German Literature

VI

Revolution and Reaction (1832-1871)

During the 1830s a new generation of writers turned from the fantasy of Romanticism towards participation in political events. Forming a movement known as Junges Deutschland (Young Germany), they supported the attempts of liberal elements in various parts of Germany to modify the absolute rule of the surviving feudal princes. The major philosopher of this period was G. W. F. Hegel, whose rationalistic idealism and dialectical method were later to have such a profound effect upon Karl Marx. Also influenced by him was the lyrical poet and critic Heinrich Heine. A dominant figure among the new writers, Heine began his career with ironic poems on Romantic themes and became famous with the publication of his Buch der Lieder (1827; Book of Songs, 1846). After the failure of the revolution of 1830, he fled to Paris, where he wrote his most important poetry and produced many critical articles on contemporary art and politics. A perceptive observer, Heine anticipated many of the techniques of modern journalism. Another political exile, Ludwig Börne, attempted to invigorate German political activity in his Briefe aus Paris (Letters from Paris, 1830-1833).

A

19th-Century Drama

Political ideas dominated the German drama of the 19th century. In addition to Kleist, Christian Dietrich Grabbe and other writers produced significant plays. Most important, however, was the revolutionary dramatist Georg Büchner, a pioneer in psychological realism whose works continue to be widely performed. His Dantons Tod (1835; Danton’s Death, 1927) explores the sense of futility and apathy that affected the French revolutionary leader Georges Jacques Danton at the close of his life. In Woyzeck (1836; trans. 1927)—well known in the modern operatic version by the Austrian composer Alban Berg—Büchner depicts the tragic disintegration of a poor soldier victimized by an unjust and cruel society. The topic, style, and deep psychological insight of this play mark it as the beginning of modern German drama.

Psychological realism and political perception also characterize the historical tragedies of Friedrich Hebbel and the poetic dramas of the Austrian playwright Franz Grillparzer. Ferdinand Raimund wrote comedies that took place in a world of fairy tales and magic happenings but which nevertheless reflected his deep melancholy. Entertaining satires were composed by Johann Nestroy; and Ludwig Anzengruber wrote plays of peasant life, anticipating, in his concern with social problems, the literary movement known as Naturalism.

The German theatre of the 19th century was profoundly influenced by the composer Richard Wagner. A participant in the unsuccessful revolution of 1848, Wagner produced numerous prose writings describing the importance of the drama in the development of civilization and calling for a union of the arts in a form he called the Gesamtkunstwerk (total art form). As a poet, he wrote the texts of his music dramas, celebrating the great traditions of German literature in such works as Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1867) and Parsifal (1882). Wagner in turn was influenced by the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, whose darkly pessimistic thought may be considered typical of the defeatist temper that followed the political repression of 1848. Schopenhauer, in his principal work Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (1819; The World as Will and Idea, 1883), conceived of a fundamental active principle, the will, that operates as a driving force in all forms of existence and that, in human beings, causes inevitable dissatisfaction and suffering unless balanced by a sense of saintly resignation. This conception of a primal governing force in human behaviour was to have a significant influence on subsequent German literature and philosophy.

B

19th-Century Prose

The popular storytellers of the mid-19th century included the poet Baroness Annette Elisabeth von Droste-Hülshoff, known for her novella Die Judenbuche (1842; The Jew’s Beech, 1958). Detailed descriptions of nature characterize the writings of the Austrian writer Adalbert Stifter, whose best-known works are the novel Der Nachsommer (Indian Summer, 1857) and the collection of short stories, Bunte Steine (Multi-Coloured Stones, 1853). Another master of the novella form was the Swiss author Gottfried Keller, whose collection Die Leute von Seldwyla (1856 and 1874; The People of Seldwyla, 1929) wittily captured the foibles of the inhabitants of a fictional Swiss town. Keller’s autobiographical novel Der Grüne Heinrich (4 vols., 1854-1855; Green Henry, 1960), continued the tradition of the Bildungsroman that began with Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (4 vols., 1795-1796; Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, 1824). Rural life was portrayed by the Swiss writer Jeremias Gotthelf, best known for his novella Die Schwarze Spinne (1842; The Black Spider, 1958), while the novelist Wilhelm Raabe depicted the problems of the individual in an expanding society. Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, a poet and novelist, chose characters from the Middle Ages for many of his ballads and stories. The unity of human beings and nature forms a recurrent theme in the poetry and novellas of Theodor Storm. Immensee (1852; trans. 1863), one of his best-known stories, is a lyrical, nostalgic tale of childhood. His later, darker style is shown in Der Schimmelreiter (1888; Rider of the White Horse, 1915), which shows the effect of the sea on the lives of shore dwellers. The most important novelist of the time was undoubtedly Theodor Fontane, whose novel of adultery, Effi Briest (1895; trans. 1967), vividly captured contemporary social mores through its realistic detail and strong characterization.

The prevailing idealism of German philosophy was rejected in favour of materialism by Paul Johann Anselm von Feuerbach, whose work influenced the German revolutionaries Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Among the many scholars who furthered the development of the science of history during this period were Leopold von Ranke, considered a founder of the objective writing of history, Theodor Mommsen, an expert in Roman studies, and Jakob Burckhardt, noted for Kultur der Renaissance in Italien (1860; The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, 1878). The development of Germany as a nation was studied by Wilhelm Häring, who used the pseudonym Willibald Alexis, and by the ardent nationalist Heinrich von Treitschke.

VII

German Nationalism (1871-1945)

After the unification of the German states in 1871, the revolutionary tendencies of German literature began increasingly to conflict with the militarism and economic materialism of the German middle class. Representing, in the main, the latter, the Prussian statesman and first chancellor of the German Empire, Prince Otto von Bismarck, expressed the prevailing view of contemporary society in his memoirs entitled Gedanken und Erinnerungen (1898; Bismarck: His Reflections and Reminiscences, 1898). A profoundly pessimistic cultural analysis, however, was advanced by the poet and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. In works such as Jenseits von Gut und Böse (1886; Beyond Good and Evil, 1907) and Wille zur Macht (1901; The Will to Power, 1967) he challenged the traditional religious values of bourgeois morality and the prevailing idealism of German philosophy. His celebrated pronouncement that “God is dead” encapsulated the belief that any notion of higher meaning is a delusion created by those unable to bear the reality of human existence, life consisting instead of nothing more than the “will to power”, that energy which produces all human endeavour. In his later writings, notably in the prose poem Also Sprach Zarathustra (1883; Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 1896), Nietzsche set forth the vision of a new type of creative individual who would himself embody the “will to power”, the Übermensch (superman), able to withstand the loss of transcendence and representing the heroic ideal to which humans should aspire. That this image was later taken up by the Nazis to justify their own racial doctrines may represent a crude misreading of Nietzsche, but it is testament also to the ambiguity of some of his conceptions.

Nietzsche’s concern with the inner forces of the human personality profoundly influenced the course of early 20th-century thought. In psychology, Sigmund Freud and the Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung were greatly indebted to him for their theories of the human psyche. From Nietzsche’s idea of the cyclical recurrence of events, the philosopher of history Oswald Spengler formulated his principles of historical determinism. These developments in psychology and historical studies, when combined with Nietzsche’s conception of the artist as a radical critic of society, influenced the major literary movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries: Naturalism, Expressionism, and the epic theatre.

A

Naturalism

The naturalistic movement in literature occurred after the rise of Realism. Realism calls for an art reflecting both the good and the evil forces that affect human life. Naturalism, on the other hand, is a form of artistic determinism and depicts a bleak world in which people are trapped and doomed to defeat and disaster by uncontrollable forces. Symbols often used by Naturalist writers include sickness; insanity; senility; hypocrisy in religion, family relationships, and government; and the entrapping forces of economics, heredity, race, class, and environment. The artistic principles of the Naturalist movement were described by the critic and writer Arno Holz in his treatise Die Kunst (Art, 1891). Holz was also the co-author, with Johannes Schlaf, of three dramatic naturalistic stories under the collective title Papa Hamlet (1889). Certain elements of Naturalism, especially those dealing with the erotic aspects of life, appear in the dramas of the Austrian doctor and playwright Arthur Schnitzler. The principal representative of Naturalism, however, was the dramatist Gerhart Hauptmann. In his play Vor Sonnenaufgang (1899; Before Dawn, 1909), he depicted human beings as victims of heredity and environment, doomed to hopeless struggles against forces beyond their control. This theme, and the manner of its presentation, anticipated many similar treatments in modern literature. A later Hauptmann play, Die Weber (1892; The Weavers, 1899), introduced the social group as hero of the drama. Hauptmann’s later writings represent a transition from Naturalism to the literary movement known as Impressionism, in which precise realism is replaced by a depiction of the impressions that objects make on the individual vision of the artist.

Among other principal movements in the German literature of the early 20th century were Neo-Classicism (see Classical Style), Neo-Romanticism, Symbolism (see Symbolist Movement; Surrealism; Dada), and, most important, Expressionism, in which the emphasis on psychological problems became especially pronounced.