Queer Places:
Aspang, 2870, Austria
Joseph Kitir (February 11, 1867, Aspang (Niederösterreich) – July 23, 1923, Wien), poet and writer, was the pseudonym of Edwin Flug.
As the son of a forester, Kitir spent his childhood in the Wechselgebiet and attended an agricultural school and studied law at the university of Vienna. Then Kitir spent some time as a journalist in Munich, then became a civil servant in Vienna, where he had lived as a freelance writer since 1889. He was co-editor of the Poetischen Flugblätter (poetic leaflets, 1898 with Karl Maria Klob) and the Neuen Musenalmanachs, Deutsche Poesie zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts (New Musal Almanac, German Poetry at the beginning of the 20th century, 1901). Known by Pierre Rarnus as Austrian Verlaine, he published Ausgewuhlte Gedichte (Poems) in 1899.
He studied in Vienna and for several years was a contributor and editor of periodicals in Vienna and Munich. Collected Poems appeared in 1889, Leben and Stimmung in 1891, and Blaetter der Freundschaft in 1892. Rudolf Steiner refers to the poetry of Kitir in The Riddle of Man (1916). Again Steiner, in the Story of My Life, remember him:
"At the very time during which I enjoyed such stimulating experiences at the home of delle Grazie, I had the privilege of entering also a circle of the younger Austrian poets. Every week we had a free expression and mutual sharing together of whatever one or the other had produced. The most varied characters met in this gathering. Every view of life and every temperament was represented, from the optimistic, naïve painter of life to the leaden-weighted pessimist. Fritz Lemmermayer was the soul of the group. There was present something of the storm which the Hart brothers, Karl Henckel, and others had loosed in the German Empire against “the old” in the spiritual life of the time. But all this was tinged with Austrian “amiability.” Much was said about how the time had come in which new tones must sound forth in all spheres of life; but this was done with that disapproval of radicalism which is characteristic of the Austrian.
One of the youngest of this circle was Joseph Kitir. He devoted his effort to a form of lyric to which he had been inspired by Martin Greif. He did not wish to bring subjective feelings to expression; he wished to set forth an event or situation objectively, and yet as if this had been observed, not with the senses, but with the feelings. He did not wish to say that he was enchanted; but rather he would paint the enchanting event, and its enchantment should act upon hearer or reader without the poet's statement. Kitir did really beautiful things in this way. His soul was naïve. A little while after this he bound himself more closely to me."
Among the minor gay literary figures of the 1900s were Emile Mario Vacano, Karl Michael Freiherr von Lewetzow, Kitir, and Emerich von Stadion, who published in the journal Poetischen Flugblätter, edited by Kitir.
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