The first comprehensive study on the central importance of the genre category for the work of Robert Walser. Robert Walser's work represents almost the entire contemporary spectrum of literature, the great genres and the small forms. From the poems, fairy tales and school essays over the feature pages, prose pieces and novels to the pencil area - in a description that renounced the genres, would lose the leading contours of his oeuvre. While Walser is often cited as an example of an author who particularly vehemently reminds us of the inadequacy of literary-scientific instruments, Walser's own interest in the genres is central to this investigation. The genres are not only ex post importance, as theoretical or analytical categories, but provide information on how the central dimensions of Walser's writing - literary production and social position, aesthetic innovation and literary market, convention and creativity - are interconnected.