague literary taste', and 'the most respected Bohemian poet writing in German' at the time. An early friend and mentor of Rainer Maria Rilke, his verse had some influence on Rilke's early lyric style.

To some of his fellow Jewish intellectuals, he was regarded as an unadulterated "assimilationist," and "a militant protagonist of German liberalism and Jewish assimilation" whose attachment to Zionism was little more than a matter of embracing a fashionable trend (Mode-Zionismus). Lothar Kahn, on the other hand, says that while Salus was described by Max Brod as an unqualified assimilationist, "this may be an exaggeration, Salus did hope, all else failing, for full Jewish absorption into the host society."

Of both him and his rival Friedrich Adler, Kafka biographer Peter Mailloux says, "their Jewishness existed in name only." The philosopher Emil Utitz put it a bit differently, "Both acknowledged Jews, they nevertheless felt themselves to be the authentic representatives of all Germans in Bohemia, as well as further afield. Those Germans wanted little to do with Prague in any case, and least of all with its Jews. But Salus and Adler were liberals of the old stamp." Kahn notes that "Salus made use of Jewish folkways and observances in his poetry, plays, and occasional fiction."

Apart from his professional activities as a doctor, he published numerous volumes of poetry and short stories, and was one of the more important exponents of German-Jewish literature in the Prague of his day, moving in a circle which included younger figures of the stature of Franz Kafka, Max Brod, Franz Werfel, Egon Erwin Kisch, Oskar Baum, Johannes Urzidil, Paul Kornfeld, Ernst Weiss and Kamil Hoffmann. Several of his works were illustrated by Heinrich Vogeler, while Arnold Schönberg set two of his poems to music.

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