Whether as aphorisms or fragments, thought figures or feuilletons, prose poems, micro-stories or autobiographical jottings, different manifestations of short prose have greatly influenced the development and differentiation of recent literature in German and prove to be especially significant for the evolution of literary modernism. The present collection of articles documents the findings of a conference funded by the Thyssen Foundation. Its aim was to initialize a historical and systematic exploration of this textual field via case studies, constellation descriptions, and development outlines. The articles in this volume are not restricted to the examination of individual genres, be they firmly established or as yet largely unexplored. They also thematize the media-historical preconditions for the emergence of short prose and its text-theoretical implications. As such they supply the basis for a theory of the entire textual field within the literary system of modernism.