A novel of love and valor, war and stupidity, life and death (as well as
what may lay beyond our mortal coils), Baron Bagge concerns a young
Austrian cavalry lieutenant in the Carpathian mountains at the beginning
of WWI. The baron leads a desperate charge across a bridge to meet the
Russian forces, following the orders of his mentally unstable commander:
"We were soon to have proof of his unreliability... But perhaps it is
not right to place the blame on him. Perhaps his foolishness was merely
the instrument of fate, and the disaster into which he led his squadron,
the slaughter of so many men and horses, took place in order that
something which could no longer happen within the realm of the
living--because it was too late--could happen after life." And, swaying
in a kind of fugue, the baron wanders off the bridge into unknown
realms, where--mesmerized by Lernet-Holenia's phosphorescent style--the
reader joins his waking dream.