Originally Posted by
stlukesguild
Robert Walser's short fictions are often compared with Kafka (He was Swiss/German). Rilke is the German/Austrian poetic giant from around the time of Kafka. His "essential" books include The Book of Images, New Poems, Duino Elegies, Sonnets to Orpheus, and Uncollected Poems all translated by Edward Snow. Then there's Georg Trakl, the Austrian Expressionist poet. Check also Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth, Robert Musil, Gustav Meyrink's The Golem, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Sigmund Freud, Hermann Broch... and even though he was outside of Austro-HUngary, I'd also look into the Expressionist, Frank Wedekind.