Baron Bagge
1936 novella by Alexander Lernet-Holenia
Baron Bagge (German: Der Baron Bagge) is a novella by the Austrian author Alexander Lernet-Holenia, originally published in German in 1936 by S. Fischer Verlag. Set during World War I, it deals with a cavalry officer's ride through the Carpathian Mountains that turns more and more unreal as he encounters love, death and war. The first English translation by Richard and Clara Winston was published in 1956.
Plot
At an official reception in Vienna, there is a dispute between Baron Bagge and a young man, Farago, who forbids Bagge to speak with his sister. Bagge, Farago claims, was responsible for the suicides of two women. Bagge challenges him to a duel, but the situation can be cleared and Farago agrees to apologize. Bagge finds he has to explain himself and tells his story. Both women did indeed kill themselves, because he would marry neither of them. This was, Bagge says, because he was actually already married.
He was a cavalry officer back in 1915 and found himself with his unit on a reconnaissance mission in the buildup to the Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive in Eastern Europe.
“Baron Bagge” enters the record as 1936 novella by Alexander Lernet-Holenia. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Baron, Bagge and novella can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1192402. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1936, 1956 and 1915.
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This entry incorporates text from “Baron Bagge” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.