BAUMGARTNER, ALEXANDER. – Swiss Jesuit, literary critic and historian, born at S. Gallen on 27 June 1841, died in Luxembourg on 5 September 1910. He was the son of the noted historian and statesman Gallus Jakob B., whose Geschichte des schweiz. Freistaates und Kantons St. Gallen he later completed (III, S. Gallen 1890), and of whom he wrote a biographical profile: Gallus Jakob B... und die neue Staatsentwicklung in der Schweiz (1769 bis 1869) (Freiburg im Breisgau 1892).
A Jesuit from 1860, B. was assigned, after completing his studies (1873), to the editorial staff of the journal Stimmen aus Maria-Laach, where he attracted attention with penetrating articles of literary criticism on Lessing, Longfellow, Vondel, etc. (some works, such as his first studies on Goethe and Das Ramayana und die Rama-Literatur der Inder (1892), appeared in the Ergänzungshefte, or supplements, of Stimmen). His vigorous work Goethe, sein Leben und seine Werke (3 vols., Freiburg im Breisgau 1885–86), sound in judgment but at times harsh in its reaction against the prevailing idolatry of the neo-pagan poet, provoked violent controversies (cf. N. Scheid, Verständigung im Streit um Goethe, in Stimmen aus Maria-Laach, 86 [1941], pp. 420–28; the work was later revised into 2 vols. by A. Stockmann, Freiburg im Breisgau 1923–25). B.’s masterwork, however, unfortunately remained incomplete: Geschichte der Weltliteratur (6 vols., Freiburg im Breisgau 1897–1911), in which the ancient literatures, both Eastern and Greco-Roman, and the medieval Latin literatures are treated; among the modern national literatures, only the French is treated and, in the final, posthumous volume, the Italian. Of the finest aesthetic sensibility, and also a poet, B. nevertheless adhered strictly, as a critic, to moral and religious principles and rejected the formula of art for art’s sake, which earned him, toward the end of his life, no small amount of opposition (cf. his work: Die Stellung der deutschen Katholiken zur neueren Literatur, Freiburg im Breisgau 1910). In another field, his travel accounts of the northern regions had met with broad approval: Island und die Förder (3rd ed., there 1902); Durch Skandinavien nach S. Petersburg (3rd ed., there 1901); Reisebilder aus Schottland (3rd ed., there 1906).