VOLUME XI SLICE VII Geoponici to Germany (part) (continued 6)

The chief representative of the literary movement inaugurated by the Silesian “court poets” was Johann Christoph Gottsched (1700-1766), who between 1724 and 1740 succeeded in establishing in Leipzig, the metropolis of German taste, literary reforms modelled on the principles of French 17th-century classicism. He reformed and purified the stage according to French ideas, and provided it with a repertory of French origin; in his Kritische Dichtkunst (1730) he laid down the principles according to which good literature was to be produced and judged. As Opitz had reformed German letters with the help of Ronsard, so now Gottsched took his standpoint on the principles of Boileau as interpreted by contemporary French critics and theorists. With Gottsched, whose services in purifying the German language have stood the test of time better than his literary or dramatic reforms, the period of German Renaissance literature reaches its culmination and at the same time its close. The movement of the age advanced too rapidly for the Leipzig dictator; in 1740 a new epoch opened in German poetry and he was soon left hopelessly behind.

V. The Classical Period of Modern German Literature (1740-1832)

(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 Pléiade, by way of the aberrations of Marini and the estilo culto, to the art poétique 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 Zürich, 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 Beiträger 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 Beiträge 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. Götz (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 société 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 Frühling (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 bürgerliche Tragödie 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 Thümmel (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 Gräfin (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. Musäus (1735-1787), the last mentioned being, however, best known as the author of a collection of Volksmärchen (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 Aufklärung 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 Göttingen “Bund” or “Hain,” a number of young students who met together in 1772, and for several years published their poetry in the Göttinger 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. Hölty (1748-1776) and J.M. Miller (1750-1814), again, excelled in simple lyrics in the tone of the Volkslied. Closely associated with the Göttingen 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. Bürger (1748-1794) who contributed to the Göttinger Musenalmanach ballads, such as the famous Lenore (1774), of the very first rank. These ballads were the best products of the Göttingen 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 Göttingen “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 Möser (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 Götz 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 Götz von Berlichingen found enthusiastic imitators in J.M.R. Lenz (1751-1792), whose Anmerkungen übers 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 Müller, better known as Maler Müller (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 Götz 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 Räuber (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. Schröder (1744-1816) and A.W. Iffland (1759-1814), and even in the popular medieval plays, the so-called Ritterdramen of which Götz 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 Würde, on the Ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen (1795), and Über 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 Möser, Thomas Abbt, I. Iselin, F.C. Schlosser, Schiller himself and, greatest of all, Johannes von Müller (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 régime 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 natürliche 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 Stürmer und Dränger, 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 Hölderlin (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 Görres (1776-1848), their organ, corresponding to the Athenaeum, was the Zeitung für Einsiedler, or Tröst-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 Volksbücher, 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. Körner (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 Württemberg. 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 Fouqué (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 Rückert (1788-1866), sought the inspiration which Romanticism was no longer able to give, in the East; still another group, of which Wilhelm Müller (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 Bürger, 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. Mörike (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 Württemberg 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), Westöstlicher 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.

VI. German Literature since Goethe (1832-1906)

(a) Young Germany.—With Goethe’s death a great age in German poetry came to a close. Long before 1832 Romanticism had, as we have seen, begun to lose ground, and the July revolution of 1830, the effects of which were almost as keenly felt in Germany as in France, gave the movement its death-blow. Meanwhile the march of ideas in Germany itself had not been favourable to Romanticism. Schelling had given place to G. W.F. Hegel (1770-1831), now the dominant force in German philosophy, and the Hegelian metaphysics proved as unfruitful an influence on literature as that of Fichte and Schelling had been fruitful. The transference of Romantic ideas to the domain of practical religion and politics had proved reactionary in its effects; Romanticism became the cloak for a kind of Neo-catholicism, and Romantic politics, as enunciated by men like F. von Gentz (1764-1832) and Adam Müller (1779-1829), served as an apology for the Metternich régime in Austria. Only at the universities—in Göttingen, Heidelberg and Berlin—did the movement continue, in the best sense, to be productive; German philology, German historical science and German jurisprudence benefited by Romantic ideas, long after Romantic poetry had fallen into decay. The day of Romanticism was clearly over; but a return to the classic and humanitarian spirit of the 18th century was impossible. The social condition of Europe had been profoundly altered by the French Revolution; the rise of industrialism had created new economic problems, the march of science had overturned old prejudices. And in a still higher degree were the ideas which lay behind the social upheaval of the July revolution incompatible with a reversion in Germany to the conditions of Weimar classicism. There was, moreover, no disguising the fact that Goethe himself did not stand high with the younger generation of German writers who came into power after his death.

“Young Germany” did not form a school in the sense in which the word was used by the early Romanticists; the bond of union was rather the consequence of political persecution. In December 1835 the German “Bund” issued a decree suppressing the writings of the “literary school” known as “Young Germany,” and mentioned by name Heinrich Heine, Karl Gutzkow, Ludolf Wienbarg, Theodor Mundt and Heinrich Laube. Of these men, Heine (1797-1856) was by far the most famous. He had made his reputation in 1826 and 1827 with Die Harzreise and Das Buch der Lieder, both of which books show how deeply he was immersed in the Romantic traditions. But Heine felt perhaps more acutely than any other man of his time how the ground was slipping away from beneath his feet; he repudiated the Romantic movement and hailed the July revolution as the first stage in the “liberation of humanity”; while ultimately he sought in France the freedom and intellectual stimulus which Germany withheld from him. Heine suffered from having been born in an age of transition; he was unable to realize in a wholehearted way all that was good in the new movement, which he had embraced so warmly; his optimism was counteracted by doubts as to whether, after all, life had not been better in that old Romantic Germany of his childhood for which, to the last, he retained so warm an affection. Personal disappointments and unhappiness added to the bitterness of Heine’s nature, and the supremely gifted lyric poet and the hardly less gifted satirist were overshadowed by the cynic from whose biting wit nothing was safe.

Heine’s contemporary and—although he was not mentioned in the decree against the school—fellow-fighter, Ludwig Börne (1786-1837), was a more characteristic representative of the “Young German” point of view; for he was free from Romantic prejudices. Börne gave vent to his enthusiasm for France in eloquent Briefe aus Paris (1830-1833), which form a landmark of importance in the development of German prose style. With Karl Gutzkow (1811-1878), who was considerably younger than either Heine or Börne, the more positive aspects of the “Young German” movement begin to be apparent. He, too, had become a man of letters under the influence of the July revolution, and with an early novel, Wally, die Zweiflerin (1835), which was then regarded as atheistic and immoral, he fought in the battle for the new ideas. His best literary work, however, was the comedies with which he enriched the German stage of the ’forties, and novels like Die Ritter vom Geiste (1850-1851), and Der Zauberer von Rom (1858-1861), which have to be considered in connexion with the later development of German fiction. Heinrich Laube (1806-1884), who, as the author of lengthy social novels, and Reisenovellen in the style of Heine’s Reisebilder, was one of the leaders of the new movement, is now only remembered as Germany’s greatest theatre-director. Laube’s connexion (1850-1867) with the Burgtheater of Vienna forms one of the most brilliant periods in the history of the modern stage. Heine and Börne, Gutzkow and Laube—these were the leading spirits of “Young Germany”; in their train followed a host of lesser men, who to the present generation are hardly even names. In the domain of scholarship and learning the “Young German” movement was associated with the supremacy of Hegelianism, the leading spirits being D.F. Strauss (1808-1874), author of the Leben Jesu (1835), the historians G.G. Gervinus (1805-1871) and W. Menzel (1798-1873), and the philosopher L.A. Feuerbach (1804-1872), who, although a disciple of Hegel, ultimately helped to destroy the latter’s influence.

Outside the immediate circle of “Young Germany,” other tentative efforts were made to provide a substitute for the discredited literature of Romanticism. The historical novel, for instance, which Romanticists like Arnim had cultivated, fell at an early date under the influence of Sir Walter Scott; Wilhelm Hauff, Heinrich Zschokke (1771-1848) and K. Spindler (1796-1855) were the most prominent amidst the many imitators of the Scottish novelist. The drama, again, which since Kleist and Werner had been without definite principles, was, partly under Austrian influence, finding its way back to a condition of stability. In Germany proper, the men into whose hands it fell were, on the one hand, undisciplined geniuses such as C.D. Grabbe (1801-1836), or, on the other, poets with too little theatrical blood in their veins like K.L. Immermann (1796-1840), or with too much, like E. von Raupach (1784-1852), K. von Holtei (1798-1880) and Adolf Müllner (1774-1829)—the last named being the chief representative of the so-called Schicksalstragödie. In those years the Germans were more seriously interested in their opera, which, under C.M. Weber, H.A. Marschner, A. Lortzing and O. Nicolai, remained faithful to the Romantic spirit. In Austria, however, the drama followed lines of its own; here, at the very beginning of the century, H.J. von Collin (1771-1811) attempted in Regulus and other works to substitute for the lifeless pseudo-classic tragedy of Ayrenhoff the classic style of Schiller. His attempt is the more interesting, as the long development that had taken place in Germany between Gottsched and Schiller was virtually unrepresented in Austrian literature. M. von Collin (1779-1824), a younger brother of H.J. von Collin, did a similar service for the Romantic drama. Franz Grillparzer (1791-1872), Austria’s greatest poet, began in the school of Müllner with a “fate drama,” but soon won an independent place for himself; more successfully than any other dramatist of the century, he carried out that task which Kleist had first seriously faced, the reconciliation of the classicism of Goethe and Schiller with the Romantic and modern spirit of the 19th century. It is from this point of view that works like Das goldene Vliess (1820), König Ottokars Glück und Ende (1825), Der Traum, ein Leben (1834) and Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen (1831) must be regarded. As far as the poetic drama was concerned, Grillparzer stood alone, for E.F.J. von Münch-Bellinghausen (1806-1871), his most promising contemporary, once so popular under the pseudonym of Friedrich Halm, soon fell back into the trivial sentimentality of the later Romanticists. In other forms of dramatic literature Austria could point to many distinguished writers, notably the comedy-writer, E. von Bauernfeld (1802-1890), while a host of playwrights, chief of whom were F. Raimund (1790-1836) and J. Nestroy (1801-1862), cultivated the popular Viennese farce and fairy-play. Thus, in spite of Metternich’s censorship of the drama, the Viennese theatre was, in the first half of the 19th century, in closer touch with literature than that of any other German centre.

The transitional character of the age is best illustrated by two eminent writers whom outward circumstances rather than any similarity of character and aim have classed together. These were K.L. Immermann, who has been already mentioned, and A. von Platen-Hallermund (1796-1835). Immermann’s dramas were of little practical value to the theatre, but one at least, Merlin (1832), is a dramatic poem of great beauty. In his novels, however, Die Epigonen (1836) and Münchhausen (1838-1839), Immermann was the spokesman of his time. He looked backwards rather than forwards; he saw himself as the belated follower of a great literary age rather than as the pioneer of a new one. The bankruptcy of Romanticism and the poetically arid era of “Young Germany” left him little confidence in the future. Platen, on the other hand, went his own way; he, too, was the antagonist both of Romanticism and “Young Germany,” and with Immermann himself he came into sharp conflict. But in his poetry he showed himself indifferent to the strife of contending literary schools. He began as an imitator of the German oriental poets—the only Romanticists with whom he had any personal sympathy—and with his matchless Sonette aus Venedig (1825) he stands out as a master in the art of verse-writing and as the least subjective of all German lyric poets. In the imitation of Romance metres he sought a refuge from the extravagances and excesses of the Romantic decadence.

Meanwhile the political side of the “Young German” movement, which the German Bund aimed at stamping out, gained rapidly in importance under the influence of the unsettled political conditions between the revolutions of 1830 and 1848. The early ’forties were in German literature marked by an extraordinary outburst of political poetry, which may be aptly compared with the national and patriotic lyric evoked by the year 1813. The principles which triumphed in France at the revolution of 1848 were, to a great extent, fought out by the German singers of 1841 and 1842. Begun by mediocre talents like N. Becker (1809-1845) and R.E. Prutz (1816-1872), the movement found a vigorous champion in Georg Herwegh (1817-1875), who in his turn succeeded in winning Ferdinand Freiligrath (1810-1876) for the revolutionary cause. Others joined in the cry for freedom—F. Dingelstedt (1814-1881), A.H. Hoffmann von Fallersleben (1798-1874), and a number of Austrians, who had even more reason for rebellion and discontent than the north Germans. But the best Austrian political poetry, the Spaziergänge eines Wiener Poeten, 1831, by “Anastasius Grün” (Graf A.A. von Auersperg, 1806-1876), belonged to a decade earlier. The political lyric culminated in and ended with the year 1848; the revolutionists of the ’forties were, if not appeased, at least silenced by the revolution which in their eyes had effected so little. If Freiligrath be excepted, the chief lyric poets of this epoch stood aside from the revolutionary movement; even E. Geibel (1815-1884), the representative poet of the succeeding age, was only temporarily interested in the political movement, and his best work is of a purely lyric character. M. von Strachwitz’s (1822-1847) promising talent did not flourish in the political atmosphere; Annette von Droste-Hülshoff (1797-1848), and the Austrian, Nikolaus Lenau (1802-1850), both stand far removed from the world of politics; they are imbued with that pessimistic resignation which is, more or less, characteristic of all German literature between 1850 and 1870.

(b) Mid-Century Literature.—When once the revolution of 1848 was over, a spirit of tranquillity came over German letters; but it was due rather to the absence of confidence in the future than to any hopefulness or real content. The literature of the middle of the century was not wanting in achievement, but there was nothing buoyant or youthful about it; most significant of all, the generation between 1848 and 1880 was either oblivious or indifferent to the good work and to the new and germinating ideas which it produced. Hegel, who held the earlier half of the 19th century in his ban, was still all-powerful in the universities, but his power was on the wane in literature and public life. The so-called “Hegelian Left” had advanced so far as to have become incompatible with the original Hegelianism; the new social and economic theories did not fit into the scheme of Hegelian collectivism; the interest in natural science—fostered by the popular books of J. Moleschott (1822-1893), Karl Vogt (1817-1895) and Ludwig Büchner (1824-1899)—created a healthy antidote to the Hegelian metaphysics. In literature and art, on which Hegel, as we have seen, had exerted so blighting an influence, his place was taken by the chief exponent of philosophic pessimism, Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860). Schopenhauer’s antagonism to Hegelianism was of old standing, for his chief work, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, had appeared as far back as 1819; but the century was more than half over before the movement of ideas had, as it were, caught up with him, before pessimism became a dominant force in intellectual life.

The literature produced between 1850 and 1870 was preeminently one of prose fiction. The beginnings which the “Young German” school had made to a type of novel dealing with social problems—the best example is Gutzkow’s Ritter vom Geiste—developed rapidly in this succeeding epoch. Friedrich Spielhagen (born 1829) followed immediately in Gutzkow’s footsteps, and in a series of romances from Problematische Naturen (1860) to Sturmflut (1876), discussed in a militant spirit that recalls Laube and Gutzkow the social problems which agitated German life in these decades. Gustav Freytag (1816-1895), although an older man, freed himself more successfully from the “Young German” tradition; his romance of German commercialism, Soll und Haben (1855), is the masterpiece of mid-century fiction of this class. Less successful was Freytag’s subsequent attempt to transfer his method to the milieu of German academic life in Die verlorene Handschrift (1864). As was perhaps only natural in an age of social and political interests, the historical novel occupies a subordinate place. The influence of Scott, which in the earlier period had been strong, produced only one writer, Wilhelm Häring (“Willibald Alexis,” 1798-1871), who was more than a mere imitator of the Scottish master. In the series of six novels, from Der Roland von Berlin to Dorothe, which Alexis published between 1840 and 1856, he gave Germany, and more particularly Prussia, a historical fiction which might not unworthily be compared with the Waverley Novels. But Alexis had no successor, and the historical novel soon made way for a type of fiction in which the accurate reproduction of remote conditions was held of more account than poetic inspiration or artistic power. Such are the “antiquarian” novels of ancient Egyptian life by Georg Ebers (1837-1898), and those from primitive German history by Felix Dahn (born 1834). The vogue of historical fiction was also transferred to some extent, as in English literature, to novels of American life and adventure, of which the chief German cultivators were K.A. Postl, who wrote under the pseudonym of Charles Sealsfield (1793-1864) and Friedrich Gerstäcker (1816-1872).

Of greater importance was the fiction which owed its inspiration to the Romantic traditions that survived the “Young German” age. To this group belongs the novel of peasant and provincial life, of which Immermann had given an excellent example in Der Oberhof, a story included in the arabesque of Münchhausen. A Swiss pastor, Albrecht Bitzius, better known by his pseudonym “Jeremias Gotthelf” (1797-1854), was, however, the real founder of this class of romance; and his simple, unvarnished and naïvely didactic stories of the Swiss peasant were followed not long afterwards by the more famous Schwarzwälder Dorfgeschichten (1843-1854) of Berthold Auerbach (1812-1882). Auerbach is not by any means so naïve and realistic as Gotthelf, nor is his work free from tendencies and ideas which recall “Young German” rationalism rather than the unsophisticated life of the Black Forest; but the Schwarzwälder Dorfgeschichten exerted a decisive influence; they were the forerunners of a large body of peasant literature which described with affectionate sympathy and with a liberal admixture of dialect, south German village life. With this group of writers may also be associated the German Bohemian, A. Stifter (1805-1868), who has called up unforgettable pictures and impressions of the life and scenery of his home.

Meanwhile, the Low German peoples also benefited by the revival of an interest in dialect and peasant life; it is to the credit of Fritz Reuter (1810-1874) that he brought honour to the Plattdeutsch of the north, the dialects of which had played a fitful, but by no means negligible rôle in the earlier history of German letters. His Mecklenburg novels, especially Ut de Franzosentid (1860), Ut mine Festungstid (1863) and Ut mine Stromtid (1862-1864), are a faithful reflection of Mecklenburg life and temperament, and hold their place beside the best German fiction of the period. What Reuter did for Plattdeutsch prose, his contemporary, Klaus Groth (1819-1899), the author of Quickborn (1852), did for its verse. We owe, however, the best German prose fiction of these years to two writers, whose affinity with the older Romanticists was closer. The north German, Theodor Storm (1817-1888) is the author of a series of short stories of delicate, lyric inspiration, steeped in that elegiac Romanticism which harmonized so well with mid-century pessimism in Germany. Gottfried Keller (1819-1890), on the other hand, a native of Zürich, was a modern Romanticist of a robuster type; his magnificent autobiographical novel, Der grüne Heinrich (1854-1855), might be described as the last in the great line of Romantic fiction that had begun with Wilhelm Meister, and the short stories, Die Leute von Seldwyla (1856-1874) and Züricher Novellen (1878) are masterpieces of the first rank.

In the dramatic literature of these decades, at least as it was reflected in the repertories of the German theatres, there was little promise. French influence was, in general, predominant; French translations formed the mainstay of the theatre-directors, while successful German playwrights, such as R. Benedix (1811-1873) and Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer (1800-1868), have little claim to consideration in a literary survey. Gustav Freytag’s admirable comedy, Die Journalisten (1852), was one of the rare exceptions. But the German drama of this epoch is not to be judged solely by the theatres. At the middle of the century Germany could point to two writers who, each in his way, contributed very materially to the development of the modern drama. These were Friedrich Hebbel (1813-1863) and Otto Ludwig (1813-1865). Both of these men, as a later generation discovered, were the pioneers of that dramatic literature which at the close of the century accepted the canons of realism and aimed at superseding outward effects by psychological conflicts and problems of social life. Hebbel, especially, must be regarded as the most original and revolutionary German dramatist of the 19th century. Unlike his contemporary Grillparzer, whose aim had been to reconcile the “classic” and the “romantic” drama with the help of Spanish models, Hebbel laid the foundations of a psychological and social drama, of which the most modern interpreter has been Henrik Ibsen. Hebbel’s first tragedy, Judith, appeared in 1840, his masterpieces, Herodes und Marianne, Agnes Bernauer, Gyges und sein Ring, and the trilogy of Die Nibelungen between 1850 and 1862.

In this period of somewhat confused literary striving, there is, however, one body of writers who might be grouped together as a school, although the designation must be regarded rather as an outward accident of union than as implying conformity of aims. This is the group which Maximilian II. of Bavaria gathered round him in Munich between 1852 and 1860. A leading spirit of the group was Emanuel Geibel, who, as we have seen, set a model to the German lyric in this age; F. von Bodenstedt (1819-1892), the popular author of Mirza Schaffy; and J.V. von Scheffel (1826-1886), who, in his verse-romance, Der Trompeter von Säckingen (1854), broke a lance for a type of literature which had been cultivated somewhat earlier, but with no very conspicuous success, by men like O. von Redwitz (1823-1891) and G. Kinkel (1815-1882). The romance was, in fact, one of the favourite vehicles of poetic expression of the Munich school, its most successful exponents being J. Wolff (b. 1834) and R. Baumbach (1840-1905); while others, such as H. Lingg (1820-1905) and R. Hamerling (1830-1889) devoted themselves to the more ambitious epic. The general tone of the literary movement was pessimistic, the hopelessness of the spiritual outlook being most deeply engrained in the verse of H. Lorm (pseudonym for Heinrich Landesmann, 1821-1902) and H. Leuthold (1827-1879). On the whole, the most important member of the Munich group is Paul Heyse (b. 1830), who, as a writer of “Novellen” or short stories, may be classed with Storm and Keller. An essentially Latin genius, Heyse excels in stories of Italian life, where his lightness of touch and sense of form are shown to best advantage; but he has also written several long novels. Of these, Kinder der Welt (1873) and, in a lesser degree, Im Paradiese (1875), sum up the spirit and tendency of their time, just as, in earlier decades, Die Ritter vom Geiste, Problematische Naturen and Soll und Haben were characteristic of the periods which produced them.

(c) German Literature after 1870.—In the years immediately following the Franco-German War, the prevailing conditions were unfavourable to literary production in Germany, and the re-establishment of the empire left comparatively little trace on the national literature. All minds were for a time engrossed by the Kulturkampf, by the financial difficulties—the so-called Gründertum—due to unscrupulous speculation, and, finally, by the rapid rise of social democracy as a political force. The intellectual basis of the latter movement was laid by Ferdinand Lassalle (1825-1864) and Karl Marx (1818-1883), author of Das Kapital (vol. i, 1867). But even had such disturbing elements been wanting, the general tone of German intellectual life at that time was not buoyant enough to inspire a vigorous literary revival. The influence of Hegel was still strong, and the “historical” method, as enunciated in Der alte und der neue Glaube (1872) by the Hegelian D.F. Strauss, was generally accepted at the German universities. To many the compromise which H. Lotze (1817-1881) had attempted to establish between science and metaphysics, came as a relief from the Hegelian tradition, but in literature and art the dominant force was still, as before the war, the philosophy of Schopenhauer. In his Philosophie des Unbewussten (1869), E. von Hartmann (1842-1906) endeavoured to bring pessimism into harmony with idealism. In lyric poetry, the dull monotony was broken by the excitement of the war, and the singers of the revolution of 1848 were among the first to welcome the triumph and unification of Germany. At the same time, men of the older generation, like Herwegh, Freiligrath and Geibel could ill conceal a certain disappointment with the new régime; the united Germany of 1871 was not what they had dreamed of in their youth, when all hopes were set on the Frankfort parliament.

The novel continued to be what it was before 1870, the most vigorous form of German literature, but the novelists who were popular in the early ’seventies were all older men. Laube, Gutzkow and Auerbach were still writing; Fritz Reuter was a universal favourite; while among the writers of short stories, Storm, who, between 1877 and 1888, put the crown to his work with his Chroniknovellen, and Paul Heyse were the acknowledged masters. It was not until at least a decade later that the genius of Gottfried Keller was generally recognized. The historical novel seemed, in those days, beyond hope of revival. Gustav Freytag, it is true, had made the attempt in Die Ahnen (1872-1881), a number of independent historical romances linked together to form an ambitious prose epic; but there was more of the spirit of Ebers and Dahn in Freytag’s work than of the spacious art of Scott, or of Scott’s disciple, Willibald Alexis.

The drama of the ’seventies was in an even less hopeful condition than during the preceding period. The classical iambic tragedy was cultivated by the Munich school, by A. Wilbrandt (b. 1837), A. Lindner (1831-1888), H. Kruse (1815-1902), by the Austrian F. Nissel (1831-1893), and A. Fitger (b. 1840); but it was characteristic of the time that Halm was popular, while Hebbel and Grillparzer were neglected, it might even be said ignored. The most gifted German dramatist belonging exclusively to the decade between 1870 and 1880 was an Austrian, Ludwig Anzengruber (1839-1889), whose Pfarrer von Kirchfeld (1870) recalled the controversies of the Kulturkampf. This was Anzengruber’s first drama, and it was followed by a series of powerful plays dealing with the life of the Austrian peasant; Anzengruber was, indeed, one of the ablest exponents of that village life, which had attracted so many gifted writers since the days of Gotthelf and Auerbach. But the really popular dramatists of this epoch were either writers who, like Benedix in the older generation, cultivated the bourgeoise comedy—A. L’Arronge (b. 1838), G. von Moser (1825-1903), F. von Schönthan (b. 1849) and O. Blumenthal (b. 1852)—or playwrights, of whom P. Lindau (b. 1839) may be regarded as representative, who imitated French models. The only sign of progress in the dramatic history of this period was the marked improvement of the German stage, an improvement due, on the one hand, to the artistic reforms introduced by the duke of Meiningen in the Court theatre at Meiningen, and, on the other hand, to the ideals of a national theatre realized at Bayreuth by Richard Wagner (1813-1883). The greatest composer of the later 19th century is also one of Germany’s leading dramatists; and the first performance of the trilogy Der Ring der Nibelungen at Bayreuth in the summer of 1876 may be said to have inaugurated the latest epoch in the history of the German drama.

The last fifteen or twenty years of the 19th century were distinguished in Germany by a remarkable literary activity. Among the younger generation, which was growing up as citizens of the united German empire, a more hopeful and optimistic spirit prevailed. The influence of Schopenhauer was on the wane, and at the universities Hegelianism had lost its former hold. The sponsor of the new philosophic movement was Kant, the master of 18th-century “enlightenment,” and under the influence of the “neo-Kantian” movement, not merely German school philosophy, but theology also, was imbued with a healthier spirit. L. von Ranke (1795-1886) was still the dominant force in German historical science, and between 1881 and 1888 nine volumes appeared of his last great work, Weltgeschichte. Other historians of the period were H. von Sybel (1817-1895) and H. von Treitschke (1834-1896), the latter a vigorous and inspiring spokesman of the new political conditions; while J. Burckhardt (1818-1897), author of the masterly Kultur der Renaissance in Italien (1860) and the friend of Nietzsche, exerted an influence on German thought which was not confined to academic circles. Literary criticism perhaps benefited most of all by the dethronement of Hegel and the more objective attitude towards Schopenhauer; it seemed as if in this epoch the Germans first formed definite ideas—and ideas which were acceptable and accepted outside Germany—as to the rank and merits of their great poets. A marked change came over the nation’s attitude towards Goethe, a poet to whom, as we have seen, neither the era of Hegel nor that of Schopenhauer had been favourable; Schiller was regarded with less national prejudice, and—most important of all—amends were made by the new generation for the earlier neglect of Kleist, Grillparzer, Hebbel and Keller.

The thinker and poet who most completely embodies the spirit of this period—who dealt the Hegelian metaphysics its death-blow as far as its wider influence was concerned—was Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). Nietzsche had begun as a disciple of Schopenhauer and a friend of Wagner, and he ultimately became the champion of an individualistic and optimistic philosophy which formed the sharpest possible contrast to mid-century pessimism. The individual, not the race, the Herrenmensch, not the slave, self-assertion, not self-denying renunciation—these are some of the ideas round which this new optimistic ethics turns. Nietzsche looked forward to the human race emerging from an effete culture, burdened and clogged by tradition, and re-establishing itself on a basis that is in harmony with man’s primitive instincts. Like Schopenhauer before him, Nietzsche was a stylist of the first rank, and his literary masterpiece, Also sprach Zarathustra (1883-1891), is to be regarded as the most important imaginative work of its epoch.

Nietzschean individualism was only one of many factors which contributed to the new literary development. The realistic movement, as it had manifested itself in France under Flaubert, the Goncourts, Zola and Maupassant, in Russia under Dostoievsky and Tolstoi, and in Norway under Ibsen and Björnson, was, for a time, the dominant force in Germany, and the younger generation of critics hailed it with undisguised satisfaction; most characteristic and significant of all, the centre of this revival was Berlin, which, since it had become the imperial capital, was rapidly establishing its claim to be also the literary metropolis. It was the best testimony to the vitality of the movement that it rarely descended to slavish imitation of the realistic masterpieces of other literatures; realism in Germany was, in fact, only an episode of the ’eighties, a stimulating influence rather than an accepted principle or dogma. And its suggestive character is to be seen not merely in the writings of the young Stürmer und Dränger of this time, but also in those of the older generation who, in temperament, were naturally more inclined to the ideals of a past age.

Of the novelists of the latter class, A. Wilbrandt, who has already been mentioned as a dramatist, has shown, since about 1890, a remarkable power of adapting himself, if not to the style and artistic methods of the younger school, at least to the ideas by which it was agitated; F. Spielhagen’s attitude towards the realistic movement has been invariably sympathetic, while a still older writer, Theodor Fontane (1819-1898), wrote between 1880 and 1898 a series of works in which the finer elements of French realism were grafted on the German novel. To the older school belong Wilhelm Jensen (b. 1837), and that fine humorist, Wilhelm Raabe (b. 1831), with whom may be associated as other humorists of this period, H. Seidel (1842-1906) and W. Busch (1832-1908). Some of the most interesting examples of recent German fiction come, however, from Austria and Switzerland. The two most eminent Austrian authors, Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (b. 1830), and Ferdinand, von Saar (1833-1906), both excel as writers of Novellen or short stories—the latter especially being an exponent of that pessimism which is Austria’s peculiar heritage from the previous generation of her poets. Austrians too, are Peter Rosegger (b. 1843), who has won popularity with his novels of peasant life, K.E. Franzos (1848-1904) and L. von Sacher-Masoch (1835-1895). German prose fiction is, in Switzerland, represented by two writers of the first rank: one of these, Gottfried Keller, has already been mentioned; the other, Konrad Ferdinand Meyer (1825-1898), turned to literature or, at least, made his reputation, comparatively late in life. Although, like Keller, a writer of virile, original verse, Meyer is best known as a novelist; he, too, was a master of the short story. His themes are drawn by preference from the epoch of the Renaissance, and his method is characterized by an objectivity of standpoint and a purity of style exceptional in German writers.

The realistic novels of the period were written by H. Conradi (1862-1890), Max Kretzer (b. 1854), M.G. Conrad (b. 1846), H. Heiberg (b. 1840), K. Bleibtreu (b. 1859), K. Alberti (pseudonym for Konrad Sittenfeld, b. 1862) and Hermann Sudermann (b. 1857). A want of stability was, however, as has been already indicated, characteristic of the realistic movement in Germany; the idealistic trend of the German mind proved itself ill-adapted to the uncompromising realism of the French school, and the German realists, whether in fiction or in drama, ultimately sought to escape from the logical consequences of their theories. Even Sudermann, whose Frau Sorge (1887), Der Katzensteg (1889), and the brilliant, if somewhat sensational romance, Es war (1894), are among the best novels of this period, has never been a consistent realist. It is consequently not surprising to find that, before long, German fiction returned to psychological and emotional problems, to the poetical or symbolical presentation of life, which was more in harmony with the German temperament than was the robuster realism of Flaubert or Zola. This trend is noticeable in the work of Gustav Frenssen (b. 1863), whose novel Jörn Uhl (1901) was extraordinarily popular; it is also to be seen in the studies of child life and educational problems which have proved so attractive to the younger writers of the present day, such as Hermann Hesse (b. 1877), Emil Strauss (b. 1866), Rudolf Huch (b. 1862) and Friedrich Huch (b. 1873). One might say, indeed, that at the beginning of the 20th century the traditional form of German fiction, the Bildungsroman, had come into its ancient rights again. Mention ought also to be made of J.J. David (1859-1907), E. von Keyserling (b. 1858), W. Hegeler (b. 1870), G. von Ompteda (b. 1863), J. Wassermann (b. 1873), Heinrich Mann (b. 1871) and Thomas Mann (b. 1875). Buddenbrooks (1902) by the last mentioned is one of the outstanding novels of the period. Some of the best fiction of the most recent period is the work of women, the most distinguished being Helene Böhlau (b. 1859), Gabriele Reuter (b. 1859), Clara Viebig (C. Cohn-Viebig, b. 1860) and Ricarda Huch (b. 1864). Whether the latest movement in German poetry and fiction, which, under the catchword Heimatkunst, has favoured the province rather than the city, the dialect in preference to the language of the educated classes, will prove a permanent gain, it is still too soon to say, but the movement is at least a protest against the decadent tendencies of naturalism.

At no period of German letters were literature and the theatre in closer touch than at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries; more than at any previous time has the theatre become the arena in which the literary battles of the day are fought out. The general improvement in the artistic, technical and economic conditions of the German stage have already been indicated; but it was not until 1889 that the effects of these improvements became apparent in dramatic literature. Before that date, it is true, Ernst von Wildenbruch (1845-1909) had attempted to revive the historical tragedy, but the purely literary qualities of his work were handicapped by a too effusive patriotism and a Schillerian pathos; nor did the talent of Richard Voss (b. 1851) prove strong enough to effect any lasting reform. In October 1889, however, Gerhart Hauptmann’s play, Vor Sonnenaufgang, was produced on the then recently founded Freie Bühne in Berlin; and a month later, Die Ehre by Hermann Sudermann met with a more enthusiastic reception in Berlin than had fallen to the lot of any German play for more than a generation.

Hauptmann (b. 1862), the most original of contemporary German writers, stands, more or less, alone. His early plays, the most powerful of which is Die Weber (1892), were written under the influence either of an uncompromising realism, or of that modified form of realism introduced from Scandinavia; but in Hanneles Himmelfahrt (1893) he combined realism with the poetic mysticism of a child’s dream, in Florian Geyer (1895) he adapted the methods of realism to an historical subject, and in the year 1896 he, to all appearance, abandoned realism to write an allegorical dramatic poem, Die versunkene Glocke. Hauptmann’s subsequent work has oscillated between the extremes marked out by these works—from the frank naturalism of Fuhrmann Henschel (1898) and Rose Berndt (1903), to the fantastic mysticism of Der arme Heinrich (1902) and Und Pippa tanzt! (1906).

The dramatic talent of Hermann Sudermann has developed on more even lines; the success of Die Ehre was due in the first instance to the ability which Sudermann had shown in adapting the ideas of his time and the new methods of dramatic presentation to the traditional German bürgerliches Drama. This is the characteristic of the majority of the many plays which followed of which Heimat (1893), Das Glück im Winkel (1896) and Es lebe das Leben! (1902) may be mentioned as typical. With less success Sudermann attempted in Johannes (1898) a tragedy on lines suggested by Hebbel. A keen observer, a writer of brilliant and suggestive ideas, Sudermann is, above all, the practical playwright; but it is unfortunate that the theatrical element in his work too often overshadows its literary qualities.

Since 1889, the drama has occupied the foreground of interest in Germany. The permanent repertory of the German theatre has not, it is true, been much enriched, but it is at least to the credit of contemporary German playwrights that they are unwilling to rest content with their successes and are constantly experimenting with new forms. Besides Hauptmann and Sudermann, the most talented dramatists of the day are Max Halbe (b. 1865), O.E. Hartleben (1864-1905), G. Hirschfeld (b. 1873), E. Rosmer (pseudonym for Elsa Bernstein, b. 1866), Ludwig Fulda (b. 1862), Max Dreyer (b. 1862), Otto Ernst (pseudonym for O.E. Schmidt, b. 1862) and Frank Wedekind (b. 1864). In Austria, notwithstanding the preponderant influence of Berlin, the drama has retained its national characteristics, and writers like Arthur Schnitzler (b. 1862), Hermann Bahr (b. 1863), Hugo von Hofmannsthal (b. 1874) and R. Beer-Hofmann (b. 1866) have introduced symbolistic elements and peculiarly Austrian problems, which are foreign to the theatre of north Germany.

The German lyric of recent years shows a remarkable variety of new tones and pregnant poetic ideas; it has, as is natural, been more influenced by the optimism of Nietzsche—himself a lyric poet of considerable gifts—than has either novel or drama. Detlev von Liliencron (1844-1909) was one of the first to break with the traditions of the lyric as handed down from the Romantic epoch and cultivated with such facility by the Munich poets. An anthology of specifically modern lyrics, Moderne Dichtercharaktere (1885) by W. Arent (b. 1864), may be regarded as the manifesto of the movement in lyric poetry corresponding to the period of realism in fiction and the drama. Representative poets of this movement are Richard Dehmel (b. 1863), K. Henckell (b. 1864), J.H. Mackay (b. 1864 at Greenock), G. Falke (b. 1853), F. Avenarius (b. 1856), F. Evers (b. 1871), F. Dörmann (b. 1870) and K. Busse (b. 1872). A later development of the lyric—a return to mysticism and symbolism—is to be seen in the poetry of Hofmannsthal, already mentioned as a dramatist, and especially in Stefan George (b. 1868). Epic poetry, although little in harmony with the spirit of a realistic age, has not been altogether neglected. Heinrich Hart (1855-1906), one of the leading critics of the most advanced school, is also the author of an ambitious Lied der Menschheit (vols. 1-3, 1888-1896); more conservative, on the other hand, is Robespierre (1894), an epic in the style of Hamerling by an Austrian, Marie delle Grazie (b. 1864). Attention may also be drawn to the popularity which, for a few years, the so-called Überbrettl or cabaret enjoyed, a popularity which has left its mark on the latest developments of the lyric. Associated with this movement are O.J. Bierbaum (1865-1910), whose lyrics, collected in Der Irrgarten der Liebe (1901), have been extraordinarily popular, E. von Wolzogen (b. 1855) and the dramatist F. Wedekind, who has been already mentioned.

Whether or not the work that has been produced in such rich measure since the year 1889—or however much of it—is to be regarded as a permanent addition to the storehouse of German national literature, there can be no question of the serious artistic earnestness of the writers; the conditions for the production of literature in the German empire in the early years of the 20th century were eminently healthy, and herein lies the best promise for the future.

Bibliography.—(a) General Histories, Anthologies, &c.: A. Koberstein, Grundriss der Geschichte der deutschen Nationalliteratur (1827; 5th ed. by K. Bartsch, 5 vols., 1872-1874; 6th ed., vol. i., 1884); G.G. Gervinus, Geschichte der poetischen Nationalliteratur der Deutschen (5 vols., 1835-1842; 5th ed. by K. Bartsch, 1871-1874); A.F.C. Vilmar, Geschichte der deutschen Nationalliteratur (1848; 25th ed., 2 vols., 1900, with a continuation by A. Stern); W. Wackernagel, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur (1851-1855; 2nd ed. by E. Martin, 1879-1894); K. Goedeke, Grundriss zur Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung (3 vols., 1857-1881; 2nd ed. by E. Goetze and others, in 9 vols., 1884 ff.); W. Menzel, Deutsche Dichtung von der ältesten bis auf die neueste Zeit (1858-1859); H. Kurz, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur mit ausgewählten Stücken (3 vols., 1857-1859; 7th ed., 4 vols., 1876-1882); O. Roquette, Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung (2 vols., 1862; 3rd ed., 1878-1879); W. Scherer, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur (1883; 10th ed., 1905). English translation by Mrs F.C. Conybeare (2 vols., 1885; new ed., 1906); Kuno Francke, German Literature as determined by Social Forces (1896; 6th ed., 1903); F. Vogt and M. Koch, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur (1897; 2nd ed., 2 vols., 1903); J.G. Robertson, History of German Literature (1902); A. Bartels, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur (2 vols., 1901-1902), with the accompanying bibliographical summary, Handbuch zur Geschichte der deutschen Literatur (1906). There are also histories of the literature of separate countries and districts, such as J. Bächtold, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur in der Schweiz (1887); R. Krauss, Schwäbische Literaturgeschichte (2 vols., 1897-1899); J.W. Nagl and J. Zeidler, Deutsch-Österreichische Literaturgeschichte (2 vols., 1899 ff.). The most comprehensive collection of German literature in selections is J. Kürschner, Deutsche Nationalliteratur (222 vols., 1882-1898). Of general anthologies mention may be made of W. Wackernagel, Deutsches Lesebuch (4 vols., 1835-1872; new ed., 1882 ff.), and F. Max Müller, The German Classics from the Fourth to the Nineteenth Century (1858; ed. by F. Lichtenstein, 2 vols., 1886; new ed., 1906). For illustrations to the history of German literature, see G. Könnecke, Bilderatlas zur Geschichte der deutschen Nationalliteratur (1887; 2nd ed., 1895).

(b) Special Periods: i. Old High German and Middle High German Periods: R. Kögel and W. Bruckner, “Geschichte der althochdeutschen Literatur,” and F. Vogt, “Geschichte der mittelhochdeutschen Literatur,” in H. Paul’s Grundriss der germanischen Philologie (2nd ed., vol. ii. pt. i., 1901); F. Khull, Geschichte der altdeutschen Dichtung (1886); J. Kelle, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur, i.-ii. (1892-1896); R. Kögel, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur bis zum Ausgang des Mittelalters, i. (1894-1897); W. Golther, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur von den ersten Anfängen bis zum Ausgang des Mittelalters (in Kürschner’s Deutsche Nationalliteratur, vol. 163, pt. i., 1892); W. Scherer, Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung im 11. und 12. Jahrhundert, and by the same author, Geistliche Poeten der deutschen Kaiserzeit (both works in Quellen und Forschungen, 1874-1875); O. Lyon, Minne- und Meistersang (1882). There are numerous series of editions of medieval texts: K. Müllenhoff and W. Scherer, Denkmäler deutscher Poesie und Prosa aus den 8.-12. Jahrhundert (2 vols., 3rd ed., 1892); M. Heyne, Bibliothek der ältesten deutschen Literaturdenkmäler (14 vols., begun 1858); F. Pfeiffer, Deutsche Klassiker des Mittelalters (12 vols., begun 1865), with the supplementary Deutsche Dichtungen des Mittelalters, edited by K. Bartsch (7 vols., 1872 ff.); K. Goedeke, Deutsche Dichtung im Mittelalter (2nd ed., 1871); J. Zacher, Germanistische Handbibliothek (9 vols., begun 1869); H. Paul, Altdeutsche Textbibliothek (16 vols., begun 1882); Deutsche Texte des Mittelalters, ed. by the Berlin Academy (1904 ff.). Convenient editions of the Minnesang are K. Lachmann and M. Haupt, Des Minnesangs Frühling (4th ed. by F. Vogt, 1888), and K. Bartsch, Deutsche Liederdichter des 12. bis 14. Jahrh. (4th ed. by W. Golther, 1903).

ii. From 1350-1700.—L. Geiger, Renaissance und Humanismus in Italien und Deutschland (1882; 2nd ed. 1899); K. Borinski, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur seit dem Ausgang des Mittelalters (in Kürschner’s Deutsche Nationalliteratur, vol. 163, ii., 1898); H. Palm, Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Literatur des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts (1877); C.H. Herford, Studies in the Literary Relations of England and Germany in the Sixteenth Century (1886); C. Lemcke, Von Opitz bis Klopstock, i. (1871; 2nd ed. 1882); M. von Waldberg, Deutsche Renaissance-Lyrik (1888), and Die galante Lyrik (1885); F. Bobertag, Geschichte des Romans in Deutschland, i. (to 1700) (1877-1884); K. Borinski, Die Poetik der Renaissance und die Anfänge der literarischen Kritik in Deutschland (1886). A vast quantity of the literature of these centuries has been republished by the Stuttgarter literarischer Verein (founded in 1839), whose publications now number considerably over two hundred volumes; further, W. Braune, Neudrucke deutscher Literaturwerke des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts (begun 1882); K. Goedeke and J. Tittmann, Deutsche Dichter des 16. Jahrhunderts (18 vols., 1867 ff.), and Deutsche Dichter des 17. Jahrhunderts (15 vols., 1869 ff.). A valuable anthology is K. Goedeke’s Elf Bücher deutscher Dichtung von Sebastian Brant bis auf die Gegenwart (2 vols., 1849). Since 1890 the Jahresberichte für neuere deutsche Literaturgeschichte have provided an exhaustive survey of all publications dealing with modern German literature. A useful practical bibliography for English readers, covering this and the succeeding periods, is J.S. Nollen, A Chronology and Practical Bibliography of Modern German Literature (1903).

iii. The Eighteenth Century.—J. Schmidt, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur von Leibniz bis auf unsere Zeit (4 vols., 1862-1867; 2nd ed. 1886-1890); J. Hillebrand, Die deutsche Nationalliteratur im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (3 vols., 1845-1846; 3rd ed. 1875); H. Hettner, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur im 18. Jahrhundert (4 vols., 1862-1870; 4th ed. by O. Harnack, 1893-1895); J.W. Schäfer, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur des 18. Jahrhunderts (1855-1860; 2nd ed. by F. Muncker, 1881); J.K. Mörikofer, Die schweizerische Literatur des 18. Jahrhunderts (1861); J.W. Löbell, Entwickelung der deutschen Poesie von Klopstock bis zu Goethes Tod (3 vols., 1856-1865). There are also innumerable more special treatises, such as A. Eloesser, Das bürgerliche Drama (1898); O. Brahm, Das deutsche Ritterdrama des 18. Jahrhunderts (1880), &c. Of collections of the literature of this and the following century, reference need only be made to the Bibliothek der deutschen Nationalliteratur des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts, published by Brockhaus (44 vols., 1868-1891), and Deutsche Literaturdenkmale des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts, edited first by B. Seuffert (1882-1894), and subsequently by A. Sauer.

iv. The Nineteenth Century.—Th. Ziegler, Die geistigen und sozialen Strömungen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (1899; 2nd ed. 1901); R. von Gottschall, Die deutsche Nationalliteratur des 19. Jahrhunderts (1854; 7th ed., 4 vols., 1900-1902); R.M. Meyer, Die deutsche Literatur des 19. Jahrhunderts (1899; 4th ed. 1910); R.M. Meyer, Grundriss der neueren deutschen Literaturgeschichte (1902); C. Busse, Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung im neunzehnten Jahrhundert (1901); R. Haym, Die romantische Schule (1870; 2nd ed. 1906); G. Brandes, “Den romantiske Skole i Tyskland” (1873), and “Det unge Tyskland” (1890), in Hovedströmninger i det 19de Aarhundredes Litteratur, vols. ii. and vi. (German translations, 1887 and 1891; several subsequent editions, Danish and German; English translations, ii. 1903, and vi. 1905); R. Huch, Die Blütezeit der Romantik (2nd ed. 1901), and Ausbreitung und Verfall der Romantik (1902); F. Wehl, Das junge Deutschland (1886); J. Proelss, Das junge Deutschland (1892); A. Bartels, Die deutsche Dichtung der Gegenwart (7th ed., 1907); A. von Hanstein, Das jüngste Deutschland (2nd ed., 1901); J.F. Coar, Studies in German Literature in the Nineteenth Century (1903); Ch. Petzet, Die Blütezeit der deutschen politischen Lyrik (1903); H. Mielke, Der deutsche Roman des 19. Jahrhunderts (4th ed., 1900); S. Friedmann, Das deutsche Drama des 19. Jahrhunderts (2 vols., 1900-1903); B. Litzmann, Das deutsche Drama in den literarischen Bewegungen der Gegenwart (4th ed., 1898).

(J. G. R.)

GERMAN REED ENTERTAINMENT. The dramatic and musical entertainment which for many years was known in London by the title of “German Reed” was a form of theatrical enterprise deserving of commemoration in connexion with those who made it successful. Mr Thomas German Reed (born in Bristol in 1817, died 1888) married in 1844 Miss Priscilla Horton (1818-1895), and in 1855 they started their entertainment at the “Gallery of Illustration,” in Waterloo Place, London. From 1860 to 1877 they were assisted by John Orlando Parry (1810-1879), an accomplished pianoforte player, mimic, parodist and humorous singer; and the latter created a new type of musical and dramatic monologue which became very popular. His tradition was carried on after 1870 by Mr Corney Grain (1844-1895), who, as a clever, refined, and yet highly humorous society entertainer (originally a barrister), was one of the best-known figures of his day. After the retirement of the elder German Reeds, their son, Alfred German Reed (1846-1895), himself a capital actor, carried on the business in partnership with Corney Grain. The “German Reed Entertainment”—which was always patronized by a large class of people, many of whom objected on principle to going or taking their children to a regular theatre or a music-hall—retained its vogue for forty years at Waterloo Place and at the St George’s Hall, Regent Street. But the death of Mr Corney Grain almost simultaneously with Mr Alfred German Reed, in 1895, together with the changed public attitude towards the regular theatre, ended its career.

GERMAN SILVER or Nickel Silver, an alloy of copper, nickel and zinc, prepared either by melting the copper and nickel together in a crucible, and adding piece by piece the previously heated zinc, or by heating the finely divided metals under a layer of charcoal. To destroy its crystalline structure and so render it fit for working, it is heated to dull redness, and then allowed to cool. German silver is harder than silver; it resembles that metal in colour, but is of a greyer tinge. Exposed to the air it tarnishes slightly yellow, and with vinegar affords a crust of verdigris. At a bright red heat it melts, losing its zinc by oxidation unless protected from the atmosphere. At a heat above dull redness it becomes exceedingly brittle. German silver in various modifications of composition is much used in the arts. Alloys, of which about 50% is copper and the residue zinc and nickel in about equal proportions take a fine polish, and are used as imitation silver for knives and forks. With a somewhat higher proportion of copper an alloy is formed suitable for rolling and for wire. In Chinese white silver or packfong (paktong) the amount of copper is smaller, about 40%, with about 32% of nickel, 25 of zinc, and 2 or 3 of iron. German silver for casting contains 2 or 3% of lead, which like iron increases the whiteness of the alloy. German silver, having a high specific resistance and a low temperature coefficient, has been used for electrical resistance coils, and these qualities are possessed in a still greater degree in manganin, which contains manganese in place of zinc, its composition being 84% of copper, 12 of manganese and 4 of nickel. The addition of a trace of tungsten to German silver, as in platinoid, also largely increases the resistance.

GERMAN SOUTH-WEST AFRICA. This German possession is bounded W. by the Atlantic, N. by Angola, S. by the Cape province, E. by Bechuanaland and Rhodesia, and is the only German dependency in Africa suited to white colonization. It has an area of about 322,450 sq. m., and a population of Bantu Negroes and Hottentots estimated in 1903 at 200,000.1 The European inhabitants, in addition to the military, numbered 7110 in 1907, of whom the majority were German.

Area and Boundaries.—The boundary separating the German protectorate from the Portuguese possessions of Angola is the lower Kunene, from its mouth in 17° 18′ S., 11° 40′ E. to the limit of navigability from the sea, thence in a direct line, corresponding roughly to the lat. of 17° 20′ S., to the river Okavango, which it follows eastwards until the stream turns abruptly south (towards Lake Ngami). From this point a strip of German territory 300 m. long and about 50 m. broad, projects eastward until it reaches the Zambezi a little above the Victoria Falls. On the south this narrow strip of land (known as the Caprivi enclave) is separated from southern Rhodesia by the Kwando or Chobe river. On the east the frontier between British and German territory is in its northern half the 21st degree of E. longitude, in its southern half the 20th degree. This frontier is drawn through desert country. The southern frontier is the Orange river from its mouth to the 20° E. The coast-line between the Kunene and Orange rivers is not wholly German. Just north of the tropic of Capricorn is the British enclave of Walfish Bay (q.v.). The northern part of the protectorate is known as Ovampoland, the central portion as Damara (or Herero) land; the southern regions as Great Namaqualand. These names are derived from those of the dominant native races inhabiting the country.

Physical Features.—The coast-line is generally low and little broken by bays or promontories. In its entire length of about 800 m. it has no good natural harbour, and its bays—Angra Pequena, otherwise Lüderitz Bay, Sierra Bay, Sandwich Harbour—are in danger of being filled with sand by the strong, cold, northerly coast current. Swakopmund is an artificial harbour at the mouth of the river Swakop. The small islands which stud the coast north and south of Angra Pequena belong to Great Britain. The coast-line is bordered by a belt of sand-dunes and desert, which, about 35 m. wide in the south, narrows towards the north. This coast belt is flanked by a mountain range, which attains its highest elevation in Mount Omatako (8972 ft.), in about 21° 15′ S., 16° 40′ E. N. E. of Omatako is the Omboroko range, otherwise known as the Waterberg. South of Omboroko, occupying the centre of the country, the range attains its highest average altitude. The following massifs with their highest points may be distinguished: Gans (7664 ft.), Nu-uibeb (7480 ft.), Onyati (7201 ft.), Awas (6988 ft.), Komas (5331 ft.) and Ganab (4002 ft.). In the S.E. are the Karas mountains, which attain an elevation of 6570 ft. The mountains for the main part form the escarpment of the great Kalahari plateau, which, gently rising from the interior towards the west, slopes again towards the south and north from the point of its highest elevation. The Kalahari plateau changes the undulating character it has in the west to a perfect plain in the far east, where the watered and habitable country merges into the sterile Kalahari desert. In the northern half of the country the central plateau contains much rich grass-land, while in the north-eastern region the Omaheke desert has all the characteristics of the Kalahari.

There are no rivers of importance wholly within German South-West Africa. The Kunene (q.v.) has but a small portion of the southern bank in the colony, and similarly only part of the northern bank of the Orange river (q.v.) is in German territory. Several streams run south into the Orange; of those the chief is the Great Fish river, which has a course of nearly 500 m. Both the Kunene and the Orange carry water all the year round, but are not navigable. Neither is the Great Fish river, which, however, is rarely dry. The Okavango, which comes from the north and runs towards Ngami (q.v.), is perennial, but like the Kunene and Orange, belongs only partly to the hydrographic system of the country. From the inner slopes of the coast chain many streams go N.E. to join the Okavango. They cross the Omaheke waste and are usually dry. Ovampoland has a hydrographic system connected with the Kunene, and, in seasons of great flood, with that of Ngami. Before the Kunene breaks through the outer edge of the plateau, it sends divergent channels south-east to a large marsh or lake called Etosha, which is cut by 17° E. and 19° S. Of these channels the Kwamatuo or Okipoko, which is perennial, enters Etosha at its N.W. corner. The lake when full extends about 80 m. W. to E. and 50 m. N. to S. From its S.E. corner issues the Omuramba, which divides into two branches, known respectively as the Omaheke and the Ovampo. These streams have an easterly direction, their beds, often dry, joining the Okavango. The other rivers of the protectorate have as a rule plenty of water in their upper courses in the rainy season, though some river beds are dry for years together. After a heavy thunderstorm such a river bed will be suddenly filled with a turbid current half a mile wide. The water is, however, before long absorbed by the thirsty land. Only in exceptionally rainy years do the streams which cross the sand belt carry water to the ocean. But in the sand which fills the river beds water may be obtained by digging. Of rivers running direct to the Atlantic the Little Fish river enters the sea at Angra Pequena and the Kuisip in Walfish Bay. The Swakop rises in the hills near the Waterberg, and north of it is the Omaruru, which carries water for the greater part of the year. Hot springs are numerous, and it is remarkable that those of Windhoek flow more copiously during the dry than the rainy season. There are also many cold springs, and wells which contain water all the year.

Geology.—Gneiss and schist, with intrusive granites and porphyries, overlain to a great extent by sand and lateritic deposits, occupy the coast belt, coast mountains and the plateau of Damaraland. In the Huib and Han-ami plateaus of Great Namaqualand the crystalline rocks are overlain by sandstones, slates, quartzites and jasper rocks, and these in turn by dolomites. They are probably equivalent to the Transvaal and Pretoria series (see Transvaal: Geology). The next oldest rocks are of recent geological date. The Kalahari Kalk, which extends over large areas to the south-east of Ovampoland, may be of Miocene age, but it has not yielded fossils. Extensive tracts of alluvium occur in the basin of the Ovampo, while the dunes and sand-tracts of the Kalahari occupy the eastern regions.

Climate.—On the coast the mean temperature is low, and there is little rainfall. Moisture is supplied by dense fogs, which rise almost daily. South-west winds prevail. Inland the climate is temperate rather than tropical, with bracing, clear atmosphere. There are considerable differences of temperature between day and night, and two well-marked seasons, one cold and dry from May to September, the other hot and rainy from October to April. In winter ice frequently forms during the night on open water on the plateau, but it never remains all day. The yearly rainfall is about 20 in. in the Damara Hills; there is more rain in the north than in the south, and in the east than in the west. In the greater part of the colony the climate is favourable for European settlement.

Flora and Fauna.—The vegetation corresponds exactly with the climate. In the dry littoral region are plants able to exist with the minimum of moisture they derive from the daily fog—Amarantaceae, Sarcocaula, Aloe dichotoma, Aristida subacaulis and the wonderful Welwitschia. Farther inland are plants which spring up and disappear with the rain, and others whose roots reach permanent water. The former are chiefly grasses, the latter exist almost solely in or near river-beds. Amongst the fine trees often seen here, the ana tree (Acacia albida) is the most noteworthy, its seeds being favourite fodder for all domestic animals. Acacia giraffae, Ac. horrida, Adansonia sterculia, near the Kunene the Hyphaene ventricosa, deserve special notice. The vegetation in the mountain valleys is luxuriant, and towards the north is of a tropical character. The palm zone extends a considerable distance south of the Kunene, and here vegetation spreads over the sand-dunes of the coast plain, which are covered with grasses.

Large game, formerly abundant, especially pachyderms, is scarce. Of antelopes the following species are plentiful in parts: springbok, steenbok, kudu, rietbok, pallah; of monkeys, the Cynocephalus porcarius is frequent. Various kinds of hyenas and jackals with fine fur (Canis mesomelas), also Felis caracal, abound. The spring-hare (Pedestea caffer) and rock-rabbit (Hyrax capensis) may often be observed. Of birds there are 728 species. Crocodiles, turtles and snakes are numerous.

Inhabitants.—Among the natives of German South-West Africa three classes may be distinguished. In the first class are the Namaqua (Hottentots) and Bushmen. The Namaqua probably came from the south, while the Bushmen may be looked upon as an indigenous race. The Hottentots, the purest existing types of that race, are divided into numerous tribes, independent of one another, such as the Witbois, Swartzbois, Bondelzwarts. The Bushmen are found scattered over the eastern parts of the country (see Hottentots and Bushmen). The second class consists of the mountain Damara (Hau-Khoin), a race of doubtful affinities, probably of Bantu-Negro origin, but speaking the Hottentot language. The third class belongs to the Bantu-Negro stock, and came from the north-east, expelling and enslaving the mountain Damara, and settling in various parts of the country under different names. The most prominent are the Herero, thorough nomads and cattle-breeders; while the Ovampo (Ovambo or Ambo), in the northern part of the protectorate, are agriculturists. The Herero (q.v.) are also known by the Hottentot name Damara, and by this name their country is generally called. The Bastaards, who live in Namaqualand, are a small tribe originating from a mingling of Cape Boers with Hottentots. They are Christians, and able to read and write. The other natives are spirit-worshippers, save for the comparatively few converts of the Protestant missions established in the country. Of white races represented the chief are Germans and Boers. In the S.E. Boer settlers form the bulk of the white population. There are also numbers of British colonists in this region—emigrants from the Cape. The immigration of Germans is encouraged by subsidies and in other ways.

Towns.—The chief port is Swakopmund, built on the northern bank of the Swakop river (the southern bank belonging to the British territory of Walfish Bay). The harbour is partially protected by a breakwater. There are also settlements at Lüderitz Bay (white pop. 1909, over 1000) and at Sandwich Harbour. Swakopmund is connected by a narrow gauge railway with Windhoek, the administrative capital of the colony, situated in a hilly district 180 m. due east of the port, but 237 m. by the railway. Karibib is the only place of consequence on the line. Otyimbingue is a government station 70 m. W.N.W. of Windhoek, and Tsumeb a mining centre 240 m. N.N.E. of the same place. Olukonda is a government post in Ovampoland. In the S.E. corner of the colony, 30 m. N. of the Orange river, is the town of Warmbad. Keetmanshoop, 100 m. N. of Warmbad and 180 m. E. of Lüderitz Bay, is the centre of a small mining industry. Gibeon is a government station and missionary settlement about midway between Keetmanshoop and Windhoek. Besides these places there are numbers of small native towns at which live a few white traders and missionaries. The missionaries have given Biblical names to several of their stations, such as Bethany and Beersheba in Namaqualand, and Rehoboth in Damaraland. In the Caprivi enclave are a German residency and the site of the town of Linyante, once the capital of the Makololo dynasty of Barotseland (see Barotse).