(a) _From the Swiss Controversy to the "Sturm und Drang."_--Between
Opitz and Gottsched German literature passed successively through the
various stages characteristic of all Renaissance literatures--from that
represented by Trissino and the French Pleiade, by way of the
aberrations of Marini and the _estilo culto_, to the _art poetique_ of
Boileau. And precisely as in France, the next advance was achieved in a
battle between the "ancients" and the "moderns," the German "ancients"
being represented by Gottsched, the "moderns" by the Swiss literary
reformers, J.J. Bodmer (1698-1783) and J.J. Breitinger (1701-1776). The
latter in his _Kritische Dichtkunst_ (1739) maintained doctrines which
were in opposition to Gottsched's standpoint in his treatise of the same
name, and Bodmer supported his friend's initiative; a pamphlet war
ensued between Leipzig and Zurich, with which in 1740-1741 the classical
period of modern German literature may be said to open. The Swiss, men
of little originality, found their theories in the writings of Italian
and English critics; and from these they learned how literature might be
freed from the fetters of pseudo-classicism. Basing their arguments on
Milton's _Paradise Lost_, which Bodmer had translated into prose (1732),
they demanded room for the play of genius and inspiration; they insisted
that the imagination should not be hindered in its attempts to rise
above the world of reason and common sense. Their victory was due, not
to the skill with which they presented their arguments, but to the fact
that literature itself was in need of greater freedom. It was in fact a
triumph, not of personalities or of leaders, but of ideas. The effects
of the controversy are to be seen in a group of Leipzig writers of
Gottsched's own school, the _Bremer Beitrager_ as they were called after
their literary organ. These men--C.F. Gellert (1715-1769), the author of
graceful fables and tales in verse, G.W. Rabener (1714-1771), the mild
satirist of Saxon provinciality, the dramatist J. Elias Schlegel
(1719-1749), who in more ways than one was Lessing's forerunner, and a
number of minor writers--did not set themselves up in active opposition
to their master, but they tacitly adopted many of the principles which
the Swiss had advocated. And in the _Bremer Beitrage_ there appeared in
1748 the first instalment of an epic by F.G. Klopstock (1724-1803), _Der
Messias_, which was the best illustration of that lawlessness against
which Gottsched had protested. More effectively than Bodmer's dry and
uninspired theorizing, Klopstock's _Messias_, and in a still higher
degree, his _Odes_, laid the foundations of modern German literature in
the 18th century. His immediate followers, it is true, did not help to
advance matters; Bodmer and J.K. Lavater (1741-1801), whose
"physiognomic" investigations interested Goethe at a later date, wrote
dreary and now long forgotten epics on religious themes. Klopstock's
rhapsodic dramas, together with Macpherson's _Ossian_, which in the
'sixties awakened a widespread enthusiasm throughout Germany, were
responsible for the so-called "bardic" movement; but the noisy
rhapsodies of the leaders of this movement, the "bards" H.W. von
Gerstenberg (1737-1823), K.F. Kretschmann (1738-1809) and Michael Denis
(1729-1800), had little of the poetic inspiration of Klopstock's _Odes_.
The indirect influence of Klopstock as the first inspired poet of modern
Germany and as the realization of Bodmer's theories can, however, hardly
be over-estimated. Under Frederick the Great, who, as the docile pupil
of French culture, had little sympathy for unregulated displays of
feeling, neither Klopstock nor his imitators were in favour in Berlin,
but at the university of Halle considerable interest was taken in the
movement inaugurated by Bodmer. Here, before Klopstock's name was known
at all, two young poets, J.I. Pyra (1715-1744) and S.G. Lange
(1711-1781), wrote _Freundschaftliche Lieder_ (1737), which were direct
forerunners of Klopstock's rhymeless lyric poetry; and although the
later Prussian poets, J.W.L. Gleim (1719-1803), J.P. Uz (1720-1796) and
J.N. Gotz (1721-1781), who were associated with Halle, and K.W. Ramler
(1725-1798) in Berlin, cultivated mainly the Anacreontic and the
Horatian ode--artificial forms, which kept strictly within the classic
canon--yet Friedrich von Hagedorn (1708-1754) in Hamburg showed to what
perfection even the Anacreontic and the lighter _vers de societe_ could
be brought. The Swiss physiologist Albrecht von Haller (1708-1777) was
the first German poet to give expression to the beauty and sublimity of
Alpine scenery (_Die Alpen_, 1734), and a Prussian officer, Ewald
Christian von Kleist (1715-1759), author of _Der Fruhling_ (1749), wrote
the most inspired nature-poetry of this period. Klopstock's supreme
importance lay, however, in the fact that he was a forerunner of the
movement of _Sturm und Drang_. But before turning to that movement we
must consider two writers who, strictly speaking, also belong to the age
under consideration--Lessing and Wieland.
As Klopstock had been the first of modern Germany's inspired poets, so
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) was the first critic who brought
credit to the German name throughout Europe. He was the most
liberal-minded exponent of 18th-century rationalism. Like his
predecessor Gottsched, whom he vanquished more effectually than Bodmer
had done, he had unwavering faith in the classic canon, but "classic"
meant for him, as for his contemporary, J.J. Winckelmann (1717-1768),
Greek art and literature, and not the products of French
pseudo-classicism, which it had been Gottsched's object to foist on
Germany. He went, indeed, still further, and asserted that Shakespeare,
with all his irregularities, was a more faithful observer of the spirit
of Aristotle's laws, and consequently a greater poet, than were the
French classic writers. He looked to England and not to France for the
regeneration of the German theatre, and his own dramas were pioneer-work
in this direction. _Miss Sara Sampson_ (1755) is a _burgerliche
Tragodie_ on the lines of Lillo's _Merchant of London, Minna von
Barnhelm_ (1767), a comedy in the spirit of Farquhar; in _Emilia
Galotti_ (1772), again with English models in view, he remoulded the
"tragedy of common life" in a form acceptable to the _Sturm und Drang_;
and finally in _Nathan der Weise_ (1779) he won acceptance for iambic
blank verse as the medium of the higher drama. His two most promising
disciples--J.F. von Cronegk (1731-1758), and J.W. von Brawe
(1738-1758)--unfortunately died young, and C.F. Weisse (1726-1804) was
not gifted enough to advance the drama in its literary aspects.
Lessing's name is associated with Winckelmann's in _Laokoon_ (1766), a
treatise in which he set about defining the boundaries between painting,
sculpture and poetry, and with those of the Jewish philosopher, Moses
Mendelssohn (1729-1786) and the Berlin bookseller C.F. Nicolai
(1733-1811) in the famous _Literaturbriefe_. Here Lessing identified
himself with the best critical principles of the rationalistic
movement--principles which, in the later years of his life, he employed
in a fierce onslaught on Lutheran orthodoxy and intolerance.
To the widening and deepening of the German imagination C.M. Wieland
(1733-1813) also contributed, but in a different way. Although no enemy
of pseudo-classicism, he broke with the stiff dogmatism of Gottsched and
his friends, and tempered the pietism of Klopstock by introducing the
Germans to the lighter poetry of the south of Europe. With the exception
of his fairy epic _Oberon_ (1780), Wieland's work has fallen into
neglect; he did, however, excellent service to the development of German
prose fiction with his psychological novel, _Agathon_ (1766-1767), which
may be regarded as a forerunner of Goethe's _Wilhelm Meister_, and with
his humorous satire _Die Abderiten_ (1774). Wieland had a considerable
following, both among poets and prose writers; he was particularly
looked up to in Austria, towards the end of the 18th century, where the
literary movement advanced more slowly than in the north. Here Aloys
Blumauer (1755-1789) and J.B. von Alxinger (1755-1797) wrote their
travesties and epics under his influence. In Saxony, M.A. von Thummel
(1738-1817) showed his adherence to Wieland's school in his comic epic
in prose, _Wilhelmine_ (1764), and in the general tone of his prose
writings; on the other hand, K.A. Kortum (1745-1824), author of the most
popular comic epic of the time, _Die Jobsiade_ (1784), was but little
influenced by Wieland. The German novel owed much to the example of
_Agathon_, but the groundwork and form were borrowed from English
models; Gellert had begun by imitating Richardson in his _Schwedische
Grafin_ (1747-1748), and he was followed by J.T. Hermes (1738-1821), by
Wieland's friend Sophie von Laroche (1730-1807), by A. von Knigge
(1752-1796) and J.K.A. Musaus (1735-1787), the last mentioned being,
however, best known as the author of a collection of _Volksmarchen_
(1782-1786). Meanwhile a rationalism, less materialistic and strict than
that of Wolff, was spreading rapidly through educated middle-class
society in Germany. Men like Knigge, Moses Mendelssohn, J.G. Zimmermann
(1728-1795), T.G. von Hippel (1741-1796), Christian Garve (1742-1798),
J.J. Engel (1741-1802), as well as the educational theorists J.B.
Basedow (1723-1790) and J.H. Pestalozzi (1746-1827), wrote books and
essays on "popular philosophy" which were as eagerly read as the
_moralische Wochenschriften_ of the preceding epoch; and with this group
of writers must also be associated the most brilliant of German
18th-century satirists, G.C. Lichtenberg (1742-1799).
Such was the _milieu_ from which sprang the most advanced pioneer of the
classical epoch of modern German literature, J.G. Herder (1744-1803).
The transition from the popular philosophers of the _Aufklarung_ to
Herder was due in the first instance to the influence of Rousseau; and
in Germany itself that transition is represented by men like Thomas Abbt
(1738-1766) and J.G. Hamann (1730-1788). The revolutionary nature of
Herder's thought lay in that writer's antipathy to hard and fast
systems, to laws imposed upon genius; he grasped, as no thinker before
him, the idea of historical evolution. By regarding the human race as
the product of a slow evolution from primitive conditions, he
revolutionized the methods and standpoint of historical science and
awakened an interest--for which, of course, Rousseau had prepared the
way--in the early history of mankind. He himself collected and published
the _Volkslieder_ of all nations (1778-1779), and drew attention to
those elements in German life and art which were, in the best and most
precious sense, national--elements which his predecessors had despised
as inconsistent with classic formulae and systems. Herder is thus not
merely the forerunner, but the actual founder of the literary movement
known as _Sturm und Drang_. New ground was broken in a similar way by a
group of poets, who show the results of Klopstock's influence on the new
literary movement: the Gottingen "Bund" or "Hain," a number of young
students who met together in 1772, and for several years published their
poetry in the _Gottinger Musenalmanach_. With the exception of the two
brothers, Ch. zu Stolberg (1748-1821) and F.L. zu Stolberg (1750-1819),
who occupied a somewhat peculiar position in the "Bund," the members of
this coterie were drawn from the peasant class of the lower
_bourgeoisie_; J.H. Voss (1751-1826), the leader of the "Bund," was a
typical North German peasant, and his idyll, _Luise_ (1784), gives a
realistic picture of German provincial life. L.H.C. Holty (1748-1776)
and J.M. Miller (1750-1814), again, excelled in simple lyrics in the
tone of the _Volkslied_. Closely associated with the Gottingen group
were M. Claudius (1740-1815), the _Wandsbecker Bote_--as he was called
after the journal he edited--an even more unassuming and homely
representative of the German peasant in literature than Voss, and G.A.
Burger (1748-1794) who contributed to the _Gottinger Musenalmanach_
ballads, such as the famous Lenore (1774), of the very first rank. These
ballads were the best products of the Gottingen school, and, together
with Goethe's Strassburg and Frankfort songs, represent the highest
point touched by the lyric and ballad poetry of the period.
But the Gottingen "Bund" stood somewhat aside from the main movement of
literary development in Germany; it was only a phase of _Sturm und
Drang_, and quieter, less turbulent than that on which Goethe had set
the stamp of his personality. Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832) had, as
a student in Leipzig (1765-1768), written lyrics in the Anacreontic vein
and dramas in alexandrines. But in Strassburg, where he went to continue
his studies in 1770-1771, he made the personal acquaintance of Herder,
who won his interest for the new literary movement. Herder imbued him
with his own ideas of the importance of primitive history and Gothic
architecture and inspired him with a pride in German nationality; Herder
convinced him that there was more genuine poetry in a simple Volkslied
than in all the ingenuity of the German imitators of Horace or Anacreon;
above all, he awakened his enthusiasm for Shakespeare. The pamphlet _Von
deutscher Art und Kunst_ (1773), to which, besides Goethe and Herder,
the historian Justus Moser (1720-1794) also contributed, may be regarded
as the manifesto of the _Sturm und Drang_. The effect on Goethe of the
new ideas was instantaneous; they seemed at once to set his genius free,
and from 1771 to 1775 he was extraordinarily fertile in poetic ideas and
creations. His _Gotz von Berlichingen_ (1771-1773), the first drama of
the _Sturm und Drang_, was followed within a year by the first novel of
the movement, _Werthers Leiden_ (1774); he dashed off _Clavigo_ and
_Stella_ in a few weeks in 1774 and 1775, and wrote a large number of
_Singspiele_, dramatic satires and fragments--including _Faust_ in its
earliest form (the so-called _Urfaust_)--not to mention love-songs which
at last fulfilled the promise of Klopstock. Goethe's lyrics were no less
epoch-making than his first drama and novel, for they put an end to the
artificiality which for centuries had fettered German lyric expression.
In all forms of literature he set the fashion to his time; the
Shakespearian restlessness of _Gotz von Berlichingen_ found enthusiastic
imitators in J.M.R. Lenz (1751-1792), whose _Anmerkungen ubers Theater_
(1774) formulated theoretically the laws, or defiance of laws, of the
new drama, in F.M. von Klinger (1752-1831), J.A. Leisewitz (1752-1806),
H.L. Wagner (1747-1779) and Friedrich Muller, better known as Maler
Muller (1749-1825): The dramatic literature of the _Sturm und Drang_ was
its most characteristic product--indeed, the very name of the movement
was borrowed from a play by Klinger; it was inspired, as _Gotz von
Berlichingen_ had been, by the desire to present upon the stage figures
of Shakespearian grandeur impelled and tortured by gigantic passions,
all considerations of plot, construction and form being regarded as
subordinate to the development of character. The fiction of the _Sturm
und Drang_, again, was in its earlier stages dominated by _Werthers
Leiden_, as may be seen in the novels of F.H. Jacobi (1743-1819) and
J.M. Miller, who has been already mentioned. Later, in the hands of
J.J.W. Heinse (1749-1803), author of _Ardinghello_ (1787), Klinger, K.
Ph. Moritz (1757-1793), whose _Anton Reiser_ (1785) clearly foreshadows
_Wilhelm Meister_, it reflected not merely the sentimentalism, but also
the philosophic and artistic ideas of the period.
With the production of _Die Rauber_ (1781) by Johann Friedrich Schiller
(1759-1805), the drama of the _Sturm und Drang_ entered upon a new
development. Although hardly less turbulent in spirit than the work of
Klinger and Leisewitz, Schiller's tragedy was more skilfully adapted to
the exigencies of the theatre; his succeeding dramas, _Fiesco_ and
_Kabale und Liebe_, were also admirable stage-plays, and in _Don Carlos_
(1787) he abandoned prose for the iambic blank verse which Lessing had
made acceptable in _Nathan der Weise_. The "practical" character of the
new drama is also to be seen in the work of Schiller's contemporary, O.
von Gemmingen (1755-1836), the imitator of Diderot, in the excellent
domestic dramas of the actors F.L. Schroder (1744-1816) and A.W. Iffland
(1759-1814), and even in the popular medieval plays, the so-called
_Ritterdramen_ of which _Gotz von Berlichingen_ was the model. Germany
owes to the _Sturm und Drang_ her national theatre; permanent theatres
were established in these years at Hamburg, Mannheim, Gotha, and even at
Vienna, which, as may be seen from the dramas of C.H. von Ayrenhoff
(1733-1819), had hardly then advanced beyond Gottsched's ideal of a
national literature. The Hofburgtheater of Vienna, the greatest of all
the German stages, was virtually founded in 1776.
(b) _German Classical Literature._--The energy of the _Sturm und Drang_,
which was essentially iconoclastic in its methods, soon exhausted
itself. For Goethe this phase in his development came to an end with his
departure for Weimar in 1775, while, after writing _Don Carlos_ (1787),
Schiller turned from poetry to the study of history and philosophy.
These subjects occupied his attention almost exclusively for several
years, and not until the very close of the century did he, under the
stimulus of Goethe's friendship, return to the drama. The first ten
years of Goethe's life in Weimar were comparatively unproductive; he had
left the _Sturm und Drang_ behind him; its developments, for which he
himself had been primarily responsible, were distasteful to him; and he
had not yet formed a new creed. Under the influence of the Weimar court,
where classic or even pseudo-classic tastes prevailed, he was gradually
finding his way to a form of literary art which should reconcile the
humanistic ideals of the 18th century with the poetic models of ancient
Greece. But he did not arrive at clearness in his ideas until after his
sojourn in Italy (1786-1788), an episode of the first importance for his
mental development. Italy was, in the first instance, a revelation to
Goethe of the antique; he had gone to Italy to find realized what
Winckelmann had taught, and here he conceived that ideal of a classic
literature, which for the next twenty years dominated German literature
and made Weimar its metropolis. In Italy he gave _Iphigenie auf Tauris_
(1787) its final form, he completed _Egmont_ (1788)--like the exactly
contemporary _Don Carlos_ of Schiller, a kind of bridge from _Sturm und
Drang_ to classicism--and all but finished _Torquato Tasso_ (1790).
_Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre_ (1795-1796) bears testimony to the clear
and decisive views which he had acquired on all questions of art and of
the practical conduct of life.
Long before _Wilhelm Meister_ appeared, however, German thought and
literature had arrived at that stability and self-confidence which are
the most essential elements in a great literary period. In the year of
Lessing's death, 1781, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), the great philosopher,
had published his _Kritik der reinen Vernunft_, and this, together with
the two later treatises, _Kritik der praktischen Vernunft_ (1788) and
_Kritik der Urteilskraft_ (1790), placed the Germans in the front rank
of thinking nations. Under the influence of Kant, Schiller turned from
the study of history to that of philosophy and more especially
aesthetics. His philosophic lyrics, his treatises on _Anmut und Wurde_,
on the _Asthetische Erziehung des Menschen_ (1795), and _Uber naive und
sentimentalische Dichtung_ (1795) show, on the philosophic and the
critical side, the movement of the century from the irresponsible
subjectivity of _Sturm und Drang_ to the calm idealism of classic
attainment. In the same way, German historical writing had in these
years, under the leadership of men like Justus Moser, Thomas Abbt, I.
Iselin, F.C. Schlosser, Schiller himself and, greatest of all, Johannes
von Muller (1752-1809), advanced from disconnected, unsystematic
chronicling to a clearly thought-out philosophic and scientific method.
J.G.A. Forster (1754-1794), who had accompanied Cook round the world,
and Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), gave Germany models of clear and
lucid descriptive writing. In practical politics and economics, when
once the unbalanced vagaries of undiluted Rousseauism had fallen into
discredit, Germany produced much wise and temperate thinking which
prevented the spread of the French Revolution to Germany, and provided a
practical basis on which the social and political fabric could be built
up anew, after the Revolution had made the old regime impossible in
Europe. Men like Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) and the philosopher
J.G. Fichte (1762-1814) were, in two widely different spheres,
representative of this type of intellectual eminence.
Meanwhile, in 1794, that friendship between Goethe and Schiller had
begun, which lasted, unbroken, until the younger poet's death in 1805.
These years mark the summit of Goethe and Schiller's classicism, and the
great epoch of Weimar's history as a literary focus. Schiller's
treatises had provided a theoretical basis; his new journal, _Die
Horen_, might be called the literary organ of the movement--although in
this respect the subsequent _Musenalmanach_, in which the two poets
published their magnificent ballad poetry, had more value. Goethe, as
director of the ducal theatre, could to a great extent control dramatic
production in Germany. Under his encouragement, Schiller turned from
philosophy to poetry and wrote the splendid series of classic dramas
beginning with the trilogy of _Wallenstein_ and closing with _Wilhelm
Tell_ and the fragment of _Demetrius_; while to Goethe we owe, above
all, the epic of _Hermann und Dorothea_. Less important were the
latter's severely classical plays _Die naturliche Tochter_ and
_Pandora_; but it must not be forgotten that it was chiefly owing to
Schiller's stimulus that in those years Goethe brought the first part of
_Faust_ (1808) to a conclusion.
Although acknowledged leaders of German letters, Goethe and Schiller had
considerable opposition to contend with. The _Sturm und Drang_ had by no
means exhausted itself, and the representatives of the once dominant
rationalistic movement were particularly arrogant and overbearing. The
literature associated with both _Sturm und Drang_ and rationalism was at
this period palpably decadent; no comparison could be made between the
magnificent achievements of Goethe and Schiller, or even of Herder and
Wieland with the "family" dramas of Iffland, still less with the
extraordinarily popular plays of A. von Kotzebue (1761-1819), or with
those bustling medieval _Ritterdramen_, which were especially cultivated
in south Germany. There is a wide gap between Moritz's _Anton Reiser_ or
the philosophic novels which Klinger wrote in his later years, and
Goethe's _Meister_; nor can the once so fervently admired novels of Jean
Paul Richter (1763-1825) take a very high place. Neither the fantastic
humour nor the penetrating thoughts with which Richter's books are
strewn make up for their lack of artistic form and interest; they are
essentially products of _Sturm und Drang_. Lastly, in the province of
lyric and epic poetry, it is impossible to regard poets like the gentle
F. von Matthisson (1761-1831), or the less inspired G.L. Kosegarten
(1758-1818) and C.A. Tiedge (1752-1841), as worthily seconding the
masterpieces of Goethe and Schiller. Thus when we speak of the greatness
of Germany's classical period, we think mainly of the work of her two
chief poets; the distance that separated them from their immediate
contemporaries was enormous. Moreover, at the very close of the 18th
century a new literary movement arose in admitted opposition to the
classicism of Weimar, and to this movement, which first took definite
form in the Romantic school, the sympathies of the younger generation
turned. Just as in the previous generation the _Sturm und Drang_ had
been obliged to make way for a return to classic and impersonal
principles of literary composition, so now the classicism of Goethe and
Schiller, which had produced masterpieces like _Wallenstein_ and
_Hermann und Dorothea_, had to yield to a revival of individualism and
subjectivity, which, in the form of Romanticism, profoundly influenced
the literature of the whole 19th century.
(c) _The Romantic Movement._--The first Romantic school, however, was
founded, not as a protest against the classicism of Weimar, with which
its leaders were in essential sympathy, but against the shallow,
utilitarian rationalism of Berlin. Ludwig Tieck (1773-1853), a leading
member of the school, was in reality a belated _Sturmer und Dranger_, who
in his early years had chafed under the unimaginative tastes of the
Prussian capital, and sought for a positive faith to put in their place.
Friedrich Holderlin (1770-1843), one of the most gifted poets of this
age, demonstrates no less clearly than Tieck the essential affinity
between _Sturm und Drang_ and Romanticism; he, too, forms a bridge from
the one individualistic movement to the other. The theoretic basis of
Romanticism was, however, established by the two brothers, August Wilhelm
and Friedrich Schlegel (1767-1845 and 1772-1829), who, accepting, in
great measure, Schiller's aesthetic conclusions, adapted them to the
needs of their own more subjective attitude towards literature. While
Schiller, like Lessing before him, insisted on the critic's right to sit
in judgment according to a definite code of principles, these Romantic
critics maintained that the first duty of criticism was to understand and
appreciate; the right of genius to follow its natural bent was sacred.
The _Herzensergiessungen eines kunstliebenden Klosterbruders_ by Tieck's
school-friend W.H. Wackenroder (1773-1798) contained the Romantic
art-theory, while the hymns and fragmentary novels of Friedrich von
Hardenberg (known as Novalis, 1772-1801), and the dramas and fairy tales
of Tieck, were the characteristic products of Romantic literature. The
universal sympathies of the movement were exemplified by the many
admirable translations--greatest of all, Schlegel's _Shakespeare_
(1797-1810)--which were produced under its auspices. Romanticism was
essentially conciliatory in its tendencies, that is to say, it aimed at a
reconciliation of poetry with other provinces of social and intellectual
life; the hard and fast boundaries which the older critics had set up as
to what poetry might and might not do, were put aside, and the domain of
literature was regarded as co-extensive with life itself; painting and
music, philosophy and ethics, were all accepted as constituent elements
of or aids to Romantic poetry. Fichte, and to a much greater extent,
F.W.J. von Schelling (1775-1854) were the exponents of the Romantic
doctrine in philosophy, while the theologian F.E.D. Schleiermacher
(1768-1834) demonstrated how vital the revival of individualism was for
religious thought.
The Romantic school, whose chief members were the brothers Schlegel,
Tieck, Wackenroder and Novalis, was virtually founded in 1798, when the
Schlegels began to publish their journal the _Athenaeum_; but the actual
existence of the school was of very short duration. Wackenroder and
Novalis died young, and by the year 1804 the other members were widely
separated. Two years later, however, another phase of Romanticism became
associated with the town of Heidelberg. The leaders of this second or
younger Romantic school were K. Brentano (1778-1842), L.A. von Arnim
(1781-1831) and J.J. von Gorres (1776-1848), their organ, corresponding
to the _Athenaeum_, was the _Zeitung fur Einsiedler_, or
_Trost-Einsamkeit_, and their most characteristic production the
collection of _Volkslieder_, published under the title _Des Knaben
Wunderhorn_ (1805-1808). Compared with the earlier school the Heidelberg
writers were more practical and realistic, more faithful to nature and
the commonplace life of everyday. They, too, were interested in the
German past and in the middle ages, but they put aside the idealizing
glasses of their predecessors and kept to historic truth; they wrote
historical novels, not stories of an imaginary medieval world as Novalis
had done, and when they collected _Volkslieder_ and _Volksbucher_, they
refrained from decking out the simple tradition with musical effects, or
from heightening the poetic situation by "Romantic irony." Their
immediate influence on German intellectual life was consequently
greater; they stimulated and deepened the interest of the German people
in their own past; and we owe to them the foundations of the study of
German philology and medieval literature, both the brothers Jakob and
Wilhelm Grimm (1785-1863 and 1786-1859) having been in touch with this
circle in their early days. Again, the Heidelberg poets strengthened the
national and patriotic spirit of their people; they prepared the way
for the rising against Napoleon, which culminated in the year 1813, and
produced that outburst of patriotic song, associated with E.M. Arndt
(1769-1860), K. Th. Korner (1791-1813) and M. von Schenkendorf
(1783-1817).
The subsequent history of Romanticism stands in close relation to the
Heidelberg school, and when, about 1809, the latter broke up, and Arnim
and Brentano settled in Berlin, the Romantic movement followed two
clearly marked lines of development, one north German, the other
associated with Wurttemberg. The Prussian capital, hotbed of rationalism
as it was, had, from the first, been intimately associated with
Romanticism; the first school had virtually been founded there, and
north Germans, like Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) and Zacharias Werner
(1768-1823)had done more for the development of the Romantic drama than
had the members of either Romantic school. These men, and more
especially Kleist, Prussia's greatest dramatic poet, showed how the
capricious Romantic ideas could be brought into harmony with the classic
tradition established by Schiller, how they could be rendered
serviceable to the national theatre. At the same time, Berlin was not a
favourable soil for the development of Romantic ideas, and the circle of
poets which gathered round Arnim and Brentano there, either themselves
demonstrated the decadence of these ideas, or their work contained
elements which in subsequent years hastened the downfall of the
movement. Friedrich de la Motte Fouque (1777-1843), for instance, shows
how easy it was for the medieval tastes of the Romanticists to
degenerate into mediocre novels and plays, hardly richer in genuine
poetry than were the productions of the later _Sturm und Drang_; and
E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776-1822), powerful genius though he was, cultivated
with preference in his stories, a morbid super-naturalism, which was
only a decadent form of the early Romantic delight in the world of
fairies and spirits. The lyric was less sensitive to baleful influences,
but even here the north German Romantic circle could only point to one
lyric poet of the first rank, J. von Eichendorff (1788-1857); while in
the poetry of A. von Chamisso (1781-1838) the volatile Romantic
spirituality is too often wanting. Others again, like Friedrich Ruckert
(1788-1866), sought the inspiration which Romanticism was no longer able
to give, in the East; still another group, of which Wilhelm Muller
(1794-1827) is the chief representative, followed Byron's example and
awakened German sympathy for the oppressed Greeks and Poles.
Apart from Eichendorff, the vital lyric poetry of the third and last
phase of Romanticism must be looked for in the Swabian school, which
gathered round Uhland. Ludwig Uhland (1787-1862) was himself a disciple
of the Heidelberg poets, and, in his lyrics and especially in his
ballads, he succeeded in grafting the lyricism of the Romantic school on
to the traditions of German ballad poetry which had been handed down
from Burger, Schiller and Goethe. But, as was the case with so many
other disciples of the Heidelberg Romanticists, Uhland's interest in the
German past was the serious interest of the scholar rather than the
purely poetic interest of the earlier Romantic poets. The merit of the
Swabian circle, the chief members of which were J. Kerner (1786-1862),
G. Schwab (1792-1850), W. Waiblinger (1804-1830), W. Hauff (1802-1827)
and, most gifted of all, E. Morike (1804-1875) was that these writers
preserved the Romantic traditions from the disintegrating influences to
which their north German contemporaries were exposed. They introduced
few new notes into lyric poetry, but they maintained the best traditions
intact, and when, a generation later, the anti-Romantic movement of
"Young Germany" had run its course, it was to Wurttemberg Germany looked
for a revival of the old Romantic ideas.
Meanwhile, in the background of all these phases of Romantic evolution,
through which Germany passed between 1798 and 1832, stands the majestic
and imposing figure of Goethe. Personally he had in the early stages of
the movement been opposed to that reversion to subjectivity and
lawlessness which the first Romantic school seemed to him to represent;
to the end of his life he regarded himself as a "classic," not a
"romantic" poet. But, on the other hand, he was too liberal-minded a
thinker and critic to be oblivious to the fruitful influence of the new
movement. Almost without exception he judged the young poets of the new
century fairly, and treated them sympathetically and kindly; he was
keenly alive to the new--and for the most part "unclassical"--development
of literature in England, France and Italy; and his own published work,
above all, the first part of _Faust_ (1808), _Die Wahlverwandtschaften_
(1809), _Dichtung und Wahrheit_ (1811-1814, a final volume in 1833),
_Westostlicher Divan_ (1819), _Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre_ (1821-1829)
and the second part of _Faust_ (published in 1832 after the poet's
death), stood in no antagonism to the Romantic ideas of their time. One
might rather say that Goethe was the bond between the two fundamental
literary movements of the German classical age; that his work achieved
that reconciliation of "classic" and "romantic" which, rightly regarded,
was the supreme aim of the Romantic school itself.