UORARY Outlines of the History of German Literature BY J. G. ROBERTSON PROFESSOR OF GERMAN IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON NEW YORK G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS EDINBURGH AND LONDON WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 1911 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Printed by WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, Edinburgh, Scotland. PREFACE. THE present little volume is long overdue ; it was originally my intention to accompany my History of German Literature with a briefer in- troduction to the subject, and a considerable part of the present book dates back to the time of my occupation with the History. The point of view from which I have regarded the subject will be found to be not essentially different from that of the larger book ; and, as in the latter, I have considered it advisable to keep as far as possible to accepted judgments, rather than to obtrude diver- gent personal views which in a book of this scope there is not room to support. The economy of space compared with the larger book has been attained by the suppression of detail concerning minor writers ; the chief writers and works have, on the other hand, been dealt with on what may seem a disproportionate scale. But this is inevit- able in a small book. Apart from this, my effort has been rather to lay down general lines VI PREFACE. of development than to heap up biographical or critical detail. The book has been provided with somewhat extensive chronological tables ; the reader will, I believe, find the parallel tabulation of events in English and other literatures useful in helping him to "place" the phenomena and movements of German literature. To my colleague, Prof. R. Priebsch, I have to express my warm thanks for his valuable aid in reading the proof-sheets of the earlier chapters. J. G. ROBERTSON. LONDON, October 1911. CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE PREFACE . . . . V INTRODUCTORY ..... 1 I. THE OLD HIGH GERMAN PERIOD ... 4 II. THE BEGINNINGS OF MIDDLE HIGH GERMAN POETRY . . . . . -13 III. THE POPULAR EPIC . . .20 IV. THE COURT EPIC . . . . .32 V. MINNESANG AND DIDACTIC POETRY . . 47 VI. THE TRANSITION FROM MEDIAEVAL TO MODERN LITERATURE ..... 57 VII. HUMANISM AND THE REFORMATION . . 67 VIII. THE RENAISSANCE IN GERMANY . . -79 IX. THE LATER SEVENTEENTH CENTURY . . 90 X. FRENCH CLASSICISM AND ENGLISH NATURALISM 99 XI. SAXON AND PRUSSIAN LITERARY CIRCLES ; KLOPSTOCK . . . . .109 XII. LESSING . . . . . .120 XIII. WIELAND AND HERDER ; THE GOTTINGKK DICHTERBUND . . . . .130 XIV. GOETHE AND THE " STURM UND DRANG " . 142 xv. SCHILLER; GOETHE'S FIRST PERIOD IN WEIMAR 154 Vlll CONTENTS. XVI. THE CULMINATION OF WEIMAR CLASSICISM . l66 XVII. MINOR WRITERS OF THE CLASSICAL PERIOD ; GOETHE'S OLD AGE . . . .178 XVIII. THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT . . . 192 XIX. THE DRAMA UNDER ROMANTIC INFLUENCE . 209 XX. LITERATURE IN SWABIA AND AUSTRIA . . 222 XXI. THE END OF ROMANTICISM . . . 231 XXII. YOUNG GERMANY AND THE POLITICAL LYRIC . 24! XXIII. MIDCENTURY FICTION .... 254 XXIV. NEW BEGINNINGS IN THE DRAMA ; THE MUNICH SCHOOL ...... 265 XXV. GERMAN LITERATURE SINCE 1870 . . 277 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES .... 287 INDEX ... . 312 Outlines of the History of German Literature INTRODUCTORY. THE race-name by which we designate to-day the domin- ating nation on the European continent has undergone several changes of definition. Originally, if we may trust a probable Keltic derivation of the word, applied to the " neighbouring " tribes, which the Roman invaders of Gaul found opposing them on the banks of the Rhine, the word " German " has been adopted by us to describe the people who know themselves as " Deutsche.'' German or Deutsch was the strong empire which, for centuries, in the darker epochs of European history, held the balance between the nationalities of the continent ; German or Deutsch was the name by which the small German- speaking states of Northern Europe had, since the close of the Middle Ages, described the common bond that held them together ; and German or Deutsch is the new empire which emerged from the last great European war. The word, however, calls up, in the first instance, a racial and linguistic tie, not a political one, and German litera- ture means for us not the literature of the German Empire alone, but also that of the German - speaking population of Austria and Switzerland. 2 INTRODUCTORY. This interpretation of the word "German" as " German-speaking " is, however, subject to considerable modification when we penetrate a few centuries back into the past of the people whose literature we have to study. The early history of all literatures is, of necessity, a history of writings in dialects, not in one recognised national speech ; and this is particularly true in the present case. Centuries elapsed before the German races became the possessors of a common literary language ; and a history like the present has, in its earlier chapters, to take cognisance of the poetic expression of many races, speak- ing widely different dialects. The various stages in the History of the German Language afford obviously the most natural divisions for a history of the works written in that language. An Old High German Period of linguistic growth was followed by a Middle High German Period, and this, again, by a New, or Modern High German Period. In the same way we are able to distinguish three great stages of development in the literature : I. The Old High German Period, extend- ing from about 750 to 1050, a period of tentative begin- nings, composed in many dialects, the most important monuments being, indeed, not in High German at all, but in Low German ; II. The Middle High German Period, from about 1050 to about 1350, which includes the flourishing - period of German mediaeval poetry, a period of great but short-lived intensity at the beginning of the thirteenth century; and III. The Modern High German Period, from about 1350 onwards. It is usual to subdivide this last period into an Early New High German Period, extending to about the end of the seven- teenth century, an age in which the language was still more or less in a condition of flux, and a later period embracing the two last centuries, in which Modern German had attained its definite classical form. This grouping of German literature is not, however, based merely on linguistic distinctions. The literature itself, which in its development was peculiarly chequered and irregular, falls naturally into the divisions that have DIVISIONS OF GERMAN LITERATURE. 3 been mentioned. Between the Old High German Period and the Middle High German Period there was a complete break in the literary tradition, or at least in the records of that tradition, hardly a line having come down to us in the vernacular from a period little short of a century; and between Middle High German poetry and the new beginnings of the Reformation century lay an age of depression and mediocre achievement which more effect- ually broke the continuity of mediaeval traditions than the social changes which ushered in the modern period. Again, the century of the Thirty Years' War a century comparatively barren in literary production in Germany intervened between the period of the Reformation and the classicism of the eighteenth century. And, if a divi- sion has to be made in the enormous literary production since 1700, the two words "Classic" and "Romantic" which stand, in Germany at least, for two diametrically opposed literary creeds, make it possible to draw a boundary line between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. CHAPTER I. THE OLD HIGH GERMAN PERIOD. WHEN we first meet the Germanic races on the threshold of history, they consist of scattered tribes, more or less unsettled, occupying the great plains of north-western Europe, the peninsula of Scandinavia, and even extending as far south-east as the lower reaches of the Danube. Our knowledge of these peoples in the first century of our era is drawn from Roman writers, from Julius Qesar who had fought against them, and from Tacitus, who described them in his Germania (written in 98) and Annals. Like all primitive races, the ancient Germans possessed an unwritten poetry. Tacitus tells us that they celebrated their heroes in song, and they had also hymns and battle-songs. But we have no actual records from this early period ; and, indeed, it is unlikely that the art of writing was known to the Germans of whom Tacitus wrote. Their Runic alphabet, a rough imitation of some of the Latin letters, was not in general use for inscriptions until at least the end of the second century. The Germanic race, which had made its home on the Lower Danube a branch of the group known as Goths was, as a consequence of its proximity to the older civilisations of the south of Europe, intellectually the most advanced. About the middle of the fourth century, long before any other Germanic people possessed a written literature, and when England was still a Roman province, a bishop of these Goths, Wulfila, or, according to the Greek form of the name, Ulphilas, conceived the plan of THE GOTHIC BIBLE. 5 giving his people the Bible in their own tongue. Wulfila, who lived from 311 to about 382, and was consecrated in 341, not only translated into a language which had never before been employed for literary purposes, but he had to invent the very letters which he used. He adopted the Greek alphabet, helping out its deficiencies with the Latin and Runic alphabets. Only a small part of the Gothic Bible has been preserved to us, and that mainly the gospels, but it is of inestimable importance for the history of the Germanic languages. Regarded as a trans- lation, it also shows literary skill of a high order ; for the Gothic language attained in Wulfila's hands a flexibility and a grace which it would be difficult to parallel in the early history of any other Germanic dialect. This brilliant beginning to a Gothic literature was, how- ever, only a beginning ; Wulfila virtually stands alone ; and at the end of the fourth century a great catastrophe broke over the Germanic world which retarded immeasurably the intellectual growth of these races. The Huns, a wild Mongolian horde, broke into Europe from the East, and drove the Germans out of their settlements. In the fierce struggles of the so-called " Volkervvanderung " or Migra- tions, the distribution of nationalities over the face of Europe was completely changed and the Roman Empire received a shock from which it never recovered. And just as in ancient Greece the conflicts of opposing races on the coasts of Asia Minor provided the materials out of which the national epic of the Greeks was formed, so we owe to the Migrations the national epic-sagas of the Germanic races. The stories of Siegfried and Attila, of the Burgundians, who had been annihilated by the Huns in 437, and of Ermanarich and Theodorich, gradually took shape amidst these struggles for national existence. Often, too, old nature-myths, the common heritage of all the Aryan peoples, were, in the sagas, associated and blended with the historical events. But centuries of oral tradition had to elapse before they crystallised into literature in the Eddas of the Scandinavians and the Nibelungenlied of the Germans. The continental Ger- 6 THE OLD HIGH GERMAN PERIOD. manic races to whom we have henceforth to limit ourselves were naturally more exposed to such unset- tling conflicts than their cousins in Scandinavia or in England, and their intellectual awakening was proportion- ately longer in coming ; the Anglo-Saxons had their epic of Beowulf long before we have evidence of any similar development among the Germans. Beyond two interesting charms, the so-called Merseburg Charms (Merseburger Zauberspriiche), of a wholly heathen nature, only one fragment of early German literature points back indubitably to the heroic time of the Migra- tions. This is the Hildebrandslied or Lay of Hilde- brand, written about 800 in the monastery of Fulda; it is only a fragment of sixty -eight lines of alliterative verse, this being the primitive form of Germanic poetry in which the links binding the lines together consist, not of end -rhymes, but of accentuated syllables beginning with the same sound. Hildebrand is a vassal of Theo- dorich's, who, when the latter is defeated by Odoaker, flees eastward and takes refuge with the Huns. Thirty years elapse, and the old warrior is now on his way home to wife and child. He finds himself confronted by a young fighter in whom he recognises his own son Hadu- brand ; he joyfully offers the youth the arm-ring which Attila has given him. But the impetuous Hadubrand only sees in the old man's generosity a ruse to escape a conflict ; he insists on measuring arms with him. Hildebrand pleads in vain, and the fight takes place. The fragment breaks off here, but there is little doubt that the story ended tragically : Hadubrand is slain by his own father. This grim tragedy, which meets us on the very thresh- old of German literature, is one of the most precious specimens of primitive literature we possess ; it is also much the most interesting literary monument that has come down to us from the earliest period of German literary history. The magnificent directness and inten- sity of this old lay, the fierceness of its irony, seem to take us back to the very headspring of tragedy. The CHARLES THE GREAT. 7 heathen spirit has also left its traces on an alliterative fragment of a prayer, the so-called Wessobrunner Gebet (end of the eighth century), which opens with some lines describing the creation of the world ; and it appears again in the fragmentary Muspilli (ca. 850), where the end of the world is described by a poet whose imagination had possibly been fired by the early Germanic conception of that catastrophe. But however much or little of pre-Christian ideas these literary fragments contain, not one of them is, in the form in which it has been preserved to us, older than the reign of Charles the Great. With this great German emperor, called by his French-speaking subjects Charlemagne, the centre of political power in Europe was for the first time established north of the Alps ; he welded his people, the Franks, into a great nation which dominated the Roman- ised portion of Gaul as well as all the West Germanic tribes of the continent. The history of German litera- ture as a written literature begins with Charles the Great, whose reign extended from 768 to 814. When Charles came into power, one of his first cares was to strengthen the hands of the Church, which had already, thanks mainly to the Anglo-Saxon " Apostle of the Germans," Winfrith or Bonifacius (ca. 680-755), gained a hold upon the German peoples. He encouraged the scholarly ac- tivity of the monasteries and impressed upon the monks the necessity of interpreting the doctrines of Christianity to the people in their own tongue. Thus the majority of the earliest specimens of the German vernacular at the close of the eighth and beginning of the ninth cen- turies consist of Latin -German vocabularies or Glosses, translations of the Church liturgy and the like. The best of these translations from the time of Charles the Great is one of a theological tract by the Church Father Isidore, and a fragment of this with part of the Gospel of St Matthew and two sermons is also preserved in the Monseer Fragmente, from the monastery of Monsee in Upper Austria. These are much superior to the more voluminous translation of Tatian's Gospel - Harmony 8 THE OLt) HIGH GERMAN PERIOD. (Evangelienharmonie), made some thirty years later (about 835) in the monastery of Fulda, a monastery which, under the great churchman, Rabanus Maurus, had be- come, together with Reichenau and St Gall, one of the chief fountainheads of light in these dark ages. Charles the Great's interest in the intellectual welfare of his nation was not, however, limited to ecclesiastical and scholastic reforms ; he concerned himself with their secular culture and even had a collection made of the songs of the people. The two lengthiest monuments of old German poetry belong to the ninth century. These are the Heliand ("The Saviour"), together with fragments of Genesis, written about 830 in Old Saxon alliterative verse, during the reign of Charles the Great's son and successor, Ludwig the Pious, and the Evangelienbuch or Gospel- Book, composed more than thirty years later by the Alsatian monk Otfrid. The familiarity which the un- known poet of the Heliand and Genesis which were possibly only parts of a version of the entire Bible shows with the form of the old Germanic epic has led to the belief that he was one of those wandering singers who are to be met with all through the dark ages of European history at the courts of kings and nobles. From the subject and treatment of his poem we might perhaps also infer that part of his life, at least, had been passed in a monastery, probably not far from the sea, in the low- lying land between Weser and Elbe ; this at least is the scenery which forms the background of the poem. On the other hand, there is considerable ground for the opinion that this Old Saxon biblical poem is not the work of one hand. The Heliand is a genuine epic of the life of Christ based on the Gospels, or rather on a Harmony of the four Gospels ; its language is simple and noble, ornamented only by the direct and forcible phrases of the old alliterative speech. Christ is here a prince who shows favour to his faithful followers by bestowing, like the hero of a Germanic saga, gifts of arm- rings on them; the places he moves among, "Nazareth- THE " HELIAND AND OTFRID. g burg," " Bethleemburg," " Rumuburg " (Rome), are the Saxon villages with which the poet was familiar. Inci- dents that might lower the hero in the listener's estima- tion, such as the entry into Jerusalem on the ass, are either omitted or glossed over, and the old Germanic virtues of faithfulness and loyalty kept continually in the foreground. The Evangelienbuch or Gospel -Book of Otfrid is, as poetry, much less interesting than the Heliand. It is not only strongly influenced by Latin models and by the theological speculation of the time, but it is also divided into sections which correspond to the pericopes or lessons of the church service. We know little more of Otfrid than that he was a monk of the monastery of Weissenburg ; he may have been born about 800, and lived to about 871; his poem appears to have been written subsequent to 863. Didactic and poetically un- inspired as Otfrid's verses for the most part are, they mark more definitely an epoch in the history of German literature than the Heliand. The Heliand was the last great poem in alliterative verse ; Otfrid's Gospel-Book is the first German poem in rhymed verse. Otfrid's in- fluence is possibly to be traced on the sparing remains of religious poetry that have been preserved from the later Old High German period, such as the Bittgesang an den heiligen Petrus, Christus und die Samariterin, and Das Lied vom heiligen Georg. Of a secular lyric poetry in this period no traces have been preserved, and it is very doubtful if the so-called " winileod," prohibited by a Church decree of Charles the Great's time, come under this heading. The Ludwigslied (88 1), a song in honour of a victory of one of the later Carlovingians, Ludwig III., although monkish in spirit, may be regarded as the earliest ballad in German literature. De Heinrico, a short political poem composed about 1000 and referring to Otto I. and Heinrich I., may also be mentioned here ; it is written in alternating Latin and German lines. The ninth century, with its two Biblical epics, remains the brightest in the dim Old High German period. Thus, IO THE OLD HIGH GERMAN PERIOD. chronologically speaking, we might say that the flourishing- time of this literature lay between the chief period of Old English poetry and that of Old English prose. The Carlovingian empire was in 842 divided between Charles the Great's two grandsons, Ludwig and Charles ; and this division, which marks the beginning of the independent growth of the two great nationalities of France and Germany, has left its literary record in the Strassburger Eide (842), oaths sworn by the two kings in the two languages, at Strassburg. The later Carlovingian rulers of the eastern Frankish kingdom were not, however, encouragers of literature and learning ; a new period of darkness set in with them, and this darkness only deep- ened, as far as vernacular literature was concerned, under the successors of the Carlovingians, the Saxon dynasty (919- 1024). The Saxon emperors had other and sterner tasks before them in maintaining the integrity of their empire against aggressive neighbours, than that of caring for the spiritual welfare or literature of their people. But the old sagas continued, notwithstanding, to live on on the lips of the people, kept alive by the wandering "gleemen " or " Spielleute," whose importance for the life of those times was rapidly growing. There was, however, a kind of literary renaissance under the Saxon emperors, a renaissance that was, it is true, Latin both in its speech and in its ideas ; but it produced a few works which cannot be overlooked in a history of German literature. The first of these is the Latin epic, Wal- tharius, written about 930 by Ekkehard, a monk of the monastery of St Gall, a monastery which, all through the tenth and part of the eleventh centuries, formed an intellectual focus in Southern Germany. Written in polished Latin hexameters, the Lay of Waltharius, or Waltharilied, is a version of one of the national sagas which arose out of the Migrations of the fifth century : it is a national poem in Latin garb. Walther of Aquitaine and his betrothed, Hildegund of Burgundy, escape from the court of Attila, King of the Huns, who has held them as hostages. They ultimately reach the Rhine, near Worms ; LATIN LITERATURE. II Gunther, the Frankish king, who reigns at Worms, sets out with twelve chosen vassals to intercept the fugitives and take possession of their treasure, to which Gunther lays claim. One after the other Walther overcomes and slays the king's vassals, until only Gunther, Hagen, and he are left. In a desperate encounter all three are disabled, and Walther is allowed to proceed on his way in peace. Another Latin poem of this time, the Ecbasis Captivi ("Escape of the Captive"), written about 940 by a monk of Lorraine, is interesting as the earliest example of the "Tierepos" or "beast epic." Under the guise of a calf, which strays into the forest and is seized by a wolf, but is ultimately rescued, the poet writes an allegory of his own life. The poem, however, has no great merit as literature. More interesting, and also more German in spirit, is the first romance in German literature, the Latin poem known as Ruodlieb, which was written in the mon- astery of Tegernsee, in Bavaria, about the year 1030. Ruodlieb goes out to seek his fortune in foreign lands, and comes to the court of a king, into whose service he enters ; he distinguishes himself here both as hunter and soldier. After ten years he proposes to return home, and the king remunerates him with two loaves of bread in which are concealed money and treasures, and with twelve maxims, which Ruodlieb prizes above all material riches. The poet evidently intended that his hero should go through adventures on his journey home, each of which should illus- trate practically the wisdom of one of the king's maxims. The poem, however, is fragmentary, and the plan is only partially carried out. Ruodlieb is the one poem of its time which foreshadows the literary developments of the coming centuries ; for it contains in germ much of what developed later into the epic of chivalry. The Saxon nun, Hrotsuith, or Roswitha of Ganders- heim, who lived in the second half of the tenth century, wrote a number of Christian dramas on the model of Terence, to counteract the latter's evil influence in the monasteries, although to the modern mind the antidote seems sometimes worse than the poison. Hrotsuith has 12 THE OLD HIGH GERMAN PERIOD. been claimed as the first German-born dramatist. Her plays, however, are only legends in dialogue form, and have no qualities that distinguish them as German ; she is a purely Latin writer of this Latin renaissance. But there was one man in this age of Latin cul- ture who interested himself seriously in the language of his people, namely, the head of the convent school in the monastery of St Gall, who is variously known as Notker III., Notker the German, and Notker Labeo ("the thick-lipped"). He lived from 952 to 1022, and was consequently very nearly the exact contemporary of the Anglo-Saxon Aelfric. Besides purely Latin writings, Notker has left a number of manuscripts of works used in the school Boethius's De consolatione philosophies, Aristotle's Categories and Hermeneutics, that strange alle- gorical treatise by Marcianus Capella, so popular in the Middle Ages, The Marriage of Philology and Mercury, and these, for the benefit of his pupils, he interpreted into the vernacular, every few words of Latin being accompanied by an equivalent translation. Notker's translations are, however, a good deal more than mere schoolman's work ; they show often considerable literary skill and a sense for the beauty and music of German words, such as no other German of the tenth or eleventh centuries pos- sessed. Notker also wrote a few shorter treatises, collected under the title De mttsica, exclusively in German. It is usual to designate the period which comes to a close with Notker of St Gall as the Old High German period of German literature, after the dialect or group of dialects then spoken in southern Germany. But it is well to remember that by no means all the literary remains that have come down to us are in High German dialects ; the most important of all, the Heliand, is in Old Saxon, and the Hildebrandslied contains Low German elements which imply that its preservation was due to a Low German tradition. CHAPTER II. THE BEGINNINGS OF MIDDLE HIGH GERMAN POETRY. THE revival of German vernacular poetry after its long sleep of more than a century was slow and tentative. The absence of written records undoubtedly facilitated a great change which, at the beginning of the twelfth century, came over the Old High German dialects. The degeneration if degeneration it may be called to which all languages unfixed by a written literature are prone, had proceeded rapidly throughout the eleventh century, and about the year noo the High German speech re- appears denuded of the varied flexional endings and the wide range of vowel sounds which made Old High German the richest and most musical of all the older Germanic dialects. Middle High German speech, com- pared with its predecessor, seems colourless and mono- tonous ; its phonology has become simplified, the a, i, o, and u of the original flexions being, for the most part, reduced to a uniform e ; and its accidence has undergone a similar levelling process. The growth of a secular literature was retarded by the religious temper of the time ; for in the eleventh century a wave of monastic asceticism, which originated in the Burgundian monastery of Cluny, spread over Europe and was directly hostile to any literature not immediately in the service of the Church. The very sparing literary remains which we meet with at the beginning of the Middle High German period are filled with a disconsolate asceticism and a bitter contempt for 14 BEGINNINGS OF MIDDLE HIGH GERMAN POETRY. the world. This spirit is to be seen in a monkish poem Memento mori, written in Alemannian soon after the middle of the eleventh century, and in a still more acute form, in a long poetic exposition of the Nicene Creed, Vom Glauben, composed early in the twelfth century by a monk of Thuringia, named Hartmann. A less negative aspect of the Christianity of the time is to be seen in the spirited Ezzolied, or Lay of Ezzo (1063), which was written at the command of Bishop Gunther of Bamberg. The Ezzolied goes back to the beginning of things, and de- scribes the birth, life, and death of Christ. About the same time Willeram, abbot of Ebersberg in Bavaria, para- phrased and commented in prose upon the Song of Songs (Das hohe Lied}. A lighter, less depressing tone is noticeable, too, in poetic versions of the stories of the Old Testament (Genesis, Exodus\ while the lyric feeling of the time found almost its only outlet in a number of Marienlieder, in which the worship of the Virgin rises at times to extravagant adoration ; to this category belong also three beautiful Lieder von der Jungfrau (ca. 1170) by a priest, Wernher, who was probably a Bavarian. A Frau Ava who lived in Austria in the first quarter of the twelfth century has left several religious poems; and a little later (ca. 1160), Heinrich von Melk, in Austria, mingled asceticism with satire and didacticism in his Remembrance of Death (Von des todes gehugede] and Priesterleben. Mysticism, the chief undercurrent in the spiritual life of the twelfth century, has left its traces on a number of smaller German poems, such as Von den vier Radern, Anegenge (" beginning "), and the so - called Vorauer Genesis of about the year 1130. The bridge between the religious and secular poetry of the twelfth century was formed by a large number of legends of the saints, of which the earliest is the so-called Annolied, written probably before the end of the eleventh century by a clerical poet of the monastery of Siegburg near Cologne. Anno, whose life and death the poem celebrates, was a famous bishop of Cologne, who played LEGENDS; " K^NIG ROTHER." 15 an active part in political life ; but the poem, like the Ezzolied, goes back to the Creation, and describes the spread of Christianity down to the founding of Cologne. Legends, too, form a considerable part of the Kaiser- chronik, a vast poetic chronicle which begins with the history of Rome and comes down to the middle of the twelfth century. This work, which was probably written in Regensburg between 1130 and 1150, was one of the most popular books of the Middle Ages. So far, the writing of poetry had lain mainly in the hands of monks, or at least lay-brothers ; but now with the encroachments of the secular spirit a different type of poet came into evidence ; this was the " Spielmann," whom we have already met with in Old High German times, but whom the ascetic religious movement had for a time succeeded in silencing. The influence of the " Spielleute " is to be traced in several biblical narrative poems written in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries ; but we do not meet with undisguised " Spielmann's poetry " until the middle of the twelfth century. To a wandering singer of this class is due the first German epic based on a national saga, namely Konig Rother, which was probably written in Bavaria about the year 1 1 60. This epic is an excellent example of the light, sprightly kind of narrative intended for an uncultured audience, such as we associate with the Spielleute. The unnamed poet is not concerned with finer characterisa- tion or psychological probings; he is content to tell a story that will interest and amuse by its incidents alone. King Rother, whose seat is at Bari in Italy, chooses as his bride the daughter of a king of Constantinople, and the sons of Duke Berchter of Meran are sent as envoys to demand her hand. The King of Constantinople, how- ever, throws the envoys into prison, and Rother, disguised as a Spielmann, sets out to free them and to win his bride himself. He succeeds in obtaining an interview with the princess and learns that she will wed none but King Rother. The sons of Berchter are set free, and under Rother's leadership they do the King of l6 BEGINNINGS OF MIDDLE HIGH GERMAN POETRY. Constantinople a service by vanquishing one of his enemies. On leaving Constantinople they carry off the princess in their ship. An obvious continuation of the original story tells how the latter is brought back to her parents, and Rother is obliged to undergo fresh adventures to win her again. The influence of the Crusades on Konig Rother is apparent in the fact that the hero seeks his bride in the East; that influence is still more marked on a second epic of this period, Herzog Ernst (ca. 1180). This poem is based on the popular traditions of two different Dukes of Swabia. After taking vengeance on the enemies who have calumniated him, Duke Ernst sets out on a crusade ; he meets with the most extraordinary adventures in the East, finds people with cranes' heads and with webbed feet, pigmies, giants, and all kinds of natural wonders. As poetry, Herzog Ernst is lacking in the personal note of the Spielmann's poetry, which makes Konig Rother so inter- esting ; it is even doubtful if it was written by a Spielmann at all. On the other hand, poems like Salman und Morolf, Orendel, and Oswald, in each of which the theme of Konig Rother recurs in a more or less modified form, may be regarded as typical specimens of the Spielmann's epic at the close of the twelfth century. The Crusades were responsible for a great deal more in German literature than the oriental scenery of Konig Rother and the oriental lore of romances like Herzog Ernst; to them we owe the social type of the Middle Ages, the knight or " Ritter," in whom the religious and secular ideals of the time were blended and reconciled. This type was restricted to no one land or nationality, and consequently created a basis of common sympathy and understanding for the intellectual life of all Europe. The idea of chivalry developed, however, most rapidly in Provence, and from there the literature of chivalry spread to other lands. This new spirit is to be seen in two German epics of French origin, which belong to a period anterior to the middle of the twelfth century, the Alexander/ted and the Rolandslied. " ALEXANDERLIED " AND " ROLANDSLIED." 17 The life of Alexander the Great had, at a comparatively early date, been made the subject of romance, and the hero's adventures in the unknown East gave the successive poets who described them an opportunity for introducing, with their own embellishments, the legendary lore which was current in Europe about the Orient. Lamprecht, a German priest of the Rhineland, was the author of the oldest German version ; it was written about 1130 and is based on a French Chanson d 1 Alixandre. After con- quering Italy, Sicily, Asia, and Africa, Alexander reaches the end of the world, where the heavens are seen turning round it like a wheel on its axle, but through lack of humility he fails to add the Garden of Paradise to his conquests. A gentler lyric beauty appears occasionally in the poem, but, on the whole, it is adapted to appeal to the rough spirit of adventure which inspired the early Crusades. The second epic, the German version of the Chanson de Roland, was the work of a priest, Konrad of Regensburg, to whom the Kaiserchronik has also been ascribed, and was written about the year 1135 ; but the German Rolandslied is less able to do justice to its theme than the Alexanderlied, and is dominated throughout by a narrow monastic fanaticism. A more immediate forerunner of the courtly epic of the thirteenth century than either Lamprecht or Konrad is Eilhart von Oberge, a vassal of Heinrich the Lion ; about the year 1180 Eilhart produced the earliest German version of the story of Tristan. There is little of the literary polish which we associate with the Arthurian epic about this Tnstranf, but the polite standpoint of chivalrous society is maintained throughout. The new social ideals were rapidly gaining ground in the literature of the time, a feature which is also evident in other epic romances of the time, such as Floris und Blancheflur, a story in which love plays almost as large a role as in Tristan. The Beast epic, too, which, as we have seen, had appeared in Germany with the Latin Ecbasis Captivi of the tenth century, took more definite form about 1150 in a Latin poem, Isengrimus, written in Ghent, and then B l8 BEGINNINGS OF MIDDLE HIGH GERMAN POETRY. rapidly developed in the hands of French poets, as the Roman de Renart. The earliest German epic of the fox was written in imitation of this French romance about 1 1 80 by an Alsatian poet who called himself Heinrich der Glichezare ("the dissembler"). No less fruitful was the influence of the Crusades on the development of the German lyric. Lyric poetry, in which the German national spirit has, in all times, found its truest expression, is but sparingly represented in the record of the earlier period, partly because owing to its nature it more readily escaped being written down than the longer and less easily remembered narrative poems. A " Liebesgruss " embedded in the Latin epic of Ruodlieb, and the so-called Carmina Biirana, a Bavarian collection which is for the most part Latin of the songs of the Goliards or wandering scholars, are almost the only vestiges. The lyric first becomes a constant element in German literature with the rise of the Minnesang, that is to say, a form of poetry analogous to the lyric of chivalry cultivated by the troubadours of Southern France. To the group of German singers who form what has been called the " springtime of the Minne- sang" (ca. 1 1 60-80) belong an Austrian nobleman who appears as the " Herr von Kiirenberg," Dietmar von Aist, also an Austrian, the Burggraf von Regensburg, and Meinloh von Sevelingen. The lyrics of these singers are primitive in their simplicity, and describe simple lyric scenes and situations in the most direct language and often with an unconscious touch of naive pathos. Kiiren- berg composed in a form of strophe similar to that of the Nibelungenlied, while Dietmar von Aist has given us the earliest German " Tagelied," that is to say, a poem analog- ous to the Provencal " alba " or French " aube," in which two lovers are warned of the approach of dawn. Even at this early date we find evidence of that didacticism and satire which were to form so important a constituent of later German mediaeval literature, namely, in the so-called " Spruchdichtung," which comprises short, one-strophe poems in a reflective .and often pessimistic tone. As EARLY MINNESANG AND DRAMA. IQ " Spruchdichter " of this early time two are known to us, one probably called Herger, the other " Der Spervogel." In the slow development of dramatic literature Germany forms no exception to the rule of European nations ; and the course of that development shows little divergence from the general norm. The modern drama was evolved in Germany as elsewhere from the church liturgy. In the tenth century the Easter and Christmas services were invested with a certain dramatic character ; the events celebrated at these festivals were narrated by the priests in dialogue, and even acted. This was the beginning of the Easter and Passion plays. Opportunity for a more secular development was afforded by the representation of the events of Christ's birth, celebrated at Epiphany, such, for instance, as the arrival of the Wise Men of the East, the Slaughter of the Innocents, and the Flight into Egypt. A German Dreikonigsspiel in Latin verse has been pre- served from the eleventh century. Another step in the direction of secularisation was taken when the stories of the Old Testament were included in these representations of sacred history. As the church drama thus became more secular and elaborate, it was performed outside the churches, often in the market - places ; and as laymen were gradually drawn into the performances, Latin had to give way to the vernacular. But even in the twelfth century very little progress had been made, and the most interesting plays of that century an elaborate work pro- duced at Regensburg in 1194 which represented the creation of the angels, the dethronement of Lucifer, the creation of the world and the Fall, and a Latin Anti- christ play from the monastery of Tegernsee (1188), which reflected faintly the spirit of the German people in the days of Barbarossa can hardly be considered as constituting a dramatic literature. For the real awakening of her drama Germany had to wait until the beginning of the sixteenth century and the in- fluence of the Reformation. 20 CHAPTER III. THE POPULAR EPIC. THE narrative poetry of the German Middle Ages falls, according to the subjects of which it treats, into two main groups, the Popular or National Epic and the Court Epic. In the present chapter we have to deal with the first of these types of epic : it is national in so far as its themes are taken from German history and tradition, and popular in so far as the traditions were handed down by the people and thrown into epic form by " Spielleute" or popular singers. The line of demarcation between the two kinds of poetry is, however, by no means so clear as the above definition might imply, and many of the popular epics received their final form from poets who were schooled in the art of the Court epic. The beginnings of the German national epic are, as we have seen, to be looked for in the stormy history of the Migrations. The famous deeds of the kings of the Ostrogoths, Ermanarich and Theodorich the Great, who appears in the sagas as Dietrich von Bern (i.e., Verona), formed the nucleus of one great group of stories ; epic materials were also provided by the annihilation of the Burgundians and their king Gundahari by the Huns in 437, an event which made a deep impression on the Germanic imagination, and was brought into connection with the tragic end of Attila, king of the Huns, in 453. An important group of sagas which gathered round the figure of Siegfried of Xanten, seems to have been especi- ally developed by the Frankish tribes on the Rhine ; THE " NIBELUNGENLIED." <2l while, standing more isolated, a number of stories of the sea sprang up amongst the Low German peoples of the coast. These sagas were handed down through the centuries by oral tradition, and provided the materials from which the unnamed German poets of the close of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth centuries wove their epics. By far the most important of these is Der Nibelunge Not or Das Nibelungenlied, the national epic of the German people, which was composed in Austria, probably in the last decade of the twelfth century. The theme of this epic is the result of a fusion between two originally quite distinct traditions, the Frankish saga of Siegfried, who wins a great treasure and goes through an adventure similar to that which is familiar to us from the story of the "sleeping beauty," with the more im- mediately historical accounts of the Burgundians. This race had settled on the Rhine early in the fifth century, and owing to the fertile character of their territory, they were associated with an older mythical saga of a treasure or " hoard " which lay sunk in the Rhine ; it was this same treasure which Siegfried had once wrested from its original possessors, the Nibelungs or children of darkness, and to the Burgundians the name Nibelung is transferred. At Worms, on the Rhine, King Gunther holds his court ; here live, too, his mother Ute, his sister Kriemhild, and two brothers Gernot and Giselher. Of the many faithful vassals of the king, Hagen von Tronege occupies the first place. The tragedy of the epic is foreshadowed by a dream of Kriemhild's at the opening of the poem : she sees a wild falcon which she had tamed, torn by two eagles. The falcon, her mother tells her, is a husband ; whereupon she will hear nothing of marriage. But it happens otherwise. Siegfried, son of a king of the Nether- lands, arrives as a stranger at Worms, where only Hagen recognises in him the hero who slew the dragon and bathed himself invulnerable in its blood. Kriemhild and Siegfried find favour in each other's eyes. Meanwhile Siegfried not 'only assists Gunther against his enemies, but is persuaded to help the Burgundian king to win 22 THE POPULAR EPIC. as his bride a princess of Iceland, Brunhild. At this point we seem to come upon an older stratum of the poem, which becomes clearer when we turn to the Scandinavian version. According to the latter, this Brunhild was originally a Valkyrie, a daughter of Wodan himself; and although the German poet of the twelfth century seems ignorant of this, he retains the super- human elements in Brunhild's character, especially her enormous physical strength. The hero who would win her must overcome her in three tests of bodily prowess, in throwing the spear, in hurling the stone, and in leap- ing ; otherwise he must pay the penalty of his temerity with his life. Gunther, himself unable to stand these tests, is assisted by Siegfried, who, by means of his " tarnkappe," or mantle of invisibility, stands at his friend's side during the contest. Brunhild is overcome and returns with the Burgundians across the sea to Worms, where a double marriage is celebrated : Gunther and Brunhild, Siegfried and Kriemhild. But Brunhild, as we know from the northern version, and as the German poet apparently did not know, had once been rescued by no other than Siegfried himself from the fire which her angry father, Wodan, had raised round her for protect- ing, in disobedience to his commands, the race of the Volsungs, and she is far from contented as Gunther's queen. She envies Kriemhild her husband, and re- proaches Gunther for having without reason given his sister to a mere bondsman. And once more, before the marriage has been consummated, Siegfried is obliged to aid Gunther in overcoming Brunhild's supernatural strength. After the lapse of ten years, Kriemhild and Siegfried, who has in the meantime succeeded to the throne of the Netherlands, return to Worms. The years have not cooled Brunhild's resentment, and it breaks out afresh in a quarrel with Kriemhild as to the worth of their re- spective husbands ; in a stormy scene before the minster, Kriemhild in blind rage calls Brunhild Siegfried's mistress, and as proof shows her the ring and the girdle which SIEGFRIED'S DEATH. 23 Siegfried had wrested from her. Siegfried's denial brings no conviction to the angry Brunhild, and she listens willingly to Hagen's councils : Siegfried, as a traitor to his king, must die. A plot is schemed by Hagen. He causes false messengers to arrive with a declaration of war against Gunther, whereupon Siegfried offers his services against the enemy. Kriemhild blindly entrusts her husband to Hagen's care, and in order that he may know how to protect him in case of need, she sews with her own hand a cross upon his coat on the spot where the leaf fell when he bathed himself in the dragon's blood, the only spot where he is vulnerable. This information is sufficient for Hagen ; the rumours of war are contradicted, and a hunt proposed instead. The description of this hunt in the forest of the Vosges, or according to another version, in the Odenwald, is fresh and vivid ; and the events of the day, including Siegfried's capture of a bear, are dwelt on with that ironic objectivity which, as we have seen, was characteristic of the Spielmann's art. Meanwhile midday has arrived, but there is no wine for the midday meal. Hagen, however, knows a spring in the neighhourhood and proposes to race to it ; Siegfried is the first to reach it, but he will not drink before the king ; then, as he bends down to the water, Hagen plunges Siegfried's own spear into the vulnerable spot on his back. With no arms at hand but his shield, Siegfried is helpless, but before the blow of the shield Hagen flees, as he had never fled before. So Siegfried's life-blood ebbs away, and at night the body is carried home and, by Hagen's order, laid before Kriemhild's door. In the morning, even before she had seen the body, Kriemhild has a presentiment that her husband has been murdered, and with heartrending shrieks vows revenge upon his mur- derer. And when the body is laid out in the minster, the wound bleeds again at Hagen's approach, showing him to have done the deed. Kriemhild remains in Worms, whither she has had the Nibelung's hoard brought ; but the far-seeing Hagen, fearful lest this wealth might give 24 THE POPULAR EPIC. her undue power, has the treasure sunk in the Rhine. Thus the first part of the tragedy closes with an echo of one of the very oldest motives in the saga, that of the Nibelung's gold. Thirteen years pass away, and Kriemhild marries again. Her second husband is the powerful King Etzel or Attila of Hunnenland. She has only married him on the con- dition that he will obtain for her amends for the wrongs that have been done her. Another thirteen years pass away, and still the thought of vengeance is present to her. At last the time seems ripe to put it in execution. At her request King Etzel invites her kinsfolk to a great festival ; two Spielleute are sent to Burgundy with special instruc- tions to see that, if the invitation is accepted, Hagen at least does not remain behind. Despite Hagen's warnings, the Burgundians, or, as the poet now calls them, the Nibelungs, set out on their journey to Etzel's kingdom. When they reach the Danube, two water-sprites prophesy to Hagen that of all his brave company none but the chaplain will ever see his home again. As they are being ferried across the river, Hagen determines to make the prophecy naught in at least one particular, by throwing the chaplain into the river ; but the latter swims to the shore, and Hagen realises grimly that nothing can now avert the fate that awaits them. They are entertained on the way by the Markgraf Riidiger, and warned by Dietrich of Bern, who rides out to meet them. Etzel has made hospitable preparations for his visitors, but Kriemhild receives them coldly ; only for her youngest brother Giselher has she a kiss. In defiant hatred she demands of Hagen why he has not brought with him her treasure. The Nibelungs refuse to divest themselves of their arms ; Hagen admits that he was Siegfried's mur- derer, and that it is Siegfried's sword he wears by his side. The guests retire to rest in a hall, where Hagen and the Spielmann Volker of Alzei keep watch and prevent the night attack which the Huns had planned. Next day at a tournament a noble Hun is slain by Volker, and this is the signal for an open feud. At Kriemhild's wish, KRIEMHILD'S REVENGE. 25 her brother-in-law Blodelin treacherously attacks a body of the Nibelungs, and in retaliation Hagen strikes off the head of Kriemhild's son, Ortlieb. The struggle now becomes general, and only by Dietrich's intercession is it possible for Etzel, Kriemhild, and some six hundred men to leave the hall. In the night Kriemhild commands the hall to be set on fire, and when morning dawns the survivors of the terrible ordeal are once more attacked by the avenging Huns ; one after the other the leaders of the Nibelungs fall, until only Gunther and Hagen are left ; these are overcome and made prisoners by Dietrich. They are brought before the queen, who once more de- mands of Hagen her treasure, but he refuses to reveal where it is concealed as long as any of his masters live, whereupon Kriemhild orders her brother to be beheaded and the head brought to Hagen. But still he will not tell, and with her own hand Kriemhild draws from his side Siegfried's sword and strikes off his head. Then Dietrich's vassal Hildebrand avenges Hagen's shameful death by slaying Kriemhild. The origin of the Nibdungenlied is still a very vexed question. Suffice it to say that the poem, as we know it, was probably preceded by a Rhenish epic of the twelfth century, perhaps even by a still older Latin poem on the subject. The strength of the Nibelungenlied lies, above all things, in its unity of construction ; it is based on one fundamental and primitive idea, which is ex- pressed in the opening of the poem and recurs again at the close, the idea that human happiness must be paid for in the end by suffering ; " nach liebe leit," the inevitable retribution that follows on excess of earthly joy. This is the ethical idea in the background of the whole ; and the motives which actuate the characters are unflinching loyalty of man to master on the one side, and on the other an unswerving desire for vengeance, with which is associated the baser motive of the greed for gold. The literary qualities of this national epic are rather rugged strength and unveiled directness than poetic subtlety or intellectual grace ; the poem is essentially 26 THE POPULAR EPIC. Germanic, the Christian and chivalric element being but a superficial veneer added at a later period. At the same time, the Nibelungenlied is neither uncouth nor barbaric, nor is it lacking in scenes of gentler beauty and humour ; but its beauty is primitive in its simplicity, and its humour grim in its subtle irony. A later poet attempted to carry the story beyond the culminating catastrophe in Die Klage, a poem of much inferior merit, in which the survivors mourn for the fallen heroes ; but this poem has little of the heroism of the great age, and was evidently composed merely to satisfy the popular craving for a continuation. The Nibelungenlied has been called the Iliad of the Germanic peoples ; in a similar way, the second of the great national epics, Gudrun, might be compared with the Odyssey. The two poems present similar points of con- trast to the Greek epics : the Nibelungenlied is a lurid tragedy of revenge, full of wild passions and fierce slaughters, involving the fates of whole peoples ; Gudrun, or Kudrun, is an epic of the sea, a story of adventure and of loyal affection, rewarded in the end ; it centres, not in a nation, but in an individual heroine. The inequality between the Nibelungenlied and Gudrun is, however, greater than that between Iliad and Odyssey ; the second epic is more dependent upon the first, and is further removed from the original primitive basis. The broad lines of the Nibelungenlied are lacking in Gudrun ; its construction is loose and uncertain, being dependent more on fortuitous accretions from without, on repetitions of motives and episodes, than on the natural development of a carefully moulded plan. On the other hand, Gudrun has the advantage of a milder, gentler conception of life ; the spirit of Christianity has sunk deeper into it, and the graces of chivalric ideals make its characters, above all that of the heroine herself, more human and lovable. In its original form, Gudrun was an epic of the Germanic tribes dwelling on the North Sea coasts ; it be- longed to the same cycle of sagas which includes the Old English Beowulf. But of this original form nothing has "GUDRUN." 27 come down to us, and we are entirely dependent for our knowledge of the poem on an Austrian version written probably between 1210 and 1215. The epic of Gudnm falls into two more or less parallel halves, the first of which relates the story of Gudrun's mother, Hilde, the second of Gudrun herself. More than this, the first four cantos or " Aventiuren " of the poem tell the story of Gudrun's grandfather, Hagen, who as a child had been carried off to a lonely island by a griffin, and had there found three beautiful princesses, one of whom, Hilde of India, becomes his wife. Their daughter, likewise called Hilde, is protected by her jealous father from all wooers, until she is ultimately won by a Scan- dinavian king, Hettel, who employs ingenious ruses. With three of his vassals, the sweet singer Horand, the generous Frute, and the grim Wate, he sets out disguised as a merchant to Hagen's home in Ireland, and Horand's singing wins him a private audience with Hilde ; he presses his master's suit, and finds no unwilling ear. The court is invited to inspect the wares which the strangers have on board their ships ; as soon as Hilde and her retinue are safely on board one of the ships, the men of the party are thrown overboard and Hettel makes good his flight, leaving Hilde's father in help- less wrath on the shore. But Hagen gives chase, and overtakes the fugitives as they reach Scandinavia. A fierce battle takes place on the shore, in which both kings are wounded before Hilde succeeds in interceding as peace- maker. Hettel and Hilde have a son, Orwin, and a daughter, Gudrun, the latter even more beautiful than her mother. Gudrun is guarded no less carefully by her father than Hilde had been guarded by Hagen, but King Herwig of Seeland has won her heart, and after a similar battle with Gudrun's father she is betrothed to Herwig. Here, however, the parallelism of the stories ends. A disappointed suitor of Gudrun, Siegfried of Morland, now makes war on King Herwig, and Hettel goes to the latter's assistance, leaving his own land unprotected. This is the opportunity for a third suitor, Hartmut, 28 THE POPULAR EPIC. who, with his father, King Ludwig of Ormandie, or Nor- mandy, sweeps down on Hettel's. land and carries off Gudrun and her maidens. Hettel gives chase, but in a terrible battle on the island of Wiilpensand, off the Dutch coast, he is defeated and slain by King Ludwig. Gudrun is brought by her captors to Normandy, but she refuses to become Hartmut's wife, and is treated with great cruelty, being condemned to the most menial of tasks. Years pass and her lot becomes harder and harder; for five years and a half, even in the depth of winter, she is compelled to kneel by the sea day after day washing clothes. Thirteen years have now elapsed since the battle on the Wiilpensand, and Hettel's people, the Hegelingen, feel themselves strong enough to avenge themselves on the Normans ; they set out for Normandy, and an angel in the form of a bird brings Gudrun tidings of her coming rescue. Next morning as she and her faithful maid, Hildburg, are washing barefoot in the snow, a boat approaches with two men in it ; they are Gudrun's brother, Ortwin, and her betrothed, Herwig. First, Gudrun tells them that the Gudrun whom they seek is long dead, whereupon the men burst into tears ; but the rings she and Herwig had exchanged lead to a recognition. Next morning the Hegelingen attack the castle, a fearful slaughter ensues, no less sanguinary than that at the close of the Nibelungenlied. The poem, however, does not close so tragically, for Gudrun is united to Herwig, her brother marries the Norman princess Ortrun, and the young king of Normandy his father and mother have been both slain marries the faithful Hildburg. Besides the two great epics there is a large body of popular epic romance of varying poetic value, ranging from the crudest Spielmann's epics to poems hardly dis- tinguishable, except by their theme, from the Court epics. It is usual to group these popular epics together under the collective title of Das Heldenbuch. The connecting link in these romances is the figure of Theodorich the Great, or, as he is known to poetry, Dietrich von Bern. In most of them he is the central figure, or at least THE " HELDENBUCH. ' 2Q stands to them in a relation similar to that in which King Arthur stands to the knights whose adventures are related in the Court epic. But in a higher degree than Arthur or Charles the Great, higher even than Siegfried, Dietrich was the national German ideal of a hero ; even in the Nibelungenlied itself we find an echo of this senti- ment ; brave and strong as Siegfried is, Dietrich is surrounded by a mysterious halo of reverence as the incorporation of all Siegfried's virtues, and of supreme wisdom as well ; he is the ideal of the wise, strong man. In one of the epics of this cycle, Der Rosengarten, for instance, which describes the various conflicts that took place round Kriemhild's "rose-garden" at Worms, even Siegfried is obliged to flee before Dietrich and seek pro- tection with Kriemhild. Siegfried and Dietrich appear again as opposing combatants in the epic of Biterolf und Dietlieb, written in Austria at the beginning of the thirteenth century, a poem in which the influence of the Court poetry is strong. In a number of these romances the folklore of super- natural adventure, so beloved by the popular Spielmann, plays a large role; dwarfs and giants are the enemies against whom these heroes have to prove their mettle. This is seen in the charming story of Laurin, oder der kleine Rosengarten, in which the rose-garden of Worms is transferred to Tyrol ; its boundaries here are only marked off by a silken thread, and it is watched over by a dwarf Laurin. Every intruder is condemned to lose his right foot and his left hand. Dietrich and Witege undertake to punish the dwarf; and they compel him to open up his subterranean kingdom. The cunning Laurin, however, again gets them into his power by means of a sleeping- draught, and another chain of adventures has to be gone through before he is finally overcome. But giants are the favourite embodiments of evil in these stories, as in Das Eckenlied, which is written in strophes of thirteen lines each, Sigenot, Goldemar, and Virginal. For poetic beauty and strength the first place among the poems of the Dietrich cycle belongs to the fragmentary 30 THE POPULAR EPIC. epic of Alpharts Tod. In this story of a brave young hero who goes out to fight against uneven odds, and ultimately falls at the hand of Witege whose life he had spared, we alone find something of that tragic singleness of purpose and epic dignity which are characteristic of the Nibelungenlied. The last two epics of the cycle, Dietrichs Flucht and Die Rabenschlacht (i.e., "battle of Ravenna"), belong by the nature of their themes to the main con- stituents of what, under more favourable circumstances, might have been a national epic with Dietrich as central figure; but unfortunately they were both written at the close of the thirteenth century, long after the best epoch of the popular epic was past. In the foreground of the action stands Dietrich's feud with Ermanarich, the treason of his own vassals, Witege and Heime, and the alliance of Dietrich with the King of the Huns, Etzel. But the innate nobility of the old epic has disappeared ; the interest is eked out with supernatural motives borrowed from the lower Spielmann's poetry, and the style is diffuse and wanting in distinction. Not all the stories of the Heldenbuch^ however, belong to the Dietrich saga in its narrower sense. Ortnit and Wolfdietrich the latter a long, confused epic which has been preserved in several versions are characteristic Spielmann's epics, which have but a remote connection with the other poems of the collection. Ortnit is the familiar story of a king he is here king of Lamparten or Lombardy who seeks his bride in foreign lands and carries her off by stealth. His father-in-law takes revenge by sending a brood of young dragons into Ortnit's land, one of which kills him. Connected with this story is that of Wolfdietrich, who at the close of the former poem came to the court of Ortnit and successfully vanquished the dragons. Wolfdietrich is the son of King Hugdietrich of Constantinople, and as a child he shows such amazing strength that the king believes the devil and not himself must be the real father. He consequently entrusts his faithful vassal, Duke Berchtung, with the task of killing the child. Berchtung has not the heart to carry out "ORTNIT" AND " WOLFDIETRICH. ' 31 his master's commands, but leaves Wolfdietrich beside a pool of water in the hope that he will try to pluck the water-lilies and fall in and be drowned. But this does not happen, and at night when the beasts of the forest come down to the pool to drink they leave the child unmolested, a group of wolves even sitting round him watching him in the moonlight. Next day Berchtung gives the child to a peasant to bring up, and the father subsequently repents. Hugdietrich has, however, already divided his kingdom among his other sons, and Wolf- dietrich goes empty - handed ; a feud arises with the brothers, in which Wolfdietrich's whole army is anni- hilated except the faithful Berchtung, his ten sons, and Wolfdietrich himself. It is at this point in the story that he escapes to Lombardy. In a subsequent series of ad- ventures he rescues Berchtung's sons, who are prisoners in Constantinople, and avenges himself on his enemies. These are, in brief summary, the sagas which make up the national epic of the German people; they go far back, as we have seen, into German history, back to the age of the Migrations, and even beyond it ; for there is possibly a dim, unconscious echo in them of a still earlier and more primitive poetry, in which the forces of nature, the seeming victory of light over darkness, of sunshine over storm, of summer over winter, are reflected. This epic literature, moreover, was not merely a pos- session of the Middle Ages, but was revived again in succeeding epochs, in the prose romances and ballads of the period before and after the Reformation, in the eighteenth century as soon as the fetters of classicism had been broken, and in the drama of the nineteenth century from La Motte Fouque to Hebbel and Wagner. CHAPTER IV. THE COURT EPIC. THE second of the two main divisions into which the narrative poetry of the Middle Ages falls is the Court Epic. It is distinguished from the Popular Epic, which has just been discussed, not so much by an essential difference of treatment, of poet, or even of the public to which it appealed, as by a difference in the materials of which it was composed. The themes of the Court Epic are mainly taken from the vast body of story and tradition that grew up round the figure of King Arthur and the knights of his Round Table ; these stories were seized upon by French poets, who made them a kind of mirror of the polite life of the twelfth century, and from France they were imported into Germany. The civilisation they describe was wholly different from that of the national sagas ; and their conventions and customs were originally as foreign to Germany as their themes. It is true, the point of view, even in the earliest attempts to naturalise the French epic, was, to the best of the adapter's ability, focussed to German eyes ; but, as a rule, the German poets of the Court Epic did not allow themselves much freedom of invention, and consequently a good deal besides the mere incidents of the story was taken over from the French poems. It is this which makes these adaptations often appear exotic when compared with the epics on national themes. We have already seen how a courtly type of epic had begun to differentiate itself from the older German narra- HEINRICH VON VELDEKE. 33 tive literature, in the poems of Lamprecht, Konrad, and, most noticeable of all, in the Tristrant of Eilhart von Oberge. But the real founder of the Court Epic in Germany was Heinrich von Veldeke, a poet whose home was at Maestricht in the Low Lands. His earliest poem seems to have been a translation of the legend of Saint Servatius ; he then began, about the year 1175, to pre- pare a German version of the French Roman d' Eneas ; but this was not finished until about 1186. Heinrich von Veldeke's Emit is the first German Court Epic of im- portance. The main features of this translation of Virgil into terms of the Middle Ages especially the quite un- classic adaptation of the love episodes to suit the ideals of the age of chivalry are naturally also to be found in the French original ; but Heinrich von Veldeke is not a literal translator, and the alterations which he makes, do not always seem to be due to exigencies of metre or rhyme ; he thinks the French poet's thoughts over again, and in an essentially German way. His poem is thus German in something more than its language. A little later than Heinrich von Veldeke, and obviously inspired by him, a Hessian poet, Herbert von Fritslar, prepared, under the patronage of the Landgraf Hermann of Thur- ingia, a counterpart to the Eneit by translating Benoit de Sainte More's epic of the Trojan War ; but Herbert's Lied von Troja shows much less skill and originality than its predecessor, and is, in its enormous length over 18,000 verses tedious and unreadable. Hardly more merit is to be found in Albrecht von Halberstadt's version of Ovid's Metamorphoses (ca. 1190), which was based on the Latin original and not on a French trans- lation ; but only a fragment of the original poem has come down to us. Although the beginnings of the Court Epic are thus to be sought on the Lower Rhine, the three chief masters, Hartmann von Aue, Wolfram von Eschenbach, and Gottfried von Strassburg, were all South Germans. It was the special merit of the first of these, Hartmann von Aue, to give Germany a Court Epic on the model of the c 34 THE COURT EPIC. French Arthurian epics of Chretien de Troyes. Of Hartmann's life, as of the lives of all the poets of this time, we have only fragmentary, indirect, and uncertain know- ledge. He seems to have been born about 1170, and served as " dienstman " or vassal of a lord of Aue, probably in the Ortenau on the west side of the Black Forest ; he had the advantage of a scholarly education, and his life was darkened by more than one sorrow. He perhaps took part in the unfortunate Crusade of 1196-97, and he was dead before 1220. To his earlier years belong his lyrics and the Biichlein or Klage, a love epistle in the manner of the old " Soul and Body " dialogues of mediaeval literature. His principal romances were written in the last decade of the twelfth and the first decade of the thirteenth century ; they are, in the most probable chronological order, JErec, Gregorius^ Der arme Heinrich, and Iwein. The first and last of these are Arthurian romances, and both are based on epics by Hartmann's French master, Chretien de Troyes. Between these two epics, of which the first was written about 1191, the second ten or fifteen years later, there is all the difference of style and composi- tion which distinguishes the work of a beginner from that of a finished master, but in other respects they are com- plementary. Erec is a young knight of the Round Table who wins the hand of Enite, the daughter of a poor Graf, and, in the excess of his love for her, forgets his duties as a knight. Hurt by people's reproaches, Enite goes out into the world of adventure with him, and helps him to win back his good name as a knight. Iwein presents the converse picture. In the spirit of adventure the hero defeats and slays the possessor of a magic spring in the forest, and marries his widow ; he is, however, so devoted to his profession of knighthood that he forgets his wife entirely. He breaks his vow to return to her at the end of a year, and when reminded of this vow, is so over- whelmed by remorse that he becomes bereft of his senses and lives for a time naked in the forest. Restored to health, another series of adventures await him before he is ulti- HARTMANN VON AUE. 35 mately reconciled to his wife. Iwein is the best example in German of the Arthurian romance as it was cultivated in France ; it is admirably planned and proportioned, and free alike from German diffuseness and German obscurity. The Hartmann who wrote Iwein is the unsurpassed master of form and style in the Middle High German epic. More personal and less objective are the two romances, which, in all probability, were composed before Iivein, Gregorius, and Der arme Hdnrich. The first of these is a religious legend in which asceticism takes the place of the active optimism of the Arthurian epic. Like a Christian Oedipus, Gregorius finds himself the victim of a terrible fate : he is the child of a brother and sister, the husband of his mother. And to expiate his crime he has himself chained for seventeen years to a rock in the sea, where dripping water is his only nourishment ; in the end he is rewarded by being proclaimed Pope by the voice of God. Monastic and ascetic also is Der arme Heinrich, a legend possibly associated with the house in whose service Hartmann himself stood. A certain Heinrich von Aue becomes, at the height of his prosperity, stricken with leprosy ; and the physicians tell him that the only remedy is the blood of a young girl, who, of her own free will, gives her life for him. The daughter of a farmer, with whom Heinrich has taken refuge, is ready to sacri- fice herself; but at the last moment, when the knife is being whetted, Heinrich repents ; he calls to the physician to stay his hand ; he will rather die himself. The disease disappears, and the farmer's daughter ultimately becomes Heinrich's wife. Skilfully planned and sympathetically told, Der arme Heinrich is one of the most charming idylls in mediaeval literature. While Hartmann's supreme merit was, without denying his own poetic individuality, to have familiarised Germany with the clear, well-proportioned art of the French master of the Arthurian romance, the two other great poets of the Court Epic, and, above all, Wolfram von Eschenbach, were more original. No European poet, indeed, before 36 THE COURT EPIC. Dante can vie with Wolfram in grandeur of imagination and depth of insight into the springs of human action ; he is the profoundest Germanic poet of the Middle Ages. When he was born we do not know ; but he seems to have been of about the same age as Hartmann. He may have lived until 1220. He took his name from the little Bavarian (then Prankish) town of Eschenbach, which lies not far from Ansbach, and here he was probably born. Compared with Hartmann, he was comparatively illiterate ; he even tells us he could not read or write. Whether this statement is to be taken as strictly true or not, his com- parative freedom from the trammels of French romance, the naturalness of his outlook on life, and his sturdy humour, show, at least, that literary traditions did not lie heavy on him. Wolfram von Eschenbach was repeatedly the guest of the great patron of Middle High German poetry, the Landgraf Hermann of Thuringia, and there is ground for believing that at least the sixth and seventh books of his epic, Parzival, were written, not long after 1203, in the Wartburg near Eisenach ; in any case the poem was com- posed at the beginning of the thirteenth century. Parzival is an epic of nearly 25,000 lines, divided over sixteen books ; it unrolls in the leisurely fashion of chival- ric romance the story of Parzival, son of Gahmuret of Anjou and Queen Herzeloyde of Valois, from his careless, idyllic childhood in the forest, where his mother brings him up in order to preserve him from the temptations of adventure, which had proved fatal to his father, to the culmination of his life, when he is crowned king of the Gral. It differs from other epic romances in being not merely a book of adventure ; it is also a story of spiritual growth, the history of a soul in its journey through the trials and temptations of life ; for Parzival's ultimate triumph is due to his purity and singleness of purpose, to his power of rising superior to the doubts and despairs through which he passes. To the child of the forest the existence of the great world outside is first revealed by knights in armour, the bpy believes to be gods, for his mother had WOLFRAM VON ESCHENBACH's " PARZIVAL." 37 taught him that God was bright and shining. From these knights he learns the knowledge his mother would fain have kept from him, and he begs to be allowed to seek the court of King Arthur. Herzeloyde lets him go, but, in the hope that he may be driven back to her by the mockery of men, she dresses him in the garb of a fool. Parzival, however, does not return, and his mother dies of a broken heart. Meanwhile on his way to King Arthur he becomes, through his very innocence and ignorance of the laws of chivalry, involved in guilt; he kills a noble knight and robs a noble lady of her ring and brooch. From King Arthur's court he finds his way to the castle of an old knight, Gurnemanz of Graharz, who receives him hospitably and gives him the wisdom of which he stands so sorely in need. Once more he goes out into the world, still pure of heart, but no longer a simpleton, and by his first deed of prowess wins the heart and hand of a beautiful queen, Kondwiramur, who becomes his wife. Parzival's thoughts now revert to his mother in the forest, and he resolves to seek her out, ignorant of the fact that his long absence has cost her her life. To- wards evening on the first day he arrives at a lake, and inquires of some fishermen where he may find a night's lodging. The most distinguished among them directs Parzival to a castle in the neighbourhood where he will himself be his host. Parzival is well received, and led into a hall where sit four hundred knights ; his host, beside whom he is placed, is no other than King Anfortas, the king of the Gral. According to the in- terpretation of the church, the Holy Gral, a vessel of miraculous powers, was identified with the cup from which Christ drank at the Last Supper, and in which Joseph of Arimathea received His blood when He was nailed to the cross. In Wolfram's Parzival it has become a precious stone, which possesses marvellous powers of supplying meat and drink ; those powers, however, have to be renewed once each year, on Good Friday, by a dove that descends from heaven. Parzival 38 THE COURT EPIC. is now the witness of the mystic ceremony of the Oral. He sees the bleeding spear borne through the hall, and hears the knights groaning when they see it ; he ob- serves that his host, Anfortas, suffers from a wound that will not heal, and through a half-open door he catches a glimpse of King Titurel, old and ashen pale. But all this he sees and hears in silence ; no question crosses his lips as to what it all means, no word of sympathy for the sufferers. Next morning when he wakens, he finds the company of the previous evening gone, and leaves the castle ; only later does he learn that he has been in the castle of Monsalvatsch, the castle of the Gral. He returns to the court of King Arthur, where the sorceress Kundrie, the messenger of the Gral, confronts him and curses him for his lack of sympathy on the evening at Mon- salvatsch. One word of sympathy from his lips would have brought relief and healing to the sufferers. Parzival is overcome by his sense of guilt ; he feels dishonoured, and sets out again to seek the castle of the Gral and repair his fatal omission ; and for four long years he wanders in the Valley of the Shadow, doubting, despair- ing, seeking, fighting, but still untarnished in heart and soul, still facing life with manly courage. Meanwhile Wolfram turns aside from his hero's adventures to re- late those of Gawan, the more worldly ideal of the Arthurian knight, who serves as a kind of foil to the guileless hero. In the ninth book we return again to Parzival, who, hopeless and despairing, is rebuked by an old knight for bearing arms on Good Friday. The knight induces Parzival to seek out a hermit in the forest, and to unburden to him his load of sin. His horse guides him to the place, where he finds Trevrizent, the brother of Anfortas and Herzeloyde, his own uncle. What Gurnemanz did for him in the first part of the story, Trevrizent does now ; Parzival opens his heart to the hermit, and learns from him what path he must follow if he will find again the Gral. Two great trials of valour "TITUREL" AND "WILLEHALM." 39 and strength await him before the goal is reached ; he must overcome both Gawan and his own half-brother, Feirefiz. Then he returns once more to the castle of Monsalvatsch, and asks the question of sympathy which releases the sufferers from the spell. He is reunited with Kondwiramur, and himself becomes king of the Gral. So closes this epic of human suffering and of the redeeming power of sympathy, an epic which crystallises into poetry, as no other work of its time, the spiritual aspiration, the naive beauty and emotional intensity of mediaeval Christianity. In Parzival himself the worldly and the spiritual blend to form the perfect knight. Wolfram von Eschenbach is the author of two other poems, the so-called Titurel, of which the leading figures, Schionatulander and Sigune, appeared episodically in the great epic ; and Willehalm, a version of the French Bataille (FAliscans. Both were written subsequently to Parzival. The first of these poems is composed in a strophic metre similar to that of the popular epic, and shows Wolfram's art from a new side ; it is a fragmentary love-story, an idyllic episode rather than an epic romance. In Willehalm, on the other hand, the subject of which was suggested to Wolfram by the Landgraf of Thuringia, we find a stormier, more virile life than was depicted either in Parzival or Titurel ; Parzival had presented a picture of the Christian hero in the ideal world of romance ; Willehalm portrays the Christian hero as a soldier fighting for his faith. The gentle, unworldly Kondwiramur stands in similar contrast to Willehalm's noble and heroic wife Gyburg, the finest of all Wolfram's women. But, like Parzival, this poem is also domi- nated by the poet's own personality, his calm, just out- look on life and the nobility of soul which enabled him to rise superior to the strife of factions and the differ- ences of religious faith. The third of the great medieval epic poets is Gottfried von Strassburg, of whose life we are even more completely in ignorance than of Hartmann's or Wolfram's ; we have, however, direct evidence' in an acrostic that he was the 40 THE COURT EPIC. author of the epic of Tristan. We can also infer that Gottfried was a learned poet, that is to say, familiar with both Latin and French, and that, unlike the others, he did not belong to the nobility ; to contemporaries he is always " Meister " Gottfried, not " Herr." From internal evidence it is possible to fix the date of the poem as approximately 1210. The source of Tristan is, to some extent, a matter of conjecture. Chretien de Troyes wrote an epic on the subject, which is lost, and it would be natural to assume that Gottfried had found his materials here. He expressly mentions, however, a certain " Thomas of Brittany " as his source, and a few fragments of an old French Tristan by a "jongleur" of this name have been discovered. These fragments are, for the most part, from a part of the poem which Gottfried did not reach, his epic being unfinished, but there is sufficient correspondence to place his indebtedness beyond question. Tristan's father, Riwalin of Parmenia, fell in battle before his son was born, and his mother, Blancheflur, died in giving birth to him ; he is brought up by the faithful marshal Rual, and astonishes everyone by his precocious powers. Carried off by Norse merchants, he is landed on the coast of Cornwall, and makes his way to the castle of Tintajoel, where King Marke holds his court. Here his foster-father finds him after a search of four years, and discloses to the king and to himself who he is. Thereupon King Marke appoints him his heir, and amidst the ceremony of the mediaeval " Schwert- leite," Tristan is invested with the honours of knighthood. The young hero's first business is to avenge his father's murder in Parmenia ; he reconquers that country and hands it over to his foster-father's sons. He then returns to Cornwall, where he undertakes to free the land from an intolerable tribute imposed upon it by the Irish king Gurmun and his brother-in-law Morold. The matter depends on single combat with Morold. Tristan over- comes him, but receives a wound which, as his dying opponent tells him, can only be cured by his sister, the Irish queen. Morold's brother 'is taken back to Ireland, GOTTFRIED VON STRASSBURG'S "TRISTAN." 4! and the queen preserves a splinter of Tristan's sword, which she finds in the wound. In search of healing, Tristan finds his way to Ireland, where, disguised as a " Spielmann," he wins the interest of the young princess Isolde for his art ; in return for the instruction he gives her, her mother heals his wound. Meanwhile the Cornish noblemen are growing jealous of Tristan's influence at his uncle's court, and in the hopes of preventing Tristan suc- ceeding him, they propose to the king that he should marry. The young Isolde, of whom Tristan has brought back favourable reports, is chosen, and Tristan is sent as envoy to Dublin. She recognises in him the Spielmann of former days and loves him ; but her love is suddenly turned to hate, when, by means of the sword -splinter her mother has preserved, she discovers that King Marke's envoy is the murderer of her uncle. She is about to avenge herself on him when her mother inter- venes, and after Tristan has explained his mission, Isolde's father consents to her union with Marke. On the voyage to Cornwall Isolde's hatred of her companion is by an unhappy accident turned to the fiercest passion ; they drink together, in mistake for wine, a love-potion which Isolde's mother had prepared for her and Marke, in order to ensure a happy marriage. This passion grows in in- tensity, and the honour of vassal and bride-elect are alike forgotten. The marriage with King Marke is celebrated, and the love of Tristan and Isolde kept a secret from the king. The epic now becomes a story of love intrigue, in which the cunning deception practised by the lovers is again and again on the brink of being discovered. At last, however, Tristan and Isolde are banished from the court, and love again is supreme in the seclusion of the " Minnegrotte," where they take refuge. Reconciliation with the king follows, then another discovery. This time Tristan has to flee. At the court of the Duke of Arundel he hopes to forget Isolde, and meets there another Isolde, " Isolde with the white hands," to whom he transfers his affection. But although he marries her, the effects of the love-potion are not to be destroyed ; he is irresistibly 42 THE COURT EPIC. drawn back to Cornwall, where more adventures await him. Again we find him united to his wife, but he has returned with a wound from a poisoned spear, and only the Isolde of Cornwall can cure him. A messenger is dispatched to fetch her, and it is arranged that if she returns with the ship, it is to bear a white sail, if not, a black one. Tristan's wife is, however, jealous and deceives him, telling him that the sail of the approaching vessel is black. He succumbs before the ship reaches the shore, and Isolde of Cornwall dies of grief at his side. The secret of the fatal potion is revealed to King Marke, and he has the lovers buried side by side in Cornish soil ; a vine and rose, planted on their graves, intertwine. Gottfried did not live to complete his epic, and, to find the end of the story after Tristan's marriage to the white- handed Isolde, we have to turn to his continuers, Ulrich von Tiirheim, who wrote about 1240, and Heinrich von Freiberg (ca. 1300), a much more gifted poet than Ulrich. Gottfried's Tristan, no less than Iwein and Parzival, is one of the masterpieces of mediseval literature ; clear, pellucid, written with a mastery of language inferior to that of no other mediseval poet, Tristan is a romance of inexhaustible charm. So true and living do Gottfried's figures stand out against the background, so wonderfully is their passion attuned to the music of the ever-present sea, that even the modern reader is not wearied by the recurrence of endless love-adventures. No other poet of the Middle Ages understood, as Gottfried did, how to describe a great passion ; none realised, as he had done, the intense earnestness of those whose lives are in its grip. Not a touch of lightness, not a gleam of frivolity, lightens the grim pessimism, in which the old Germanic virtue of unflinching loyalty succumbs before the sinister power which holds two noble souls in its grasp. With these three poets, Hartmann, Wolfram, and Gott- fried, the German Arthurian epic touches its highest point ; the literature which followed, in so far at least as it restricted itself to the Arthurian stories, was little more than unoriginal and uninspired imitation. And in pro- IMITATORS OF HARTMANN AND WOLFRAM. 43 portion as the influence of one or other of the chief poets predominates, it is possible to group the work of their successors. To the imitators of Hartmann and Hartmann had the most immediate influence upon his contemporaries belong Ulrich von Zatzikoven, a Swiss poet who wrote a Lanzelet about 1195, and, perhaps most gifted of all the minor poets of the age, Wirnt von Gravenberg, a Bavarian nobleman, who about 1205 wrote his Wigalois, an epic, the hero of which is Gawan's son. Gawan himself is the subject of a long, planless poem, Die Krone (i.e., " the crown of all adventures "), which a Carinthian poet, Heinrich von Tiirlin, wrote under Hartmann's influence about 1 2 20 or a little earlier. Hartmann's style may still be traced in the second half of the thirteenth century, in the epics of a poet of Salzburg known as " der Pleier." But while these imitators of Hartmann have, one and all, taken over their master's way of looking at life, that dualism which presents the forces of light and darkness in even balance, not one grasped the import- ance of the greatest lesson he had to teach, the lesson of artistic form. As was to be expected, the influence of Wolfram was still less conducive to style and proportion ; indeed, the very originality of Wolfram deteriorated, in his successors, into a mannerism. His influence on the Court epic be- came more marked as the thirteenth century advanced. The chief poem of Wolfram's school is Der jungere Titurel, a long romance, written about 1270 by a Bavarian, perhaps Albrecht von Scharfenberg by name, and built up on the fragments of Wolfram's Titurel. Of Wolfram's understanding for the spiritual side of life there is little in his successors ; but something of the imaginative mys- ticism of Wolfram's Gral story has at least passed over into Der jungere Titurel. To the group of literature associated with. Parzival belong also two other Bavarian poems, Der heilige Georg, by Reinbot von Duren (ca. 1240), and Lohengrin, written at a still later date (between 1276 and 1290) than Der jungere Titurel. 44 THE COURT EPIC. The influence of Gottfried of Strassburg spread more rapidly. In 12 20 a Swiss poet, Konrad Fleck, imitated him in a love epic, Flore und Blancheflur, and the two continuers of Tristan, already mentioned, were more or less disciples of Gottfried. There was a more modern element in Gottfried's art which appealed with increasing force as time went on to the poets of the Court epic ; and it is not surprising to find that his influence is paramount on the two chief poets of the later period, Rudolf von Ems and Konrad von Wtirzburg. The first of these was a native of Switzerland, taking his name from Ems near Chur. He has left a vast quantity of verse, which, however, partakes more of the character of chronicle than romance. Only in his early period, in poems like Der gute Gerhart and Barlaam und Josaphat, which were written not long after 1220, does Rudolf keep himself sufficiently free from religious asceticism and pedantic detail to appeal to his readers' interest from the purely poetic side ; even his Wilhelm von Or/ens, written between 1231 and 1238, a romance of chivalry, is dry and tedious, and his Weltchronik, a history of the world down to the age of Solomon, is rather an encyclopaedia of mediaeval learning than a poem. All that such a poet could learn from Gottfried was the method of presenting his subject ; the warm life, the pagan revelling in passion, which provided the atmo- sphere of Gottfried's Tristan, could mean nothing to Rudolfs dry, ascetic temperament. A poet of a different stamp was Konrad von Wurzburg, who, probably a native of Wurzburg, died at Basel in 1287 ; he began to write not long after Rudolf von Ems' death in 1254. Konrad has left a considerable body of narrative poetry behind him, characterised by a healthy realism and told in that effective narrative style he had learned from Gottfried ; but Konrad, compared with his master, fails, as all the minor Middle High German poets fail, in being unable to distinguish the essential from the unessential, the poetic from the prosaic. He began by writing religious legends, such as Alexius, and KONRAD VON WURZBURG. 45 poems with strongly marked religious tendencies, like Der JVelt Lohn and Die goldene Schmiede, the latter an allegorical glorification of the Virgin. From these he passed to more worldly romances, such as Kaiser Otto^ Die Herzemdre the story of a knight who, dying in the East, commands that his heart be taken back to his mistress, whereupon the latter's husband has it cooked and served up to her and Konrad's paean in honour of friendship, Engelhart. In these short romances Konrad is seen at his best. The unwieldy epics of Partenopier (ca. 1277), a fantastic fairy romance, which shows only too plainly the decadence of the epic, and Der trojanische Krieg, his last work, the longest epic in Middle High German literature, are so extraordinarily diffuse and ill-constructed that it is difficult for the modern reader to extract from them even the modicum of poetry they contain. Besides the gradual sinking of the Arthurian romance, the narrative literature of the thirteenth century shows two distinct developments, both of which were due to the demand for a more faithful presentment of life than is to be found in the great poets. One form in which this craving for reality showed itself, was the grow- ing tendency to substitute the truth of the chronicle for the romantic fiction of chivalry ; the other development tended to discountenance the knight in this era of social change and to deal with the lives and adventures of ordinary men and women. To the former phase belong, besides avowed chronicle poets like Rudolf von Ems, the writers of semi-historical romances, such as Ulrich von Eschenbach and Berthold von Holle. The second tendency was productive of more important poetical results ; we owe to it a revival of the " Schwank " of the mediaeval Spielmann, an example of which is the Pfaffe Amis of the " Strieker," a Rhenish poet of the earlier thirteenth century who passed part of his life in Austria, and also the admirable peasant romance by Wernher der Gartenaere, Meier Helmbrecht, which was written before the middle of the century. This story 40 THE COURT EPIC. of the discontented peasant who degenerates into a freebooter and ends his life on the gallows, is the reverse of the ideal pictures which the poets of an earlier generation had drawn ; it is a forerunner, in its unflinching realism, of a large body of German narrative poetry in the next few centuries. The actual conflict of the new realism and social ideals with the world of chivalry is illustrated by the two poems, Frauenditnst (1255) and the Frauenbuch (1257), written by a Styrian knight, Ulrich von Lichtenstein, who was probably born about 1 200. These books, descriptions of the poet's own adventures as a knight and a lover, make a vain effort to uphold the old ideals amidst the decadence of the new age. The many lyrics which are interspersed in Ulrich's narrative give him a prominent place in the history of the Minnesang. At the beginning of the fourteenth century the Arthur- ian epic was virtually dead ; it had been a kind of mirror held up to chivalry, reflecting with extraordinary sensitive- ness the changes to which knighthood was exposed ; and as soon as the old social order passed away, its degenera- tion set in with rapidity. The Court epic ceased to be the bearer of a great poetic ideal, and became merely a form, and an inferior one, of the entertaining literature of its day. 47 CHAPTER V. MINNESANG AND DIDACTIC POETRY. As we have already seen in considering the beginnings of Middle High German poetry, the origin of the third great group of that poetry, the lyric or Minnesang, presents more difficult problems than either of the other two. But whether the German Minnesang was, like the Popular Epic, indigenous in its origins or not, it at least responded with alacrity to the stimulus which came with chivalry from the west ; at a very early stage it adopted not merely the form of the French or Provencal lyric, but also its themes and even its general social ethics and conventions. At the same time, the German singer was no artificial imitator; he honestly sang of what he felt, even when he was expressing himself in stereotyped words, images, and forms. The Minnesinger was quick to realise where he could no longer follow his Proven9al model and where his mental horizon no longer coincided with the latter's ; the German poet took over the conventions of the French lyric, but he put at an early date his own German stamp upon them. This is particularly noticeable in the more spiritual and mystic meaning which was given to the word " Minne," as compared with the personal and concrete " amour " of the French poets. Thus, when due allowance is made for the peculiar conditions of mediseval poetry the existence of binding traditions affecting the whole body of chivalric literature, Romance as well as Germanic it is possible to understand how the Minne- sang could be dependent on forms originally foreign, 48 MINNESANG AND DIDACTIC POETRY. and at the same time be the vehicle of a national lyric sentiment. In the early beginnings of the Minnesang, which have already been traced, a purely German lyric, or what ap- pears to be such, may be found beside the conventional lyric of chivalry ; but at a comparatively early date the fusion of the two was complete. The first master of the epic, Heinrich von Veldeke, was at the same time the initiator of this new phase in the development of the lyric ; in more than fifty lyric strophes, which he has left us, he has succeeded in combining the French conventions with the natural sentiment of ,the light-hearted Rhine- lander. From the Rhine, too, came Friedrich von Hausen, one of Barbarossa's crusaders, who died in 1190 in battle with the Turk. The influence of the Provengal lyric is strong on Friedrich's poetry, but one obtains, notwith- standing, a clear idea from his songs of the personality of this manly, if somewhat melancholy, soldier - poet. More gifted and original was the Thuringian, Hein- rich von Morungen, who represents a further stage in the adaptation of the French lyric to German needs ; in his language, and especially in his lighter and gayer mood, he widened the range of expression of the German Minnesang. Hartmann von Aue sought in his lyrics as in his narrative poetry a remedy for the spiritual dissension which he felt so keenly ; all the poems by him that have been preserved are religious in tone, and were evidently written in those years of doubt and despair, which have also left their traces on his epics. Less easily did Wol- fram's rugged genius adapt itself to the narrow confines of the lyric ; what we possess of his is more the descrip- tion of a dramatic situation than the subjective reflex of the poet's own emotional experience. Lastly, two or three lyrics have come down to us under Gottfried's name, but it is almost certain that they are not his. The master of the German Minnesang, and one of the greatest of all lyric poets, is Walther von der Vogel- weide, who lived from about 1170 to about 1228. The exact date of his birth and where he was born are unknown. WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE. 49 Many places have striven for the honour of being Walther's birthplace, but all that can be said is that he was most probably a native of the Austrian Tirol. He was of noble family the title " Herr " implies this but so poor that he was obliged to win his bread by his talents as a " fahrender Sanger." The first definite knowledge we have of Walther is that he spent his early years at the court of Duke Leopold V. in Vienna, and that he here attracted the attention of Reinmar von Hagenau, or Reinmar der Alte, an Alsatian poet who had made Vienna his home. Reinmar has left a large number of lyrics, but these rarely rise above the conventional forms of the Minnesang ; his theme is almost invariably unrequited love, and the tone of his poetry is monotonously elegiac. By him, however, Walther was initiated into the art of poetry, and when Reinmar died, about 1 2 10, Walther wrote a noble panegyric of him. Walther von der Vogelweide's early lyrics are influenced by Reinmar ; but his tone is lighter, more youthful and exuberant ; he learned the art of Reinmar's poetry with- out being unduly affected by its mood. On the whole, however, Walther in this early period has not advanced much beyond the artificial conventions of his time. He left Vienna in 1198 and, for the next ten or twelve years, wandered from castle to castle as a " Fahrender." He was, no doubt, everywhere a welcome and hon- oured guest, and was often entertained by his noble patrons for weeks at a time. In this, the second period of Walther's life, he is the unapproached master of the Minnesang, as a form of court poetry. Not all the poems he sang were based on personal feelings or experience; at the same time, he doubtless met by the way with love-adventures of more or less seriousness which provided materials for his verse. In the year 1197, the Emperor Heinrich VI. died un- expectedly at Messina, and the question of his successor threw the whole political life of the Roman Empire into confusion. Walther von der Vogelweide became a strong partisan of Duke Philip, the Swabian pretender to the 50 MINNESANG AND DIDACTIC POETRY. imperial throne. Thus, under the stress of circumstances, Walther became a political poet, and, as far as his art was concerned, an innovator. He opened up a field for the courtly Minnesang, which had hitherto been only considered suitable for the lower type of Spielmann ; he raised the old "Spruch" to the level of national and patriotic song, and widened the whole scope of mediaeval lyric poetry. The history of those stormy years in Ger- man history may be followed step by step in Walther's " Spruchdichtung " ; that is to say, the gradual rise of Philip's fortunes, until at the height of his prosperty, in 1208, he was murdered by Otto of Wittelsbach. Walther seems only to have followed Philip with interest as long as he had adversity to fight against, and we do not know how the tragic close of the Duke's career affected the poet. In 1212, however, Walther again entered the lists as a political singer ; the Pope's antagonism to the new emperor, Otto IV., at once induced him to take the latter's part. It was not, however, until the young Friedrich II., the next Staufen emperor, succeeded to the throne, that Walther reaped any benefit from his loyalty to the reigning dynasty ; Friedrich gave him a small estate and enabled him to pass his last days free from care. Once more, in 1227, Walther defended his emperor against the interference of the Pope, and warmly advocated the crusade of 1228. Whether Walther himself accom- panied Friedrich on this crusade or not is doubtful ; from 1228 on his life is a blank to us. A tradition tells that he passed his last days in Wiir/.burg and lies buried there, but even the year of his death is unknown. It was probably not later than 1230. The last period of Walther's life was at the same time that of his greatest unpolitical lyric, his finest love-songs. Just as he had, as " Spruchdichter," passed beyond the boundaries of the conventional Minnesang, so here, too, he left its prescribed rules behind him ; the conventions of the " Minnedienst" have ceased to be any longer even a scaffolding for his art. He now treats of themes which the courtly singer of the old school would have scorned ; WALTHER'S SUCCESSORS. 51 and just these songs of " niedere Minne " songs like " Unter den linden," one of the most perfect gems of mediaeval German poetry are unsurpassed in the lyric poetry of the Middle Ages. Thus in every field of his art, Walther broke new ground ; the supreme merit belongs to him of having transformed the aristocratic Minnesang into the national lyric of his people. His personal outlook in the world was not optimistic, as it could hardly have been in one who was exposed to the buffets of so stormy an age. He looked backwards rather than forwards, and as he grew older the shadows on his life deepened. To his later years we owe the splendid poetic melancholy of his elegy : " Owe war sint verswunden alliu miniu jar ! " Perhaps the greatest tribute of all to Walther's genius is that the later development of the German lyric, down into the century of the Reformation, stands under his influence ; he is the master to whom the later singers, Meistersingers as well as Minnesingers, look up as to an infallible lawgiver. There were poets of whom the Swabian Hiltbold von Schwangau may be taken as rep- resentative who clung conservatively to the older con- ventions of the courtly Minnesang, and who, despite the inevitable influence of Walther, preferred to hark back to the latter's predecessors for their models ; but the majority of Walther's imitators were content to imitate him slavishly. Of the latter, Ulrich von Singenberg of St Gall and Leuthold von Saben were not ungifted poets, although they had little understanding for the really vital elements in Walther's poetry. To have had this understanding was the conspicuous merit of the greatest of Walther's contemporaries and successors, Neidhart von Reuental, who lived from about 1 1 80 to 1250. Neidhart seized upon the popular side of Walther's poetry ; he developed the lyric of " niedere Minne " and created what has been described as " hofische Dorfpoesie," village poetry under court influence. This poetry, no less than Walther's, was intended for court circles ; but by introducing, in a manner that almost 52 MINNESANG AND DIDACTIC POETRY. suggests a comparison with Heine, ironical, piquant, and even grotesque elements, Neidhart provided a new zest for the jaded palates of his audience. In verses attuned to the season, the sprightly, sharp-tongued poet sings of the peasants on whom he looks down as upon a heavy- witted race. From one point of view, all this is a descent from the noble Minnesang of Walther and his pre- decessors ; there is a strain of coarseness in Neidhart's lyric which necessarily appealed to a lower taste. But it was an inevitable stage through which the lyric had to pass. The great outburst of popular song in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries would not have been what it was, had poets like Neidhart von Reuental not thus directed the stream of the courtly Minnesang into popular channels. Few of the Minnesinger of the later half of the thirteenth century escaped the influence of Neidhart von Reuental. In most of them, as in Burkhart von Hohenfels, Ulrich von Winterstetten, and Gottfried von Neifen, we find the older court lyric side by side with the peasant lyric. But in their natural temperament and their outlook upon life the poets of this period were obviously more in sympathy with Neidhart than with Walther. " Der Tannhauser," for example, was a rough, witty Spielmann, who had little sympathy with the solemn formalities of the old " Minnedienst " ; he wrote under French influence, the models most congenial to his taste being the French " pastourels," a form of poetry which is not unsimilar to Neidhart's lyric. In the verses of " Steinmar " probably Berthold Steinmar von Kling- enau the new lyric of " niedere Minne " has been reduced almost to a parody of the higher Minnesang. By the close of the thirteenth century the Minnesang had become a distant tradition, and when attempts were made to revive it, as, for example, by the Zurich citizen, Johannes Had- laub, it made the impression of being an artificial and insincere cult. The stimulating qualities of Walther's songs of " niedere Minne " are also to be found in his " Spruchdichtung," his poetic comments on the political and social questions NEIDHART AND REINMAR VON ZWETER. 53 of the day. As Neidhart developed the lower lyric, so Reinmar von Zweter, a poet of the Rhineland, who passed part, at least, of his life in Austria, was Walther's immedi- ate successor as a " Spruchdichter." Reinmar's satire is mild and timid, and even his political poetry has not the vigour of his master's ; his verses are monotonous and lacking in variety ; but we find in them, nevertheless, the germs of that satiric and didactic " Spruchdichtung " which was to become so powerful a weapon in the hands of the social reformers of the Reformation age. From now on, the "Spruch" remains a constant quantity in German poetry ; its scope was widened to admit the most outspoken satire on the one side, and on the other to include as in the verses of poets like the " Marner," a Swabian who lived till about 1270 the recondite learning of the time. This, rather than the pure lyric, was the form of poetry in which the later Meistersinger schools delighted to exercise their art. The transition from purely imaginative poetry to a didactic and satiric literature was a characteristic sign of the times in the thirteenth century ; it was intimately connected with the social changes of the age, the gradual rise in importance of the burgher. The beginnings of didacticism in Middle High German poetry may, how- ever, be traced back to the best years of the century, and even as in the case of the Tugendkhre of Wernher von Elmendorf, and the long popular Disticha Catoms beyond it. A typical moral text-book of the early thirteenth century was Der Winsbeke, by a Bavarian Herr von Windesbach ; it contains, in the form of in- struction given by a father to his son, the code of knightly virtue in an age when the Arthurian epic held the mirror up to chivalry. As a poem it has small merit, and still less has a later companion poem Die Winsbekin, the instruction of a mother to her daughter. A long step forward in the direction of a purely didactic literature is to be seen in Der welsche Gast, a poem of some 15,000 verses, written about 1215 by an Italian churchman, Thomasin von Zirclaere, and sent as a " guest " 54 MINNESANG AND DIDACTIC POETRY. to German lands. Thomasin destroys the poetic halo that had surrounded chivalry, and keeps before him religious and moral aims. But he remains the aristocrat, to whom the burgher is of small importance ; he still looks up to the Arthurian epics as moral guides for the youth of the time. In religious matters he insists on the Pope's supremacy in the Holy Roman Empire, and will admit of no infringement of the letter of the catholic faith. Still more democratically didactic is a collection of epigrammatic " Spriiche " entitled Bescheidenheit (" worldly wisdom "), begun perhaps as early as Der welsche Gasf, but not finished until some fifteen years later. The author, who calls himself " Freidank," was no doubt a wandering Spielmann, but except the fact that he took part in the crusade of 1229, we know nothing of him. Bescheidenheit is a book of the people and for the people. The existence of knighthood and the ideas of chivalry are by no means ignored, especially in the poet's discussion of love ; but they have ceased to be more than an ideal in the background. His point of view is that of the common man, whose trusting piety did not blind him to the shortcomings of the church, whose implicit faith in Rome did not bring with it the belief that the Pope should also be the head of the state and dictate to a German emperor. What Freidank gives us is not direct satire, but it is a preparation for the satire of the coming centuries. Light is thrown on the social conditions at the close of the thirteenth century by a collection of satirical poetry written in Lower Austria and ascribed to a Spielmann, Seifried Helbling ; a dialogue of questions and answers, a form familiar in the late Latin literature of this class, is here made the vehicle of a trenchant criticism of the passing social order. Didactic in a more learned way is another poem of this period, Der Renner (so called because it was to "run" through the world, to be a " cursor mundi "), by Hugo von Trimberg, a schoolmaster of Teuerstadt, a village on the outskirts of Bamberg. Hugo von Trimberg's matter-of-fact spirit has little MIDDLE HIGH GERMAN PROSE. 55 patience with the "lies" set forth in the epics of chivalry, but he sees no falseness in the elaborate allegory in which he himself inveighs against the sinful life. But Der Rentier has little plan or form ; its author little calling for poetry. . He pleases best when he borrows most freely from his predecessor and master, Freidank. Middle High German literature is almost exclusively a literature in verse ; prose, at least as a literary vehicle, is non-existent, and to find specimens of it at all we have to turn mainly to sermons and law-books. To the former category belong the German tracts of David of Augsburg, who died in 1271, a preacher whose mysticism fore- shadowed coming developments in German religious thought. His German sermons are unfortunately lost. But from his contemporary, Berthold von Regensburg, we possess many German sermons. Berthold lived from about 1 2 20 to 1272, wandered all over Germany, and was unquestionably the greatest popular preacher of the German Middle Ages. His language has all the qualities of a good popular prose ; it is direct, dramatic, sincere, and often illumined by striking imagery. Indeed, it is difficult to believe that so excellent a prose style had not been preceded by a long evolution of prose literature. Of less literary value is the prose of the law-books of the age. The model for all the German legal codes was the famous Sachsenspiegel, put together in Low German about 1225 by Eike von Repgowe, a knight of Anhalt ; and the most important imitation of it was the South German Schivabenspiegel, which, in its oldest form, dates from about 1260. Of more general interest than these is the so-called Lucidarius, a kind of encyclopaedia in the form of question and answer which was compiled between 1 190 and 1195, possibly at the direct instigation of Heinrich the Lion. Looking back on the Middle High German literature which we have just passed in review, it might be said that its most conspicuous characteristic is extreme simplicity ; it is practically only a literature in verse, and it falls into great clearly marked groups, distinguished either by the 56 MINNESANG AND DIDACTIC POETRY. rank and culture of the individual poets, or by the themes they chose for their poetry. National epic and Court epic exist side by side with little overlapping, and such as there is, is not due to any unclearness of definition. In the same way the lyric, or Minnesang, developed on bold and simple lines, without the confusion of forms which renders a survey of any other period of German lyric poetry so difficult. Least sharply defined is the group of literature which has been discussed in the latter part of the present chapter, satire and didactic poetry; but these may be regarded as merely the prelude to a vast literature which belongs essentially to the following age. 57 CHAPTER VI. THE TRANSITION FROM MEDIAEVAL TO MODERN LITERATURE. ABSENCE of continuity is a distinguishing feature of Germany's literary as well as her political history; she would appear to cling with less tenacity to her poetic traditions than Italy, or France, or England, and conse- quently her periods of transition are usually at the same time periods of destruction and reconstruction, of decay and rebirth. In the literature of Italy, Dante, Ariosto, Tasso, were the representatives of a transition from mediaevalism to modern times; in France, the ideas of the Middle Ages merged, like dissolving views, into the aspirations of the Renaissance, and in England a poet like Chaucer is at the same time a spokesman of medievalism and the " father of modern poetry." In German literature, on the other hand, there is no Chaucer, no bridge leading from the Middle Ages to modern times. The decay, which had already set in in the fourteenth century, pro- ceeded apace in the fifteenth ; and the fabric of medieval literature had almost to be razed to the ground before the foundations of a modern literature could be laid. The subversive character of this transition is partly explained by the social and political changes to which the German people were in a peculiar degree exposed. The close of the crusades hastened the decay of chivalry ; the invention of gunpowder made the knight of the old stamp superfluous, for the issue of battles depended under the new conditions more on the masses of foot-soldiers 58 FROM MEDIEVAL TO MODERN LITERATURE. than on the valour of individuals. As the old aristocracy disappeared, the middle classes rose in importance ; com- merce became a factor of greater weight than it had ever been before, and the focus of power in the state was removed from the castle to the town. So radical a change in the social order brought about a complete shifting in the literary centre of gravity ; the polite aris- tocratic literature of the Middle Ages gave place to a crude and naive middle - class literature. The finer graces of chivalry had no counterpart in the towns, where life was honest and straightforward, but without polish or culture ; the sense of beauty and the feeling for rhythm, which had been laboriously attained by the higher classes at the opening of the twelfth century, dis- appeared as completely as if they had never existed. Literature became once more formless and unmusical ; it had, as it were, to go back to the beginnings again. It is true, the people still loved the old stories of knightly prowess, just as when, in earlier days, they sat at the feet of the noble singer ; but now that they had themselves become the tellers of these stories, the narrative alone remained ; unimaginative simplicity, a jingling doggrel or lumbering prose, not rarely a coarse humour, took the place of the refined art of the past. In place of the unworldly ideals of the knight, we now find that utilitarian didacticism which seems inseparable from the middle-class mind in all times. Almost as late as the Reformation, however, attempts were made to keep the traditions of mediaeval romance alive; Wolfram's Parzival was, between 1331 and 1336, extended by two Alsatians, Glaus Wisse and Philipp Colin ; the stories of the Trojan War, of Alexander the Great, and Charles the Great, were told again in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. But, as time went on, the attempts to revive the old epic, such as Ulrich von Fiietrer's Buck der Abenteuer, written at the close of the latter century, showed how impossible it was to bring the Arthurian ideals into harmony with the sober life of the German burgher. The Emperor Maximilian I. (1459- THE DECAY OF THE EPIC. 59 1519), the "last of the knights," was at the same time the last great patron and cultivator of mediaeval literature. Two romances associated with his name, Der Weisskonig (1512) and Teuerdank (printed 1517), have almost all the defects of the decadent epic. Chivalrous adventure is in the latter mingled with historical fact or extravagant allegory ; the spacious idealism of the old time is ousted by irrelevant moralisings on right and wrong, or by ludic- rously trivial realism ; and the whole set forth in clumsy, unpoetic verses, which, however, were not composed by the emperor himself, but by his scribe, Melchior Pfintzing of Niirnberg. Prose was more to the taste of the age than verse, and we find, accordingly, the stories of chivalry and the national epics told again and again in this medium ; many of them, indeed, became favourite " Volksbiicher " for generations to come. But even where verse was employed, the technique of Middle High German poetry had become a lost art, and the poets of the age recast the national epics in so-called " Knittelverse," as in the Dresdener Heldenbuch (1472) and the Lied vom hurnen Seifried. For a time it seemed as if the loss of chivalry might be compensated for in the poetry of this age by the poetic mysticism and allegory which filtered into European liter- ature from theological speculation ; allegories, such as that of the chess figures, were as popular in Germany as elsewhere ; and Swabia gave some promise of a revival of her old poetic prestige with an allegorical literature that might have taken its place beside the Roman de la Rose. But neither Der Minne Lehre by Heinzlein of Constance at the close of the thirteenth century, nor Hermann von Sachsenheim's Des Spiegels Abenteuer and Die Mohrin in the fifteenth century, were followed by the hoped-for poetic renaissance. The best poem of this class was, perhaps, Die Jagd, by Hadamar von Laber, a Bavarian nobleman of the early fourteenth century. The taste of the middle classes ran in the direction neither of chivalrous virtues nor poetic allegories ; the comic parody of the epic, with grotesquely realistic scenes 60 FROM MEDIEVAL TO MODERN LITERATURE. of everyday life, such as Heinrich Wittenweiler's Ring, from the beginning of the fifteenth century, was more to their taste. The short, comic anecdote, however, enjoyed chief favour. Figures like the Pfaffe Amis, Markolf, Neidhart Fuchs, round whom the comic stories of the earlier of these centuries collected, were still essen- tially mediaeval ; but in Tyl Eulenspiegel arose a more modern rogue, an incarnation of the coarse mischief, the sly practical joking, of the Reformation age. Although the oldest collection of Eulenspiegel's adventures dates from the later fifteenth century, no earlier version is extant than that which was published at Strassburg in 1515. Throughout the sixteenth century volume after volume of such merry adventures and comic anecdotes were issued from the German printing-presses. They embrace every form of "Schwank," from the coarse popular witticisms of the Austrian Pfaffe von Kalenberg (ca. 1475), i ts continua- tion, the Histori Peter Lewen (ca. 1550), and Eulenspiegel^ to the Italian and oriental collections which found their way to Germany in the train of the humanists, and semi- religious and moralising collections, such as Schimpf und Ernst (i 552) by the Franciscan monk, Johannes Pauli. Apart from this vast anecdotal literature, we find a more legitimate descendant of the mediaeval " Spruchdichtung " in the verses of the so-called " Reimsprecher " of the four- teenth and fifteenth centuries, who had skill in throw- ing off extempore verses in celebration of public events or in honour of noble patrons, or, as in the case of the special group known as " Wappendichter," writing poetry descriptive of the family arms. Here may be mentioned Peter Suchenwirth, an Austrian of the later fourteenth century, and two Niirnberg poets, Hans Rosenplut and Hans Folz, who flourished respectively about the middle of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries. Another mediaeval form of literature appealed with re- doubled force to this new age of middle-class supremacy, the beast fable. The fable of ^Esop had been revived at the beginning of our period by Ulrich Boner, whose Edel- stein (ca. 1349), a collection of fables on the Latin model, " REINKE DE VOS." 6l was one of the first German books to be printed ; and in the sixteenth century Burkard Waldis (ca. 1490-1557) in his Esopus (1548), and Erasmus Alberus (1500-53) in his Buck von der Tugend und Weisheit (1550), discovered the possibilities of the ^Esopian fable as a vehicle for religious polemics. But just as the " Schwank " literature of this age is overshadowed by the figure of Tyl Eulenspiegel, so the beast fable is overshadowed by the most famous work that the Low German peoples have produced, the romance of Reinke de Vos. In a quite special sense this is a product and possession of the Low Germans ; the Reinaert de Vos, which a certain Willem made about the middle of the thirteenth century, was Flemish ; so, too, was another version written about 1375 ; and that of Hinrik van Alkmar, written in the fifteenth century, now unfortunately lost, was Low German. The edition we know is a Low Saxon translation of the last- mentioned version; it was printed at Liibeck in 1498. From a simple allegory in which King Lion holds his court and the rascally fox is condemned for his misdeeds but escapes punishment by his superior cunning, the story grew into an elaborate satire on human nature, a legiti- mate precursor of the picaresque novels of the seventeenth century. Reinke the Fox is in disgrace ; every animal has some accusation to bring against him, and Brun the bear is despatched by King Lion to Malepertus, to summon Reinke before the court. But Brun is outwitted by the Fox's cunning; so, too, is Hintze the cat. At last, Grimbart the badger succeeds in bringing the culprit to justice. He is condemned to die, but escapes on promising to disclose to the king where he will find hidden treasure. Meanwhile Reinke proposes to make a pilgrimage to Rome to atone for his sins. Lampe the hare and Bellin the ram accompany him, but both are duped, Lampe being, indeed, served up for the supper of Reinke and his family. This brings us to the end of the first book ; the remaining three books are much less interesting and much more obviously didactic ; they are clearly later excrescences on the original story. 62 FROM MEDIAEVAL TO MODERN LITERATURE. Didactic and satiric as Reinke de Vos was, the militant antipathies of the age demanded a more direct form of satire for their expression, and, four years earlier, there had appeared the most famous German satire of its day, Sebastian Brant's Narrenschiff (1494), the proto- type of Barclay's Ship of Fools, Sebastian Brant (1457- 1521), who was born and died in Strassburg, was a humanist and a scholar ; he recognised as clearly as any of his contemporaries the depravity of the time and the abuses of the religious life. But he had little faith in any nostrums of reform ; his only hope for Germany's regen- eration was in a return to the golden age of mediaeval Catholicism. Thus his outlook was essentially negative ; he was an iconoclast rather than the builder up of a new faith, and, in spite of himself, a forerunner of the Reforma- tion. His Narrenschiff is a collection of short, vigorous satires, written in blunt rhymed verse, and occasionally with an ostentatious show of learning. From fools of crime and arrogance to rioters and spendthrifts, from meddlers and busybodies to the fools that cling with perverse self-confidence to their own ignorance, Brant marshals before us every type of folly that the age had to show ; and all of them he assembles in a ship which is bound for the fools' paradise, " Narragonien." The idea of the ship, however, which is merely the framework for a collection of disconnected satires, is soon lost sight of. The great movement of this age, the passing of the poetry of knighthood and the birth of a literature of the people, is to be seen most clearly of all in the history of the German lyric. Signs of degeneration in the courtly Minnesang are to be traced, as we have seen, early in the thirteenth century; and with every new generation of poets the bucolic lyric of Neidhart gained on the aristocratic art of the nobility. As late as the beginning of the fifteenth century there were, however, still poets bent on maintaining the old tradi- tions. Hugo von Montfort (1357-1423), and Oswald von Wolkenstein (ca. 1367-1445), both natives of that first stronghold of the German Minnesang, the moun- MINNESANG AND MEISTERGESANG. 63 tainous 'land that lies to the east of Lake Constance, were Minnesingers of the old type ; but their songs are either echoes of the past, tinged with melancholy, or excel in that technical cleverness and ingenuity of metrical construction, which was ultimately to destroy the sincerity of the lyric. Thus, imperceptibly s the aristo- cratic Minnesang became merged in the democratic Meistergesang, a form of poetry which was more con- cerned with technical " correctness " than with truth of sentiment. To no movement in German poetry is the word " school " more applicable than to the " Meister- singers." The " Meistergesang " was an artificial affair of laws and rules, and could only be learned in schools. The Minnesingers had been content to express their lyric emotion directly and simply ; the art of their suc- cessors lay in the invention of complicated strophic forms, the ingenious arrangement of words, and the introduction of pedantic and often incongruous imagery. Singing contests between rival poets were the chief events in the Meistersinger schools. Such contests, however, to judge from a poem of the end of the thirteenth century, the so - called Wartburgkrieg, which describes a contest of this kind between the chief Minnesingers assembled at the court of the Landgraf Her- mann of Thuringia, would appear to go back to medi- aeval times. In the sixteenth century the aspirant to honours in the Meistersinger schools had first to place himself as "Schuler" under the tuition of a "Meister," who taught him the elaborate code of laws inscribed in the "Tabulatur." This learned, the scholar then became, according to the Niirnberg regulations, a "Schulfreund." The next acquirement was to be able to sing at least four acknowledged "tones" or melodies, which entitled the "Schulfreund" to advance to the rank of "Singer." And from "Singer" he proceeded to " Dichter," and from " Dichter," on the invention of a new and original "tone," to "Meister." Needless to say, such a reduction of the art of poetry 64 FROM MEDIAEVAL TO MODERN LITERATURE. to an artificial exercise of mental ingenuity was not favourable to the growth of poetic genius. The Meister- singer schools bore witness to an awakening interest in poetry on the part of the "Burger" of the German towns, and they provided the soil from which sprang later developments, especially the drama ; but that was all. They produced neither real poetry nor real poets. A number of the later Minnesingers, such as the poet known as the Marner, and Heinrich von Miigeln, stand on the borderland between Minnesang and Meister- gesang, while Heinrich von Meissen, usually called " Frauenlob," who flourished about the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth century, may be regarded as the first prominent Meistersinger. His verse is typical for the whole school. Obscure imagery and scholastic mysticism, far-fetched symbolism and in- genuity of strophic form, are more conspicuous than poetic spontaneity. He is at his best when he sings the praise of domestic virtues and the well-ordered life. His name may have arisen from the fact that his best-known poem is in honour of the Virgin ; there is also a legend that he was borne to his grave in the cathedral of Mainz by women. In the fifteenth century the North Bavarian, Muskatblut, and Michael Beheim ( I4i6-ca. 1480), widened to a certain extent the range of the Meistergesang, the former by introducing religious themes, the latter by making it the vehicle of his experiences as a widely- travelled adventurer ; yet when, in the sixteenth century, Hans Folz and his greater pupil, Hans Sachs, made Niirnberg the last great centre of the Meistersingers' art, this form of poetry was not essentially different from what it had been in the time of Frauenlob. Meanwhile the irrepressible lyric feeling of the German people in these centuries of intellectual awakening found another outlet; between 1350 and 1550, when artificial rules were gradually reducing the Meistergesang to a mechanical exercise, the German Volkslied rose to heights it had never reached before and was not to reach again. In these centuries, as in the seventeenth, and, in fact, THE VOLKSLIED. 65 in all transitional periods of German literature, the lyric is the most constant element, the natural connecting link between even the most sharply marked-off periods. The national sagas of Ermanarich and Hildebrand were told again now in ballad form, and poets of the thirteenth century, such as Tannhauser and "der edle Moringer," became heroes of popular poetry ; the story of Siegfried was, as we have seen, recast in a long epic ballad. The historical ballad, which is very sparingly represented in the thirteenth century, and was practically a creation of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, is the successor to the "Spriiche"and narrative poems of the mediaeval Spielmann. The Swiss, in particular, celebrated in long semi-epic ballads their struggle against Charles the Bold, and the Lied von der Sempacher Schlacht and the Lied von der Schlacht bei Ndfels are representative historical ballads of the earlier period. This art of throwing the great events of the day into easy and attractive verse soon spread to North Germany, and by the time of the Reformation the ballad, one might say, had become the recognised newspaper of the time. It is less easy to point to the mediaeval analogue of the popular love-poetry of this time. The nai've delight in the coming of spring and the interest with which the unnamed popular poets follow the conflict between light and dark- ness, summer and winter, attuning these phenomena to their own joys and sorrows, seem to take us back to the very beginnings of the mediaeval lyric ; but the artless, natural tone of these Volkslieder is quite unhampered by rules, and had been uninfluenced by the later develop- ment of the Minnesang. We might say, perhaps, that these songs represent a form of lyric expression which had never died out, and had, all through the Middle Ages, been handed down by a merely oral tradition ; the love- song of the fourteenth century was no more a new inven- tion than the historical ballad. This is further borne out by the close connection which obviously exists between the drinking songs and social songs, the light-hearted songs of student and " landsknecht," of this age, and the E 66 FROM MEDLEVAL TO MODERN LITERATURE. songs of the wandering scholars or Goliards that have come down to us from the earlier time. In turn the Volkslied reacted on the religious Lied or hymn ; and a new religious poetry arose in which the Latin hymns of the Church were translated into popular language, and often altered beyond all recognition. A monk of Salzburg, Hermann or Johannes, had in the fourteenth century popularised the Church poetry in this way. The Volkslieder were also employed for religious purposes by making them appear as allegories of the spirit- ual life, and even by actually parodying them. Heinrich von Laufenberg, a monk of Freiburg, who died in 1460, was the author of allegorical parodies of this kind. Dramatic literature made least satisfactory progress in the transition period, the increasing elaboration of the church drama being, if anything, detrimental to its true * development. The beginnings of a more secular drama are, however, to be traced in the Low German play of Theophilus, which goes back to the fourteenth century, and in the Spiel von Fran Jutten, written in 1480 by Theodor Schernberg, a priest of Miilhausen. Both works are forerunners of the Reformation Faust ; both represent the tragedy of man's temptation by the evil powers. Theophilus sells his soul to the devil for worldly dis- tinction ; " Frau Jutta of England " is tempted by the devil to pass herself off as a man ; she ultimately becomes Pope, and only escapes perdition by taking upon herself the shame of the world. 6 7 CHAPTER VII. HUMANISM AND THE REFORMATION. THE preparation for the Protestant Reformation was two- fold, and may be summed up in the words mysticism and humanism. At the close of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth centuries German religious life was again merged, as it had been three centuries before, in a wave of religious fervour which now took the form of mysticism. Meister Eckhart (ca. 1260-1327), the first and the greatest of the German mystics, preached the oneness of the soul with God, and gave German mysticism once and for all its guiding principles and ideas. Eckhart was followed by the fervid, poetic Swiss mystic, Heinrich Seuse (1295-1366), and the manly Alsatian preacher, Johannes Tauler (ca. 1300-61). To the demand which these men made for a purely personal faith, an intimate communion of the soul with God, we owe the first complete German Bible, a translation of the Vulgate, which was published at Strassburg in 1466. What Tauler was to the fourteenth century, another Alsatian, Johann Geiler of Kaisersberg (1445-1510), was to the fifteenth; he, too, was a mystic, but a mystic who had studied in the school of the humanists. He accepted the tenets of mysticism, but he interpreted them in an essentially practical way ; he de- manded the abolition of abuses within the church as well as a deepening of the spiritual life of the individual. And, like his friend Brant, he had recourse to that fav- ourite weapon of the humanists, satire. Humanism, the other factor of the new movement, takes 68 HUMANISM AND THE REFORMATION. its beginning, as far as Germany was concerned, from the founding of the University of Prague in 1348. It first made itself felt in literature by introducing into Germany the fruits of the Italian Renaissance ; Enea Silvio, Poggio, Petrarch, Boccaccio, were translated ; the classics appeared in German, notably Plautus and Terence ; the literary horizon of northern Europe was rapidly widened. But the original literature of the German humanists remained Latin in language and spirit ; and the fact that many of them, such as Jakob Wimpfeling (1450-1528), interested themselves in the history of their native land, atoned only in a very small degree for the un- German character of their books and ideas. One may even trace back to the contempt of the early German humanists for their mother- tongue that prejudice in favour of Latin, and even French, which did not die out in Germany until late in the eighteenth century. But, whether Latin or German, humanism was the great destructive force which shook the catholic world to its foundations, and prepared the way for Luther. On the threshold of the Reformation stand two humanists, Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1467-1536) and Johannes Reuchlin of Pforzheim (1455-1522), who fought with every weapon at their command against the retrograde traditions of the mediaeval church. The first of these, author of the world-famous books, the En- chiridion militis christiani (" Manual of the Christian Soldier," 1509), and the Morice Encomium ("Praise of Folly," 1509), laid, with his edition of the Greek Testa- ment, the basis for a direct knowledge of the Bible ; and Reuchlin became involved in one of the bitterest of pre- Reformation conflicts by the publication of a Hebrew Grammar. The humanists warmly espoused Reuchlin's cause; in 1514 he was able to publish their testimony to him in the form of Epistolce clarorum virorum ; and in the following years, 1515-17, appeared what was ostensibly a retort to these letters, the Epistolce obscurorum virorum. At first the church party was gratified by this vindication of their standpoint, but it soon became obvious MARTIN LUTHER. 69 that these letters were really an ingenious and, by its very insidiousness, powerful satire on Reuchlin's opponents. The authorship of the letters is still uncertain, Johannes Jager (Crotus Rubianus) of Dornheim being usually men- tioned as having had the chief share in them ; but, who- ever may have written them, the Epistola obscurorum uirorum were an effective prelude to the Reformation. Like all great movements, the Reformation was ulti- mately the achievement of a single mind, which synthesised and gave expression to the vague aspirations of the age. The two streams of mysticism and humanism converged and united in Martin Luther. Born at Eisleben in Thuringia on November 10, 1483, Luther had in his youth come under both influences, and in 1512, after a journey to Rome, he was made Doctor of Theology in Wittenberg ; only five years later, on October 31, 1517, he nailed on the door of the Schlosskirche of that town his ninety-five Thesen wider den Ablass. The humanists had long in- veighed against the abuse of indulgences, but Luther was the first to make it a vital question of the main- tenance of the Christian church. And once a beginning was made, the principles of the protestant Reformation took miraculously rapid shape in Luther's mind. In less than three years, in 1520, he gave Germany the three great documents of protestantism, An den Christlichen Adel deutscher Nation, De captivitate Babylonica ecclesia (in Latin), and Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen. The Bible, and the Bible alone, he demanded, must be the law to every Christian ; supremacy in German lands must lie with the German Emperor and not with the Pope ; above all, the church must be swept clean of its hypocrisies and abuses. He will have no more vows and no monastic prisons ; no more festivals for saints, no pious pilgrimages ; the inquisition must be abolished. He also demanded the emancipation of the schools from the fetters of mediaeval scholasticism, and made spacious plans for the reform of German education. In the castle of the Wartburg, where Luther was con- cealed, a willing prisoner, until the storms evoked by his 70 HUMANISM AND THE REFORMATION. actions had subsided a little, he began his translation of the Bible; the New Testament appeared in 1522, the whole Bible in 1534. In 1522 he returned to Witten- berg, and in 1525 married a former nun, Katharina von Bora. His death took place in 1546 during a visit to his native town. Like the English Bible, Luther's Bible is in the best sense a literary monument ; it is a "Volksbuch," written in the pithy, vivid language of the German people, and represents, better than any other book of its age, the triumph of the new middle-class literature over the aristo- cratic poetry of the Middle High German period. In respect of language it was no less important ; for Luther was careful to choose for the medium of his translation a dialect that of Meissen and the Saxon official language which should be comprehensible to the greatest possible numbers of the nation, and in this way took the first and greatest step towards the literary unification of Germany. Luther not only gave Germany her Bible, but also her hymn-book ; his Geistliche Lieder, of which the first collection appeared in 1524, form the basis of the protestant hymnal. As in his Bible he had taken the language of " the common German man " as his model, so here he turns to the German Volkslied. Simplicity and pious earnestness, above all, the avoidance of dog- matism and of that over-subtlety which crept into German religious poetry later, are the characteristics of his hymns. The best idea of Luther's personality is to be obtained from his Tischreden, which were first collected in 1566; these give an interesting glimpse into the mind of the reformer, and reveal a strange combination of childlike simplicity and dogged, unbending will which shrank before nothing. His unreadiness to enter into any compromise, even with those who wished him and his cause well, may often seem to us tactless ; but we have to admit that it was just this ruthless determin- ation of purpose and callous unreasonableness that en- ULRICH VON HUTTEN J SATIRE. 71 abled Luther to achieve the great work which was put on his shoulders. Taken as a whole, the protestant Reformation had little to do directly with literature ; the Reformers were not literary men. Hardly any of them, indeed, except Luther himself, left his mark on literature ; Zwingli, Hus, even Melanchthon (Philipp Schwarzerd, 1497-1560), the "prseceptor Germanise," have no claim to a place in the present history. In one of Luther's contemporaries, how- ever, the Franconian knight Ulrich von Hutten (1488- 1523), the spirit of the Reformation joins hands with humanism, and the result has more immediate bearing on literature. At the same time, Ulrich von Hutten's writings, whether in Latin or in the vernacular, belong rather to the literature of humanism than of the Re- formation. The cause of protestantism no doubt suffered from its lack of effective satirists. Men like Erasmus Alberus (ca. 1500-53), author of .Der Barfiisser Monch Eulenspiegel und Alcoran (1542), and of the collection of fables, Das Buch von dcr lugend und Weisheit (1550), or the Swiss, Niklaus Manuel (1484- 1536), who wrote dramatic satires, sink into insignifi- cance compared with the catholic priest, Thomas Murner (1475-1537), the most unscrupulous satirist in the whole range of German literature. A Franciscan monk of Strassburg, Murner had been brought up in the school of humanism, and had learned both from Brant and Geiler. His earlier satires, Die Narrenbeschworung and Die Schelmenzunft (1512), show unmistakably the influence of the Narrenschiff, although both are on a grosser plane. Die Miihle von Schimndels- heim (1515) and Die Geuchmat ("the fools' meadow," 1519) are still coarser and more scathing, while Vom grossen lutherischen Narren (1522) is most virulent and bitter of all. This last is a personal satire on the reformer, and Murner shrinks before nothing that the scurrility and brutality of the age could invent. That the Reformation withstood such an attack is one of the 72 HUMANISM AND THE REFORMATION. tributes to its justification and necessity. The impression which Murner makes on us is that of an absolutely nega- tive nature ; he was an uncompromising pessimist who saw good in nothing. The new order of things which the Reformation promised was utterly repugnant to him ; his only hope was in a return to the ideals of mediaeval Christianity, and when this hope was destroyed, he turned and vented his resentment on Luther himself. Barren as the Reformation was in literary monu- ments outside of Luther's Bible, it exerted a great and inspiring influence on the literature of the sixteenth cen- tury. Above all, the drama responded to its stimulus. Towards the end of the fifteenth century a new type of play arose, which provided the outlet, hitherto missing, for the nation's dramatic instincts. This was the " Fast- nachtsspiel," or shrove-tide play, a kind of dramatised, or merely dialoguised, " Schwank," which had taken form in Niirnberg in the hands of Hans Rosenpliit and Hans Folz, two writers who have already been mentioned. In itself the " Fastnachtsspiel" was not broad enough to form the basis of a national drama ; but it was supple- mented by and learned from the Latin School comedy of the humanists ; and the German humanists, begin- ning with Wimpfeling, who wrote his Stylpho in 1470, did not stand behind their Italian colleagues in the cultivation of the drama. Thus between indigenous " Fastnachtsspiel " and Latin comedy, the conditions were exceedingly favourable for the development of German comedy at the beginning of the sixteenth century ; and the Reformation, which was ready to employ the drama in the service of its controversies, provided the leaven of ideas. The value of the drama as a factor in the spread of the Reformation was first recognised in Switzerland, where, even before Luther's decisive step had been taken, Pam- philus Gengenbach, a native of Niirnberg, had in his Die Gonchmat (1516) and Der Nollhart (1517), written " Fastnachtsspiele " in the interests of moral and religious reform. But the chief representation of the early Swiss THE RISE OF THE DRAMA. 73 protestant comedy was Niklaus Manuel (1484-1536), who has already been mentioned as the most powerful satirist on the protestant side. Manuel was a native of Bern, and had made a name for himself both as a soldier and a painter. His " Fastnachtsspiele " or dramatic dialogues for they are little more Vom Papst und seiner Priest- schaft (1522), Der Ablasskramer (1525), Barbali (1526), and most trenchant of all, Von der Messe Krankheit und ihrem letzten Willen (1528), are, in the first instance, satires ; but Manuel had no mean gifts of dramatic char- acterisation, and under more favourable conditions might have helped to create a genuine national drama. Outside Switzerland the influence of the Latin comedy was more conspicuous. The fable-writer Burkard Waldis produced in 1527 a play in Low German, Parabell vam vorlorn Sohn, which has clearly benefited by the in- fluence of the Latin drama ; so, too, has the Susanna (produced at Basel in 1532) of Sixt Birck (1500-54), a schoolmaster of Augsburg. Better, however, than Birck's version of this, the most popular dramatic theme of the sixteenth century, was another by Paul Rebhun, a Saxon pastor, who lived from about 1500 to 1546. Rebhun's Susanna (1535), as well as his less successful Hochzeit zu Cana (1538), are attempts to adapt to German require- ments the Latin metres which the humanists were fond of experimenting with. But apart from its vagaries in out- ward form, Rebhun's work shows how much the German comedy was able to learn, in the matter of construction, from the Latin ; his Susanna is the best German play of the sixteenth century. The School comedy itself could point to two masters in Germany, Thomas Kirchmayer, better known by his Latin name, Naogeorgus (1511-63), the author of many polemical Latin dramas, of which the best are Pammachius (1538) and Mercator (1540) ; and the gifted Swabian poet, Philipp Nikodemus Frischlin (1547-90). Frischlin was for a time Professor of Poetry in Tubingen, but his unbridled satirical tongue got him into political trouble, and the Duke of Wiirtemberg imprisoned him 74 HUMANISM AND THE REFORMATION. in the castle of Hohenurach. This was in 1590, and a few months later he lost his life in attempting to escape. Frischlin's plays are not all, like his Rebecca (1576) and Susanna (1577), in Latin; he wrote in the ver- nacular a historical comedy, Frau Wendelgard (1579), the heroine of which is the daughter of Heinrich I., and he planned a series of Biblical dramas, to which belong Ruth and Die Hochzeit zu Cana. Frischlin is at its best when he is opposing abuses or fighting for ideas ; in his Priscianus vapulans (1578) he satirises the bar- barous Latin of the Middle Ages, in Julius Cczsar Redivivus (1584) he brings Caesar back to earth to wonder at the inventions of gunpowder and printing, and in Phasma (1580) he ventures on the dangerous ground of religious controversy and sectarian quarrels. On the whole, these plays mark the high - water level of the German humanistic drama ; Frischlin was, no doubt, one of the most gifted German dramatists of his century ; but in his outlook on life he was too exclusively a humanist to influence very deeply the vernacular literature. The representative German poet and dramatist of the sixteenth century is the cobbler of Niirnberg, Hans Sachs, the most complete embodiment of the " biirgerliche " spirit of the age. Born in 1494, he enjoyed a fairly good edu- cation and, under the guidance of the Niirnberg Meister- singer schools, worked his way up to the rank of a master in the art of poetry. For more than fifty years he was the acknowledged leader of the Niirnberg Meistergesang, and has left behind him an enormous quantity of verse. His own inventory, made in 1567, enumerates no less than 4275 Meistergesange and 1773 Spruchgedichte, of which more than two hundred were dramas. He died in 1576. Hans Sachs made his reputation in the first instance by taking advantage of the new ideals in literature to widen the sphere of the German Meistersinger poetry ; he adapted to German needs the treasures of the Italian Renaissance which the humanists were rapidly making common European property. In the second HANS SACHS. 75 place, he threw in his lot at an early date with the " Wittembergische Nachtigall," Luther. His " Meister- lieder," his religious poetry, his parables and fables, are as good as any the sixteenth century produced ; but while many of his contemporaries showed a strong satiric bias, while others had the power of rising above their own world and seeing things from a more universal stand- point, Sachs remained from first to last a simple story- teller. He rarely said anything in verse which might not as easily have been said in prose, and he wrote entirely from the standpoint of the Niirnberg "Burger." He reflected the latter's outlook on life, and was content to chronicle faithfully and to describe the civic life around him, townspeople and peasants, monks and artisans, exactly as he saw them. He is the versatile spokesman of his time and people. But the want of higher poetic thoughts and impulses becomes a virtue in Sachs's verse-anecdotes and stories ; his unvarnished narrative adds nothing and subtracts nothing, and in every line is apparent his delight in the mere telling of the story. It is as a dramatist, however, that he has left the most abiding mark on his time. In his hands the " Fastnachtsspiel," which earlier poets had employed only as a means to satiric or controversial ends, receives its final stamp ; it becomes a humorous " Schwank " thrown into dramatic dialogue. The best of Sachs's " Fastnachtsspiele," such as Der fahrende Schiiler im Paradies (1550), Frau Wahrheit will niemand herbergen (1550), Das heisse Eisen (1551), and Der Bauer im Fegefeuer (1552), show that he was not only able to tell an interesting story in dialogue, but could also create genuinely dramatic figures. In the same spirit Hans Sachs wrote comedies and tragedies, although his lack of understanding for the laws of dramatic construction placed these more ambitious efforts at a disadvantage. From the humanist dramatists, it is true, he had borrowed the method of dividing his plays into "Actus," and of assisting the movement of the play by means of an " Ehrenhold " or herald : but his dramas remain, after all, only stories 76 HUMANISM AND THE REFORMATION. in dialogue form. His range of subjects was extraordin- arily wide ; they are taken from the Bible, the Greek and Latin classics, from the old German sagas, as well as from the Italian novelists and contemporary German collections of " Schwanke." A more powerful and original writer than Sachs was Johann Fischart (ca. 1550-90), perhaps, indeed, the most manly personality in the German literature of the Refor- mation period. Fischart was born about the middle of the sixteenth century, probably in Strassburg, and was much more deeply immersed in the stream of humanism than the Niirnberg shoemaker. He had been brought up by Kaspar Scheidt, the learned translator of Grobianus (1549), a vigorous Latin satire by F. Dedekind (ca. 1525-98) on the coarseness and brutality of the age; and he had travelled widely. Like Hans Sachs, he began as a champion of the Reformation, but the satires on the catholics, which he adapted from French and Dutch originals Der Bienenkorb des heiligen romischen Im- menschwarms (1579) and Das Jesuiterhiitlein (1580) are much more definite in their aims than the com- paratively ineffectual satire that accompanied the Refor- mation movement in its early stages. Fischart's Philosophisches Ehezuchtbiichlein (1578), the most pleasing of all his prose writings, shows how close the ties were that bound him to the humanists ; and in his best poem, Das glitckhafte Schiff von Zurich (1576), he had learned a lesson in form from the classic masterpieces which the Renaissance had made popular. This, the best German poem of the whole sixteenth century, tells how in the summer of 1576 a number of Zurich citizens made in a single day the voyage from Zurich to Strassburg in order to take part in a shooting festival. The bonds of neighbourly feeling are symbolised by a basin of millet porridge, which, cooked in the morning before the party leaves Zurich, still retains its warmth when their vessel reaches Strassburg at nightfall. While Sachs merely skimmed the surface of his age, Fischart plunged deep into its social and intellectual JOHANN FISCHART. 77 movements, regardless of their coarseness or brutality. That broad virility, which in Murner shrank at nothing, is revived again, this time on the protestant side, by Fischart. He had not studied under the translator of the Grobianus for nothing, and his epic Floh ffatz, Weiber Tratz (1573) falls little short of Murner's satires in its coarseness. But the fact that Fischart lived a generation later than his catholic predecessor enabled him to draw more easily on the later Renaissance litera- tures, and in Rabelais he found a congenial master. Fischart's masterpiece is his translation or adaptation of the first book of Rabelais's comic romance, which appeared in German under the extraordinary title, Affenteurlich naupengeheurliche Geschichtklitterung vom Leben, Raten und Taten der Helden und Herren Grandgusier, Gargantua und Pantagruel (1575). Rabe- lais is here translated as no writer has ever been translated before or since. A translation, indeed, it is impossible to call Fischart's book ; it is an adaptation which has swollen to three times the size of the orig- inal ; a clumsy, unwieldy book, the humour of which consists in the heaping up of incongruous epithets, a book which forfeits all claim on our interest by its absurd exaggerations and its insufferable formlessness. And yet, in spite of its unpromising and repellent exterior, or rather by virtue of it, Fischart's Geschichtklitterung reflects the intellectual temper of its time ; it is as completely German as its original is French, and a characteristic product of the dominant factors in the intellectual life of the six- teenth century, humanism and protestantism. The new spirit which expressed itself unmistakably in the writings of Fischart, also found a congenial outlet in the later developments of the " Schwank." Jorg Wickram (died ca. 1560), a Meistersinger of Colmar, to whose longer novels we shall return in a later chapter, produced in his Rollwagenbuchlein (1555) that is, " Biichlein " for the use of travellers in the diligence or " Rollwagen " an excellent popular collection of such anecdotes, which was speedily followed by a large number of imitations, such as 78 HUMANISM AND THE REFORMATION. M. Montanus's Wegkiirzer (1557), M. Lindener's Rast- biichlein (1558), and H. W. Kirchhoffs Wendunmut(\^^). These were the legitimate successors of the long line of collections of "Schwanke" which extended unbroken from the Middle Ages to the Reformation. Fischart's satires on the catholics found successors in Der treue Eckart (1588) and Die lautere Wahrheit (1585) by Bartholomaus Ringwaldt (ca. 1530-99), and the beast epic was brought into the service of the Reformation by Georg Rollenhagen (1542-1609), author of the Froschmauseler (1595), a modernised version of the Greek " battle of the frogs and mice." In this century, too, the " Volksbuch " became, like the Volkslied, a vehicle of expression for the nation's aspirations; and in one of these "Volks- bucher," the Historia von D. Johann Fausten, published at Frankfort-on-the-Main in 1587, we rind an illustra- tion of how the German people of the sixteenth century interpreted the intellectual liberation which protestantism conferred on them. Like so many dreamers in the history of his time, the Faust of the " Volksbuch " hopes to obtain by means of alchemy, astrology, and magic, rest from the longings that harass him ; he makes a pact with the devil, who opens up to him new worlds of unlimited enjoyment and unlimited knowledge ; he travels far and wide, to Italy and the East, and con- jures up the most beautiful woman of all time, Helen of Troy, until at last the twenty-four years for which he had stipulated come to an end and he is carried off in triumph to hell. Such is the earliest form in which the immortal story appears, a story which, two centuries later, Goethe made use of to show that human aspiration, human longings and ambitions are not, as the sixteenth century believed, to be rewarded with eternal damnation, but are the most precious attributes of our race. 79 CHAPTER VIII. THE RENAISSANCE IN GERMANY. THE seventeenth century, contrasted with this epoch in other lands, is a dark age in Germany's intellectual history. Her literature, it is true, is voluminous enough, but it has no root in the soil, and consists for the most part of artificial and ill-adapted imitations of foreign models. Thus the century which in England was rung in by Shakespeare and his great contemporaries and closed with Milton and Dryden, the century of Ariosto and Tasso, of Cervantes, Calder6n, and Lope de Vega, the age of Louis XIV., is mainly a period of negation in Germany. For this there were two reasons, one political, the other inherent in the conditions of German literary development. The seventeenth century was the cen- tury of the Thirty Years' War; from 1618 to 1648, that terrible struggle between the two great spiritual powers in Europe, Catholicism and protestantism, de- vastated German lands, as no lands before or since in the history of civilised peoples have been devas- tated. The population of Germany was reduced to one-fourth of what it had been when the war began, and from comparative affluence the country was brought to the extremes of poverty. Worst of all, the uncertainty of life and property, and the desolation which the armies left in their train, demoralised the nation. This alone was sufficient to destroy any literature that drew its vitality from the national life. There was, however, 8o THE RENAISSANCE IN GERMANY. another and more subtle reason for the intellectual bank- ruptcy of Germany in the seventeenth century. The literature which the Reformation inaugurated and in- spired had come to a natural end ; it had been, in the best sense, popular and indigenous ; but, like all purely indigenous literatures, it voiced the mood and aspirations of a very definite age; it was incapable of adapting itself to new conditions, and not strong enough to maintain its existence against the powerful influence of neighbouring literatures. Thus, even had the Thirty Years' War not checked all healthy development, the literary movement of the seventeenth century in Germany would have had to make a fresh start ; it could not merely have carried on the traditions of the Reforma- tion period. A new stimulus was necessary, and that stimulus came from without. At the close of the sixteenth century there was an attempt to revive the moribund Reform- ation drama by engrafting upon it the technical achieve- ments of the Elizabethan drama. About this time English actors, taking advantage of the continental re- putation of the English stage, visited Germany and gave performances in most of the larger towns ; their repertory consisted of the popular English plays of the day, which were often badly mutilated or even re- duced to mere theatrical skeletons of sensational incident interspersed with clowning. The entertainments proved, however, popular, and soon German troupes, to which an English clown was occasionally attached, took, as " Englische Komodianten," the place of the foreign rivals. Two German dramatists, Jakob Ayrer (1543-1605), a notary of Nurnberg, and Heinrich Julius, Duke of Brunswick (1564-1613), were quick to realise how the Reformation drama could learn from England, and wrote plays which combined the old form with the technical improvements and varied attractions of these adaptations from the English. Unfortunately, however, these hope- ful beginnings were blotted out by the war, which was naturally more disastrous to the drama than to any other HEIDELBERG AS A LITERARY CENTRE. 8l form of literature. Although a German version of Hamlet had been played in Germany in Shakespeare's lifetime, more than a hundred years had to elapse before Shake- speare was even known by name to the Germans. Not from England, but from the Latin peoples came the regeneration of German literature ; the seventeenth century was the century of the Renaissance. The history of this movement in Germany is a weak re- flection of the literary evolution which had taken place in Italy and France. JThe German humanists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were the pioneers ; and in the course of the following century German liter- ature passed through the same three stages through which Renaissance literature elsewhere passed : a period of vigorous youth, a^ middle period of artificiality and stylistic vagaries, and a third period of classic rigour. For the first of these periods Germany's immediate models were the poets of the French " Pleiade." In Heidelberg, the focus of the German Renaissance, Paul Schede, or, as he Latinised his name, Melissus, had, as early as 1572, translated into German verse the French version of the Psalms by Clement Marot, and, four- teen years later, when Schede was settled as librarian in Heidelberg, a number of scholarly writers gathered round him. The spokesman of this circle was ]. VV. Zincgref (1591-1635), who, besides publishing in 1624 as a supplement to his edition of Opitz's poems an anthology of the poetry of the group, Anhang unter- schiedlicher ausgesuchter Gedichte, wrote himself Scharf- sinnige kluge Spruche (1626) which reveal a healthy and sympathetic understanding for the German people. A greater poet was the Swabian, G. R. Weckherlin (1584- 1653), whose collection of Oden rmd Gesdnge (1618-19) was the first sign of promise in the new movement. Weckherlin was a widely travelled man and had lived so long in England as to have become practically an Englishman; he was Milton's predecessor as "secretary for foreign tongues " to the English Government. The leader of the German Renaissance, Martin Opitz, F 82 THE RENAISSANCE IN GERMANY. was not a South German, but a Silesian. It was in Heidelberg, however, that his genius was first fully recognised. Born at Bunzlau in 1597, he came as a student to Heidelberg in 1619, where a Latin treatise, entitled Aristarchus (1617), and some poetry had heralded his arrival. During the few months he stayed in Heidel- berg, the Renaissance movement in German literature was born. In 1620 Opitz went to Holland, where he came under the influence of the Dutch Renaissance movement, especially of Daniel Heinsius (1580-1655). His life was chequered and varied enough ; we find him for a time in Holstein, then as a professor in Transylvania ; in Vienna, a little later, he was formally crowned laureate by the Emperor Ferdinand II., who subsequently ennobled him as Opitz von Boberfeld. For a time he was secretary to the notorious persecutor of the Protestants, Graf Hannibal von Dohna, who provided him with the means of visiting Paris. In 1632 Opitz was obliged to seek a new patron, whom he found in the person of the Protestant Prince Ulrich of Holstein ; finally he trans- ferred his services to the King of Poland, and settled in Danzig, where he died of the plague in 1639. Although but mediocrely gifted, both as a poet and as a critic, Opitz was the most commanding literary person- ality of his century in Germany ; his contemporaries looked up to him as the embodiment of the Renaissance ideals. His essay on poetic theory, the Buck von der deutschen Poeterei (1624), the most famous and influential German book of the seventeenth century, was pieced together in the course of a few days out of the Renais- sance treatises on poetics from Scaliger to Ronsard and Du Bellay ; it was only an original book in so far as Opitz adapted the foreign ideas to German requirements. He made claims for the German tongue as a literary medium, and deprecated the use of Latin and of foreign words ; he recognised that in German verse accentuated and unaccen- tuated syllables take the place of the longs and shorts of Latin metre; and he gave Germany those "rules" which all the Renaissance theorists believed to be indispensable MARTIN OPITZ. 83 to great poetry. Opitz's original verse exemplifies only too plainly his theory that an observance of the rules was sufficient to make the poet. His poetry is, however, not all uninspired, and his best poems, the collection entitled Trostgedichte in Widerwdrtigkeit des Krieges (1633), con- tain lines as good as any written in the seventeenth cen- tury in Germany. He laboured diligently to bring German literature under the Renaissance yoke ; he translated Sophocles and Seneca, as well as Rinuccini's Italian opera Dafne(\62']} ; he introduced the Renaissance novel with translations of Barclay's Argents (1626) and Sidney's Arcadia (1629), and followed these with a pastoral of his own, the Schdferei von der Nymphen Hercine (1630). In the furtherance of his aims Opitz was assisted by the many literary or rather linguistic societies which sprang up throughout Germany in the first half of the seventeenth century and tided German literature over the stormy epoch of the war. The first of these societies, " Die fruchtbringende Gesellschaft," or " Der Palmenorden," founded under the presidency of Prince Ludwig of Anhalt-Cothen in the year 1617, was a direct imitation of the famous linguistic academy of Florence, the Ac- cademia della Crusca or " Bran Academy," so called because it was designed to purify the pure flour of Italian speech from the bran of barbarisms. In the same way the German society followed "fructifying" aims, each of the members taking a pseudonym bearing on that function. In Hamburg, again, Johann Rist (1607-67), a lyric poet and dramatist of some distinction, founded the " Elbschwanenorden." Such societies no doubt furthered the linguistic reforms for which Opitz fought ; but in literature the results of their activity were more questionable. G. P. Harsdorffer (1607-58), for instance, one of the founders of the famous Niirnberg society, "Der gekronte Blumenorden " or " Pegnitz Shepherds," reduced, in all seriousness, the poetic theories of Opitz to absurdity by writing a Poetischer Trickier (1647-53), which professed to "pour" the art of poetry into any one in six hours. 84 THE RENAISSANCE IN GERMANY. With Opitz the literary focus of Germany was transferred to the north-east; the members of his school, which is some- times called the " First Silesian School," made Konigsberg for a time their headquarters. At least two poets among Opitz's disciples, Simon Dach (1605-59) and Paul Fleming (1609-40), were more gifted than their master. These two men present the greatest possible contrast ; the one was a shy, retiring, melancholy professor of poetry in Konigsberg, the other a burly Saxon who wandered far afield he spent five years in the East and looked life in the face with a manly straightforwardness ; but they have both one quality in common, they make us forget their allegiance to Opitz and his rules. While Dach and Fleming thus showed that the Renais- sance rules were not inconsistent with the production of genuine poetry, on another, and perhaps the most gifted of them all, Opitz's fetters lie heavy, namely, on the chief dramatist of the German Renaissance, Andreas Gryphius. Like Opitz, Gryphius was a Silesian ; he was born in 1 6 1 6 the year of Shakespeare's death in Breslau, as the syndic of which town he died in 1664, a hundred years after Shakespeare was born. His lyric poetry, especially the Sonn- und Feiertags-Sonette (1639) and Kirchhofsgedan- ken (1656), show him to have been a man who had tasted more of the bitterness of life than his brother poets ; he felt more modernly, and had what the principles of Opitz made extremely difficult to practise, the art of expressing those feelings sincerely. It was only with difficulty that Gryphius squeezed and trimmed his melancholy reflections to fit the recognised verse-forms. Still more disastrous was the effect of the Renaissance poetics on his dramatic work. Under more favourable conditions, Gryphius might have been the founder of a national drama ; as it was, he struggled vainly with the bloodless, epic tragedy of the Renaissance theatre, and with no better models to imitate than the plays of the Dutch poets, Hooft and Vondel ; it is thus no wonder that his Leo Armenius (1650), Katharina von Georgien (1657), and even such daring innovations as his tragedy, Ermordete Majestat, GRYPHIUS AND LOGAU. 85 oder Carolus Stuardus^Konig von Gross- Britannien (1657), on an almost contemporary theme, and Cardenio und Celinde (1657), a forerunner of the "tragedy of common life " of the eighteenth century, fail to convey even a semblance of reality. In comedy, Gryphius retained a freer hand, perhaps because the paralysing influence of Seneca did not lie so heavy on the Renaissance comedy. In his Horribilicribrifax (1663), the hero of which, a bragging soldier, was a favourite figure with the Renais- sance dramatists, and in Herr Peter Squentz (1663), a merry adaptation of the comic scenes of the Midsummer Night's Dream, Gryphius revealed comic power of a quite remarkable order; these are the best, indeed the only outstanding German comedies of the seventeenth century. Perhaps the greatest positive achievement which, besides its literary theory, we owe directly to the Renais- sance in Germany, is the epigrams of the poet who, in the " Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft," bore the sobriquet of "der Verkleinernde," Friedrich von Logau. Logau, too, was a Silesian, but no friend of the Opitzian school ; Opitz he admired as a poet, but he had little faith in the art of making poetry by rule of thumb. His outlook on the life of the time was sane and wise ; he could rise sufficiently above the strife of the day to see the hollowness of a religious faith that permitted the callous bloodshed of the Thirty Years' War ; he had faith enough in his own people to ridicule their slavish imita- tion of French manners and customs, and to condemn unsparingly the taste which interlarded his native language with French words and phrases. Born at Brockut, near Nimptsch, in 1604, Logau held an official position in the service of the Duke of Liegnitz ; and he died at Liegnitz in 1655. In 1638 appeared his first collection of epigrams under the title Erstes Hundert teutscher Reimenspriiche, but the main collection was not published until 1654, Deutscher Sinngedichte drei Tausend. Logau concealed his authorship under an anagram, "Salomon von Golaw," and so effectually that it was not until over a hundred 86 THE RENAISSANCE IN GERMANY. years later that Ramler and Lessing in their reprint of the epigrams revealed who "Golaw" really was. As far as form is concerned, Logau is an epigrammatist of the normal Renaissance type that is to say, he takes Martial as his model ; but he has made the form his own ; and there are not many among these three thousand epigrams upon which he has not set the stamp of his own strong personality. Logau is Germany's greatest epigrammatist. Thus in the seventeenth century the politer, more polished epigram took the place of the full-blooded satire of the Reformation ; indeed, it almost seemed as if satire had now withdrawn to Low German lands. The rep- resentative satirists of the period, Johann Lauremberg (1590-1658) and Joachim Rachel (1618-69), are both Low Germans. The former, a native of Rostock, wrote in 1652 four admirable Scherzgedichte in the Low German dialect of his home. A kindly humour rather than satire is the ground-tone of Lauremberg's poetry, and it seems in keeping with the homely dialect which, from motives of patriotism, he chose. In the High German translation which soon followed, the poems lose something of their force. The faith of Rachel in Opitz, on the other hand, was stronger than his patriotism ; in early Volkslieder he showed promise as a Low German poet, but he preferred to write his six Satirische Gedichte (1664) in the High German speech which Opitz alone recognised ; he has not, however, the originality and force of Lauremberg. The lyric poetry of the seventeenth century was not restricted to the experiments in classic forms which the more rigid adherents of the Renaissance movement favoured, and the more sincere, if still classic, lyrics of poets like Dach and Fleming. The lyric genius of the people, which in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had produced the great Volkslieder, found its outlet now in religious poetry ; the seventeenth century is the age of the German hymn. Both catholic and protestant poets contributed to this religious lyric, the former giving ex- RELIGIOUS MYSTICISM, 87 pression to the subtle mystic and allegorical tendencies of the age, the latter ministering in a practical way to the immediate spiritual needs of the people. Now, as in the pre-Reformation age, the revival of a more intense religious life was heralded by mysticism. In 1612 Jakob Bohme (1575-1624), a shoemaker of Gorlitz in Silesia, published his first book, Aurora, oder Morgenriite im Aufgang. Under the guise of a strange, allegorical imagery, Bohme set forth in this book a spiritual mysti- cism, which acted as a solvent on the rapidly stiffen- ing dogmas of the churches. His philosophy was a leaven of inspiration for the lyric poetry of the century. Bohme's immediate influence is to be seen in the poetry of the Silesian writer, Johann Scheffler, who preferred to be known as "Angelus Silesius." Scheffler was born in the year in which Bohme died, and of a protestant family ; he was educated as a doctor and practised in Breslau, and in 1652 became a convert to Catholicism. In 1657 his poetry appeared in two volumes, Heilige Seelenlust, oder geistliche Hirtenlieder der in ihren Jesiim verliebten Psyche, and Geistreiche Sinn- und Schlussreime zur gottlichen Beschaulichkeit, the latter better known under the title it bore in the second edition, Der cherubinische Wanders- mann (1674). Scheffler died in 1677. He held aloof from the German Renaissance movement, but it is clear from his poetry that his horizon was bounded by the pastoral poetry of the time ; his allegory has the unmis- takable Renaissance stamp. His strength lies, however, not in the literary forms and traditions he adopted, but in the strange mystic couplets and strophes of the Cherubinische Wandersmann. The logical consequences of Bohme's pantheism, which saw God in all things and preached the oneness of the human soul with God, were carried out by Scheffler with a ruthlessness that does not shrink before the most startling paradoxes. The fusion of pious religious feeling with the allegory of the Renaissance is also to be seen in the poetry of Friedrich von Spec (1591-1635). Although a strict Jesuit, Spec did not allow himself to be blinded by the 88 THE RENAISSANCE IN GERMANY. superstitions of his time ; his own life was embittered by his having, as professor in Wurzburg, to prepare for the stake witches in whose innocence he believed. He died of fever caught while nursing the sick and the wounded in the hospital of Treves. His poetry is collected under the fantastic title, Trutz-Nachtigall, oder geistlich-poetisches Lustwaldlein (1649), a book which, in spite of its artificial conventions, has still a certain charm ; the outward form may be of the Renaissance, but the calm humanity of Spec's faith and the warmth of his feeling for nature make the impression of complete sincerity. The national religious poetry of the seventeenth cen- tury, the real heir of the Volkslied, was unquestionably the protestant hymn. It was a form of literature on which neither the war nor the preoccupation of the nation with embittered religious strife seems to have had any deterrent effect ; in hours of adversity the people turned to their hymns as a consolation and a refuge. The hymn of this century was directly modelled on that of Luther ; and the line of great hymn-writers from Luther onwards was continuous. At the same time there is, in the course of these hundred years, strangely little develop- ment to record ; the hymn became perhaps more harmoni- ous and less militant, but the spiritual standpoint changed little, and the poetic form even less. Paul Gerhardt (1607-76), the greatest religious poet of the seventeenth century, was a protestant preacher of the Lutheran type, first at Berlin, then at Liibben on the Spree ; and he fought all his life for what he believed to be the best interests of protestantism. His hymns, of which the first collected edition appeared under the title Geistliche Andachten in 1667, were written in the direct service of the church and form the backbone of the protestant hymnal. It can hardly be said that Gerhardt was in the highest sense an inspired poet ; his hymns were not even the expression of a personal, spiritual need ; his aim was merely to express in the simple language of the people its spiritual faith. The dictum that the great battle-songs THE PROTESTANT HYMN. 89 and great hymns of the world have never been written by its greatest poets is eminently true of German religious poetry in the seventeenth century. For Gerhardt was only one of many Lutheran pastors who at that time composed religious poetry which found its way to the hearts of the people ; indeed, it is extraordinary how many masterpieces of the German hymnal emanated from otherwise quite unknown men, men who had no kind of relation to literature at all. If Gerhardt stands out prominently from the many, it is not because he was as a poet so much greater than his contemporaries, but because he wrote a larger number of great hymns. From the decay of the Volkslied in the later sixteenth century to the first quarter at least of the eighteenth century, German lyric poetry is to be seen at its best in the hymns of the protestant church. CHAPTER IX. THE LATER SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. SUBJECTION to the ideals of the Latin Renaissance was one characteristic feature of German literature in the seventeenth century; another was the predominance a predominance in which, however, Germany did not stand alone of the novel. The novel swallowed up, as it were, several forms of literature which in the previous century existed independently of it ; satire appears now mainly in the form of fiction, and didactic poetry has given place to didactic novels. The beginnings of a modern, that is to say, modern as opposed to mediaeval, novel, have been traced in Germany to a writer who has been already mentioned, Jorg Wickram of Colmar. The influence of French and Italian models no doubt assisted Wickram to get beyond the purely mediaeval type of romance, as he did in his best novels, Der jungen Knaben Spiegel (1554), Der irrreitende Pilger (1556), and Der Goldfaden (1557). Wickram was modern in so far as he recognised the reorganisation of society on a wider, more democratic basis, and saw in the psychological development of his personages a more interesting theme for his fiction than the succession of adventures which made up the older novel. But the demolition of the mediaeval romance was more effectually carried out in Spain ; and the Spanish novel made its appearance in Germany early in the seventeenth century. Lazarillo de Tonnes, the earliest Spanish picaresque romance, was translated into German in 1617, and Don SATIRE AND SERMON. QI Quixote partially translated at least in 1625. In 1642-43 appeared in a complete edition the Wunderliche und wahrhaftige Gesichte Philanders von Sittewald, a remark- able contribution to satiric fiction. The author of this book, which is a German imitation of the Suenos, or " Dreams " of Francisco de Quevedo, was Hans Michael Moscherosch (1601-69), an Alsatian, whose family was probably of Spanish origin. As an official in villages in Lorraine he had had more than his share of the horrors of the Thirty Years' War ; he then obtained an appoint- ment as town-secretary in Strassburg, where he wrote his Gesichte, embodying in them, no doubt, many of his own earlier experiences. Vanity, hypocrisy, injustice, licen- tiousness, the slavery of Germany in matters of customs and taste to France, are the themes of his satires. In the vision entitled Hollenkinder he sees his contem- poraries floundering in the flames of hell, and in Soldaten- leben the demoralisation of the land by the mercenaries of the war is painted in vividly realistic colours. Only about one half of Moscherosch's book is a direct imitation of the Spanish work ; the rest is entirely his own. Links may also be found connecting the fiction of the seventeenth century with a form of German prose which had divided the field with satire in the preceding century, namely, didactic and religious literature, above all, the sermon. Here two writers have to be mentioned, the Protestant North German, Johann Balthasar Schupp (1610-61) and the South German monk, Ulrich Megerle, better known as Abraham a Santa Clara (1644-1709). The lives and the writings of these two men form an in- structive contrast. Schupp, a native of Giessen, was an admirable example of the pugnacious Lutheran clergy- man ; he had himself had experience of the rough student-life of the time the University of Giessen was notorious in this respect in the seventeenth century and he had wandered on foot all over Europe. He was for a time professor in Marburg before he accepted a call to the church of St Jakobi in Hamburg. In Hamburg his Q2 THE LATER SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. rough popular tone was not to all tastes, and his career there was not free from thorns ; hut fighting was the breath of life to him, and his words carried conviction. More interesting to us to-day than his sermons is the little tract, Der Freund in der Not (1657), in which he chronicled as a warning to his son his own experiences at the university. Schupp did not shrink from jests and witticisms in his sermons, but in this respect Abraham a Santa Clara (1644-1 709), who rose to be Court preacher in Vienna, left him far behind ; where Schupp is merely coarse, Santa Clara is scurrilous. The witty monk is wholly lacking in the North German's earnestness ; but his biting sarcasm was quite as effective in dealing with his public as Schupp's direct bludgeoning. Schupp had the blunt, straightforward Lutheran mind, Santa Clara the mercurial imagination of a wit and a poet. His tracts, such as MerKs Wien ! (1680) and Ai/f, auf, ihr Christen! (1680), of which the latter is perhaps best known, as it served Schiller as a model for the sermon of the Capuchin monk in Wallensteins Lager, belong to literature in a higher degree than to theology ; they stand in line with the writings of Murner and Fischart in the previous century. In the mixture of sermon and novel which makes up his chief work, Judas der Erzschelm (1686), the novel is the more interesting component. Santa Clara revives here the mediaeval romance which gathered round the figure of Judas Ischariot, and repre- sented him to have been the victim of an CEdipus-like fate before his appearance in the Gospel narrative. But, after all, however interesting Santa Clara's story may be, he obviously attached more importance to the interspersed sermons than to his plot. The main value of the book now is that it shows how the new prose romance was en- croaching on all domains, even on that of the sermon. But the chief German novel of the seventeenth cen- tury, and the greatest imaginative work of that century in the German tongue, had appeared nearly twenty years before Judas der Erzschelm. This was Der abenteurliche GRIMMELSHAUSEN'S " SIMPLICISSIMUS." 93 Simplitissimus Teutsch, das ist : die Beschreibung des Lebens eines seltsamen Vaganten, ganannt Melchior Stern- fels -von fuchsheim, by Johann Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen. A native of Hesse, where he was born about 1624, Grimmelshausen had tasted to the full the horrors of the Thirty Years' War. As a boy of ten he had been carried off, like his hero, by soldiers, and no doubt much else in his novel is autobiography rather than romance. The last years of his life were passed as a town official of the little town of Renchen, on the western borders of the Black Forest. He died in 1676. Grimmelshausen's first literary efforts were in the style which had been made popular by Moscherosch ; he also translated a French novel of adventure ; then, in 1669, appeared his Simplicissimus, which, like the Gesichte of his predecessor, was also influenced by Spanish literature; Simplicissimus is a "Schelmenroman" or picaresque romance. Simplicius Simplicissimus is brought up in the Spessart by a peasant, whom he believes to be his father. He is a simple child who plays his " Sackpfeife," or bagpipe, and herds his flock in happy innocence. His first glimpse of the world comes to him, as it came to Parzival in Wolfram von Eschenbach's epic, from soldiers, rough cuirassiers who fall upon the village, pillage and burn the houses, and carry off Simplicissimus, he clinging to his bag- pipe as his most precious possession. Like Parzival again, he comes to a hermit in a forest, who, as he discovers long afterwards, is his own father, and for two years he sits at the hermit's feet learning wisdom from him. The hermit dies and Simplicius once more falls into the hands of soldiers. He is brought to the Gover- nor of Hanau, who learns that he is his own nephew, and makes him his page. But Simplicius is ill-adapted for a life of this kind ; he is only laughed at, and an attempt is even made to convert him into a court fool by unhinging his mind. One day he is carried off by Croats and experiences all the barbarism of the war. Gradually, however, he accustoms himself to their wild 94 THE LATER SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. mode of life and becomes a thief and an adventurer. In two comrades, Olivier and Herzbruder, he finds his good and his bad angel, and the fortune of war for a time favours him. He falls into the hands of the Swedes, but is well treated ; he also discovers a large treasure, and is inveigled into an unhappy marriage. In the course of further ad- ventures he finds his way to Cologne and Paris, where he prospers as " beau Alman." Meanwhile, however, he has lost all his wealth, and has no option but to become a soldier again. His old comrade Olivier tempts him to join him in a life of open brigandage ; Herzbruder leads him back to his true self. His wife is dead, and he longs for a peaceful life. He buys a farm and marries again, but this marriage is also unhappy, and he seeks consolation in his love for adventure ; he goes out once more into the world, penetrating as far as Asia. After three years he returns to find his foster-father in the Spessart dead, and settles down among his long-forgotten books to a life of meditation and repentance. Later, Grimmelshausen was tempted to provide his story with a continuation, which, however, like most continuations, is too consciously an effort to surpass the original story ; only the close, where the hero retires to a lonely island, has a special interest as providing a link between the picaresque novel of the seventeenth century and the novel of realistic adventure ushered in by Robin- son Crusoe in the eighteenth. Much better than this continuation are Grimmelshausen's shorter stories, Die Landstorzerin Courasche (ca. 1669), Der selfsame Spring- insfeld (1670), and Das witnderbarliche Vogelnest (1672), which, grouped together as Simplidanische Schriften, afford pictures of the Thirty Years' War supplementary to those in his great novel. A less spontaneous genius than Grimmelshausen was Christian Weise (1642-1708), rector of the Gymnasium at Zittau, who distinguished himself as a lyric poet, as a novelist, and a dramatist. He is perhaps seen to best advantage in his first capacity ; the natural tone of his Uberflussige Gedanken der griinenden Jugend (1668), much CHRISTIAN WEISE. Q5 as he himself despised these poems in later life, is a relief after the stiff artificiality of the Renaissance lyric. But Weise did not himself see the salvation of literature in this return to natural simplicity ; he rather believed that it must become more didactic and moral. His novels, of which Die drei drgsten Erznarren in der ganzen Welt (1672), and Die drei klilgsten Leute in der ganzen Welt (1675) are best known, are satirical in an unambigu- ously didactic way, not with Grimmelshausen's genial openness. As a dramatist, Weise was extraordinarily prolific, but only about half of his fifty-five plays have been published. These, however, stand apart from the general literary movement of the century, for they were written in the first instance for performance by the author's scholars in Zittau ; like the Latin comedy of the previous century, Weise's was a School comedy. In the art and technique of the drama Weise is really no further advanced than Gryphius, but he at least writes a simpler and more natural prose. As examples of his plays may be mentioned Die triumphierende Keuschheit (1668), a modernised adaptation of the story of Joseph and Potiphar, the comedy Baurischer Macchiavellus (1679), a tragedy on the subject of Masaniello (1682), and Die unvergniigte Seele (1688). A verbose version of the Taming of the Shrew, Komb'die von der bb'sen Katharina, written in 1705, has also been recently reprinted. But the day of the drama had not yet come in Germany, and Weise had little influence in hastening its arrival. In the field of fiction the worthiest successor of Simp lid ssimus was not Weise's work, but another German picaresque novel on Spanish lines, Schelmuffskys wahrhaftige, curib'se und sehr gefdhrliche Reisebeschreibung zu Wasser und Lande (i 696). The author of this vividly written braggart romance, the forerunner of the celebrated Miinchhausen, was only dis- covered in comparatively recent years to have been a young student, Christian Reuter, born near Halle in 1665. In the last quarter of the seventeenth century the German Renaissance passed into what we have called 96 THE LATER SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. the second phase in the general development of Renais- sance literature that is to say, the phase of degeneration which in all European literatures set in after the first outburst of early 'Renaissance poetry and preceded the second, riper period dominated by French classicism. The phase of German literature now to be considered, the so-called " Second Silesian School," is, in the evolu- tion of Renaissance literature, parallel to the movement which in Italy was represented by Marino, in Spain by Gongora, in England by Lyly and the Euphuists, and in France by the precieuses ridicules of the Hotel de Rambouillet. Thus at a time when France had touched the zenith of her greatest period of classicism, Germany had hardly even reached the stage preparatory to such a period. The leaders of the Second Silesian School were Christian Hofmann von Fjtofmannswaldau (1617-79) and Daniel Kaspar von Lohenstein (1635-83), one the representative lyric poet, the other the representative dramatist of the time. Hofmannswaldau was a native of Breslau, where, after extensive travels, he ultimately settled ; he had been brought up in the literary tenets of Opitz, and from Italy he introduced the " liebliche Schreibart " of Guarini and Marino. He translated the former's Pastor fido in 1678, and in 1680 earned for himself the sobriquet of the "German Ovid" with his ffeldenbriefe, a collection of love epistles in verse and prose, in which the empty bombast and trivial gallantry of his Italian models is carried to an absurd extreme. An anthology of the lyrics of the school by Benjamin Neukirch began to appear in 1695 under the title Herrn von Hofmannswaldau und anderer Deutschen auserlesene Gedichte. Hofmannswaldau's lyrics included in this col- lection are not perhaps worse than his Heldenbriefe, but Neukirch's volume well deserves its description as the lowest point to which the German lyric ever sank. Lohenstein's dramas held out even less hope for the betterment of German literature. Although Lohenstein had Gryphius at hand as a model, his dramas recall THE HEROIC NOVEL. Q7 rather the very earliest and crudest forms of Renaissance tragedy ; the main impression they leave behind them is of a constant aping of Seneca's style and a striving after a rhetorical sublimity that is never attained. In addition to this, Lohenstein revels in barbarous horrors as hardly another European poet of the seventeenth century ; subjects like those of his Cleopatra (1661), Agrippina (1665), and Sophonisba (1680), do not attract him by their poetic possibilities, but by the opportunities they afford of describing cruelty, bloodshed, and incest. As was to be expected, the novel of the Second Sil- esian School kept more in touch with what was being done under Renaissance influence in other European lands than either its lyric or drama ; for in the heroic romances of France and their equivalents in other lands the artificial style of the second Renaissance period still lingered. The French gallant novels found an eager public in Germany, and several had been translated at an early date by the founder of one of the Hamburg linguistic societies, Philipp von Zesen (1619-89), a native of Dessau. Zesen's own stories of this class, such as Die adriatische Rosemund (1645) and Simson, eine Helden- und Liebesgeschichte (1679), were no less popular. That the object of this form of romance was not merely to entertain, but also to be a school of manners, is seen in the lengthy books by Duke Anton Ulrich of Bruns- wick (1633-1714), Die durchlduchtige Syrerin Aramena (1669-73) and Die romische Oktavia (1677), as well as in Herkules und Valiska (1659-60) by A. H. Bucholtz (1607-71), a novel which enjoyed an extraordinarily long- lived popularity. Didactic, too, are the voluminous geo- graphical and historical romances of E. W. Happel (1648-90). Two books, however, stand out from this general mass of artificial fiction, and are worthy of more careful attention. One is Die asiatische Banise, oder blutiges dock mutiges Peru (1689), by Heinrich Anshelm von Ziegler (1663-96), the best German novel of the heroic type, a book the exotic scenery and vigorously drawn characters of which kept it alive, in spite of the G 98 THE LATER SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. rhetorical bombast of its language, until late in the eighteenth century. The other is Lohenstein's one novel, Grossmii tiger Feldlurr Arminius, oder Hermann ah ein tapferer Beschirmer der deutschen Freiheit nebst seiner durchlauchtigsten Thusnelda (1689-90), which in its patriotism and truth of observation stands in closer relation to actuality than any other product of Lohen- stein's school ; it is one of the few books of this de- cadent time that show a promise of better things. It was perhaps the best that could have happened for the ultimate regeneration of the nation that in this century of the Thirty Years' War, when a popular or national literature was impossible, the Germans should have looked abroad for their poetic inspiration. But in the fifty years that elapsed between the Peace of West- phalia and the close of the century, the progress of their literature was disappointingly slow : it remained for the eighteenth century to make clear that Renaissance models alone could not effect the salvation of German poetry. 99 CHAPTER X. FRENCH CLASSICISM AND ENGLISH NATURALISM. THE eighteenth century in the intellectual development of Europe presents a Janus-like aspect : it looks both backwards and forwards. On the one hand, it carries the literary movement inaugurated by the Renaissance and the spiritual revival associated with the Reformation, to a higher and highest point ; and, on the other, it is the century in which the leading nations of Europe, England, France, Germany, one after the other, discovered, by virtue of a return to nature and to unfettered modes of thought, their true selves. Thus it is at the same time the century of classicism and rationalism, and the century of individualism and sentimentalism. In England and France these two movements stand in more or less acute antagonism to each other, and it was Germany's mission to effect a reconciliation between them. In German thought and poetry we are able to discern a steady endeavour to overcome the dual character of the century, a move- ment towards a classicism which afforded room for in- dividual expansion and towards a humanism which com- bined the clear vision of the " Aufklarung " with a noble idealism. It is difficult to find a definite starting-point for the literary movement of the eighteenth century. The his- torian of English literature usually begins his study of the period with the Restoration, that is to say, forty years too early ; the German, on the other hand, is rather tempted to postpone what he calls eighteenth-century literature 1OO FRENCH CLASSICISM AND ENGLISH NATURALISM. until after the year 1740. That year marks an epoch both in German political history it was the date of Frederick the Great's accession to the throne of Prussia and of Maria Theresa's to that of Austria and in the his- tory of German literature ; in 1740 took place the famous literary battle between Gottsched in Leipzig, the champion of French classicism, and Bodmer and Breitinger the two Zurich critics who won the first victories for English naturalism on the continent. The literature of the previous forty years of the eighteenth century in Germany is imitative and unin- spired. Completely overshadowed by the French seven- teenth century, it is, one might say, the German equivalent of that stage in the evolution of Renaissance ideas which found its complete expression in the " grand siecle " of Louis XIV. The group of North German poets, the so-called " Hofpoeten " Rudolf von Canitz (1654-99), Benjamin Neukirch (1665-1729), Johann von Besser (1654-1729), J. V. Pietsch (1690-1733). J. U. von Konig (1688-1744) who set themselves up in opposition to Hofmannswaldau and Lohenstein, were only superior to these poets in their better taste and avoidance of bom- bast. For the rest, they pinned their faith on Boileau and were but mediocrely endowed with poetic talent. To this circle belonged, however, one inspired lyric poet, Johann Christian Giinther (1695-1723), whose unhappy life was cut short at the age of twenty-eight. Giinther's lyrics his first collection of Gedichte appeared in 1724 show a felicity of expression and smoothness of rhythm worthy of his best predecessors in the seventeenth century, Dach and Fleming, and an emotional sincerity which foreshadows the lyric of Klopstock and Goethe. But Giinther was an exception and, at his best, has little in common with the pseudo - classic "court poets," with whom he is associated. The chief representative of this North German class- icism on the French model was Johann Christoph Gott- sched, who was born at Judithenkirch, near Konigsberg, in 1700, and found his way at the age of twenty-four to GOTTSCHED. IOI Leipzig, which was at that time the intellectual metropolis of Germany. As a member, and later as the "Senior" of the " Deutschiibende Gesellschaft " in Leipzig, and as the editor of several periodicals, he rapidly made his way to the front; and in 1730, his Versuch einer Kritischeri Dichtkunst, a practical treatise embodying the pseudo- classic dogmas of literary composition, established his right to speak with authority. From theory Gottsched passed to practice ; he succeeded in enlisting the sym- pathies of the best theatrical company of the time for his ideas, that at the head of which stood Johann and Karoline Neuber, and with their assistance he declared war on the crude melodramatic " Haupt- und Staats- aktionen," then popular, and established the masterpieces of the French classical drama on the German stage ; he insisted on the actors avoiding bombastic rant and vulgar buffoonery, and thereby brought the theatre into touch, as it had hardly ever been before in Germany, with literature. This was a great point gained, even if Gottsched's zeal for French ideals led him to neglect elements in the native drama which were worthy of development. Gott- sched's main task was to provide the theatre with plays, and between 1740 and 1745 he published six volumes entitled Deutsche Schaubiihne nach den Regeln der alten Griechen und Romer eingerichtet, which contained mainly translations from the French. He himself .wrote an original tragedy Der sterbende Cato (1732), based partly on a French play by J. Deschamps and partly on that by Addison ; in spite of its indifferent merit, Gottsched's tragedy held the German stage for many years. Gott- sched had little or no creative genius, but his wife, Luise Adelgunde Gottsched (1713-62), was the author of several excellent comedies which enjoyed deserved popularity. This varied activity between 1730 and 1740 brought Gottsched's reputation to a culminating point ; he was generally recognised as the privileged dictator of German letters. In 1740, however, the blow fell; a new move- ment in German criticism arose, championed by two Swiss critics, Bodmer and Breitinger, and in the virulent contro- 102 FRENCH CLASSICISM AND ENGLISH NATURALISM. versy that ensued, Gottsched was completely discredited. So disastrous indeed was his defeat that, although he lived till 1766, he sank almost into obscurity, all the less deserved when it is remembered that after 1740 he published works of such solid merit as his Grundle- gung einer deutschen Sprachkunst (1748), which helped materially to normalise the German literary language of the eighteenth century, and his still valuable Notiger Vorrat zur Geschichte der deutschen dramatischen Dicht- kunst (1757-65). Before dealing with Gottsched's opponents, we must return to the beginning of the century and trace the beginnings of that new spirit which was ultimately to dislodge French pseudo - classicism. Even before the close of the seventeenth century, a freer breath passed over German intellectual life ; the harsh dogmatism of Lutheranism gave way before the emotional appeal of pietism, the first and greatest representative of which was Philipp Jakob Spener (1635-1705), an Alsatian preacher and the author of the text-book of the new faith, the Desi- deria pia, oder herzliches Verlangen nach gottgefdlliger Bes- serung der wahren evangelischen Kirche (1680). And in the train of this religious revival came a fresh outburst of religious song, which showed that the traditions of the preceding century had not died out. To pietism we owe the still familiar hymns of Spener himself, of J. Neander (1650-80), G. Tersteegen (1697-1769), and N. L. von Zinzendorf (1700-60), the founder of the sect of " Herrnhuter " or Moravian Brethren. Meanwhile, the influence of Hobbes and the English deists was gradually making its way into Germany ; and in its train rationalism advanced rapidly, holding the bal- ance at the universities with pietism. Christian Thomasius (1655-1728), the pioneer of the new philosophy, delivered at Leipzig in the winter of 1687-88 the first course of university lectures in the German tongue, and about the same time published a German monthly journal, Scherz- und ernsthafte, vernilnftige und einfdltige Gedanken iiber allerhand lustige und niltzliche Biicher und Fragen. THOMASIUS, LEIBNIZ, AND WOLFF. 103 Greater than Thomasius was his younger fellow-townsman, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), the first German philosopher whose influence was European. Leibniz's historical significance is due to the fact that he definitely destroyed the formal philosophic systems of the mediaeval schools. His own system, which he expounded in Latin and French treatises (Nouveaux essais sitr fentendement Aumam, 1704; -Essais de Theodicee sur la bonte de Dieu, la liberte de fhomme et forigine du mat, 1710, and Monadologie, 1714), was based on the results arrived at by Locke in England and Bayle in France ; but Leibniz attacked the problems from a less materialistic standpoint. The dualism between matter and spirit, which the philo- sophy of the eighteenth century attempted again and again to bridge over, was explained in Leibniz's system by an ingenious hypothesis of pre-established harmony between the two ; matter consisted, according to him, of so-called "monads," which were not merely endowed individually with the qualities of matter, but had at the same time a certain spiritual potency. In his native tongue Leibniz wrote but little, but he advocated its use with persistency and warmth notably in his Unvorgreif- liche Gedanken betreffend die Ausilbung und Verbesserung der teutschen Sprache (1697) and was one of the chief founders of the Berlin Academy in 1700. He laid, one might say, the basis of modern German culture ; above all, he gave the German "Aufklarung" its character- istically optimistic tone. He was not, however, a practical thinker who reacted immediately on his nation or its literature ; that was the work of his successor, Christian Wolff (1679-1 754), who, as professor in Halle, carried on and completed the rationalistic movement inaugurated by Thomasius and Leibniz. Without the originality of either of these men, Wolff possessed a remarkably practi- cal mind ; he reduced the new philosophy to a system ( Vernilnftige Gedanken von Gott, der Welt und der Seele des Menschen, 1720), and by virtue of his immediate appeal to his time became pre-eminently, as Hegel said, the "teacher of the Germans." IO4 FRENCH CLASSICISM AND ENGLISH NATURALISM. The philosophic movement contributed in no small degree towards bringing England and Germany closer to- gether at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century. And it was not unnatural that the first avenue by which English influence found its way to the continent should have passed through Hamburg. North German philosophers and theologians had been constantly drawing attention to how much Germany had to learn from England, and the younger literary generation in Hamburg soon followed up their suggestions. The way was prepared by a satirist of no mean gifts, Christian Wernigke (1661-1725), who brought the Hamburg poets of Hofmannswaldau's school into discredit. His best epigrams, indeed, are hardly inferior to those of Logau in the previous century. And in Hamburg were born two poets who shared the honour of introducing English literary ideas into German poetry, and laying the found- ation for the new literary movement. These were Barthold Heinrich Brockes (1680-1747) and Friedrich von Hagedorn (1708-54). The former, who began in the school of Hofmannswaldau, has small intrinsic worth as a poet ; he came, however, at an early date under the influence of Pope's pastorals, and found in this model a congenial vehicle for his own passionate love of nature. His original poetry began to appear in 1721 under the title Irdisches Vergniigen in Gott, of which by 1748 nine volumes had appeared. There is little that is inspired in these volumes, but Brockes's enthusiasm leavened all that came after ; he achieved what his English contemporary Thomson, whose Seasons he translated, had achieved in England : he emancipated the senses, and voiced the growing en- thusiasm for nature. Hagedorn is in every respect a greater poet than Brockes, but it may be questioned if his influence was proportionate to his merits. He, too, came under English influence, for he had lived for several years in London as secretary to the Danish embassy, and in later life he kept in constant touch with England. But the poets who attracted him in England were rather those INFLUENCE OF THE ENGLISH WEEKLIES. IO5 who had been schooled in French classicism than the pioneers of naturalism. Apart from the lesson of form and style and this lesson must not be underrated Hage- dorn had little to give to German poetry that was vital to its progress. He had a sunny, happy nature, which revelled in the light social tone of the anacreontic, as it was cultivated in France at this time ; and in his admir- able Fabeln und Erzdhlungen (1738-50), he proved himself a worthy German successor of Lafontaine. English literature first became widely popular in Germany with the introduction of the English weekly journal on the model of the Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian. Here, again, Hamburg led the way. As early as 1713, Der Vermin/tier had appeared there, a periodical which consisted mainly of translations from the English weeklies. In the years 1721-23 Bodmer and Breitinger published their Diskurse der Maler in Zurich, while Gottsched also copied the English models in Die vernilnf- tigen Tadlerinnen (1725-26) and Der Biedermann (1727). The best example of the German "moralische Wochen- schrift " is, however, Der Patriot, which appeared in Hamburg between 1724 and 1726. This form of litera- ture took even a firmer hold upon the German people than upon the English, and continued popular on the continent until long past the middle of the eighteenth century. In England the moral weekly was a testimony to the rising influence of the middle classes, but in Germany it had at the same time a very definite mission : it became the accepted organ of popular education, the vehicle by means of which the Wolffian philosophy was rendered palatable to the nation at large. Hardly less influential than the Spectator was another great English book in the early years of the eighteenth century, Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719). While in England the significantly modern note in this novel was at once recognised, the continent saw in it rather the culmination of the form of romance which had dominated European literature in the seventeenth century. Ger- many especially regarded it as the development of a 106 FRENCH CLASSICISM AND ENGLISH NATURALISM. kind of story, of which she had already had an example in the latter part of Simplidssimus. Robinson Crusoe was at once translated into German, and within a very few years had called forth an extraordinary flood of imita- tions. We find not merely a Teutscher Robinson, a Franzo- sischer Robinson, but every country in Germany had its own Robinson The Swiss Family Robinson, by J. R. Wyss, which is still familiar to us, dates from the beginning of the nineteenth century; the list includes further a Geistlicher Robinson and a Medizinischer Robinson, and even zjungfer Robinsonin ; but many of these, it ought in fairness to be added, are only " Robinsonaden " in name. Best of all is Die Insel Felsenburg, written by J. G. Schna- bel, and published in four volumes between 1731 and 1743. Here the motives familiar from Defoe's romance are weakened by repetition and over - emphasis ; the author is more intent on demonstrating the rise of an ideal state under the conditions of nature than in depict- ing, like Defoe, the realistic struggle of man against nature's powers. But the novel is written graphically and vividly and as modernised by Tieck in Germany and Oehlen- schlager in Denmark it maintained its popularity until late in the nineteenth century. As in Reformation times, Switzerland responded most quickly to this stimulus from without ; and the gospel of naturalism which came from England, soon found en- thusiastic adherents there. Among the pioneers of the new literature, Albrecht von Haller is usually regarded as the Swiss complement of Hagedorn ; but Haller, who was born at Bern in 1708 and died in 1777, was much more a poet of the coming time than his Hamburg con- temporary. His writings have none of the winning grace of Hagedorn's verse, but his two didactic poems, Die A/pen and Uber den Ursprung des Ubels, both published for the first time in the second edition of his Versnch schweizerischer Gedichte (i 734), reveal a grander imagin- ation than Hagedorn possessed : and his appreciation for nature in her wilder and sterner moods, struck a new note in the continental literature of the eighteenth cen- BODMER AND BREITINGER. 107 tury. In his old age Haller wrote novels with didactic tendencies (Usong, 1771 ; Alfred, Konig der Angelsachsen, X 773)> an d, as professor in Gottingen, was one of the leading anatomists and physiologists of his century. It was from Switzerland, too, that the movement emanated before which Gottsched and pseudo-classicism ultimately succumbed in Germany. This movement was also English, for its theory was based on the Spectator, its practice on Milton. Gottsched's principal Swiss opponents, Johann Jakob Bodmer (1698-1783) and Johann Jakob Breitinger (1701-76), were theorists and scholars rather than poets ; the latter, indeed, restricted himself entirely to criticism, and Bodmer's original poetry, his epics, such as Noah (1750), hardly detract from the truth of this statement. In later years Bodmer helped to awaken interest in German mediaeval literature with a mod- ernisation of the Nibelungenlied(Chriemhilden Rache, 1757) and with his collection of the Minnesinger (1758-59). The two friends began their joint activity in 1721 in the journal already mentioned, Die Diskurse der Maler, and in 1732 Bodmer published a prose translation of Paradise Lout, prefaced by a short eulogy of the English poet and his rhymeless verse. Gottsched in Leipzig did not alto- gether approve of this, but it was not until Breitinger pub- lished his Kritische Dichtkimst, and Bodmer his Kritische Abhand lung von dem Wunderbaren in der Poesie in 1740, that the actual quarrel with the leader of French taste broke out. In 1741 Bodmer followed up his treatise with a second, Betrachtungen iiber die poetischen Gemdldc der Dichter. At first sight, it would not seem as if there was much room for antagonism between the two parties, and, indeed, in the essentials of poetic theory both sides were fairly well agreed. The real point at issue was whether, as Gottsched insisted, reason should be the dominating force in poetic creation, or, as his opponents said, imagination ; Gottsched believed in the poet sub- mitting himself to certain artificial laws deduced from classic writers ; Bodmer and Breitinger, while by no means despising laws, left room for the poet to exercise 108 FRENCH CLASSICISM AND ENGLISH NATURALISM. more freely his imagination. This explains why the hottest part of the controversy centred in the question as to how far the " miraculous " was a legitimate element in poetic expression. The battle had not raged long before it was evident that Gottsched's cause was lost ; not that his adversaries were superior to him, for he and his henchmen were intellectually, and even as poets, more than a match for the Zurich party, but the spirit of the age was against him. Bodmer and Breitinger triumphed, and with them the influence of English literature, not because they fought particularly well, but because the day of undiluted and unmodified pseudo-classicism was over. log CHAPTER XI. SAXON AND PRUSSIAN LITERARY CIRCLES ; KLOPSTOCK. IN the present chapter we have to consider the condition of German literature in the years subsequent to the decisive controversy between Gottsched and the Swiss in 1740 and 1741. The immediate effect of Gottsched's defeat was naturally most noticeable among his own friends and disciples in Leipzig, the young men who had helped him to translate French dramas and Bayle's Dictionary. These writers, although not openly disloyal to Gottsched, were influenced by the new ideas, and felt the need of a more liberal organ than the Belustigungen des Verstandes und des Witzes, in which their contributions had hitherto appeared; and in 1744 they founded a new monthly, which, owing to the fact that it was published in Bremen, was called the Bremer Beitrdge (1744-48). Of the writers of this circle, K. C. Gartner (1712-91), J. A. Cramer (1723-88), J. Adolf Schlegel (1721-93) father of the brothers Schlegel who became the chief critics of the Romantic School and J. A. Ebert (1723-95), who translated extensively from the English, are of small importance ; but four members of the group, Elias Schlegel, Zacharia, Rabener, and Gellert, deserve more detailed consideration. Although not perhaps the most talented, Johann Elias Schlegel (1719-49), whose promising career was cut short at the age of thirty, meant most for the future develop- ment of German poetry. His alexandrine tragedies (Hermann, 1743; Canut, 1747) wer e the most original 110 SAXON AND PRUSSIAN LITERARY CIRCLES. that the school produced, and his comedies (Die stumme Schonheit, 1747; Der Triumph der giiten Frauen, 1748) the best to be seen on the German stage before Lessing, with the possible exception of an admirable local comedy of Hamburg life, Der Bookesbeutel (1742), by Hinrich Borkenstein. In his dramaturgic theories Schlegel was distinctly a forerunner of Lessing ; he recognised that the Greeks were worthier masters to imitate than the French ; he discussed the establishment of a permanent national theatre, and had even a word to say in favour of Shakespeare, whose Julius Caesar was, in 1741, trans- lated into alexandrines by the Prussian ambassador in London, . K. W. von Borck. J. F. W. Zacharia (1726-77) helped, like Ebert, to introduce English literature into Germany he translated Milton's Paradise Lost : in 1760 but his tastes lay rather in the direction of English classicism than of the new literary ideals towards which Germany was blindly grop- ing. He is remembered almost solely by his admirable comic epic Der Renommist (1744), which was modelled partly on Boileau's Lutrin, and partly on Pope's Rape of the Lock. The hero is a student who comes from the rough, unpolished university of Jena to Leipzig, the metropolis of good taste, where he falls under the charm of a Leipzig beauty, becomes himself a dandy, only to be laughed at and rejected by the lady for a more favoured townsman of her own. The argument of the poem is trite enough, but Zacharia gives an interesting glimpse into the Leipzig to which Lessing came as a student. More gifted than Zacharia was Gottlieb Wilhelm Rab- ener (1714-71), who, educated at the school of St Afra in Meissen and at the university of Leipzig, became a revenue inspector at Leipzig and Dresden. His writings are not voluminous, being all comprised in four small volumes, Sammlung satirischer Schriften, which appeared between 1751 and 1755. Rabener is a prose satirist of a peculiarly gentle and harmless type ; politics and the wider issues of social life he eschews altogether, and the RABENER AND GELLERT. Ill raillery which he expends on provincial vagaries and eccentricities is always mingled with a didactic desire to improve. His own genial personality is reflected in his satire, and his prose style has a charm unusual at so early a period. If Rabener was more humorist than satirist, C. L. Liscow (1701-60) was a satirist without much humour ; his collection of Satirische und ernsthafte Schriften (1739) is more akin to the kind of writing we associate with Swift, but as his satire was for the most part directed against the obscurer writers of the day, it soon lost its interest. A. G. Kastner (1719-1800), professor of mathematics at Gottingen, has also to be mentioned here as a sharp-tongued and witty epigrammatist. As far as popularity was concerned, the first place among the contributors to the Bremer Beitrdge belongs to Christian Fiirchtegott Gellert (1715-69). Educated, like Rabener, in Meissen and Leipzig, he became in 1744 a " privatdozent " and in 1751 professor in the university. As a teacher, his favourite theme was the relationship of literature and morals, and his moral guidance and advice was eagerly sought by all classes of people. His books found their way into circles where previously only the Bible and the hymn-book had been read ; he taught the German middle classes what serious literature meant. Gellert is the typical product of the Wolffian philosophy as it manifested itself in literature ; he realised better than any other man of his time the educative mission of litera- ture which Wolff and Gottsched had at heart. As a playwright, Gellert wrote a few comedies the best being perhaps Das Los in der Lotterie (174?) which, without making pretensions to higher dramatic significance, re- produce faithfully the social life of the time ; and in an academic address he advocated the imitation of the comedie larmoyante of Nivelle de la Chaussee, a type of play which, as will be seen, was all-important for the subsequent development of the German drama. In fiction, he was also a pioneer, for his one novel, Leben der schwedischen Grdfin von G*** (1747-48), has the distinction of being the first German novel inspired by 112 SAXON AND PRUSSIAN LITERARY CIRCLES. Richardson. It is true, the result is of rather a hybrid character, Gellert being unable to dispense with the sen- sational elements of the older fiction ; and, in spite of its sententiousness, his book can hardly be regarded as in- culcating virtue. His didactic aims were more effectively realised in his collection of model letters (Briefe, nebst einer praktischen Abhandlung von dem guten Geschmack in Brief en, 1751), which were accepted as models for German letter-writing by more than one generation. Gellert's greatest achievement, however, was his Fabeln und Erzdhlungen (1746-48), the only book of that time which still remains popular to-day. Grace and simplicity, not poetic insight or imagination, are the characteristics of Gellert's poetry. Lafontaine is his model, but he Ger- manises Lafontaine as completely as he had Germanised Richardson in his novel ; his milieu is the unidealised daily life around him, and the didactic point of his story is care- fully adjusted to German conditions. With his Geistliche Oden und Lieder (1757), again, he satisfied the religious needs of his contemporaries as in the earlier collection he had satisfied their poetic needs. It is, however, mainly as a fable-writer that Gellert is remembered, and he and Hagedorn supplied the models for the succeeding genera- tion of fable-writers, of whom M. G. Lichtwer (1719-83) and G. K. Pfeffel (1736-1809) are worthy of mention. Lessing, on the other hand, whose Fabeln appeared in I 759> brought back the fable to the concrete, sharply focussed form of the ancients. The Bremer Beitrage numbered amongst its contribu- tors a greater writer than either Rabener or Gellert, but one who proved too strong for the school, whose first important contribution to the journal was disastrous to it. In the spring of 1748, cantos i.-ni. of Klopstock's Messias were published in the Beitrdge and opened a new era in German poetry. Before, however, turning to Klopstock it is necessary to look at the condition of literature in Prussia, and, above all, in the two centres, Halle and Berlin, in the early years of Frederick the Great's reign. LITERATURE IN HALL]'.. 113 Although the headquarters of the opposing parties in the battle between classicism and naturalism were Leipzig and Zurich, Gottsched's enemies had an advance-post in much closer proximity, namely at Halle, where the new university, founded in 1694, already stood in the vanguard of German thought. Pietism and rationalism successively looked to Halle for guidance, and between 1735 ar) d 1 74, A. G. Baumgarten (1714-62) was a teacher in the univer- sity there ; on the basis of the poetic theories of Bodmer and Breitinger, that thinker laid the foundations of a new department of philosophy aesthetics. It was thus only natural that the students of Halle should have turned rather to Zurich than to Leipzig, and received the Swiss theories with more respect than Gottsched's. Of the Halle or Prussian group of poets, the two oldest were Immanuel Jakob Pyra (1715-44) and Samuel Gott- hold Lange (1711-81). The former, who died at the age of twenty-nine, was a warm admirer of Milton, whose in- fluence is to be traced on all his poetry ; while Lange at- tempted, with much less inspiration, to combine the fervid language of the Bible with the grace of the Horatian ode. In 1737 they wrote together in rhymeless verse, Thyrsis ttnd Damons freundschaftliche Lieder, which, however, were not published until after Pyra's death in 1745. These Lieder were the immediate forerunners of Klopstock's lyric poetry. The common tie which united the members of the younger group of Halle poets, Gleim, Uz, and Gotz, was the anacreontic, a form of verse which had already been made popular by Hagedorn. J. W. L. Gleim (1719- 1803), although but meagrely gifted, was a prominent literary personality of the eighteenth century ; for he stood on an intimate footing with all the poets of his time. His home in Halberstadt was a goal of pilgrimage for many a young writer, who sought the advice and commendation of "Vater Gleim." His anacreontic Scherzhafte Lieder (1744-45) set the example to his younger colleagues, and his Preussische Kriegslieder von einem Grenadier (1758), written in the English ballad-metre of Chevy Chase, gave H 114 SAXON AND PRUSSIAN LITERARY CIRCLES. him a reputation as a patriotic poet ; but the Kriegslieder have little abiding worth ; as Lessing said, the patriot's voice drowned the poet's. Gleim, however, owed his reputation solely to these songs ; his other poetic work, his epics and imitations of the Minnesang, are long for- gotten. The most gifted poet of the group was a native of Ansbach, Johann Peter Uz (1720-96), who also studied in Halle. He, too, cultivated the anacreontic, and gave it a formal beauty which bore testimony to his industrious study of Horace and the French vers de societe ; but it is in his philosophic poems that he displays to best advant- age his peculiar poetic genius ; here he is the successor of Haller and the direct forerunner of Schiller. Lastly, J. N. Gotz (1721-81), who came from Worms, had perhaps even more sense for poetic form than either Gleim or Uz, but his verses flowed too easily from his pen, and are, for the most part, trivial and ephemeral. From Halle the literary movement inaugurated by these anacreontic poets spread to the Prussian capital, where it found in the French tastes of the court an even more favourable soil. Frederick the Great (1712-86) had a very small opinion of German literature ; Gellert, indeed, was the only poet for whom he expressed his interest with any warmth, and when, in 1780, he himself wrote an essay of German literature (De la litterature alkmande), he showed a complete misunder- standing for its national characteristics. But the very movement he condemned he had himself unwittingly called into existence and fostered ; if German poetry, from Klopstock to Goethe, advanced by leaps and bounds, it was largely due to the confidence and the patriotism with which Frederick inspired his people ; this French king, who spoke German with difficulty, and looked at Europe with the cosmopolitan eyes of the eighteenth-century phihsophe, laid the foundations of that nationalism in German poetry which was to find its most vigorous expression in the anti - classic movement of "Sturm und Drang." Frederick's conception of literature was most nearly RAMLER AND EWALD VON KLEIST. 115 realised in the poetry of Karl Wilhelm Rainier (1725-98), the "German Horace." Ramler's lyrics (Lyrische Gedtchte, 1772), with their pedantic metrical correct- ness, their carefully studied decorum, were the embodi- ment of the severely classical ideals which the Prussian king would have liked to see transferred from French to German poetry. But these poems only appear to us now as cold and insincere imitations. In an age like this, which regarded the Horatian ode as the highest form of poetic expression, it was also little wonder that Anna Luise Karsch, or, according to the custom of the time, Karschin (1722-91), a protegee of Gleim's and Ramler's, should have been regarded as a " German Sappho." Frau Karsch, whose Auserlesene Gedichte were published in 1763, had a highly developed faculty of improvisation, but her talent was not strong enough to assert itself amidst the artificial tastes of her time. Among the Frederician poets there was one, however, who caught a glimpse of higher things, an officer in Frederick's army, Ewald Christian von Kleist (1715-59). Kleist, too, had sat at Gleim's feet, and had begun by writing anacreontic verses ; but poetry was too much a matter of the heart to him to allow him to be satisfied with mere exercises of ingenuity and wit. In 1749 he published Der Fruhling, a fragment of a descriptive poem suggested by Thomson's Seasons. A greater contrast to the cold abstractions of the classic poetry of the time it would be hard to imagine. Kleist merely describes a walk in 4he country and his own delight in the beauties of nature ; but spring is a veritable revelation to him, and he looks to nature as the healer of all human woes. What in Haller's Alpen had been tentative and not always convincing, has here become a passionate, heartfelt gospel. In 1757 and 1758 Kleist was in Leipzig, where he was the intimate friend of Lessing; and to those years belong the finely polished Ode an die preussische Armee and the short epic Cissides und Parties. In August 1759 he was severely wounded in the battle of Kunersdorf, and died before assistance could reach him ; to himself fell Il6 SAXON AND PRUSSIAN LITERARY CIRCLES. the honour he had extolled in his poetry, a soldier's death for his country. The leading poet of this epoch, the poet who realised what so many had been blindly groping after, the fulfil- ment alike of the critical and poetical demands of the time, was Klopstock. Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock was born at Quedlinburg on July 2, 1724, and educated at Schulpforta, where he already planned and began his epic on the life of Christ. In 1745 he went to Jena to study theology, and here, following the example of Bodmer in his translation of Milton, he completed the first three cantos of Der Messias in prose. In the following year he exchanged Jena for Leipzig, where, at Gottsched's suggestion, he turned his poem into hexameters, and in this form the three cantos appeared in the Bremer Beitrcige in 1748. Meanwhile a number of fervid odes to Leipzig friends (collected under the title Wingolf) had given Klopstock a reputation as a lyric poet; and in 1748, as tutor at Langensalza in Thuringia, he fell in love with a cousin who inspired the odes to " Fanny." Bodmer, one of Klopstock's first and warmest admirers, invited him to visit Zurich in 1750. The Swiss critic, however, was only prepared to find in Klopstock the religious poet, and when the latter revealed himself as not at all averse to worldly pleasures, Bodmer's warmth cooled off. After nearly seven months in Switzer- land, Klopstock received an invitation from the Danish king, Frederick V., to settle in Copenhagen and finish the Messias there. On the journey north he met in Hamburg his future wife, Margarete or Meta Moller, whom he married in 1754. With the exception of a two years' break, Copenhagen remained Klopstock's home until 1770, when he retired to Hamburg. His death took place in 1803. The composition of Der Messias covers a very wide period of German literature, the last cantos not appearing until 1773, the year that saw the establishment of the movement known as "Sturm und Drang." In spite of its twenty cantos and nearly twenty thousand verses, the KLOPSTOCK'S " MESSIAS." 117 poem treats but a small section of Christ's life, beginning with the ascent of the Mount of Olives. The action, however, is not limited to events that take place on earth ; the heavenly hosts play as large a part in the poem as the earthly personages. In this respect Klopstock was only following the traditional method of the religious epic as he had found it exemplified in Milton ; but while in the grandiose sweep of his imagination Klopstock yielded to none of his predecessors, he was entirely deficient in dramatic qualities, and in the power of giving individual life to his characters. Thus Der Messias is an epic not of action, but of feelings ; not of characters, but of senti- ment ; it has, as has been well said, more affinity with the lyric oratorios of Handel than with Paradise Lost. Even those features of Klopstock's poem that appeal most to us to - day, its lofty imagery, its grandiose imaginative flights, its constant appeal to the sense of wonder, pall on the reader after a few thousand lines palled, it must be admitted, on the poet himself before he reached the end. The inspiration grows scantier and scantier as the poem approaches its close, and it was only with difficulty that Klopstock rose to a culmination at all ; the opening episodes have more of the sublime than the closing scenes, where Christ takes His place on the right hand of God. German literature had advanced too rapidly for Klopstock ; he was left behind long before his life-work was completed, and he instinctively felt it. What had been a daring innovation in 1748, was in 1773 regarded as old-fashioned by the younger generation that pinned its faith to the theatre. After all, it is not as an epic poet, but as a lyric poet even in his epic that Klopstock marked an epoch in literary history ; the great achievements of German poetry in the eighteenth century are conceivable without the preparation of the Messias, but hardly without that of Klopstock's Oden. of which the first collected edition appeared in 1771^. These poems fall into several groups which show the poet's growth more clearly than the successive cantos of the epic. In the earliest of them, the Il8 SAXON AND PRUSSIAN LITERARY CIRCLES. poems written in Leipzig, Klopstock already shows himself in advance of his friends ; in freeing the lyric from the artificial restraint of rhyme, so dear to the anacreontic singers, Klopstock at the same time asserted the right of poetry to express purely personal and individual feelings. The antique metres, which he put in the place of the simple rhymed metres, were un-German enough, but the form was of little account compared with the fact that here, for the first time for centuries, German feelings were expressed with sincerity and free from artificial conventions. Klopstock sang of religion, of love passionately in the songs to his cousin, more con- templatively in those to his future wife ; he sang, in old English measures, patriotic songs, which are much superior to Gleim's artificial jingles ; his enthusiasm for the Germanic past inspired another group of odes, and his disappointed hopes of what the French Revolution was to achieve for the world, still another. But whatever his theme, the lyric which it inspired was, in the best sense, German and national. Klopstock has to be discussed in a third capacity : as a dramatist. He is the author of six plays, three on religious story (Der Tod Adams, 1757; Sa/omo, 1764; David, 1772), three forming a trilogy on the life of Germany's first patriot, Hermann or Arminius (1769-87). The latter, which Klopstock called " Bardiete " from " barditus," a word used by Tacitus, had been inspired by that enthusiasm for national antiquity due to Macpherson's Ossian. A translation of Ossian was pub- lished in 1764, and appealed with even greater force to the German imagination than the original to the English. Besides Klopstock, the leading German " bards," as the imitators of Ossian liked to call themselves, were H. W. von Gerstenberg (1737-1823), who, with his Gedicht eines Ska/den (1766), inaugurated the Ger- man movement, K. F. Kretschmann (1738-1809), the author of an empty, rhetorical Gesang Rhingulfs des Barden, als Varus geschlagen war (1768), and, most gifted of the three, Michael Denis (1729-1800), an THE BARDS; GESSNER. ng Austrian, who was largely instrumental in introducing North German ideas and poetry into Austria ; his poems appeared under the characteristic title Lieder Sineds (an anagram of Denis) des Barden in 1772. The "bardic" movement was, however, short-lived; it was a plant without roots, and soon withered in the fierce light of the " Sturm und Drang " ; but it awakened the nation's interest in its own past, and prepared the way for a truer patriotic poetry at a later date ; its most immediate successors were the group of poets known as the " Gottinger Dichterbund." One more writer of the age of Klopstock has to be mentioned, a writer somewhat difficult to class, Salomon Gessner (1730-88). Gessner was a Swiss who spent some years learning the trade of a bookseller in Berlin, where he came into touch with the literary world. But Berlin was not congenial to his quiet, retiring, nature - loving temperament, and in literature as in life he went his own way. In 1756 appeared his first collection of prose Idyllen, which had been preceded by a pastoral romance, Daphnis (1754), and were followed by a prose epic, Der Tod Abels (1758). These were the most popular German books, not only in Germany but in Europe, before the appearance of Goethe's Werther. Gessner was a lyric poet hardly less gifted in his way than Klopstock ; but the power of expression in verse was denied to him. His poetry shows a strange mingling of two widely different epochs ; the artificial rococo of the Renaissance is in- fused with a fervid love of nature, for which Gessner always finds the aptest and most delicate poetic ex- pression. He lived in an ideal, unreal world, in which poetry and nature were one. I2O CHAPTER XII. LESSING. WHILE Klopstock was modern Germany's first national poet of genius, Lessing was her first writer whose sig- nificance was European. In a higher degree than any other author of his time, Lessing was the incarnation of the best spirit of the eighteenth century ; as a poet, as a critic, as a philosopher, and as a theologian, he is a rationalist in the best sense of that word. He is to Germany what Voltaire is to France, but with the difference that while Voltaire's work, coming with its scathing satire and witty frivolity after the most brilliant epoch in French letters, may be compared with the satyr -play which closed the Greek trilogy, Lessing's is the serious prologue to the classical epoch of German literature. Born at Kamenz in the Oberlausitz in Saxony, on January 22, 1729, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was educated at the Fiirstenschule of St Afra in Meissen, and matriculated in 1746 as a student of theology in Leipzig. Although he was not actually a member of the circle of writers who contributed to the Bremer Beitrage, his early plays, such as Der junge Gelehrte (1747), Der Freigeist (1749), Die Ju den (1749), and the epigrams and anacreontics of his Kleinigkeiten (1751), have little to distinguish them from the productions of the Leipzig group. Thus one might say that Lessing virtually began his literary career in the train of Gottsched. In Leipzig his chief ambition, as he once wrote to his father, had been to be a "German Moliere"; in LESSING IN BERLIN. 121 Berlin, where, except for a few months spent at Witten- berg in the beginning of 1752, he lived from the end of 1748 to 1755, he seems to have set his heart on being Germany's Voltaire. In the literary supplement which he edited for the Berlinische privilegierte Zeitung, or Vossische Zeitung, he attracted attention by the force and decision of his criticism, and still more by his Vade- mecum filr Herrn Sam. Gotth. Lange, (1754), a trenchant attack on Lange, the Halle poet and translator of Horace. Quite in the spirit of Voltaire was Lessing's series of Rettungen (1753-54), "vindications " of authors who, in his opinion, had, for theological or other reasons, been misjudged. In two short-lived quarterlies, Beitrdge zur Historic und Aufnahme des Theaters (1750) and Theatra- lische Bibliothek (1754-58), he carried on the work begun by Elias Schlegel, preparing the way for a serious German drama and serious dramatic criticism. It is, however, rather the wide catholicity of Lessing's views than any marked originality that characterises these journals ; and following Voltaire and Diderot, he turned his attention to the English drama and arrived ultimately at the con- clusion that Germany had more to learn from England than from France. But Lessing did not only theorise ; he gave practical effect to his views in Miss Sara Sampson, a " biirgerliches Trauerspiel " produced in 1755. As the first of a long line of German " domestic tragedies " extending down into our own time, Miss Sara Sampson might well be called the most influential innovation in the whole history of the German stage. The play is of unmistakable Eng- lish origin, being an imitation of George Lillo's London Merchant, or the History of George Barnwell (1731), while Richardson's novel Clarissa Harlowe supplied Les- sing with some traits for his characters. The scene of the play is England. Sara Sampson has eloped with her lover Mellefont, and they are living at an inn. A former mistress of Mellefont's, Marwood, discovers them here and informs Sara's father. She endeavours under a false name to enlist Sara's sympathy for herself, and to sepa- 122 LESSING. rate her from Mellefont. Meanwhile Sampson arrives and is willing to forgive his daughter ; whereupon Mar- wood poisons Sara, and Mellefont kills himself with Marwood's dagger. Not only the scene and the char- acters of this lachrymose tragedy are English ; the technique is English too. The most conspicuously German contribution is the tendency to allow the in- terest in feelings and emotions to override what to the English playwright was more important, that in the moral purpose. Miss Sara Sampson is not a great play ; even Lessing's contemporaries soon discovered its weak- nesses, but with it the German drama made a great stride forwards. Independently of Lessing, however, German dramatic literature was making steady progress. When Lessing returned to Leipzig after the production of Miss Sara, he found the theatre in n much more promising con- dition than when he had lived there seven years before. Two writers in particular interested him, both of whom were unfortunately cut off at an early age, namely J. F. von Cronegk (1731-58), author of a prize tragedy, Codrus, and an unfinished play, Olint und Sophronia, and J. W. von Brawe (1738-58), who, under Lessing's influence, wrote a tragedy in blank verse, Hmtus, and an excellent " btirgerliche Tragodie " in prose, Der Freigeist. Another friend of Lessing's, C. F. Weisse (1726-1804), had more success as a playwright ; he adapted to the popular taste of the day the ideals of more ambitious writers, and wrote an easy, fluent dialogue superior to that of Gellert and his friends. He translated and adapted Richard III. in alexandrines, converted Romeo and Juliet into a " biirgerliche Tragodie," and acclimatised English and French operettas on the German stage. Lessing himself soon left the crude realism of Miss Sara Sampson behind him in the fine one-act tragedy Philotas (i 759) and in the fragment of a drama of Faust (1759). Meanwhile, in conjunction with two Berlin friends, Moses Mendelssohn and C. F. Nicolai, Lessing had established the Briefe, die neueste Liter atur betreffend THE " LITERATURBRIEFE." 123 ( J 759- 6 5). in which, for the first time, he rose to his full height as a literary critic. Moses Mendelssohn (1729-86) was a thinker of originality and insight, and the first of the so-called " Popularphilosophen." In his most popular work, Phddon (1767), he helped to spread the ideas of the " Aufldarung," making them more gener- ally palatable by a superficial varnish of Greek philosophy. In collaboration with Mendelssohn, Lessing wrote the prize-essay/ 3 ^ ein Metaphysiker ! (1755), C. F. Nicolai (1733-1811) was a Berlin bookseller, whose obdurate adherence throughout his long life to the narrow rational- ism of his youth, caused him to be regarded by a younger generation as the representative of all that was shallow in literature and as the antagonist of progress. But his religious novel Sebaldus Nothanker (1773-75), and his popular Beschreibung einer Reise durch Deutschland und die Schweiz (1783) were regarded as advanced works in their day. In the fifty- four letters which Lessing contributed to the Literaturbriefe he showed himself to be a critic without a rival among his contemporaries. The clear and impartial judgment which had already been con- spicuous in his early criticism is here still more marked ; the leading phenomena of German literature are passed in review, and poets like Wieland and Klopstock judged with a finality which posterity has hardly needed to revise. Here, too, Lessing has at last come to clearness with himself about Shakespeare, and, abandoning Voltaire's views of the English poet, he boldly pronounces him to be a more faithful observer of the Aristotelian laws of the drama than the French tragic poets of the seven- teenth century. Before such incisive and convincing- criticism one is tempted to say that the critical method of the eighteenth century that is to say, the method of sitting in judgment on poetry and art from an assumedly superior standpoint, which held its own in Europe until long after the Romantic School had set up new ideals touches in Lessing its highest point. The Literary Letters were occupied for the most part with 124 LESSING. books, with the facts of literary history ; in his next two critical works, Lessing discussed the principles of aesthetics and the theory of criticism. These were the Laokoon and the Hamburgische Dramaturgic. In the former of these, Lessing is associated with one of the master-minds of the age, Johann Joachim Winkelmann (1717-68). Compared with Lessing, Winkelmann was a more naive type of genius ; he seemed an ancient Greek born by accident into a world of artificial pseudo-classicism : to him the true under- standing for the antique, which Lessing only arrived at slowly by a process of self -education, came, we might say, natural. His monumental Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (1764) is one of the great books of the eigh- teenth century, and laid the foundations on which the whole modern study of the history of art is built up. In an earlier booklet, Gedanken iiber die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in der Mahlerei und Bildhauerkunst (1755), Winkelmann had expressed the opinion that the characteristic of Greek masterpieces was "a noble sim- plicity and a calm grandeur, both in posture and ex- pression." This thought brought order into a train of ideas which had long occupied Lessing's mind, and which now found expression in Laokoon, oder iiber die Grenzen der Malerei und Poesie (1766). Lessing's sharp analytical mind discovered the logical weakness in Winkelmann's interpretation as applied to the Laokoon group ; he pointed out that the superiority of the sculptor's Laokoon to Virgil's description of Laokoon's death was not necessarily a superiority at all. It was rather a question of two entirely different arts, the methods of which were different. The medium of the sculptor or painter, he showed, was space, that of the poet, time ; the painter depicts objects in juxtaposition, the poet in sequence. From this obser- vation he proceeded to define the boundaries of the various arts, especially that of poetry, which in the de- scriptions of nature so popular at that time had been unduly encroaching on the province of the painter. The influence of this book was, as of all Lessing's works, immediate and decisive ; it counteracted the growing LAOKOON AND HAMBURGISCHE DRAMATURGIE. 125 fondness for descriptive writing, and removed obstacles which were impeding the advance of German poetry. The Laokoon is a fragment. Lessing had the intention of publishing a second volume in which the aesthetic basis of the drama would probably have been discussed. Many new problems in dramatic art, similar to those which he had attacked in his Laokoon, were forcing themselves on his attention : the definition of tragedy and the validity of Aristotle ; the delimitation of comedy, tragi-comedy, " domestic " drama ; the province of the actor's art. Moreover, just at this time C. W. von Gluck (1714- 87) was evolving in his operas a new type of drama analogous to that of the Greeks ; his Orfeo ed Euridice (1762) and Alceste (1767) could not but have interested the author of the Laokoon ; and Gluck's later operas, Iphigenie en Aulide (1774) and Iphigenie en Tauride (1779), probably still more. These interesting questions of dramatic theory, which might have found a .place in the second part of the Laokoon, were reserved for the Hamburgische Dramaturgic (1767-68). This work was a periodical commentary on the work of the Hamburg National Theatre, which had been founded by several Hamburg citizens in 1767, and to which Lessing was appointed critic and literary adviser. The unsatisfactory repertory of the theatre, the financial diffi- culties which weighed heavily on it from the beginning, and the unwillingness of the actors to subordinate themselves to higher artistic ideals soon compelled Lessing to with- draw from any immediate connection with the under- taking, and to regard the performances merely as an occasion for expressing his own views on literary and dramaturgic matters. The Hamburgische Dramaturgic contains the ripest opinions which eighteenth - century classicism attained to on the subject of the drama ; in persistent antagonism to Voltaire, Lessing completed what Voltaire had begun, just as, in earlier years, in con- flict with Gottsched he advanced the classic movement which Gottsched had inaugurated. He denied, with perhaps greater zeal than judgment, the merits of French 126 LESSING. classic tragedy, and pinned his faith to Sophocles and Shakespeare, the greatness of these poets being measured by the theories of Aristotle. In Lessing's eyes the drama of all time stood or fell according to the Greek critic's laws, and a large part of the Dramaturgic is devoted to an elucidation of Aristotle. It is, however, significant of Lessing's wideness of view that he has also something to say of the drama of Spain. As twelve years before, Lessing's theory was accom- panied and followed by practice. The critical standpoint of the Hamburgische Dramaturgic is illustrated and exem- plified by his own three ripest dramas, Minna von Barn- helm, oder das Soldatengliick (1767), Emilia Galotti (i 77 2), and Nathan der Weise (1779). Minna von Barnhelm is Germany's first national comedy ; it embodies as no comedy had attempted to do before in German literature, the events, the ideas, and the atmosphere of its time ; it was, as Goethe well said, the truest product of the Seven Years' War. Neither, however, the motives nor the situations of the drama are specifically German ; it abounds in analogies to the European comedy of the earlier eighteenth century, from Farquhar's Beaux' Stratagem to Voltaire's L'Ecos- saise. Major von Tellheim has been discharged from the army under circumstances which reflect on his good name, and his sense of honour forbids him to hold Minna von Barnhelm, a Saxon heiress, to her engagement with him. Accompanied by her maid, Franziska, and her uncle who, however, does not appear until the close she comes to Berlin and alights at the same inn where Tellheim has taken up his quarters ; indeed, she is the unwitting cause of Tellheim being turned out of his room by the avaricious landlord. Tellheim moves to another inn, leaving the landlord a ring as payment of his debt. The landlord shows the ring to Minna, who recognises it and advances the required sum on it. In an interview with the major, Minna endeavours to show him that his ideas of honour are exaggerated, but without success ; so she has recourse to strategy. She leads Tellheim to believe that, owing to "MINNA VON BARNHELM." 127 her engagement with a Prussian officer, she has been dis- inherited by her uncle. This brings him at once to her feet, but it is now her turn to stand upon her dignity ; she refuses to be a burden to him and returns him his ring, this being, as he discovers afterwards, the ring she had redeemed from the landlord. A letter arrives from the king exonerating Tellheim from all blame and rein- stating him in his position. While Minna von Barnhelm has retained its vitality as a stage play longer than any other of Lessing's dramas, Emilia Galotti stands more immediately in the line of national development. For it has, on the one hand, much in common with the "biirgerliche Tragodie " which Lessing himself introduced from England, and on the other, it is the connecting link between that form of drama and the drama of the " Sturm und Drang." Its strength lies in its clearly cut figures, especially the crafty chamber- lain, Marinelli, and the Grafin Orsini ; its weakness in the attempt to adapt to the mental horizon of the eighteenth century an essentially antique theme. Emilia Galotti is virtually the Roman story of Virginia. The scene is laid at an Italian court. The Prince of Guastalla loves Emilia who is on the point of being married to a Graf Appiani. The prince's chamberlain, Marinelli, arranges a plot to frustrate this union. The carriage containing the young count, Emilia, and her mother, is waylaid near a country residence of the prince's ; the count is shot and Emilia rescued from her alleged robbers and carried to the prince's residence. Her father, Odoardo, learns of the prince's nefarious design s, and, rather than let his daughter fall into his hands, he stabs her like a second Virginius. The stormy conflicts which had raged round Lessing's head for the best part of his life, increased in intensity towards its close ; he never ceased to fight for that spiritual freedom, which had always seemed to him the end and aim of the " education of humanity." A con- troversy on antiquarian subjects with C. A. Klotz, an authority on such subjects in Halle, resulted in the Brief e 128 LESSING. antiquarischen Inhalts (1768-69) and the beautiful little study on Wie die Alien den Tod gebildet (1769). In 1773 he began to publish under the title Zur Geschichte und Literatnr, forgotten or undiscovered treasures from the Ducal library of Wolfenbiittel, of which he had, in 1770, been appointed keeper. He took the opportunity of includ- ing in this series some fragments by a writer whose name was not disclosed until forty years later H. S. Reimarus (1694-1768) in which the facts of Christian origins were subjected to a rationalistic investigation. This was the signal for another and the last and bitterest attack of all ; the German theological world, with the chief pastor of Hamburg, J. M. Goeze, at its head, rose up against Lessing. To find another theological controversy carried on with such acrimony, one would have to go back to Reformation times ; and even the Reformation has hardly anything more vigorous and trenchant to point to than Lessing's Eine Duplik, Eine Parabe!, Axiomata, and eleven Anti-Goeze (1778). Meanwhile Lessing's life had been clouded by personal suffering ; his marriage with Eva Konig in 1776 awakens in us a personal interest in an author who, more than any other of his century, lives as a purely intellectual force ; and that interest is deepened into sympathy by the tragic bereavement which left Lessing a widower in little over a year. Lessing emerged, purified and chastened by his trials and conflicts, and a mild beauty lies over the crowning achievements of his career, the noble Ernst und Falk : Gesprdche fiir Freimcuirer (1778), Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts (1780), that concentration of Lessing's evolutional idealism, and the drama of Nathan der Weise (1779). In form, a development under the influence of Diderot of the philosophic drama of Voltaire, Nathan der Weise stands aside from the main movement of German dramatic literature, which, in 1779, was, one might say, seething in the cauldron of Shakespearean " Sturm und Drang." But Nathan has to be judged, less as a drama for the theatre, than as an embodiment of Lessing's own lofty dreams of humanity and wise tolerance. NATHAN DER WEISE." I2Q There is little plot in it, and not much dramatic movement. What there is, is built up round a fable which Lessing found in Boccaccio's Decameron. Nathan the wise Jew is summoned before the Mohammedan Saladin and asked to pronounce judgment as to which of the three religions, Christianity, Judaism, or Mohammedanism, is the true one ; and he tells a story of three rings. A certain man possesses a ring of magic power, which renders all who believe in its virtue pleasing to God and to men. He has three sons, whom he loves equally well, and in order not to enrich one at the expense of the other, he has two rings made exactly like the genuine one. At the father's death the sons dispute as to who possesses the true ring just as Christian, Jew, and Mohammedan dispute re- garding the true religion and the wise judge advises each of them to believe his ring to be the true one and live and act accordingly. Lessing invented as a framework to this anecdote a story which makes excessive demands on our credulity. The Jew's adopted daughter Recha turns out to be of Christian birth, and sister of the Knight Templar who has rescued her from fire and loves her, while Saladin is discovered ultimately to be their uncle. Thus the mutual tolerance and respect which Lessing wished to see in the different religions, is emphasised by family ties between the representatives of these religions. The plot of Nathan der Weise is artificial to the point of absurdity, its characters are too theoretically conceived, and its verse is often prosaic and wanting in, dignity ; but it is none the less the greatest literary product of the German " Aufklk'rung," and the first important play written in blank verse. It pointed out to Schiller the way by which the German drama was to be raised from "Sturm und Drang" realism to higher things. Lessing himself did not long survive the death of his wife; he died in 1781, the year which saw the publication of the cfowntng achievement of the movement of enlighten- ment with which Lessing himself was most closely associ- ated, Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 130 CHAPTER XIII. WIELAND AND HERDER ; THE GOTTINGER DICHTERBUND. LIKE Lessing, Wieland was also one of Germany's intel- lectual liberators, but a liberator of a different kind. While Lessing freed Germany from a false classicism and a stultifying dogmatism, Wieland freed her from the oppo- site extreme from the unbridled revelling in sentiment and emotion, which came in the train of Klopstock and Rousseau ; Lessing's antidote was the art, the criticism, and the poetry of ancient Greece, Wieland's the lighter literature of the Romance peoples. Christoph Martin Wieland was born near Biberach in Wiirtemberg on September 5, 1733. His early educa- tion and the influences under which he grew up were pervaded by pietism, and his own early writings were modelled on those of Klopstock and Bodmer ; like Klop- stock, he spent several months in Zurich as the guest of Bodmer. Here he adapted himself more successfully to what Bodmer expected of him, and he obtained a tutorship which kept him in Zurich for five years. In 1760 he settled in Biberach as director of the chancellery ; and a Graf von Stadion, whose seat was in the neighbourhood, introduced him to a new literary world which was much more to his taste than the pietistic atmosphere of Zurich ; he borrowed from the Graf's library the works of the Eng- lish deists, the French encyclopaedists, and Voltaire, and studied the poetry of Ariosto and Prior. Greek antiquity took the place of the misty, elegiac world of Klopstock. Voltaire won his interest, however, for Shakespeare, WIELAND'S EARLY WRITINGS. 131 the majority of whose Theatralische Werke he trans- lated between 1762 and 1766. Meanwhile he had already experimented himself as a dramatist with plays drawn from English sources, Lady Johanna Gray (1758) and Clementina von Poretta (1760); and in 1764 ap- peared his first important work of fiction, Der Sieg der Natur uber die Schwarmerei, oder die Abenteuer des Don Sylvio von Rosalva, a novel in which the hero, after the manner of a Don Quixote, goes out into the world to dis- cover the fairies in whose existence he firmly believes. Wieland here reveals himself as the cynical rationalist who laughs at his own earlier enthusiasms and supersti- tions. The same spirit, still more frivolously cynical, is to be seen in his Komische Erzahlungen in verse (1765). A more ambitious and serious novel followed in 1766- 67, Die Geschichte des Agathon. In this work Wieland unrolls, against that antique background to which he re- mained more or less faithful throughout his career, the history of his own spiritual development. The plot is indifferently constructed, but in laying the chief emphasis on the psychological development of his hero, Wieland adapted to German fiction the methods of Richardson, and created the first important German novel on modern lines, a forerunner of Wilhelm Meister. In 1769 Wieland was professor of philosophy at the University of Erfurt, where he remained until 1772, when he was called to Weimar by the Duchess, to be tutor to her two sons, Karl August and Konstantin. Weimar remained Wieland's home until his death in 1813. As editor of the Teutsche Merkur (1773-89), he occupied a commanding position in German letters, and most of his own works were pub- lished for the first time in this periodical. Tales in light, easily flowing verse followed each other in rapid succession (Musarion, 1768; Gandalin, 1776; Geron der Adlige, 1777); the didactic novel, Der goldene Spiegel, oder die Konige von Scheschian (1772), half fiction, half political treatise, which had commended him to the Duchess of Weimar, was followed by the entertaining satire, Die Abde- riten (1774), in which German provincialism is held up to 132 WIELAND AND HERDER. ridicule; and to these succeeded didactic Greek novels (Aristipp und einige seiner Zeitgenossen, 1800-2) and translations of the classics. The most famous of all Wieland's works, and the only one which is still read to-day, is his epic Oberon, which appeared in 1780, when the "Sturm und Drang "'was well advanced. But there is hardly an echo of " Sturm und Drang " in this sunny revival of the French mediaeval romance of Hiion of Bordeaux, in which Wieland, like an eighteenth century Ariosto, took so childlike a delight. Oberon stands as far from the German world of to-day as The Faery Queene from modern England ; for although Wieland eked out the old story with borrowings from Shakespeare and Chaucer, he made no attempt to mod- ernise it ; the interest we still take in the poem is due solely to its graceful verse and easy narrative. Wieland was a liberator from an excessive Germanic fervour, but he can hardly be regarded as one of the builders of modern German literature ; his influence was a negative one, destructive rather than constructive. Thus, with the exception of a few Austrian writers, like J. A. Blumauer (1755-98), the author of a parody on the Aeneid (1783), and J. B. von Alxinger (1755-97), who wrote epics in Wieland's style, Wieland had few disciples. Even in the comic epic and the novel, we can only regard Wieland as one of many crossing influences which moulded the work of the other writers of this age. There is, for instance, little or nothing of Wieland's spirit in Die Jobsiade (1784), an admirable comic epic in " Knittelverse," by K. A. Kortum (1742-1824), and the tendency is to overestimate his in- fluence on M. A. von Thiimmel (1738-1817), a writer who is still remembered by his comic epic in prose, Wilhel- mine (1764), and his Reise in die mittaglichen Provinzen von Frankreich (1791-1805), the best of the many German imitations of Sterne's Sentimental Journey. The German novel of the eighteenth century preferred rather to go direct to the great innovators, Richardson and Fielding, Sterne and Rousseau, than to build on the basis Wieland had laid. Indeed, we have again to turn FICTION AND DIDACTIC LITERATURE. 133 to Austria to find in A. G. Meissner (1753-1807), the author of Alcibiades (1781-88) and a many-volumed col- lection of Skizzen (1778-96), an unmistakable imitator of Wieland. Amongst the many authors of novels on English and French lines at this time, mention may be made of J. T. Hermes (1738-1821), Sophie von Laroche (1730-1807), A. von Knigge (1752-96), T. G. von Hippel (1741-96), and C. F. Nicolai, who has been already dis- cussed in connection with Lessing. J. K. A. Musaus (1735-87), who, in spite of his rationalistic standpoint, awakened an interest in German folklore with his Volks- mdrchen der Deutschen (1782-86), satirised the Richard- sonian novel in his Grandison der Ziveite (1760-62). Didactic as the novel of this period was, it did not satisfy the thirst for moral instruction, and we find, side by side with the fiction of the time, an equally popular pseudo-philosophic literature, which carried on the educa- tional work begun by the moral weeklies. To this cate- gory belong books like the long popular Uber den Umgang mit Menschen (1788) by A. von Knigge, the writings of Moses Mendelssohn (1729-86), Christian Garve (1742- 98)> J- J- Engel (1741-1802), and of Thomas Abbt (1738-66) and Justus Moser (1720-94), to whom we shall have occasion to* return. A typical "popular philosopher" was J. G. Zimmermann (1728-95), a Swiss, who spent the best part of his life in Hanover as physician to the English king. In this disciple of Haller's the same elegiac, almost misanthropic vein is to be found as in his master, a misanthropy which the influence of Rousseau inten- sified. Books like his Betrachtungen iiber die Einsamkeit (1756) and Von dem Nationalstolze (1758) are not merely full of suggestive and original thought, but often appear to us, in their avoidance of the conventional ideas of ration- alism, strangely modern and prophetic. To this age be- longed, too, Germany's greatest satirist, G. C. Lichtenberg (1742-99), a native of Oberramstadt, near Darmstadt. Unless it be Lessing, Germany possessed no clearer-headed man of letters in the eighteenth century than Lichtenberg ; he had an unrivalled power of precise and lucid expres- 134 WIELAND AND HERDER. sion. He twice paid a visit to England and had imbibed English ideas ; but in his love for the aphorism, he was rather the German Larochefoucauld than the German Swift. Unfortunately, however, his writings are fragment- ary and ephemeral, and he is best remembered now by his masterly description of Garrick's acting in his Briefe aus England (1776-78) and his commentary on Hogarth's works (1794-99). Johann Friedrich Herder is the most modern spirit of the eighteenth century ; no other thinker or writer of that age, not Rousseau or Diderot, not Kant, or even Goethe himself, had so clear an idea whither human thought was tending, or saw so far into the intellectual movements of the future as he. But it is as an originator of new ideas z not as a poet, that he takes rank among the leaders of modern German literature. His historical position is due. to the fact that he brought the movement inaugurated by Klopstock into harmony with the European craving for a " return to nature," and prepared the outburst of German individualism which we know as the " Geniezeit," or "Sturm und Drang." Herder was born in the village of Mohrungen in East Prussia on August 25, 1744, and grew up amidst the severest privations. At the University of Konigsberg he came under the influence of Kant, and won the friendship of one of the most .stimulating men of the time, J. G. Hamann (1730-88), the "Magus im Norden." Hamann was a fervid, undisciplined genius, who wrote and thought by flashes of intuition, and is best remembered by his frag- mentary books, Sokratische Denkwiirdigkeiten (1759) and Kreuzziige des Philologen (1762); he turned away from the insipid philosophy of the " Aufklarung," and looked to genius and enthusiasm as the motor forces of human- ity. Through Hamann Herder became acquainted with English literature, above all, with the works of Shakespeare and with Ossian. In i_7j^2_ Herder, who had meanwhile become teacher and preacher in the Domschule in Riga, published the work by which he first became famous, Fragments iiber die neuere deutsche HERDER'S YOUTH. 135 Literatur, these fragments being intended to serve as supplements to the Literaturbriefe founded by Lessing, Nicolai, and Mendelssohn. As far as the views expressed were concerned, Herder's standpoint was not essentially different from that of the Literaturbriefe, but he approached literature in a different way. Lessing's periodical was, as we have seen, an admirable example of that eighteenth- century criticism, which assumes that the critic, by virtue of his office, stands at a superior level to the work criticised : Herder's Fragmente inaugurated the modern method_of criticism, which was first to find general favour with the Romantic School. The critic's duty, as here con- ceived, is to understand and appreciate rather than to judge ; he approaches the masters of poetry in a spirit of humble enthusiasm, endeavouring to find in them general ideas of universal application to their age. The Frag- mente were followed in 1769 by the more polemical Kritische Wdlder the title is an allusion to Quintilian's " sylvae " in which Herder's position towards his pre- decessor Lessing is more sharply defined. In 1769, after five years' drudgery in Riga, Herder's longing for freedom was realised ; he took ship from Riga to Nantes, and spent nearly five months in France. Of this journey we possess a journal ( Journal meiner Reise im Jahre 1769) which forms one of the most interesting of all "Herder's works ; it is a record of the most magnificent literary, aesthetic, and political dreams that ever haunted a poet's brain ; here we find for the first time clearly stated that fundamental idea which runs through all Herder's life, the idea of the human race and human culture as a product of historical evolution. This idea might, indeed, tje accepted as a summing up of all Herder's work ; his writings are a collection of fragments of one great work which only existed in the author's spacious mind, a work on the evolution of mankind. After his return from France Herder became travelling- tutor to the son of the Prince-Bishop of Liibeck. and arrived with his pupil in Strassburg in September 1770. Here Herder broke off his engagement and spent several 136 WIELAND AND HERDER. months undergoing treatment for an affection of the lachrymal gland ; in these months Goethe, then a student, sat in devout worship at his feet. In Strassburg the "Sturm und Drang" movement was born, and in 1773 appeared under Herder's aegis a little book which may be regarded as its manifesto, Von deutscher Art und Kunst. "Its principal contents were an essay glorifying Ossian and popular song, and demanding a collection of " Volks- lieder " ; a panegyric on Shakespeare ; another on Gothic architecture and the Strassburg Minster ; and a retrospect on the Germanic past as a lost ideal. The contributors were Herder, Goethe, and Justus Moser, the last men- tioned being also the author of the first German history written from Herder's evolutional standpoint, Osnabriickische Geschichte (1768). Better known are Moser's Patriotische Phantasien (1774), which show how sharp the antagonism had become between the old and the new, between eighteenth-century rationalism and "Sturm und Drang." Herder's further contributions to the literature of the "Sturm und Drang" were a prize-essay, t'ber den Ursprung der Sprache (1772), two remarkably prophetic books. Auch eine Philosophic der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit (1774), and Alteste Urkunde des Men- schengeschlechts (1774), and, most important of all, his Volkslicder (1778-79), a collection of the popular song's and ballads of all peoples. Meanwhile, in 1771, Herder had settled down as chief pastor in Biickeburg, but in 1776, thanks to his Strassburg pupil Goethe, he received an invitation to become chief pastor and " general super- intendent " in Weimar ; and Weimar remained his home until his death on December 18, 1803. His influence on German literature was practically limited to. the awakening of the " Sturm und Drang " and his all-im- portant activity in the early seventies. But in Weimar he wrote his most ambitious book, the Ideen zur Philoso- phic der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784-91), a work which traced, in accordance with his theory of historical evolution, the development of human culture from its earliest awakening down to the Crusades. Epoch- THE GOTTINGER DICHTERBUND. 137 making as, in many respects, Herder's Ideen was and it forms the link between the old pedagogic ideas of Rousseau and the philosophic system of Hegel, its Importance for the history of literature is hardly greater than that of the many volumes of theological writings which filled up Herder's time in these years, or his later antagonism to his first teacher in philosophy, Kant. Only once again, and that in the last years of his life, did Herder make a contribution of abiding value to Ger- many's poetry : in 1805, more than a year after his death, appeared his translation of the Spanish ballad -literature centring in the Cid Campeador. To this book the ballad-poetry of the nineteenth century owes a debt that has hardly been adequately acknowledged. But German literature as a whole was not prepared to make the leap from Klopstock to the " Sturm und Drang" with such suddenness as its leaders; and, before proceeding to consider the movement which Herder and Goethe initiated, we have to turn to a group of poets who represent a more gradual transition from the first to the second stage of the individualistic revolt in German literature. Klopstock exerted, as we have seen, a more immediate influence on his contemporaries as a lyric poet and as a discoverer of German antiquity than as the poet of the Messias ; and it was from the fermenta- tion of Klopstock's lyric that the quieter more reflective poetry of the " Gottinger Hain " or " Dichterbund " emerged. In September 1772, the eventful year in which Herder and Goethe formulated the gospel of "Sturm und Drang," a number of young Gottingen students of poetic tastes met together one moonlight evening at Weende, a village outside Gottingen, and founded the " Bund " under an oak - tree ; friendship, patriotism, freedom these were the watchwords which they inscribed on their banner, and they are the dominant notes of their poetry. On the whole, however, they were not militant poets ; their verse is, for the most part, subdued and elegiac. The common tie which bound them together in the early years was the Gottinger 138 THE GOTTINGER DICHTERBUND. Musenalmanach, which had been founded in 1770 by H. C. Boie (1744-1806) and F. W. Cotter (1746-97). These two men had not had in view a particularly German publication ; both, and especially Cotter, were French in their tastes ; in fact, Cotter was, as a translator and adapter of French plays, the last prominent champion of French classicism in Germany. Before very long, how- ever, the Gottinger Musenalmanach had become the organ of the " Gottinger Hain " and the acknowledged receptacle for the most original lyric poetry of the time. The most prominent personality in this group was Johann Heinrich Voss (1751-1826). As an original poet, Voss rarely rises above mediocrity, but his life presents a picture of tough determination and indomit- able energy amidst discouraging conditions. Boie had made it possible for him, after a childhood of extreme privation, to study in Gottingen, where he devoted himself to classical philology ; and the best part of his life he spent as a provincial schoolmaster at Eutin, eking out his living by the scanty pittance of his pen. At last, in 1805, his worldly position was improved by his being appointed Professor at Heidelberg, where he died in 1826. Voss tried his hand at many forms of poetry, but lyric inspiration of a higher kind failed him ; even the simplicity of the Volkslied did not altogether lie within his powers. His talent was one of seeing, not feeling, and he is best remembered to-day as a translator of Homer and as the author of a couple of idylls which prepared the way for Goethe's Hermann und Dorothea. Homers Odyssee, which Voss published in 1781, is the most successful rendering of Homer into a modern tongue, and it is successful for a reason similar to that which made Luther's Bible the great " Volksbuch " of the sixteenth century. Voss succeeded in transferring into modern German the spirit of the Greek epic ; he has interpreted it by the light of that primitive peasant life he had himself lived in his youth. Others, and above all, Goethe, have realised better the poetic capabilities of the German hexameter, as a reproduction of the Greek VOSS AND HOLTY. 139 epic measure, but none has been able to approach the ancient epic in so unsophisticated a spirit as Voss. His later translations, that of the Iliad (1793), of Hesiod, or of Shakespeare (1818 ff.), may be in accuracy superior to the first ; but they fail to reproduce so faithfully the spirit of their originals. Voss's own Idyllen (first collected edition in the Gedichte, 1785) gave the impression of being as widely separated from those of Gessner, his immediate predecessor in the field, as the German social novel of the time is from the pastorals of the Renaissance. The two best, Der siebzigste Geburtstag (1781) and Luise (1784), describe simple, everyday happenings in the life of the people, the former a birthday celebration, the latter the wedding of a young village pastor, with a realism that is at times almost excessively minute. Voss taught his contemporaries how the homely world of the novel could be raised to the level of poetry ; his Idylls are an inter- pretation in terms of the eighteenth century of what he learned from his master, Theocritus. More inspired than Voss was Ludwig Holty (1748-76), who died of consumption at the age of twenty-eight; Holty was a gentle, melancholy dreamer who bathed the artificial anacreontics of an earlier day in a flood of senti- ment, and infused the classic measures of Uz with an enthusiasm for nature. The elegiac note, which was common to the majority of the group, pervades all his verse. Another member of the " Bund " was J. M. Miller (1750-1814), a Swabian theological student, who wrote lyrics that have justly become Volkslieder, and a novel, Szegwarf(iTj6), inspired, as will be seen in the following chapter, by Goethe's Werther. The two brothers, Christian and Friedrich zu Stolberg (1748-1821 and 1750-1819), joined the "Bund" a few months after its consecration at Weende. In 1779 they published together a volume of Gedichte, poems which, for the most part, turn round the poles of patriotism and freedom ; but their fervour is more conspicuous than their poetic gifts. Both brothers also distinguished themselves in later life as translators from the Greek. 140 THE GOTTINGER DICHTERBUND. To the same transition -.phase in German literature, which connects Klopstock with the "Sturm und Drang," belong three other poets who, without being members of the " Gottinger Uichterbund," were closely allied to it. The first of the three, Leopold von Gockingk (1748- 1828), shows that same kinship with the older anacreontic poets that is noticeable in Holty, but this feature is so pronounced in Gockingk that we are tempted to class him rather with the imitators of Hagedorn and Wieland than with the Gottingen disciples of Klopstock. Gockingk possessed the same fluent mastery of versification as Wieland, and he excelled in the poetic " epistle." More akin to Voss is the Holsteiner, Matthias Claudius (1740- 1815), whose simple, unassuming piety won for him a popularity not unsimilar to that of Gellert in an earlier generation. Nowadays, it is true, we are inclined to detect a certain affectation in Claudius's constant harping on the " Volk " ; the " Wandsbecker Bote," as he was called after the journal he edited for more than four years ( I 77 I ~75)> found it to his advantage to accentuate the role of "popular" poet which his patrons imposed upon him. At the same time, there is much that is still in- teresting genuine popular songs and amiable sketches of provincial life in his works, which he collected for the first time in 1775 under the extraordinary title of Asmus omnia secum portans. Greater than either of these, and more influential than all the other Gottingen writers together, was the third poet that has to be considered, Gottfried August Burger (1747-94). Biirger stands, moreover, nearer to the "Sturm und Drang "than any of the others. Domestic miseries and petty economic struggles made up his life, and his passionate temperament was in permanent conflict with the narrow provincialism amidst which he had to live. This poet, whose fame was for a time European, was compelled to struggle through life as an ill-paid official in a small German village, and, later, as an unpaid professor in the university of Gottingen. It was Burger's supreme merit to have created, on the model of , BURGER'S BALLADS. 141 the Percy Ballads, which awakened an enthusiasm in Germany second only to that of Ossian, the national German ballad. At one stroke he leapt into fame with his famous Lenore (1773), a b^^cl which kindled the im- agination df Sir ""Walter Scott and of many another young poet in every literature of Europe ; indeed, Burger's Lenore was hardly less far-reaching in its influence than Goethe's Werther itself. Wilhelm, Lenore's lover, has fallen in the battle of Prague, and she, despairing of his return, rebels against God's providence. But in the night her Wilhelm does return ; his horse is at the door : he bids her mount behind him. Then begins the wild ride through the night, a ride as fearful as that of the " wilde Jager " himself. At last the goal is reached, and Lenore's companion reveals himself as a skeleton with hook and hour-glass. So great was the fame of this ballad that Burger's other poems have been unduly over- shadowed by it. But Das Lied vom braven Mann (1777), Des Pfarrers Tochter von Taubenheim (1781), and, above all, Der wtlde Jager (1778), deserve almost as high a place as Lenore in the ballad-literature of the eighteenth century. Burger's literary achievement is virtually restricted to his ballads, his other poetry being of minor importance. His influence was not only immediate, but also lasting ; and it denned to some extent the poetic activity of the Romantic School at the beginning of the nineteenth century. A. W. Schlegel was proud to acknowledge Burger as the master to whom he owed most when, as a young student, he sat at his feet in Gottingen. 142 CHAPTER XIV. GOETHE AND THE " STURM UND DRANG." THE period in German literature which is known as the " Geniezeit," or the " Sturm und Drang," was the most national German phenomenon of the eighteenth century ; it was the natural consequence of that outburst of lyricism and individualism with which Klopstock had broken down the literary formalism of classicism. Lessing and Wieland, it is true, were retarding moments in its de- velopment, but the spirit of the time was too strong even for them. In Herder the Germanic forces burst out afresh, and with a vigour before which Lessing's and Wieland's classicism could avail little. In a larger sense, however, the " Sturm und Drang " was only a manifes- tation of a movement that was European, the German form of the individualistic revolt, the rebirth of sentiment and the return to nature, which had begun in England and found its greatest exponent in the Swiss writer, Rousseau. For the actual beginnings of the " Geniezeit " we are obliged to go back to men like Hamann and Herder, and in its later stages we find the movement passing gradually into Romanticism proper at the close of the century. It is, however, convenient to regard the period .of revolt as extending from Herder's Fragmente in 1767 to Schiller's Don Carlos in 1787 : it may be conceived pictorially as forming an ellipse, of which these two works mark the two extremes of the periphery, while the poles round which the ellipse turns are Goethe's Gotz von Berlich- THE STURM UND DRANG. 143 ingen, , which appeared six years after the Fragmente, and Schiller's Rauber^ which appeared six years before Don Carlos. Amongst the pioneers of the new movement may be numbered, besides those already mentioned, J. K. Lavater (1741-1801), who infused a spirit of individualism into the religious life of the time, and F. H. Jacobi (1743-1819), who interpreted Spinoza in the light of the new senti- mentalism. Lavater followed, as a poet, in the train of Klopstock with dreary religious epics, but he is only remembered to-day, if he is remembered at all, by his Physiognomische Fragmente zur Beforderung der Men- schenkenntnis und Menschenliebe (1775-78), a characteristic product of "Sturm und Drang" humanitarianism. The criticism of the period was inaugurated by a follower of Klopstock, H. W. von Gerstenberg (1737-1823), whose Briefe uber Merkwilrdigkeiten der Literatur ap- peared in 1766 and 1767; Gerstenberg also gave the "Sturm und Drang" its first characteristic drama, the harrowing psychological tragedy of Ugolino (1768). It was Goethe, however, who first brought aim and order into the ideas of the movement and laid down the lines on which it was to develop. The childhood of Johann Wolfgang Goethe, who was born at Frankfort - on^-" the - Main on August 29, 1749, was sunny and idyllic. His imagination was early kindled by the stories of the Old Testament and the Messias, by the pageant of an old-world coronation of a German emperor in the Frankfort town-hall ; while a marionette- theatre, and later the French players who performed regularly during the French occupation of the town in J 759> brought him under the spell of the theatre. His home itself, the roomy patrician house in the Grosse Hirschgraben, offered variety and stimulus enough ; his mother, bright and happy by nature, being the real com- panion of his early years. Two episodes in particular stood out in Goethe's later memories, the quartering of the French Count Thoranc, a man of refined artistic tastes, on his father's house during the Seven Years' War, 144 GOETHE AND THE STURM UND DRANG. and his first love-affair, the heroine of which perhaps gave her name to Gretchen in Faust. Goethe's f7rsT"*glimpse of the great world outside of Frankfort was gained as a student of the university of Leipzig, where he spent the years 1765-68. He learned his art in the literary milieu that had been created by Gotcsched and Gellert ; he wrote dramas in alexandrines (Die Laune des Verliebten, 1768; Die Mitschuldigen, 1769), and love-songs in the light, ana- creontic tone which the polished society of Leipzig appre- ciated ; the Frankfort Gretchen was forgotten for Kath- chen Schonkopf, the daughter of a Leipzig wine - mer- chant, who taught Goethe what jealousy was as well as love. An illness brought his light-hearted student days to an abrupt conclusion, and in the hours of slow recovery in Frankfort he busied himself with Lessing^. Shakespeare, and Rousseau, and sought a key to the mysteries of life ifPalche'my and mysticism. ~WEen ~rle" recovered, his father proposed that, instead of returning to Leipzig, he should complete his legal studies at Strassburg. In the seventeen months which Goethe spent in Strass- burg the most intensely lived period of his whole life he became a poet and the leader of his time. In Strassburg he found his feet at once ; at the table where he dined there were congenial friends, amongst them Heinrich Jung Stilling (1740-1817), whose autobiography, a strange monument of practical pietism, is still a German " Volks- buch." A month or two later Herder arrived in Strass- burg, the Herder whose Fragmente was the key to the new world on the threshold of which Goethe stood. The influence of Herder on the young poet was magical ; the new, vague ideas which were surging in him, at once took visible shape ; Herder communicated to him his own revolutionary ideas of history, of the " Volk," whose heart stood revealed in its songs ; he taught him to understand what he had hitherto only felt, the beauty of the Gothic cathedral that towered above him, and of the poet who was to mean so much to German poetry in GOETHE IN STRASSBURG. 145 this age, Shakespeare. Simultaneously with Herder's influence, another experience awakened the poet in Goethe, his love for Friederike Brion, daughter of the pastor of Sesenheim, an Alsatian village some twenty miles to the north of Strassburg. It is possible that Goethe, looking back on this idyll of his youth from the heights of maturer years, saw it through too poetic a veil, saw it with the eyes of an author, who stood near to him in his Strassburg days, Oliver Goldsmith. But the lyrics and letters to Friederike, show that there is, after all, more "Wahrheit" than "Dichtung" in the description of the episode in the tenth and eleventh books of the poet's autobiography. In the Sesenheimer Lieder songs in which the artificial anacreontic passes insensibly into a lyric of genuine emotion Goethe first revealed himself as a poet of the first rank. That the romance would end tragically was to have been fore- seen ; neither the Alsatian country girl nor the young poet, who already dimly realised that no common destiny was marked out for him, could have been happy. The breach had to come, and it plunged both in despair ; Friederike's life was broken, and Goethe, in the restless agony of his Wanderers Sturmlied, himself experienced the tragic conflicts which lie behind the works he wrote in the next few years. In the autumn of 1771 he returned to Frankfort to begin his practical initiation into the business of an advocate, and in the following spring he spent a few months in Wetzlar, then the seat of the Imperial law courts. Here another love-affair, that with Charlotte Buff, the betrothed of a young colleague, J. C. Kestner, once more disturbed his equanimity. A visit to the Rhine and the new acquaintances he made there helped to mitigate his grief at parting from Lotte, and on his return to Frankfort he threw himself with increased energy into literary work. During the next few years he formulated the creed of the new literary movement in his own contributions to the Frankfurter Gelehrte Anzeigen (1772-73), and in his share in Herder's Von K 146 GOETHE AND THE STURM UNO DRANG. deutscher Art und Knnst ; and in 1773 and 1774 Goethe published two works of the very first importance r'Gotz von Berlichingen and Die Leiden des jungen Werther. The first of these was the immediate outcome of his study of Shakespeare, the second of his study of Rousseau. Gotz von Berlichingen is a historical tragedy of the Reformation period, a restless, loosely constructed dramatic chronicle ; a work overflowing with spontaneous, unrestrained strength. It bids defiance to all unities except the unity imposed on the drama by its hero, and by the poet's own enthusiasm for the strong man who combines love of freedom with a wide- hearted humanity. At the opening of the drama Gotz von Berlichingen has taken his former schoolmate, Adalbert von Weisslingen, prisoner, Weisslingen being an adherent of the Bishop of Bamberg, with whom Gotz is at feud. In Gotz's castle at Jaxthausen, Weiss- lingen sees and loves Gotz's sister Maria, and resolves for her sake to break with the bishop and join Gotz. He returns to Bamberg to put his affairs in order, and there falls a victim to the intrigues of his former friends. He forgets Maria in Jaxthausen and marries Adelheid von Walldorf, a court beauty. Meanwhile Gotz has put him- self at the head of the peasants' revolt, and on their defeat is condemned to die at Weisslingen's hands. Maria begs Weisslingen to save her brother for the sake of their old love ; he tears the sentence, but him- self dies, poisoned by his own wife. Adelheid is condemned by the Holy Vehmgericht, and Gotz suc- cumbs to his wounds. Gotz von Berlichingen was published in 1773, although in its first form it was completed somewhat earlier, and in the following year appeared Die Leiden des jungen Werther. Perhaps the greatest tribute to Goethe's genius at this time is the fact that his second masterpiece is so entirely different from its predecessor. While Gotz was a histori- cal drama, or, at least, dealt with a historical theme, Werther is an immediate, personal "confession." It is a poetic interpretation, in the spirit of Rousseau's La "WERTHERS LEIDEN." 147 nouvelle Helo'ise, of the crisis through which the poet had himself passed in Wetzlar. While Gotz laid the basis for a national German literature, Werther gave that literature an interest that was cosmopolitan. Reality is but little veiled in this novel in letters ; Werther with his passionate love for nature, his absorption in Homer and Ossian, is Goethe's self displayed in the light of eighteenth-century sentimentalism. Werther loves Lotte, the betrothed of his friend Albert, as Goethe had loved Kestner's fiancee, although no doubt other loves and other experiences are in the novel consciously and unconsciously inter- woven ; Werther's passion gains the upper hand ; he bor- rows his friend's pistols and shoots himself. Werthers Leiden was the most popular European novel of its day, and still lives, even after its sentimentalism has grown old-fashioned and effete, by the vividness and truth of its characterisation. With these two works the new era was fairly inaugur- ated ; Goethe's further contributions to the literature of " Sturm und Drang " were of comparatively minor im- portance. He gave voice to the new ideas in dramatic satires such as Goiter, Helden und Wieland, and Satyros ; he pled for the dignity of the artist's calling in frag- mentary dramatic scenes (Kiinstlers Erdewallen, Kiinstlers Apotheose) ; he planned an epic on Der ewige Jude, dramas on Sokrates, Mahomet, and Prometheus, a noble fragment from the last-named drama dating from 1773. Two plays, Clavigo and Stella, appeared respectively in 1774 and 1776; both mark a descent from the lofty political enthusiasm of Gotz von Berlichingen in the direc- tion of the "domestic tragedy"; but both show an advance towards a more practical and effective dramatic technique. And, like Werther, both are " confessions " of the poet's own troubled heart. These plays were finished, but another, and the greatest of all, Faust, was to remain a fragment until the close of Goethe's life. The kernel of the First Part of Faust, Faust's despairing im- peachment of life, and all the scenes of the Gretchen tragedy scenes that we now reckon among the most in- 148 GOETHE AND THE STURM UNO DRANG. tensely tragic in the whole range of dramatic literature were already written before Goethe left Frankfort for Weimar at the close of 1775. Before following Goethe's life further, we must turn to consider the literary movement which he had in- augurated so brilliantly. The " Sturm und Drang " was pre-eminently an age of dramatic literature, and the theatre the arena in which the young writers of the day fought out their battles. Of the group of dramatists immediately associated with Goethe at this time, the most gifted was J. M. R. Lenz (1751-92), who had been in Strassburg at the same time as Goethe ; indeed, it was Lenz's weakness and misfortune that he tried all his life to wander in Goethe's footsteps. His dramas, of which the best are Der Hofmeister (1774) and Die Soldaten (1776), present vivid, realistic pictures, in which con- temporary life and manners are regarded from an often cynical and satiric standpoint. Like all these young writers, Lenz was a fervid admirer of Shakespeare ; his Anmerkungen iibers Theater (1774), which was accom- panied by a prose translation of Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost under the title Amor vincit omnia, provides a key to the dramaturgic ideas which actuated the " Sturm und Drang " ; it also supplements the Briefe iiber Merk- wurdigkeiten der Literatur (1766-67), by H. W. von Gerstenberg (1737-1823), which have already been men- tioned. But in Lenz's own dramas he has learned little from Shakespeare except how to free himself from the tyranny of the rules ; and the main sources from which he drew the ideas behind his plays were Rousseau and Diderot. Among the playwrights of the "Sturm und Drang " Lenz was, however, second only to Goethe in the art of peopling his dramas with real, living figures ; he does not give us merely puppets declaiming extravagant ideas. Revolting as his scenes at times are in their out- spoken realism, they maintain their hold on us by virtue of this creative power. The genius of F. M. von Klinger (1752-1831) was more akin to that of Schiller than of Goethe ; that is to say, he was LENZ AND KLINGER. 149 not so conspicuously a creator as an enthusiast for ideas. In character he was more manly and steadfast than Lenz, and although "Sturm und Drang" carried him at the time more completely off his feet, it was but a passing phase in his development. In this first period of his life Klinger appears to most advantage in Der Wirrwarr, oder Sturm und Drang (i 7 7 6), the play which gave the move- ment its name, and Die Zwillinge (1776). In these tragedies all technical considerations are forgotten in the sweep of unbridled passion; the characters may be in- conceivable, the events impossible, but we are impressed by the earnestness of the author himself; these plays are like magnificent nightmares, in which we cannot but believe as long as we are under their spell. Die Zwillinge is a drama on the favourite theme of the age, a theme that was to some extent suggested by the social conditions of the eighteenth century, that of hatred between two brothers. It won the prize in a competition for the best German tragedy, although, to modern tastes, another drama offered for the same competition, Julius von Tarent (1776), by J. A. Leisewitz (1752-1806), a. protege of the Gottinger Bund, seems to have a better claim to it. Julius von Tarent is a more carefully thought out and more restrained work than the impulsive products of Klinger's genius, a tragedy that owed more to Emilia Galotti than to Gotz von Berlichingen. In later life, Klinger, who in 1780 entered the Russian military service and ultimately rose to high honours, entirely outgrew the restlessness of his early period and wrote a series of nine philosophical novels (1791-1805), in which the cry of personal revolt gave place to a calmer quest for a solution to the problems that had caused the turmoil of his youth ; in their ideas and tendencies these novels belong, no less than the maturer work of Goethe and Schiller, to the classic phase of German literature. Less important than the two writers who have just been discussed was H. L. Wagner (1747-79), whose dramas, and notably Die Kindermorderin (1776), are the first step on the downward path which led from the tragedy of 150 GOETHE AND THE STURM UND DRANG. " Sturm und Drang " to the moving sentimental pictures of domestic life which Iffland and Kotzebue produced. More interesting is Friedrich, or, as he preferred to be called, "Maler" Miiller (1749-1825), who forms a link not so much between "Sturm und Drang" and the later Romanticism, as between the old-world sentimentalism of Gessner's idylls and Klopstock's early odes on the one hand, and the Romantic poetry of Tieck on the other. His Fausts Leben dramatisiert (1778) belongs, however, to the " Sturm und Drang " not merely because it is written with unshaken faith in Shakespeare, but also be- cause it gives voice to the favourite theme of the move- ment, the effort of the strong -man to obtain the mastery of life. His much later play, Golo und Genoveva (1781, but not published till 1811), is one of the best of the so-called " Ritterdramen," the degenerate successors to Gotz von Berlichingen. In the history of the drama under the influence of the later " Sturm und Drang," three clearly marked tendencies may be traced : these are, first, a rapid development of the " Ritterdrama " just mentioned ; secondly, an in- creasing popularity of the " biirgerliche Tragodie," which, without belying its origins, learned much from later French writers like Diderot and Sebastien Mercier ; and lastly, an increase in the prestige of the German theatre coupled with the rise of an essentially actor's drama. Representa- tive writers of the " Ritterdrama," which found a strong- hold in Munich, were Graf J. A. von Torring (1753-1826), J. M. Babo (1756-1822), and F. J. H. von Soden (1754- 1831). The later " biirgerliche Tragodie " was cultivated by, amongst others, O. H. von Gemmingen (1755-1836), whose Der deirfsche Hausvater (1780), an imitation of Diderot's Pere de famUle, was very popular and prepared the way for the German masterpiece of this class of drama, Schiller's Kabale und Liebe. The " Nationaltheater " of Mannheim, where Schiller's early plays were per- formed for the first time, was chiefly associated with this type of play, and it was for a time, when A. W. Iffland (1759-1814) was its leading actor, the most important THE RISE OF THE THEATRE. 151 theatrical focus in Germany. Hamburg, however, still retained a certain prestige, and that in spite of the failure of Lessing and his friends to establish there a national theatre, and under F. L. Schroder (1744-1816), the greatest German actor of the eighteenth century, it assumed once more the leading role in theatrical matters. Both Iffland and Schroder wrote dramas, the former real- istic plays of everyday life, moralising and sentimental as the public of the day demanded, but by no means devoid of higher literary interest ; while the latter, with less literary pretensions, translated and adapted plays from the English. Schroder's chief merit remains, how- ever, the fact that he laid the foundations of the modern theatre, and gave Shakespeare his place, once and for all in Germany, at the head of the classic repertory. In this respect the performance of Hamlet in Hamburg under Schroder's auspices, on September 20, 1776, marks the beginning of a new era in the history of the German stage. In this same year Joseph II. practically laid the founda- tion of what was subsequently to become the greatest of all German theatres, the " Hofburgtheater " in Vienna. In literary respects, however, Austria still lagged considerably behind North Germany ; the Viennese theatre depended for its repertoire on centres like Hamburg, Gotha, and Mann- heim, its own contributions being limited to alexandrine tragedies by C. H. von Ayrenhoff (i 733-1819), who can only be regarded as a belated follower of Gottsched, and to imitations of North German plays, especially of Minna von Barnhelm. But in the music - drama Vienna had already begun to lead the way ; Gluck had been suc- ceeded by W. A. Mozart (1756-91), whose masterworks, Die Hochzeit des Figaro (1786), Don Juan (1787), and Die Zauberflote (1791) the two former plays of Italian origin, the latter a genuine " Volksposse " were all pro- duced in Austria. The influence of Werthers Leiden was, if anything, more immediate than that of Gotz. Goethe's novel called forth an endless flood of sentimental fiction, of which J. M. 152 GOETHE AND THE STURM UND DRANG. Miller's Siegwart (1776) and F. H. Jacobi's Woldemar (1777-79) th e one lachrymose and sentimental, the other sentimental and philosophic may be taken as representative types ; but Werther also infused a new spirit into the older family novel and into the pedagogic fiction which Rousseau had brought into vogue. Gradually, however, the novel emancipated itself from the leading- strings of the "Sturm und Drang." J. J. Heinse (1749- 1803), a strange, undisciplined genius, who was really more akin to Wieland than to the sentimentalists, illustrates this transition ; in his Ardinghello, oder die gliickseligen Inseln (1787) he expressed that yearning of the German soul for Italy and enthusiasm for Italian art which from now on are constant factors in the literary and artistic life of Germany. His second novel, Hildegard von Hohental (1795-96), deals mainly with music, but, like the first, it, too, is disfigured by emotional excesses and extravagances. Both books, however, are clearly forerunners of the fiction of the Romanticists. Trans- itional, too, is another outstanding novel of this epoch, Anton Reiser (1785-90), by K. Ph. Moritz (1757-93): an autobiography rather than a work of the imagination, Anton Reiser stands, if only by virtue of the importance its author attaches to the psychological side of his story, midway between Wieland's Agatkon and Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. Two other writers have to be mentioned before we leave the " Sturm und Drang," Forster and Seume. Both belong to what might be called the outermost limit of that movement. J. G. Forster (1754-94) accompanied Cook on his second voyage round the world. It is not, however, his account of that voyage which was written in English but his masterly Ansichten vom Niederrhein, von Brabant, Flandern, Holland, England und Frankreich (1791), which assures him a place in literary history. It would almost seem as if a century of literary evolution lay between the sentimental journeys of writers like Thiimmel and Nicolai, and this faithful and painstaking FORSTER AND SEUME. 153 description written in a masterly prose style of the nature and the art of these lands. Like so many of the German idealists of this age, Forster came intellectually to grief on the French Revolution. Beyond it he could only see a blank of disruption and anarchy, and he died in 1794, before the development of events could bring him either consolation or hope. J. G. Seume (1763-1810) belonged to a still later generation, but his passionate hatred of tyranny and his humanitarian rationalism have more in common with the ideas of Rousseau and the " Sturm und Drang " than of the later Romanticists. His writings, the famous Spaziergang nach Syrakus im Jahre 1802 (1803), Mein Sommer (1806), and Mein Leben (1813), are mainly autobiographic, and give vivid glimpses into a life that had more than its share of vicissitude and adventure. 154 CHAPTER XV. SCHILLER ; GOETHE'S FIRST PERIOD IN WEIMAR. THE fact that Goethe and Schiller were united during the best years of both their lives by a warm friendship has led to them being considered as parts of one great, uniform movement, which is summed up in the word "classicism." But, in reality, the two poets stood in many respects at opposite poles ; there was an innate antagonism in their natures which personal intimacy never removed. The conditions under which they had grown up were, moreover, as different as possible. Goethe was born almost in the lap of luxury, Schiller was the son of a poor army-surgeon who had by degrees worked his way up to a captaincy in the Wiirtemberg army ; Goethe's childhood was passed in happy carelessness, while the best years of Schiller's youth were spent shut off from the world as an unwilling captive in a military school. A tragic note runs all through Schiller's life ; he had to struggle to the last against straitened means and ill-health ; every step he gained had to be fought for, every advance meant a scar ; while Goethe's trials were in great measure what we might call of his own making ; his worldly position was assured, and his life unfolded itself harmoniously. In ripe old age Goethe basked in Olympic calm, while Schiller remained a fighter to the end, a seeker after an undiscovered goal. Johann Friedrich Schiller was born at Marbach on November 10, 1759 ; his childhood was passed there, at Lorch, and at Ludwigsburg ; his early tastes inclined him SCHILLER'S " RAUBEK." 155 to the church as a career, but the Duke of Wiirtemberg laid claim on the promising scholar for his new " Military Academy " at the " Solitude " near Ludwigsburg, where there was no opportunity for theological studies. In this school Schiller spent seven years, from 1773 to 1780, first with a view to a career as a jurist, later, when the school was removed to Stuttgart, as a medical student. Much as the Duke of Wiirtemberg has been blamed for his tyrannical treatment of the young poet, it may be questioned if a theological training would have fitted him as well for his future career as that in the Duke's academy ; here, at least, he had a glimpse of court life, he was able to read widely, and he formed passionate friendships. Before Schiller left the academy to take up an unsatisfactory position in Stuttgart as a regimental doctor, he had virtually finished his first drama, Die Rduber. It was privately printed in 1781, and performed ^t Mannheim in the beginning of 1782, the young poet being surreptitiously present. This play was, as we have seen, the second pole round which the movement of "Sturm und Drang" revolved; it stands in the same relation to the latter half of that movement as Go'tz von Berlichingen stood to the earlier half. The idea on which Die Rduber is built up fraternal dissension is similar to that of Klinger's Die Zwillinge, Leisewitz's Julius von Tarent, and other revolutionary dramas of the time. Schiller owed the story to his fellow-countryman C. F. D. Schubart (1739-91), a poet akin to the Gottingen group, whose revolutionary fervour had to be expiated by ten years' imprisonment in the Castle of Hohenasperg. Karl Moor, the hero of Schiller's play, is a student in Leipzig, who has been estranged from his father by the machinations of his villainous brother Franz ; believing that his father has disowned him, he places himself at the head of a band of freebooters in the Bo- hemian forest. The "Robber Moor" becomes a second Gotz, helping with a strong arm to re-establish justice in tEe" world. He longs, however, to see once more his home and his betrothed, Amalia, and returns unan- 156 SCHILLER. nounced. He finds that Franz has imprisoned his father in a tower with a view to starving him to death, and the old man is only rescued to die. Franz kills himself, and Karl realises that in fighting against human iniquity, he has himself sinned against the eternal laws of the world ; he gives himself up to justice. Perhaps no play of this eventful time mirrored so faithfully the ideas and cravings of its age as Die Rduber ; it is a typical em- bodiment of the " Sturm und Drang " spirit, a document which, read aright, foreshadows even the coming Revolu- tion in France. This explains its power over contempor- aries ; from a purely literary standpoint it is, moreover, a work of extraordinary promise, for it is in the best sense of the word dramatic, and dominated as no German tragedy before it, not even Gotz von Berlichingen, by a genuine tragic fate. Schiller's success made him more and more discon- tented with his miserable lot in Stuttgart ; as appeals to the Duke were in vain, he at last resolved on flight. On the 22nd of September 1782 he made good his escape from Wiirtemberg. The step was inevitable, but it plunged him in serious difficulties. He found that the Mannheim National Theatre, on which he had pinned his hopes, had no position to offer him ; and for a time he was obliged to take refuge in the Thuringian village of Bauerbach, where he put the finishing touches to his second drama, Fiesco, which had been already written before he left StuttgafTprie also completed here a third drama, which was to have borne the title Louise Mitlerin, and planned a fourth on the subject of "Don Carlos, son of Philip II. of Spain. In 1783, however, he obtained the coveted appointment of "theatre poet" to the Mannheim Theatre for a year, and here -Fiesco and Louise Millerin, or, as this tragedy was rechristened by the "actor "TrHafTa, Kabale und Liebe^ were performed in 1783 and 1784. Both these plays show an advance on Die Rduber in characterisation and construction, but neither has the elemental power of the first play. The subject of Die Verschwbrung des Fiesco zu Genua, the conspiracy of "FIESCO" AND "KABALE UND LIEBE." 157 Fiasco di Lavagna against the Dorias in Genoa in the sixteenth century, was, compared with Die Rauber, an exceedingly complicated one, for it involved the fate of a whole republic ; the theme was perhaps still some- what beyond Schiller's powers, but the skill with which he handled its many threads is a tribute to his dramatic genius. With Kabale und Liebe, the first great love- tragedy in German literature, the " tragedy of common life," which Lessing had perfected in Emilia Galotti, reaches its culminating point. For his background the poet drew upon a world he knew, the court of Wiirtemberg. By more than dubious methods President von Walter has gained control of the affairs of a small German Residenz, and he now proposes to put the crown to his efforts by marrying his son Ferdinand to the Lady Milford, a cast-off mistress of the Prince. Ferdinand, however, has fallen in love with Louise, the daughter of the musician Miller ; and the President, to thwart his son's determination to marry her, has recourse to stratagem. Louise is made to believe that her father's life depends on her writing a letter in which she appears to be carrying on an intrigue with a foolish court- official. The letter is played into Ferdinand's hands, and an oath prevents Louise making explanations until she has drunk the glass of poisoned lemonade her lover has prepared for her and for himself. The drama closes with the President and his secretary being handed over to justice for earlier misdeeds. While engaged on these three dramas Schiller was also making a name for himself with other literary work ; he had already attempted journal- ism in Stuttgart, and in Mannheim he issued the first number of a new periodical, the Rheinische Thalia (1785), in which the first act of his next drama, Don Carlos, was published. As a lyric poet he had also contributed the largest share to an Anthologie auf das Jahr 1782, which he edited in Stuttgart. In April 1785 Schiller accepted a warm invitation from four admirers of his genius in Leipzig C. F. Korner, who remained his life-long friend, L. Huber, and two sisters, Dora and Minna Stock, to whom these young 158 SCHILLER. men were engaged to pay them a visit. The brighter epoch in the poet's life, which began in Saxony, finds its echo in the jubilant strains of his ode An die Freude (1785), the final word in that optimistic, semi-pagan cult of joy, which Hagedorn had first voiced in modern Ger- man poetry. The summer months of 1785 were spent in Gohlis, near Leipzig, and from the autumn of that year until the summer of 1787 Schiller lived quietly as a guest of his friend Korner in Dresden and at Loschwitz on the Elbe. The literary results of these years are all con- tained in the Thalia^ which Schiller continued to edit, the adjective " Rheinische " in the title being omitted as the journal now appeared in Leipzig. These include two novels, Verbrecher aus Infamie (1787), a realistic robber- romance, and Der GeisferseAer(i'jSg), the story of a young prince who is converted to Catholicism by trickery ; but the theme of the latter is hardly worthy of the excellent descriptive writing it contains. The principal harvest of these years was Schiller's first tragedy in blank verse, Don Carlos^ Infant wn. Spanien, which, after having appeared serially in his journal, was revised and published separately in 1787. In Don Carlos Schiller took a step similar to that which Goethe took in his Egmont ; he made a complete break with his earlier dramatic work. As first planned, Don Carlos was to have been a prose tragedy not unsimilar to Kabale und Liebe, the story of an unhappy love ; gradually, however, it assumed larger dimensions in Schiller's imagination ; the intrigue gave place to a political " purpose " ; , the hero was more and more pressed into the background, and the Marquis Posa, his friend and confidant, became the spokesman of the poet's own lofty dreams of a cosmopolitan humanism. The cul- minating scene in the drama is the interview in which Posa pleads for freedom of thought, with all the arguments of eighteenth-century rationalism, at the feet of Philip of Spain. Schiller found the plot of his tragedy in a novel by the French Abbe St Real, which had also served Otway for his tragedy Don Carlos. The French princess, DON CARLOS." '59 Elizabeth of Anjou, is destined to be the bride of Don Carlos, but on her arrival in Spain the king resolves himself to marry her. The main theme of the drama is the hopeless love of the prince for his stepmother. The king is led to suspect his son, and this suspicion is corro- borated by the Princess Eboli, a lady of the court, who is herself in love with Carlos. Carlos's attempts to find an outlet for his energies in a larger political life, although supported by the intrigue of the Marquis Posa, who has gained the confidence of the king, are thwarted ; the Marquis is shot, and the prince handed over to the Grand Inquisitor. The plot of Don Carlos has, no doubt, suffered under the changes of plan, but in these changes lay its significance ; Schiller here took the step which broke irrevocably his connection with the " Sturm und TJrang." In December 1784 Schiller had had an oppor- tunity of reading the first act of Don Carlos to the Darmstadt court on the occasion of a visit of the Duke of Weimar, and in 1787 he paid his first visit to Weimar. This visit, however, was disappointing, for the Duke himself was absent, Goethe was in Italy, and he was not received with much warmth either by the court or by Herder and Wieland. Meanwhile he continued those studies in history which he had begun in connection with Don Carlos in Dresden, and in 1788 appeared the first and only volume of his most ambitious historical work, Geschichte des Abfalls der vereinigten Niederlande ; this was followed in 1791-93 by the more popularly written Geschichte des dreissigjahrigen Krieges. Schiller ap- proaches history, as more or less all the historians of the eighteenth century, from the standpoint of the artist rather than of the scientific investigator ; he selects the salient features that appeal to him, and distributes his light and shade to fit the hypothesis from which he sets out. To him history is rather a chain of great biographies than V methodical description of events ; but he possessed at least one great virtue, which is rare in the scientific his- torian, the virtue of style. l6o SCHILLER. His labours had one important result ; on Goethe's recommendation, Schiller was appointed professor of his- tory at the neighbouring university of Jena by the Duke of Weimar, and in the following year, 1789, he married Charlotte von Lengefeld, whose acquaintance he had made on the occasion of his first visit to Thuringia. Meanwhile literature was not altogether neglected, and in poems like Die Goiter Griechenlands (1788) and Die Kiinstler (1789), he discovered a medium of poetic expression, the philosophic lyric, in which he has no rival in his own literature. But before this he had come under a new influence, which profoundly modified the work of his later life, that of Immanuel Kant. From history Schiller turned to philosophy. The metaphysical side of things always had an attraction for his mind, and in the Thalia he had already published a kind of fiction, in which two friends exchange their views on philosophic questions. At Korner's instigation he threw himself in 1791 into the study of Kant, being par- ticularly attracted by Kant's aesthetic speculations. SchillePs writings on aesthetics may be summarised as an attempt to supplement and develop the ideas of his master ; it is in this light that the essay Uber Anmut und Wiirde (1793) and the Brief e iiber die asthetische Erziehung des Menschen (1795) have to be considered. Kant had mainly discussed the beautiful as a subjective impression on the beholder ; Schiller sought an absolute criterion of beauty; his aim was to discover the quality in an object that led to its being regarded as beautiful. And this he believed he had found in what he called the " freedom in appearance " (" Freiheit in der Erscheinung ") of the object. From the beautiful Schiller passed over to the moral, and a'pplied the same method of reasoning to ethical problems. He endeavoured to bridge over those breaches which Kant had made in the utilitarian philosophy of the eighteenth century. Repelled by the severe and uncompromising ideals of moral duty which Kant set up, he demanded that our lives should rather be guided by the two principles of " Anmut " and WRITINGS ON AESTHETICS. l6l " Wiirde," of grace and dignity, and should rise to a higher harmony,^ which duty was at one with desire. A more personal contribution to aesthetics was his treatise tlber^ naive und sentimentalische Dichtung, which appeared two^years^'TateE Nominally a dissertation on the funda- mental nature of poetry illustrated by the German literature of the eighteenth century, it is in reality a justification of his own genius in comparison with Goethe's. Schiller divides all poetic production into two great classes : primitive poetry and the highest manifestations of genius in modern literatures such as Shakespeare and Goethe are " naive " ; modern poetry, on the other hand, is almost invariably " sentimental," that is to say, it does not merely give artistic form to what it observes ; it also reflects, muses, desires. Schiller recognised that his own genius was entirely "sentimental" in its qualities, and his book was a personal plea for his own right to existence beside Goethe. But before Uber naive imd sentimentalische Dichtung was published, Schiller had become the friend of Goethe, to the second phase in whose career we have now to turn. Goethe arrived in Weimar from Frankfort in the end of 1775. The favourable opinion which the young Duke of Weimar had already formed of him increased on nearer acquaintance ; he believed that the poet would not only be an ornament to his duchy, but could be made a valu- able servant of the state. Goethe threw himself with ardour into the new life ; and he who, only a year before, had been overflowing with poetic ideas and great literary schemes, seemed for a time to forget literature altogether. As he gradually found his feet again, the inevitable love- affair kept him from being too much engrossed by the routine of official duties. Goethe's new love, Charlotte von Stein, who was some years his senior and the mother of several children, has been called the noblest woman that he ever loved ; and his affection for her resembled a warm intellectual friendship rather than a passion. And now, for nearly ten years, happy years, full of a varied activity, political, scientific, and literary, Goethe published no work 162 GOETHE'S FIRST PERIOD IN WEIMAR. of the first rank ; at most he produced a handful of perfect lyric poems (An den Mond, Wonne der Wehmut, Wanderers Nachtlied, Ilmenau), a " Singspiel," Jery und Bdtely (1780), and a delicate little one-act play, Die Geschwister (1787), depicting the development of sisterly love into a warmer affection. But these seem only a poor harvest compared with the feverish activity of his last year in Frankfort. Then came, however, the great crisis in the poet's life. In October 1786 he set out for Italy, not returning to ^Weimar until the summer of 1788. What Italy meant for Goethe it is impossible to exaggerate ; far away from the distractions of Weimar life, and the petty interests of the court, Goethe was able to pass his life calmly in review ; for the first time he seemed, as it were, to -get outside himself and see himself objectively. Art, before which he had stood for so many years, as before a sphinx, now revealed its inmost secrets to him ; he realised at last what art meant in the march of eighteenth century human- ism, saw that it was something calmer and more universal than it had appeared amidst the passionate enthusiasm of his youth for a Shakespearean tragedy, a Gothic cathedral, or a Volkslied ; he felt that he himself was the born artist, the bearer of the mission that had revealed itself to him, and under the Italian sun he resolved to devote himself henceforth solely to its service. Thus Italy gave him the stimulus he needed to finish his many plans and fragments. The edition of his Schriften, which began to appear in 1787, included a large number of new works. He put the finishing touches to Iphigenie auf Tauris (1787) and Egmont (1788), and all but finished Torquato Tasso (1790); plans were laid for new classical dramas, a Nausikaa, an Iphigenie auf Delphos ; some at least of the beautiful Romische Elegien were written in Rome ; while amidst foreign surroundings he revised his most German work, Faust, which was published in its first fragmentary form in 1790. The significance of Italy to Goethe is to be read out of the two dramatic poems. Iphigenie auf Tauris " IPHIGENIE AUF TAURIS." 163 and Torquato Tasso. As a poet, he has written deeper works than either, works fraught with greater meaning, but he has written nothing superior to them in artistic form and classic, harmonious beauty ; here we find what is rare in German poetry, perfect thought wedded to perfect form. Iphigenie auf Tauris is an adaptation of the tragedy of Euripides to modern ideals and modern needs ; here, as in the ancient tragedy, Iphigenie, the Greek priestess, is an exile in the land of the barbarian Scythians, and has already begun to shed her mild and civilising influence on the rude people. The Scythian king, Thoas, demands her hand in marriage, and persists in his demand even after she reveals to him that she is of the race of Tantalus, so hated by the gods. Mean- while, two strangers have arrived at Tauris, and these the disappointed king commands shall be sacrificed according to the inhuman rites which for a time Iphigenie has succeeded in holding in abeyance. Iphigenie learns that one of these strangers is her own brother Orestes, who, tortured by the furies, seeks, as the only relief held out to him by the oracle, the temple of his sister, where he must obtain the statue of the goddess. The climax of the tragedy is, as in Euripides, the freeing of Orestes from the avenging fates ; but while to the Greek poet this is a purely outward incident, the furies relaxing their hold upon their victim, in Goethe's play we have only the psychological process which Euripides visualised. Orestes confesses to Iphigenie that the blood of his murdered mother is on his head ; this confession to his sister, who stands before him as the inspired handmaid of Artemis and the saviour of her race, frees him from the remorse that haunts his steps. In one other important point the modern poet departs from his Greek model. Truer to actuality, Euripides shows, in the theft of the goddess's image, the cunning of the Greek mind triumphing over the heavy-witted barbarian ; Goethe, on the other hand, makes his Thoas a humane tyrant of the eighteenth century ; and once more, at the close, Iphigenie over- comes his hostility to the Greeks by the frankness of her 164 GOETHE'S FIRST PERIOD IN WEIMAR. confession, and wins him as a friend. The drama closes with the Greeks departing in peace ; no " goddess from a machine," as in Euripides, is needed to cut the knot, no caprice of a higher power to overrule the course of nature. More subjective and dramatically less satisfying is Tor- quato Tasso. Indeed, Tasso belongs, properly speaking, to that category of Goethe's dramas which have been grouped together as "confessions." The court of Alphonso of Ferrara is obviously that of Weimar; the figures of the drama have all more or less their German counterparts, and Tasso, the over-sensitive poet, whose tragedy springs from his own lack of worldliness and self-control, is Goethe himself. But such resemblances are shadowy and distant, and very different from the direct portraiture which Goethe permitted himself in his earlier, realistic period. Tasso at the beginning of the play has just completed his epic, La Gerusalemme liberata, and brings it to his duke ; he is rewarded by a laurel wreath which the duke's sister, the Princess Leonore von Este, places upon his brow. The Secretary of State. Antonio Montecatino, views with dis- favour this flattery of the poet, and expresses himself in a way that is calculated to offend Tasso's self-esteem. The ill-feeling between the two men increases, until in a moment of forgetfulness Tasso draws his sword upon the minister. The poet is placed under arrest, and when set free resolves to leave the court ; but before he goes, he confesses to the princess his love for her. This foolish step makes him impossible at court, and he turns at last to Antonio to find in him his best-meaning friend. Tasso is a play of many flaws : it offends against the chief canons of dramatic construction ; the characters are con- ceived only, as it were, from the inside, not dramatically and in their totality : and the course of events is too shadowily indicated, too uninteresting, to hold the attention of an ordinary theatre-audience. But as poetry Tasso is one of the most concentrated and wonderful of all Goethe's crea- tions ; in no other work has he laid bare so unreservedly the inner workings of the supersensitive poetic tempera- "TASSO" AND " EGMONT." 165 ment ; it is the tragedy for tragedy it is, in spite of its inconclusive ending of genius. Still another of Goethe's greater dramas was completed and published in the edition of his Schriften of 1787-90, Egmont. In plan Egmont belongs to a much earlier period of the poet's life ; for it was sketched out in a form as irregular as that of Gotz von Berlichingen before Goethe left Frankfort for Weimar. Egmont is a more popular drama on the stage than Tasso, but it is even less dramatic in the true sense of that word ; Tasso is at least psychologically dramatic, but Egmont has hardly even this surrogate for outward and visible conflicts. It is a collection of dramatic episodes, centring in a great personality ; Graf Egmont, the leader of the Dutch in their revolt against Philip II. of Spain, remains in Brussels in spite of the warnings he receives that his life is in danger; he prefers the love of his Klarchen to his own safety; the consequence is that the Duke of Alba has him arrested and executed. These are the facts of the play ; and round these facts Goethe has grouped a series of dramatic genre-pictures, which serve to throw light upon the hero's fate. Above all, Egmont himself is a supremely interest- ing personality ; he is Gotz over again, but a happier Gotz, who has left the " Sturm und Drang " of life behind him and sees the world with more optimistic eyes ; he suc- cumbs, not in tragic battle with an adverse fate, but merely because his own great heart has trusted his fellowmen too much. Gotz died with the word " freedom " on his lips, a freedom for which he had fought in vain ; to Egmont appears the goddess of freedom in the semblance of Klarchen and promises him triumphs in the world to come. Egmont may be only an indifferent drama, but Goethe has invested his Egmont and Klarchen the latter one of the most delicately drawn of all Goethe's women with a charm that they can never lose. i66 CHAPTER XVI. THE CULMINATION OF WEIMAR CLASSICISM. ON June 18, 1788, Goethe returned to Weimar from his Italian journey. The realities which confronted him here did not, however, at all fit into that ideal scheme of life and work which he had mapped out for himself in Italy; after the serenity and beauty of Italian landscape and antique art, he could not feel at home under northern skies ; he was repelled by the turbulent, unbalanced litera- ture of the later "Sturm und Drang." He withdrew into himself and took but little interest in poetry and art until his friendship with Schiller, which began in 1794, led him back again to these things. In minor prose- writings of this period, such as the Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten (1795), and dramas like Der Grosscophta (1791) and Der Burger general (1793), we see, too, how little Goethe was in sympathy with the political movement, or understood the terrible lesson of the French Revolution. In 1794 he published his admirable modernisation of the Low German epic Reineke Fucks, and in 1795 an ^ 1796 the Romische Elegien and the VenetianischeEpigramme. But the first great work of this new period of Goethe's life was the novel, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, which appeared in the course of the "years 1795 and 1796. The plan of the novel had been considerably widened since Goethe first wrote it as a story of theatrical life ( Wilhelm Meisters theatralische Sendung) in 1777; the theatre is now but an episode, although an important "WILHELM MEISTERS LEHRJAHRE." 167 one, in the educational process whereby a young man completes his apprenticeship to life. As in so many of his other works, Goethe has woven into his fiction the inevitable " confession " ; for he, too, like Meister, had had his imagination nourished on poetry and a marionette-theatre; he, too, had come into conflict with the prosaic demands of a vocation in which his heart did not lie. But just as in Werther Goethe had carried to a ruthless logical conclusion a motive which had its origin in his own experience, so in this novel Meister becomes for a time wha't Goethe himself never was, the slave of his love for the theatre. Meister abandons his father's count- ing-house and joins a troupe of travelling players, ultimately becoming their leader. Romantic episodes are introduced into the story ; mysterious figures, like the Harper and Mignon the latter, perhaps, the most ethereal of all Goethe's creations wind themselves round Meister's heart and influence his life ; above all things, his chosen vocation brings him into touch with Shakespeare, whose Hamlet the company plays, giving Goethe an opportunity for reflections upon that work which have influenced all subsequent Shakespeare criticism. Gradually Meister dis- covers that the stage is not the goal of his life, but only an episode in his " apprenticeship " ; he rises to new responsibilities and more serious aims. The pretty actress, Marianne, who had captivated his youth, gives place to Nathalie, the noble sister of Lothario ; and she, in spite of other passing fancies on Wilhelm's part, at last completely retains his affections. The Harper is discovered to be the father of Mignon, the Romantic child with the instinctive, insatiable love of Italy ; and with Mignon's death the novel closes. Wil- helm Meister's apprenticeship to life is at an end ; he has passed, as Schiller said, " from a void, indefinite ideal to a definite active life, but without losing his idealising power " ; he has realised the " holy earnestness " of life. Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre occupies a central position in the history of German fiction ; it is the culmination of the eighteenth-century type of romance which, beginning l68 THE CULMINATION OF WEIMAR CLASSICISM. with imitations of Richardson and Fielding, passed to Wieland's Agathon and Moritz's Anton Reiser ; and as the accepted model for the novel of the young Ro- manticists, it dominated German prose literature down to the rise of the social novel towards the middle of the nineteenth century. Many years later Goethe provided his novel with the sequel which the original title promised, Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (1821-29) ; but this is a book of an entirely different kind, and can hardly even be called a continuation. To have finished Wilhelm Meister in the spirit of the first part and Goethe, we know, had the intention of showing in what relations his hero was to stand to social problems, after he had completed his apprenticeship was no longer possible a quarter of a 'century later. Between the two books lay not merely the French Revolution, but the rise and fall of Napoleon ; the word society connoted two entirely different things in 1795 an d 1820, and Goethe no doubt felt that his hero, to fit himself for this new society, would have had to pass through another apprenticeship. The Wanderjahre, which is eked out by a number of short stories, written at widely different times, contains Goethe's most explicit views on political and religious questions ; and this, if not its quality as a novel, gives it an important place among the writings of his later years. In the summer of 1794 Goethe and Schiller exchanged the first letters of that correspondence which forms one of the most precious documents of Weimar classicism. The immediate occasion was a new periodical, Die Horen, in which Schiller was anxious to obtain Goethe's col- laboration. Die Horen was no more successful than Schiller's previous journalistic ventures, but it accelerated the growing friendship : the very antagonism of the out- side world to the journal helped to bring the two poets closer together; and in 1795 tne >' resolved to retaliate on their critics. They published together, not in the Horen, but in Schiller's Musenalmanach fiir 1796, a collection of distichs in the manner of Martial, to which " HERMANN UND DOROTHEA." l6g they gave the title Xenien, the Greek word "xenion" meaning a gift offered to a guest. These "gifts" seem to have fully achieved their object, although to a modern reader it is often not easy to understand where their sting lay; the critics of the Weimar poets were, however, silenced, and the way made clear for positive achieve- ments. Schiller completed his Wallenstein, and Goethe one of his most perfect poems, Hermann und Dorothea. In Hermann und Dorothea (1798) Goethe stands in the debt of one of the leading poets of the Gottingen school, J. H. Voss. That poet's adaptation of the primi- tive Homeric spirit to German conditions in his idyll, Luise, suggested Goethe's poem. Hermann und Doro- thea is, however, no more to be described as an epic than its model ; it is a " Novelle " or " short story " in hexa- meters. It tells how Hermann, son of the landlord of the " Golden Lion " in a village near the Rhine, finds his bride among a company of emigrants, who are flee- ing from the terrors of the French Revolution. Goethe delights in describing in Voss's manner the daily routine of the village, the little trivial happenings that make up the villagers' life ; and he draws with a perfect sure- ness of touch the village magnates, the innkeeper, the pastor, and the apothecary. The story is simple, even conventional, and is constructed a little artificially out of misunderstandings and surprises. But this very touch of artificiality is quite in keeping with the poetic style ; for above all things, Hermann und Dorothea possesses style, not perhaps a Homeric style, but one at least more deli- cate and polished than was consistent with the turbid naturalism of Luise. Her)nann und Dorothea might be described as Goethe's most "classic" poem ; it is written with an objectivity which he had not yet attained in Iphigenie and Tasso, and its characters, stripped of the individual and the personal, have become the generalised ideals demanded by the classic theory which Goethe dis- cussed with Schiller in these years. After the success of Hermann und Dorothea, Goethe attempted to approxi- mate still more closely to the Homeric model by choosing 170 THE CULMINATION OF WEIMAR CLASSICISM. themes such as the story of the Swiss hero Tell, and even of the Greek Achilles himself, which seemed to him adapted to a genuine epic treatment. But his Achilleis did not get beyond the second canto, and the materials he had collected for Tell were subsequently handed over to Schiller for his drama on that subject. Meanwhile Schiller's Musenalmanach, which continued to appear annually from 1 796 to 1800 with more encourag- ing success than had attended any other of his periodicals, brought a new stimulus to bear on the lyric genius of both himself and Goethe. In the ballad Schiller dis- covered an opportunity for his genius, hardly inferior to the philosophic lyric, and from 1796 he enriched his literature with a series of masterly ballads Der Taucher, Der Handschuh, Der Kampf mit dem Drachen, Der Ring des Polykrates, Die Kraniche des Ibykus, to mention only a few of the best known which combine a keen sense for the dramatic and the picturesque with an almost Greek sensitiveness to form and style. In 1799 Schiller put the crown to his ballad-poetry with the magnificent Lied von der Glocke, a kind of poetic epitome of human life, in which, one might say, the two strains in the poet's lyric gift, the philosophic and the dramatic, meet and blend. And in friendly rivalry with Schiller Goethe wrote in 1797 ballads like Der Zauberlehrling, Der Gott und die baya- dere, Die Braut von Korinth, and, as a return to the Volkslied-like simplicity of his early lyrics, the cycle of Die schone Mullerin all poetry, which take an equally high place in the literature of German classicism. Goethe's uncompromising classical theories in the years that followed Hermann und Dorothea detracted seriously, however, from the value of his dramatic work. His prologues and " Festspiele " for the Weimar theatre, his translations of tragedies by Voltaire, above all, his own severely classic dramas, Die natiirliche Tochter (1804) and Pandora (1810), were of no significance for the future of the national drama. Die natiirliche Tochter is nobly planned as the first of a trilogy in which Goethe hoped to embody his own conception of the French Revolution ; but the GOETHE'S CLASSIC THEORIES. 171 impersonal objectivity is carried to such lengths that the figures of the drama seem only pale shadows or statuesque abstractions to us. There is poetry both in Die natiirliche Tochler and in the still more forbiddingly classic allegory of Pandora, but it is a poetry that appeals to the intellect, not the emotions. The classic doctrines obsessed at this time Goethe's whole intellectual life ; his views on litera- ture, his criticism of art, as is to be seen in his book on Winkelmann und seine Zeit (1805), in his art periodical, Die Propylden (1798-1800), and in the principles on which he directed the Weimar theatre from i 791 to 1817, were uncompromisingly classic, and in marked contrast to the vigorous national spirit in German art and poetry, which the Romantic School had called into life. In 1808, however, appeared a work before which all Goethe's classical aberrations sink into insignificance, the national drama of the German people, the First Part of Faust. But, as the crowning work of the poet's life, Faust will be dealt with in the following chapter. With his trilogy of Wallenstein Schiller opened the series of his dramatic masterpieces. Like Don Carlos, Wallenstein had been long in the poet's workshop, but it had benefited by the delay. To the conscientious study of history which had preceded it, is due the fact that Wallenstein gradually emerged from a drama in the style of Don Carlos, to become a spacious historical trilogy, the ripest historical drama, as it was virtually the last, of the eighteenth century. Another influence is to be seen at work in Wallenstein which was hitherto absent from Schiller's dramatic work, the influence of Greek tragedy ; Wallenstein himself is a tragic figure, less in the manner of Shakespeare than of Sophocles, and the drama is, in Greek fashion, the history of a catastrophe foreordained by fate, the struggle of a great soul against powers that are too strong for it. Only at a late period in the composition of the tragedy did Schiller resolve to divide it into three parts ; it is virtually only one long tragedy in ten acts, preceded by a prologue. This prologue, entitled Wallensteins Lager (1798), displays vividly and 172 THE CULMINATION OF WEIMAR CLASSICISM. picturesquely the motley elements that made up Wal- lenstein's camp as it lay before Pilsen in the winter of 1633-34; it provided a background for the whole drama, and obviated the necessity of breaking the classic unity of style by the introduction of mitieu-scenes into the body of the tragedy. When the first drama, Die Piccolomini (1799), opens, Wallenstein, in whose character the domin- ant forces are overweening ambition and a superstitious faith in his lucky star, is within easy distance of his goal, which is to see himself crowned king of Bohemia. His strength lies in the army he has himself created, and to turn the balance of power in his favour he is about to enter into a secret alliance with the Protestant Swedes. Only his blind faith in the stars holds him back until the propitious moment arrives. Meanwhile, however, in order to accelerate matters, Wallenstein's two staunchest friends, Field-Marshal Illo and Graf Terzky, take the opportunity of a banquet at which the leaders of the various regiments are all more or less intoxicated, to obtain the signatures of these men to a document declaring their inalienable allegiance to Wallenstein whatever may befall. One of them, however, an Italian, Octavio Piccolomini, whom Wallenstein trusts most, sees through the premeditated treason ; but he abides his time. He warns his son Max, but Max Piccolomini refuses to listen to his father, for he loves Wallenstein's daughter Thekla and looks up to Wallenstein himself in blind hero-worship. Die Piccolomini is merely a preparation for the real tragedy, Wallensteins Tod (1799). Wallenstein's fate is sealed ; like another CEdipus he is fighting against powers that the spectator knows will be too strong for him. His plot to join the Swedes has been discovered ; action is imperative, and he openly throws in his lot with the enemy. With tragic blindness he places all responsibility at the critical moment in the hands of Octavio Piccolomini ; but the regiments upon which he relies break away from him and he stands alone, deserted at last even by Max Piccolomini. With the friends he still believes faithful to him he escapes to Eger, and is here assassinated by " WALLENSTEIN " AND "MARIA STUART." 173 one of them. The crowning touch of tragic irony is given to the drama by the arrival of a messenger from the Emperor, conferring on Octavio the title of " Prince." No less classic in its adherence to the methods of Greek tragedy is Schiller's next tragedy, Maria Stuart (1800). This drama contains less outward incident than Wallenstein, and it has, properly speaking, hardly any- tragic conflict at all. The scene is at Fotheringay Castle on the last days of Mary Stuart's life ; she is already con- demned to die before the curtain rises, and the episode which fill out the play the attempt of the young catholic convert Mortimer, who is in love with her, to effect her escape, Leicester's vacillating sympathy for her, even the culminating scene, in the garden of Fotheringay, in which she seals her own fate by her angry remonstrances with Elizabeth, all these are but semblances of a drama- tic conflict where none exists. But, on the other hand, Schiller has embodied in this tragedy an idea that was deeply rooted in the ethics of the German classical age namely, that of moral regeneration and purification through suffering. This is the significance of the long and harrow- ing fifth act, in which Mary is lifted up by her religion to a peace of soul she has not known before ; the expia- tion on the scaffold becomes for her a triumph of her better self. This spiritualising of the final conflict in the heroine herself atones in very great measure for the absence, to which English readers are naturally more sensi- tive than German, of an adequate historical background. A similar ethical idea lies behind Schiller's tragedy, Die Jung/ran von Orleans (1801), for which he borrowed the paraphernalia and colouring of the Romantic drama. For his purpose in this play the poet was compelled to depart even further from history than in his previous dramas ; his Joan of Arc is a wholly idealised figure. The Divine command to Joan to lead her army against the English and crown her king in Rheims is coupled with the condition that success depends on her resistance of all earthly love : and in place of the historical tradition, according to which Joan fell into the hands of the English and was burned by 174 THE CULMINATION OF WEIMAR CLASSICISM. them as a witch, Schiller makes his heroine break her vow. Offers of marriage made to her by the French com- manders, Dunois and Lahire, she rejects at once, but in single combat with Lionel, a young English soldier, her heart softens, and she grants him his life. She feels that by this weakness she has frustrated her holy mission, and mutely accedes to the accusation of witchcraft which her father brings against her. Her only desire now is to atone for her guilt by a heroic death. She falls into the enemy's hands ; Lionel protects her and throws himself at her feet ; but her moral regeneration is complete ; she is proof against his love, breaks her chains and once more leads her people to victory. Like Maria Stuart, she, too, dies triumphant. Although in its ideas, its personages, and in its employment of the unnatural and the super- natural, Die Jungfrau von Orleans is far removed from our modern sympathies, we are bound to recognise that Schiller, having resolved to write a " Romantic " tragedy, has consistently carried out his plan ; in a higher degree perhaps than any other of Schiller's dramas, Die Jungfrau von Orleans possesses the quality of harmonious style. Outwardly a great step in the direction of render- ing German tragedy classic, although in reality only a further concession to the pessimistic quietism of Roman- ticism, is Schiller's next tragedy, Die Braut von Messina (1803). This drama is an obvious experiment, an attempt to adapt the technique of the Greek tragedy to the modern stage ; like a Greek tragedy, Die Braut von Messina is not divided into acts, and the action is helped out by means of a chorus, the introduction of which Schiller defended in a preface to the play. The scene is Messina, the time the Middle Ages. Dreams are the starting- points of the action. The Prince of Messina sees one night a lily growing up between two laurel trees, when suddenly the lily turns to fire and destroys everything around it. A wise Arabian interprets this dream as meaning that a daughter will be born to him and will cause the death of his two sons, Caesar and Manuel ; and he orders the daughter who is subsequently born "DIE BRAUT VON MESSINA" AND "TELL." 175 to be drowned. His wife, Isabella, however, also trusting to a dream, which is interpreted as meaning that her daughter will unite in love the hostile temperaments of the two brothers, saves the child's life and has it brought up secretly in a monastery. Both dreams, like the oracles of Greek tragedy, come true ; the brothers in turn see their unknown sister and love her. In blind jealousy Caesar kills Manuel and, when he learns that Beatrice is his own sister, kills himself. In devising this plot Schiller's aim was to adapt to modern, or at least mediaeval conditions, the dominant motive of Greek tragedy ; but in the transference the motive lost its dignity. For the oracle was an integral part of the Greek religion, whereas the dreams of the Braut von Messina appear to the modern mind, intolerant of superstition, as, at most, the caprices of an evil power. The form of the tragedy was against its success on the stage, but in the choruses the lyric and reflective side of Schiller's genius found a congenial medium of expression. Meanwhile Schiller's interest in Greek tragedy led him to translate the most Greek of all Shakespeare's plays, Macbeth (1801); he also, about the same time, made a German version of Gozzi's comedy Turandot (1802), translated a couple of lighter French comedies by L. B. Picard, and, in the last months of his life, Racine's Pkedre (1805). His last tragedy, Wilhelm Tell (1804), shows a complete emancipation from the narrow classicism which had led to the blind alley of Die Braiitvon Messina, With Wilhelm Tell, more than with any other of his trage- dies since Die Rduber, Schiller widened the province of the drama ; here, for the first time, he has brought the action and the fate of a whole nation within the compass of five acts. Wilhelm Tell is an epic, panoramic drama in which the individual hero is but the spokesman of his people. The theme of the play is the revolt of the Swiss against the tyranny of their Austrian rulers. The national dis- content is fanned into open rebellion by the caprice of the Landvogt Gessler : Tell refuses to bend the knee to Gessler's cap, erected on a pole in the market-place 176 THE CULMINATION OF WEIMAR CLASSICISM. of Altdorf, and for this contempt is condemned by the Landvogt to shoot with his cross-bow an apple placed on his son's head. He succeeds, but boldly confesses that the second arrow he holds in readiness was intended for the tyrant, had the first killed his child. Tell is thrown into chains and conveyed by boat to Kiissnacht, but on the way a storm arises and he has to be released to steer the boat ; he brings it sufficiently near to the land to allow him to leap ashore and make good his escape. Meanwhile the representatives of the four Forest Cantons assemble on the Riitli above the lake and swear to take common action against the tyranny under which they suffer ; and when Gessler falls by Tell's arrow in the narrow way near Kiissnacht, his assassination appears as the righteous vindication of a suffering people rather than the personal vengeance of a single individual. The last act, in which Tell's deed is thrown into relief as an impersonal national achievement by comparison with the assassination of the Austrian Emperor by Duke Johann of Swabia, is lacking in organic connection with the main theme. Wilhehn Tell was the last drama it was given to Schiller to complete. In January 1805 he began Demetrius, the story of the Russian pretender who only realises that he is not the man he has given himself out to be, when it is too late to retract. This would, no doubt, have been still another step forward in Schiller's eman- cipation from classicism ; but he had not quite finished the second act when the fatal illness overtook him from which he died on May 9, 1805. Schiller has been for so long surrounded by a halo as pre-eminently the national poet of the German people, that it is difficult for modern criticism to arrive at a final judgment of his place in the literary history of Europe. His writings are inspired by a noble idealism, a lofty aspiration and enthusiasm, but, as the generation of to-day in Germany has begun to realise, these things have less meaning and vitality for us now than the impartial realism of Goethe's calm outlook on life. Schiller was SCHILLER'S PLACE IN LITERATURE. 177 too deeply immersed in the classic movement of the eighteenth century to be numbered among the few great poets who are for all time. He was above all things a fighter ; he went through life as a partisan, a fiery champion of high causes ; the calm, dispassionate wis- dom of Goethe was never his. None the less, he is Germany's greatest dramatic poet, and has put his stamp, as no second poet, on the entire German drama of the after-time. CHAPTER XVII. MINOR WRITERS OF THE CLASSICAL PERIOD ; GOETHE'S OLD AGE. IN following to their close the lives of Goethe and Schiller, we have been carried beyond the limits of the eighteenth century ; we must now return to consider the general state of German letters in the epoch of Weimar classicism, that is to say, in the years that lay between the passing of the "Sturm und Drang" and the rise of Romanticism. In this period of what might be called humanitarian classicism, the intellectual movement of the "Aufklarung," the superseding of pseudo- classicism by a truer and more genuinely antique classicism, reached a culmination ; all that was best in the intellectual movement of the eighteenth century is concentrated in its last ten or twenty years. The entire epoch is dominated by the gigantic figure of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), alike the maturest product of rationalism and the spiritual liberator of modern Europe. Kant was born and died at Konigs- berg ; his whole life long he was associated with that town and he taught at its university from 1755 onwards. The fruits of his philosophy are to be seen in the three epoch - making treatises he published between his fifty- seventh and sixty-sixth year : Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1781), Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (1788), and Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790). The word which is common to all these titles sums up the method and spirit of Kant's philosophy ; he was the founder of a KANT AND FICHTE. 179 " critical " philosophy. Just as Descartes, a century and a half earlier, had with one magic phrase swept away the dry formalism of mediaeval scholasticism, so now Kant destroyed the ungrounded speculation and dog- matising metaphysics into which Cartesianism had de- generated. When Kant declared that the only way to certainty concerning the unknown was through the critical study of the human mind, it was a triumph for the "Aufklarung" of which the older "Aufklarer" could not have dreamed. Kant based his metaphysics on an understanding of the processes and the limita- tions of the intelligence, and the result of his investi- gations is the subject of his three treatises. The first of these discusses the pure reason, and has become an indispensable basis for all modern metaphysics ; the second analyses the practical reason, and insists on sub- ordination of the practical life to the will and implicit obedience to the moral law as the first conditions of the higher life, a doctrine of duty for duty's sake, which reacted on the character of the German people and helped to weld them into a great nation. Lastly, the third Kritik laid the foundation of the aesthetic theory of the German classical period which, as we have seen, Schiller helped materially to develop. The bracing influence of the Kantian philosophy is nowhere more apparent than in the work of Kant's first important successor, J. G. Fichte (1762-1814). Fichte was a native of the Oberlausitz in Saxony, and had studied under Kant in Konigsberg. Appointed professor at Jena in 1794, the year in which his Wissenschaftslehre appeared, he had only begun to attract students from all parts of Germany when he was accused of atheism and compelled to resign. For a time he was in Erlangen, and subsequently, in 1810, was appointed the first rector of the new university of Berlin. German idealism, which with Kant had emerged purified and ennobled from the older rationalism, was carried by Fichte to a still higher point; for it was he who first grasped the significance of the individualistic tendency in Kant's thinking; he l8o MINOR WRITERS OF THE CLASSICAL PERIOD. first gave clear expression to that intensely personal idealism which acted like a ferment on the literature of the time. But Fichte's " ego " was not merely a meta- physical, but also a moral " ego " ; from the Kantian "categorical imperative" he deduced a still more un- compromising conception of the self-denying duties of the moral life ; and he repeated again, but with fuller knowledge and understanding, the dogmas of the early thinkers of the " Sturm und Drang," that " personality " is the highest good and that our destinies lie in our own hands. Fichte's patriotic earnestness, which finds its expression in his magnificent Reden an die deutsche Nation, delivered in Berlin in the winter of 1807-8, when the German people lay crushed under the heel of Napoleon, was a factor to be reckoned with in the national rising of 1813 and the War of Liberation. It is impossible here, without going beyond the limits of literary history, to follow the influence of this stimulat- ing idealism on the many currents and undercurrents of German intellectual life at the close of the eighteenth century, but one name must at least be mentioned, that of Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835). Humboldt was personally associated with the Weimar literary circle, and one of the intellectual makers of modern Germany. As Prussian Minister of Education he directed the stream of higher culture into practical channels, and gave Germany a system of national education. As a scholar he contributed to the science of comparative philology ; his translations from the Greek show genuine poetic power, and his critical study of Hermann iind Dorothea (Asthetische Versuche, 1799) justifies the con- fidence which Goethe and Schiller placed in his literary judgment. A characteristic illustration of the effect of this new wine in old bottles, this tonic idealism on the easy-going rationalism of the foregoing period, is to be seen in the representative novelist of these years, Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, or, as he preferred to sign himself, "Jean Paul" (1763-1825). When Richter first sue- JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. l8l ceeded in attracting attention as an author with Die unsichtbare Loge in 1793, he had behind him a life of suffering and privation, such as was only too commonly the lot of German writers in the eighteenth century. He was by birth a Franconian, and, like his nation, com- bined in many ways characteristics of the Low and the High German. Richter's books are full of the contrasts and incongruities which we associate with the writers of a transition period. Into the old type of novel which Sterne had given to eighteenth-century Europe, he forced the idealism and individualism of the age of Fichte ; he combined the crudities of the German family-romance of the " Sturm und Drang " with the new fiction which Goethe's Wilhelm Meister had inaugurated. A kindly, sentimental humour and irony, of which again Sterne was the original source, is to be found side by side with morbid, sociological problems and pleas for individual licence ; and, above all this, a soaring Germanic imagina- tion which, in its most daring flights, shows an affinity with that of Klopstock or of the German mystics of the early seventeenth century. The series of Richter's greater novels begins with Hesperus (1795), ' n which there is still much of the " Sturm und Drang " ; with the charming prose idyll of Quintus Fixlein (1796) he found, however, a more con- genial channel for his talent. His third important book, B/umen-, Frucht- und Dornstiicke, oder Ehestand, Tod und Hochzeit des Armenadvokaten Siebenkds (1796-97), is as fantastic as its title ; it combines the idyllic and sentimen- tal tone of Quintus Fixlein with a flagrant defiance of social conventions in the spirit of the early " Sturm und Drang." Richter's masterpiece is Titan (1800-3), on which the influence of Wilhelm Meister is sufficiently strong to justify us in classing it with the early novels of the Romantic School. The crudities of Richter's earlier books have here disappeared, and the main problem of the story the sentimental education of a young prince at the hands of three women, who each contribute to the moulding of his character and help him to discover his l82 MINOR WRITERS OF THE CLASSICAL PERIOD. true self is a characteristically Romantic one. Of Richter's later writings, idyllic studies of the life he knew, such as Der Jubelsenior (1797), Flegeljahre (1804-5), and Leben Fibels (1812) are the most readable to-day, more readable than the ambitious but lumbering novel Der Komet (1820-22). Richter is an illustration of the nemesis which a contempt for artistic form brings with it ; in the early nineteenth century the most popular of German novelists and the opinion of his own countrymen was shared by De Quincey and Carlyle in England, he is nowadays hardly read at all. The coming epoch of Romanticism was more clearly reflected in lyric poetry at the turn of the century, and that mainly because the lyric is able to avoid the dis- turbing vicissitudes to which other forms of literature are exposed ; its development is more continuous and gradual. The younger generation departed far from Goethe's type of drama, and they no doubt believed they had advanced beyond Wilhelm Meister in their novels, but Goethe's shorter poems remained for them the unsurpassable models of lyric expression. The history of the lyric in these years is not easy to follow, for its materials have to be sought less in the works of eminent poets than in the contributions to the many " Musenalmanache " which flooded the German book- markets. Of the better known minor poets of the age Friedrich von Matthisson (1761-1831) maybe mentioned, a native of Magdeburg, whose sentimental, elegiac lyrics show an affinity with those of the Gottingen school. A. similar old-world sentiment, varied occasionally by more vigorous strains, is to be found in the lyrics, published in 1793, of the Swiss poet, J. G. von Salis- Seewis (1762-1834), author of the little poem which Longfellow has made a household word in English- speaking lands, Ins stille Land (" Into that silent Land "). To the past rather than to the future belongs also G. L. Kosegarten (1758-1818), a Mecklenburg poet who followed in the footsteps of his fellow-countryman Voss ; but neither his lyrics nor his epics (Jucunde, FRIEDRICH HOLDKRLIN. 183 1808), in spite of an obvious effort to strike a higher note and appeal to a higher literary culture, have that original force and racy flavour of the soil which attract us in Voss's Luise. The lyric in dialect is represented by J. P. Hebel (1760-1826), a native of Basel, whose Akmannische Gedichte (1803) are composed in the Ger- man dialect of the southern Schwarzwald. Lastly, mention has to be made of C. A. Tiedge (1752-1841), the once popular author of a didactic poem, Urania (1801); but Tiedge is long forgotten, and may be regarded as the last representative in literature of the undisguised didac- ticism of the German "Aufklarung." While these poets belong, one and all, to the past, another writer of this age, Friedrich Holderlin (1770-1843), belongs to the future ; although he was not personally associated with the Romantic School, his temperament and poetic faculty were essentially Romantic. A fellow- countryman of Schiller's, he passed an unhappy and chequered life, which was cut short by insanity at the age of thirty-two; thus, from 1802 onwards, he ceased to exist for literature, although he did not die until 1843. In common with the Romanticists he was filled with a passionate discontent; but while they took refuge from the prosaic world into which they were born, in the Middle Ages, Holderlin sought it in the culture of ancient Greece. His most ambitious book is a novel in let- ters, Hyperion, oder der Eremit in Griechenland, which appeared in two volumes in 1797 and 1799; it purports to be a chapter from contemporary, or almost con- temporary Greek history, and describes the Greek struggle for independence against the Turks ; its hero is a dreamy, fervid Werther, whose enthusiasm oscillates between the two poles of nature and Greek antiquity. Greece and nature, these, too, are the dominant notes of Holderlin's lyric poetry ; and he is, above all things, a lyric poet. Perhaps, indeed, he is best described as a mediator between the two centuries ; he combines the reflective lyric of the eighteenth century with a Ro- mantic pantheism and the pessimism of a more modern 184 MINOR WRITERS OF THE CLASSICAL PERIOD. " Weitschmerz." He stands between Klopstock and Schiller on the one side and the Romantic lyric of the nineteenth century on the other. In spite of the enormous impetus given to the German drama by Schiller, there was no form of literature where a wider gulf separated the Weimar poets from the rank and file of German writers. The two forms of play associated particularly with the movement of " Sturm und Drang," namely, the " Ritterdrama " and the domestic tragedy, were neither of them capable of development ; decay was inherent in them from the first. The " Ritter- drama," which at no time made much literary pretension, lost the little dignity it had by its extravagant sensation- alism, and sank to the level of a crude popular entertain- ment ; while the " biirgerliche Tragodie" deteriorated steadily from Schiller to Iffland and from Iffland to Kotzebue. August von Kotzebue (1761-1819) was no genius, but he was a playwright with a marvellously keen understanding for the needs of the stage. We have only to look at the repertory lists of the German theatres at the zenith of the classical era to see how completely he dominated the stage. Nor was his success confined to Germany ; his plays were translated into every language, and he was the most popular playwright in Europe until the rise of Scribe in the following generation. His talent was, however, purely a talent for the theatre, an ability to create effective stage situations and striking stage figures, which gave the actors unbounded opportunities. In higher poetic or literary qualities he was more deficient than even Iffland. Among his most popular plays in their day were Menschenhass und Rene (i 789), Die Indianer in England (1789), Die Spanier in Peru (1796), and Die deutschen Kleinstadter (1803), the last - mentioned a comedy that is even still occasionally seen on the German stage. Before passing to the new era of German literature, which was inaugurated by the Romantic School, we have to follow to its close the life of Goethe. Schiller's death had left an irreparable gap in his life ; he, the aristocrat GOETHE'S " WAHLVERWANDTSCHAFTEN." 185 who held aloof from the movement of his time, was lonelier than ever. Even with the political awakening of his nation Goethe had little sympathy ; Napoleon, whose genius overawed him, appeared to him as the man of destiny, against whom it was hopeless to struggle : and the triumph of German nationalism in 1813 meant com- paratively little to this cosmopolite of the old regime. In literature, in spite of Faust, Goethe remained faithful to his classic ideals. Die Wahlverwandtschaften, which ap- peared in 1809, is a novel of classic form and classic beauty, although Goethe here returned to everyday reali- ties and dealt with them from a personal standpoint. In the poet's work this book mediates, one might say, between the subjective methods of his first period and that ex- treme of objectivity which had resulted in Die natilrliche Tochter and Pandora. Die Wahlverwandtschaften is a study of four people who seek out, in defiance of social and legal conventions, their " elective affinities," and virtually succumb before the tyranny of these conventions ; it is the novel of a scientist, who watches coldly and impersonally the progress of a pathological and psychological experi- ment. The freshness of Wilhelm Meister is missing, but in its place has come a more penetrating insight into the workings of mind and heart: it is the "scientific" point of view from which Goethe regards his theme that makes Die Wahlverwandtschaften so interesting a forerunner of the later developments of the European novel. In 1811 the second of the chief works of Goethe's later years began to appear, his autobiography, Aim nieinem Leben : Dichtung und Wahrheii (1811-33), w ' tn which may be associated his Italienische Reise (1816-17) and Die Campagne in Frankreich (1822). The auto- biography only extends as far as the close of Goethe's Frankfort life in 1775 ; the period which the poet recalls with such extraordinary vividness lay separated from him by half an ordinary lifetime. Letters and contemporary documents amply prove, however, that the truth of fact is here not unduly veiled in poetry ; indeed, the title Dichtutig und Wahrheit would seem merely to imply that i86 GOETHE'S OLD AGE. Goethe had subordinated the facts and events of his life to an artistic plan, and had interpreted them in view of his future development ; the lights and shadows are adjusted by the hand of the artist rather than of the chronicler, and over the whole lies the calm optimism of the poet's later years. Meanwhile Goethe's life was becoming fuller and fuller as the years went on. His interest in art showed no abate- ment ; the journal, Uber Kunst und Altertum (1816-32), which took the place of the earlier Propylden, now be- came the general receptacle for his criticism. Science, too, engrossed him more and more with his advancing years. To optics he contributed studies on light and colour (Beitrdge ztir Optik, 1791-92; Zur Farbenlehre, 1810), in which he doggedly combated the Newtonian theory of the propagation of light by means of waves; and in geology he maintained the old "Neptunian" theory of the exclusively aqueous origin of the earth's crust against the " Vulcanists," or believers in its igneous origin. In those sciences his work was only negatively important ; but in anatomy and botany (Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen, 1790, and Zur Morphologic, 1817-22) he laid down fundamental principles of morphological development which give him an important place among Darwin's predecessors. His acknowledged position at the head of German letters brought him into touch with the intellectual aristocracy not merely of German - speaking lands, but of all Europe ; his correspondence was endless, and his diaries bear witness to the constant stream of visitors to Weimar. Once more, in 1819, Goethe's lyric genius burst forth with renewed vigour in Der westostliche Divan. The spontaneous beauty with which he here gives voice to feelings that were by no means all imagined, shows with what difficulty Goethe grew old. The only indication that the lyrics of 1819 were not the creation of a young poet is the reflective tone that occasionally creeps in, and the apophthegmatic concentration of form in which he expresses his ripe wisdom. Der Westostliche Divan is " DER WEST6STLICHE DIVAN" AND " FAUST." 187 an imitation of the Divan of the Persian poet Hafiz, which had been translated into German a few years previously, and it gave oriental poetry a vogue in Germany that lasted for forty years. Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, which has already been discussed, followed in 1821, while the last years of Goethe's life were taken up with the completion of his life-work, Faust, the second part of which appeared in 1832, a few months after his death. The position which Faust occupies in Goethe's life has no parallel in the life of any other of the world's great poets. A favourite theme of the writers of the " Sturm und Drang," Faust's story had been familiar to Goethe from his earliest years onward ; it must necessarily have attracted his attention in Leipzig, the town of " Auer- bach's Keller," and doubtless also during the months of convalescence in Frankfort, when he was interested in alchemy and magic. After the "Sturm und Drang" set in, Faust had the first place in Goethe's heart, and when he left Frankfort for Weimar in 1775, ne took with him the play more or less completed in the form we now know as the Urfaust. In Weimar Faust was not forgotten, although in the early years little or nothing was added to it, and it accompanied the poet to Italy where one or two new scenes were written and the whole prepared for pub- lication in 1790 as Faust, ein Fragment. In the following years, thanks to Schiller's stimulus and insistence, the yellowed manuscript of the poem was taken out once more, scenes were again added and the whole adapted to a wider scheme, whereby Faust's experiences were invested with a subtle problematic significance. In 1808 appeared the First Part. Slowly but with fewer interruptions, the Second Part took shape, reflecting as it progressed the various phases of Goethe's own later thought, his classicism and even his scientific interests. The final touches were not put to the work until the very last months of the poet's life. A theme such as that of Faust is uniquely adapted to mirror the temperament of the German people ; even in Reformation times, when the story first took form, it was 188 GOETHE'S OLD AGE. seized upon to embody the Germanic revolt against the spiritual fetters of Catholicism, and to voice the sixteenth century's dreams of infinite power and infinite enjoyment. Under the "Sturm und Drang" Faust was again the " Ubermensch," the rebel against laws divine and human, whose tragic fate is his quest for the unattainable ; and in Goethe's hands this Faust becomes a still more complete impersonation of the aspiration of the eighteenth century. He is the " Sturmer und Dranger " who sets law at de- fiance, who will, as it were, merge the whole world in his " ego " ; but he is at the same time imbued by Goethe with intellectual aspirations which effectually rule out those moral platitudes the earlier writers who had treated the theme were too ready to introduce. In Goethe's hands Faust is no criminal egoist ; he has become the imper- sonation of man's most precious qualities. He has ceased to be the abnormally developed individual who merely tilts against the wall of law and convention, and has become a type of aspiring humanity. To give the play a still more universal significance, Goethe fitted it into a new framework, made it unroll, like a mystery-play of the Middle Ages, against a spiritual background in which Satan struggles with God for Faust's possession. Faust, when the drama opens, has already exhausted all knowledge and wisdom : and the moment has come when he is ready to take leave of an existence, of the vanity of which he is convinced. In this moment it would seem as if a Divine force takes possession of him ; Easter bells recall him to earth, the careless, happy holiday folk remind him of the ever-renewing vitality of humanity. The moment is ripe for Mephistopheles, that emissary of the powers of evil, who, after all, is but the servant of God, to present himself to Faust. A pact is made and signed in Faust's blood. Mephistopheles agrees to stand at Faust's command, to open up to him worlds of power and enjoyment, of which he has not even dreamed ; and in return for this service, Faust signs him- self away to Mephistopheles ; but only on the condition that the latter succeeds in satiating him, in destroying " FAUST." l8g his will to dream, to strive, and to desire. Mephistopheles now proceeds to lead his victim through various forms of pleasure the crude sensuality of the wine -house, the tragic passion for Gretchen, the sense-benumbing orgies of the Brocken but without the expected result. The devil is still foiled ; for the love with which Gretchen has inspired Faust, instead of dragging him down, as Mephistopheles had hoped, has filled him with a tragic restlessness against which his lures are powerless. With Gretchen's death in prison the First Part closes. From the narrow world of personal joys and sufferings Faust passes in Part II. into the great world of humanity at large. He is no longer merely the strong individual with personal desires to satisfy ; he has become symbolic of the race. At the court of the Kaiser, Mephistopheles intro- duces him to a motley life where manifold social questions are opened up ; and at this court Faust, by virtue of a magic key, unlocks the door of antiquity. He conjures up Helen of Troy, and himself loves the phantom he has brought back to life. With the help of a small being, the " Homunculus," a creation of alchemistic science, he makes his way back through the centuries to Greek antiquity, where he takes part in the " Klassische Wal- purgisnacht," the greatest possible contrast to the wild Germanic carnival on the Brocken in Part I. Amidst the classic harmony of the ancient world, Faust sees the real Helen ; she takes refuge in his castle from the wrath of Menelaus. Faust and she are united, the romantic Germanic soul with the Greek ideal beauty ; and from their union springs the child Euphorion, in whom Goethe allegorised Byron. Euphorion loses his brief life in the quest of too high an ideal ; Helen vanishes into air and Faust is brought back by Mephistopheles into the real world, the world of political machinations, of diplomacy and war, of industry and commerce. Here Faust attains to what in Goethe's mind was the final goal of human life, a practical, beneficent activity ; his mighty energy has won new land from the sea, and at his feet he sees a happy, flourishing community of active men. Faust igo GOETHE'S OLD AGE. is now a hundred years old and cannot live much longer ; Mephistopheles believes that the hour of his triumph has at last come, for there is nothing left for Faust to strive for. Moreover, sinister figures are approaching : Want, Guilt, Need, Care, and Death himself is not far off. But the eternal striving in Faust's breast is still insatiable ; he sinks into the grave convinced that the highest wisdom is summed up in the words, that life and freedom are only for him who daily conquers them anew. Only with death itself does the moment come when Faust can " bid the passing moment stay." Mephistopheles believes that his wager with God is won ; he summons his devils to carry off his victim : but the angels of the heavenly host descend and do battle with roses for the soul of the eternal striver. Once again Goethe's magnificent imagination unfolds itself in the poetry of this last act, where Faust's soul passes upwards through the hierarchy of mediaeval Christi- anity to the Virgin, at whose feet a penitent, the Gretchen of former days, intercedes for him. Such was the fitting culmination to the life of Germany's greatest, most universal poet, who stood like a colossus amidst his age, whose work is an epitome of a whole cen- tury of Germany's literary history. It is sometimes, indeed, difficult to realise that this Goethe, who dominated the age of German classicism and saw Romanticism rise and fall, who lived into the modern era of steam and electricity, began his career in the Leipzig of Gottsched and was the leader of the " Sturm und Drang." When Goethe passed away in Weimar on the 22nd of March 1832, a great age in European letters had come to a close. At the opening of the eighteenth century the German- speaking peoples were without a living literature they could call their own, and stood in abject spiritual slavery to France ; that century left them as the leading intellectual force in Europe. From Canitz and Besser to Goethe and Schiller the vast distance was covered with miraculous rapidity, and almost within the span of a single genera- tion. No wonder this eighteenth century was a feverish age in Germany ; compared with it, the leisurely culture THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY IN GERMANY. IQI of England, which accepted the displacement of Restora- tion ideals and the "return to nature " as a matter of course, or the overripe intellectualism of France with all her glorious memories of the "grand siecle," was the greatest possible contrast. The time-spirit was clearly no gentle, beneficent deity to Germany as it was to England, but rather a relentless Chronos, who devoured his children as he created them, and brought tragic dis- appointment to all but the very greatest thinkers and poets. Yet the process of evolution in Germany was not different from elsewhere, only more concentrated and more intense. As England and France, Germany had to take the step into the modern time which consisted in discarding classicism for naturalness ; the step was a serious and even revolu- tionary one, but Germany succeeded in the end better than her neighbours in arriving at a solution of the problems of the eighteenth century. The supreme achievement of that century was neither England's material and political prosperity, nor France's great Revolution, but the humane classicism of Weimar. IQ2 CHAPTER XVIII. THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT. THE future of German poetry did not lie in that noble classicism with which the eighteenth century culminated, which Goethe and Schiller carried to its highest perfection in Weimar; the classic movement, having touched its zenith, exhausted itself, and had now to give place to another unclassic revival. Just as, a generation earlier, German individualism had asserted itself as " Sturm und Drang," so now at the beginning of the nineteenth century the same spirit appears again, this time as Romanticism. In her epochs of classicism Germany's influence on other literatures has been small out of all proportion to her achievements, but ir^ periods like that of "Sturm und Drang " and Romanticism, that influence has been almost disproportionately great. Thus, on the threshold of the new century a little band of writers, none of them of the first order, promulgated ji new doctrine which made the nineteenth century in the literatures of Europe a century of Romanticism. This doctrine of Romanticism differed from that of the "Sturm und Drang" as impetuous youth differs from mature manhood ; it was an individualism that had passed through a period of chastening humanism and enlightenment. The "Sturm und Drang" had been a German reproduction oflhe revoTroF^Rousseau and, above aTrfhingsTTco^cTastic ; it aimed at destroying rather than building up ; it spTTmBd barriers and boundaries as incon- venient hindrances to the progress of the individual. The t~~e/v, t j^ J 'S. -., x ; .X- A'l^uc - -- ."5JUUA - . | UtX "^i-?". ..*." ' J-, THE DOCTRINES OF ROMANTICISM. 193 _new movement also demanded the utmost freedom for trie" individual ; but its leaders based their claim not so "much on personal needs as on an ordered conception of the universe, in which the inoHvicTual (acuities' were 'to. have the fullest room for development. They broke down, or, it may be, only bridged over, the barriers they found in their way, less with a view to gaining more freedom for themselves, as to arriving at a more perfect freedom of thinking and feeling for the world. They spurned the utilitarianism which confused art and morality, and had dominated the greater part of the eighteenth century ; but they demanded, none the less, that life and art should be woven into one great harmonious whole, unhampered by conflicting ethics. They insisted that poetry was some- thing universal and that it should permeate all domains of the intellectual life religion, science, art ; that art and music, poetry and painting, should blend together to form one comprehensive manifestation of the beautiful. In other words, the fundamental idea of German Romanticism _might be stated summarily in the words : it was an at- tempt to create a harmony of intellect and heart, of life and art, on the basis of individualism. The little school from which these vital and inspiriting ideas emanated was formed in the year 1798, and of all places in the unromantic stronghold of the "_Aufkla- ~- rung/' Berlin. In that year Ludwig Tieck, together with the two brothers Schlegel and Friedrich von Hardenberg (" Novalis "), formulated the principles of the new move- ment, and~th*e first number of the organ of the school^ the Athenanm (1798-1800), was published. In the summer of the following year the Romantic School found a more congenial home in Jena ; but before long its members were again scattered. Novalis died in 1801, and when, in 1804, Tieck left Germany for a lengthy stavjrj Italy, the Romantic School, as a school, had virtually come to an end. Johann Ludwig Tieck (iZ2JJLi3}> a native of Berlin > was the youngest member of the group, but he may be considered first as his work shows most clearly the tran- N IQ4 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT. sition from "Sturm und Drang" to Romanticism. Tieck began as a belated imitator of the "Sturmer und Dranger"; his first important work was a novel, Geschichte des Herrn William LovelJ_ (1795-96), the hero of which, akin in temperament to Werther and Karl Moor, follows that down- ward course through guilt and crime which the novelists of the earlier movement loved to describe. The year after William Lovell was completed Tieck appeared in a different light ; he produced a satiric comedy, Dgr "$ gestiefelte Kater (1797), which ridiculed unsparingly the moralising family-comedies of Iffland and Kotzebue, into which the " domestic drama " of the seventies had degen- erated. So far, Tieck's genius had been mainly active in a negative way, destroying the old order of things; the positive Romanticist in him was first awakened by a former^ J^scHool Triend, W. H. Wackenroder (1773-98). Wacken- roder, who was cut off at the early age of twenty-five, was one of those gentle, retiring natures to whom the Romantic School owed its most stimulating and revol- utionary ideas. His Herzensergiessungen eines kunstlier benden Klosterbruders (1797), an anonymously published little book, to which Tieck contributed a few essays, * contains the germ of the Romantic conception of art ; art here is not regarded analytically and critically as the product of ingenious minds, but jis^some thing divine, as an expression of religious feeling 4 in Wackenroder's eyes * Raphael, the painter of madonnas, is the greatest of > ; ^ all painters. Similarly he pleads for music as an art ^Nio less intimately bound up with our spiritual life. In 1799, after Wackenroder's death, Tieck published another collection of essays, Phantasien iiber die Kunst, to which, however, he himself contributed about half the contents ; and to Wackenroder's influence on Tieck we owe the first characteristically Romantic novel, Franz Sternbalds Wan- der un gen (i_7jjji).. Tieck claimed the entire authorship, * but the same inspiration lies clearly behind the book as lay behind the Herzensergiessungen. Franz Sternbald is a " Kiinstlerroman," and owes much to the fountainhead of the entire Romantic fiction, Wilhelm Meister. It is the LUDWIG TIECK. 195 story of a gifted pupil of Albrecht Diirer, who wanders through Holland and Italy, meeting companions and adventures by the way. The meagre plot of the story is of small interest, but its author's youthful de-light in nature and reverent attitude towards art and artists are refreshing after the feverish atmosphere of William Lovell. From the artist-novel Tieck passed to the " Marchen," or fairy- taje^. Uer blonde Eckbert^ Die schone Mage/one, Der getreue Eckart, are charming examples of the purely Romantic fairy-tale, in which nature seems to enter jrito_a_mystic relationship with human life. These stories are equally far removed from the rationalistic fairy-tales of Musaus and the unvarnished stories of the people collected at a later period of the Romantic movement by the brothers Grimm. But Tieck's chief interest lay in the drama, on which as a critic he TTa3 great influence, especially in his later years. His own serious dramas, notably Leben und Tod der heiligen Genoveva, (1799) and Kaiser Oktayiaiius (1804), are examples of the Romantic drama in its most uncompromising form ; they arCTyric iri the persistence with which the poet dwells on moods and feelings, and (pT in the length and magnitude of their themes. There is poetry in them, Romantic, mediseval, mystic but theTfruejSramatic note is absent ; the practical exigencies of the stage are ignored. Of foreign influences, that of Calder6n is most conspicuous, a poet whom the Roman- ticists placed even higher than Shakespeare. Between 1799 and 1 80 1 Tieck published a translation of another great Spanish work, the .Don Quixote of Cervantes. The year 1804 formed a break in Tieck's life flrTtLat year he went to Rome, and when he returned, two years later, Roman- ticism had entered upon a new phase. Tieck now settled in Dresden, and one of his first tasks here was to collect the stories of his earlier period and imbed them in a connecting narrative, making them appear to be told by a circle of friends ; this collection appeared under the title Phartasus in 1812-16, and forms a marked contrast to the more realistic, matter-of-fact " Novellen " which he wrote ig6 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT. from about 1821 on. Tieck's work of this period and he lived until the year 1853 belongs, however, to a later stage of the Romantic movement. The greatest genius of the school was Friedrich von Hardenberg, better known by his pseudonym tr Novalis7"~ (1772-1801). A delicate consumptive, Hardenberg was neither mentally nor physically made for the prosaic world of everyday ; the most exalted and spiritual of poets, he was often helpless as a child before the common facts and experiences of life. Abnormally sensitive to impressions, his poetic genius was awakened by love for a girl of twelve, whose death, three years later, plunged him into a despair which found lyric expression in the wonderful Hymnen an die Nacht (1800). In 1799 Novalis made the acquaintance of Tieck, who gave him the encouraging support he needed; and under Tieck's guidance his genius rapidly unfolded. But he had only two years to live, and neither of the two prose romances he has left us is finished. Die Lehrlinge zu Sais, the first of these, has hardly emerged from the shadowy, embryonic stage; it is a panegyric pantheistic and mystic on the wonders of nature, the background for a novel rather than the actual beginnings of one. Heinrich vonjOfterdingen , published in 1802, is, on the other hand, the representative novel of the early Romantic movementT "As" a story, it, to67"moves in a shadowy, unreal world of dreams and faery, of mys- ticism and allegory ;. its figures are no creatures of flesh and blood, nor are they intended to give an impression of reality ; but the book is transfused by a subtle, spiritual, poetry, which is to be found in so concentrated a form in no other work of German prose. Heinrich's apprenticeship to poetry, his initiation into its mysteries at the hands of Klingsohr, his tragic love, and his search for that " blue flower" in which the Romantic poets symbolised their goal, are all merely the outward and visible form in which the poet embodied a very real confession of his own spiritual adventures. But the Romantic movement would have made but A. W. SCHLEGEL. Ig7 indifferent progress had it relied alone on the mystic allegories of its unworldly poets ; _a_more solid basis for progress was afforded by the critical work of the brothers Schlegel. These two writers came of a family already famous in German literary annals, for Lessing's pre- ; / djscessor, Johann Elias Schlegel, was their uncle. August Wilhelrn (1767-1840. the elder of the two, made a name for himself in Jena as_a_crjtic j and in 1797 began the pub- lication of what may be regarded as the greatest achieve- ment^ o/ the first Romantic School, his translation of Shakespeare. It is hardly possible to overestimate the merit of this masterly translation, in which Schlegel was, undoubtedly, Assisted by his wife Caroline (1763-1809), the most gifted woman of the Romantic circle. The mastery lies, not in Schlegel's verbal accuracy, which is not always unimpeachable, but in his power of conveying from English into German the intangible, indefinable atmo- sphere of the Shakespearean drama, of making Shakespeare a national poet of the German people. Schlegel trans- lated only seventeen of the plays ; these, with the excep- tion of Richard ///., which did not appear until 1810, were published between 1797 and 1801. The remaining dramas were completed by Tieck's daughter Dorothea ^7799-1841) and Graf Wolf von Baudissin (1789-1878), and, it must be added, in exceedingly close imitation of Schlegel's example and method. As an original poet, Schlegel published Gedichte in 1800, and an ineffective, bloodless Greek tragedy, ~Ton, in 1803. """Sclliegel's reputation as~a critic, especially after his - famous Viennese lectures__jt/^ dramatische Kunst und Literal ur (published 1809-11), was European, and fiom thls~date on he was generally recognised as the exponent of the Romantic methods of criticism. He published, to- gether with his^rother Fried rich, two volumes of collected critical essays in 1801, entitled Charakfenstiken__und Kritiken^ This word "Charakteristiken" expresses perhaps better than any definition, the distinguishing feature ot the Romantic criticism. Schlegel set up as the first duty of the critic, not the passing of judgment. on a work of 198 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT. art, but the appreciative " characterisation " of it. He brought to bear on literature an extraordinarily catholic knowledge and sympathy ; he taught his countrymen how to appreciate poets and books far removed from them in space or time ; for he had himself the power, which made him so brilliant a translator of Shakespeare and Calder6n, of putting himself at the standpoint of contemporaries of the poets whom he criticised. Schlegel's later life was somewhat chequered ; for a. time tutor to the sons of Madame de Stae'l, he had ji _ direct influence on that writer's monumental work, De rAl/emagne, which in 1817 did so much to make German literature, and more especially German Roman- tic ideas, a force in Europe. From 1818 on Schlegel was professor in the University of Bonn, where he devoted himself mainly to oriental studies. He died in 1845. JjYiedrich Schlegel ^1772-1829) was also a critic, but he was the complement rather than the rival of his brother. In the art of lucid interpretation he was his brother's inferior ; but he had a more original mind and an even wider outlook upon literature. He was particu- larly attracted by what we should now call comparative literature, by questions of aesthetics and^of the relations of poetry to life and art. His early studies were devoted to ThlT classics^ and his first important book, Die Griechen und Romer (1^97), was clearly influenced by Schiller's ideas on classic and modern literature. ^n^fa^Fragmente which he contributed to the Athendum, he formulated in brilliant aphorisms the principles of the Romantic School. Like his brother, he turned in later life to oriental studies, and his work Uber die Sprache _ heit der Indier (1808) helped to lay the foundation for modern oriental studies. As a creative writer, Friedrich Schlegel is mainly remembered by a fragmentary novel, Lucinde, which appeared in 1799. Crude almost to un- readableness, Lucinde is a product of the Romantic ethical theory ; it is an attempt to introduce those theories of indi- vidual freedom which were part of the Romantic creed, into ROMANTICISM IN PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. igg the ordinary relations of everyday life. But what to the best of Schlegel's contemporaries appeared as a serious contribution to social theory, reads now only as an impeach- ment of Romantic immorality and extravagance. More pleasing is the unfinished romance, Florentin (1801), written by Friedrich Schlegel's wife, Dorothea (1763-1839), who was a daughter of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, and, like her sister-in-law Caroline, one of the brilliant women of the Romantic circle. Romanticism, in so far as it sought to vitalise poetry by bringing it into touch with art and thought and life, was thus far from being purely a literary movement ; it was, above all, a power ig_Pjhilosgphiy and_religion. In its philosophy it pwedjrmch, no doubt, to the great thinker of the transition period, Fichte, but the chief exponent_ of Romantic metaphysics.^was F. W. J. von Schelling (1775-1854). The Romantic poets found in Schelling's writings an echo of their own attitude towards nature ; and the spiritualisation of nature^ which is so constant a feature in the writings of Tjeck and Novalis, became in Schelling's hands a philosophical dogma. No less sym- pathetic to the Romanticists was the mysticism which arose out of Schelling's glorification of art as the perfect union of nature and spirit in the '.' WgliggeleJ' And what ISchelling did for the philosophy of Romanticism, F. E. D. Schleiermacher (1768-1834), who was for a time preacher in Berlin, and subsequently professor in Halle, did for its religiojD. But while Schelling's work was only too soon eclipsed by the philosophy of Hegel, Schleiermacher's spiritualisation of the dogmatic systems of the theologians had a long-lasting influence on the religious life of the nineteenth century. His two little volumes, Reden itber die Religion (1799) and Monologen (1800), helped materi- ally to discredit the " Aufkla.ru ng" and to establish German religious thinking, catholic as well as protestant, on a new and healthier basis in which metaphysics had no part. It was not Schleiermacher's fault that the poets of the time chiefly employed his ideas to further a revival of mediaeval Catholicism. JAA f f ' '. r, V. - 2OO THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT. The very brief life of the first Romantic School showed that, fruitful and germinating as its ideas were, it failed to adapt itself to the practical needs of the German people ; and its mediaeval and catholic tendencies only emphasised its exclusiveness. It was not to this school, but to a later group of writers, associated with Heidelberg, that we owe the identification of Romanticism with the national ideals. It is true, these younger Romanticists, Brentano, Arnim, Gorres, also loved the Middle Ages^ and their poetic work was distinctly anti-protestant in its tendencies ; butj>ey had the art, whicli their predecessors lacked, of bringing their ideas into vital relations with the time. Their conception of poetry was wide enough to embrace the German peasant and his Yolkslieder, and actual enough to identify Romanticism with German patriotism. Clemens Maria Brentano^iyyS- 1842), whose father was an Italian, spurned with Romantic fervour the com- mercial career for which he was destined. He became a student at Jena, where, intoxicated with the new faith, he spent the next few years realising the Romantic ideals in his own life. The literary result was a strange, unbalanced novel, Godwi (1801), in which the motives of the older Romantic School, as they had appeared in books like William Lovell and Lucinde, are reproduced in incongruous connections, the story being interspersed with spngs_and_ ballads in imitation of the Volkslied. In 1803 Brentano married and a year later settled in Heidelberg, where he was soon joined by Ludwig Achim von Arnim (1781-1 83 1). Arnim was a North German, a native of Berlin, and in every respect a contrast to Brentano. Stolid and serious, his youth had been uninfluenced by the irresponsible Romanticism of the time, and was spent in the study of natural science. He turned to literature comparatively late, and began by writing novels and sketches, in which he showed skill and originality in utilising in a Romantic way the experiences he had gathered on his travels, which had extended as far as Scotland ; in this respect "A'rnim is not unworthy to be regarded as a German precursor of THE HEIDELBERG GROUP. 2OI Sir Walter Scott. His first ambitious work, Hollins Liebeleben^ appeared in 1802; it was subsequently in- corporated in Grafin Dolores, which is, on the whole, the most interesting novel he produced during his stay- in Heidelberg. The third of the little group of Heidelberg Romanti- cists, J. J. von jjorres- (1776-1848), was a thinker and scholar of stimulating, suggestive ideas rather than a poet. Thejectures.he held at Heidelberg in the years 1806 to 1808 provided a theoretical background for the new Development of Romanticism. It is significant that this 'phase of the movement was associated not merely with the romantic town of Heidelberg, but also with its university. The Romantic ideas were now beginning to influence academic learning ; and the revival of scholar- ship and more especially of philological scholarship at the German universities was intimately bound up with the literary movement. As the older School had, as its literary organ, the Athenaum, so the younger Heidelberg group had its Zeitung fur Einsiedler(i&o), or, as it was later called, Trosteinsamkeit : and this journal, short : lived as it was, won new friends and adherents for the movement all over Germany. The chief work we owe to the Heidelberg School is the collection of Volkslieder edited by Arm'm and TJfentanb in 1805 and 1808, under the title Des Knaben ^iVuriderhorn. Herder, it will be remembered, had, on the model of the Percy Ballads, made the first modern collection of Volkslieder in Germany, but Herder's collec- tion was only to a limited extent German ; he rather prided himself on his cosmopolitanism in gathering examples of popular song from the remotest quarters of Europe. Des Knaben Wunderhorn, on the other hand, is purely national and German. Neither Rrentano nor Arnim had lyric talent of the first order, but they both possessed that passivity of artistic temperament which reflects and reproduces impressions with accuracy ; they had and this, in spite of the accusation that lias been brought against them, that they tampered unduly with 202 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT. the texts of their Volkslieder the power of reproducing not merely the words of these popular songs, but also their peculiar atmosphere. Des Knaben Wunderhorn has become Germany's greatest song-book, and its influence may be followed on the entire German lyric of the nineteenth century. No less important was the activity of the school in other fields of popular literature. In 1807 Gorres published his collection of Die teutschen Volksbiicher^ and SvU~w^ irTi'8^2-15 tne brothers Grimm their Kinder- und Haus- mdrchen^ followed in 1816-18 by Deutsche Sagen. Here the method of the Wunderhorn was transferred to the stories of the people, and of these three collections, Grimm's fairy - tales, at least, have become an abiding possession of the German people. If the translation of Shakespeare is to be called the crowning achievement of the first Romantic School, Des Knaben Wunderhorn and Grimm's Mdrchen are assuredly those of the second. Jgtotk (1785-1863) and Wilhelm Grimm_(i786- i8so). both natives of Hanau, were the founders of modern German philology as a science. With Jakob Grimm s Deutsche Grammatik (1819-37), Deutsche Rechtsaltertiimer (1828), and Deutsche Mythologie (1835), above all, with the monumental Deutsches Worterbuch, begun by both brothers together in 1852, and still unfinished, a solid basis was laid for the study of the German language and the German past. Meanwhile, however, the Romantic circle in Heidel- berg had become scattered ; Arnirn and Brentano both left Heidelberg in 1808 and settled in Berlin, where, together with a number of new writers, notably .Fpuque, ^hamisso, and Eichendorff, they inaugurated a third stage in the development of the Romantic movement. As far as original work was concerned, this third period of Romanticism was more productive than either of its predecessors. Arnim has left a number of dramas which contain a wealth of imaginative poetry, but are even less suited for the stage than Tieck's ; his novels, however, have real and abiding worth. Armut, Reichtum, Schuld ARNIM AND BRENTANO IN BERLIN. 203 und Busse der Grtifin Dolores (1809), Isabella von Agypten (1812), and especially the admirable historical novel, Die Kronenwachter, of which a fragment consisting of only two books was published in 1817, are good ex- amples of Arnim's powers as a novelist. His strength lies in his narrative style ; he has something of that peculiar power of holding the reader's attention by picturesque presentment, which Scott possessed in so high a degree ; on the other hand, the stories themselves suffer from the Romantic lack of dramatic concen- tration. A more magnificent theme than that of Die Kronenwachter would be hard to find. The " crown guardians" are a mysterious society which seeks out descendants of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, so dear to all Romantic souls, that these may one day revive the glories of the German Empire. The story takes place in the sixteenth century, and historical figures, like Maximilian, Luther, Faust, cross Arnim's pages. But admirably imagined as all this is, the actual happenings fail to grip us as in a writer with a firmer hold on reality they could hardly have failed to do. In 1811 Arnim married Brentanp's sister Bettina, whose correspondence with Goethe has already been mentioned. Bettina von Arnim was one of the many gifted women of the Romantic circle, but as she published nothing until after her husband's death in 1831, her work may more conveniently be dealt with in a subsequent chapter. Amongst Brentano's other writings two short stories, Geschichte vom braven Kasperl und dem schonen Annerl (1817), and the oriental fairy-tale, Gockel, Hinkel und Gackeleia (1838), are still popular. His Romanzen vom Rosenkranz (1852) is an allegorical poem, or collection of poems, on episodes from the poet's own life and those of his friends. Reality is here blended with catholic legend and with motives from Dante, the whole making the impression of some pre-Raphaelite mosaic ; we marvel at its sustained power and beauty ; but it is too artificially archaic to have much meaning for the modern world. The same is true of Brentano's long dramatic version of the 204 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT. saga of Libussa, Die Grilndung Prags (1815). Here again there is no questioning Brentano's mastery of the art of verse ; there are wonderful scenes in this play, such as only the untheatrical dramatists of Romanticism could conceive, scenes in which the workings of the soul are, as it were, projected on the screen of nature. But, in spite of all this, Die Grilndung Prags has meant as little for the history of dramatic literature as any other of the uncompromising dramas of the Romanticists. Brentano's Catholicism narrowed as he grew older ; he became, if not a fanatic for his faith, yet so thoroughly immersed in catholic mysticism as to lose all touch with the outside world. Long before he died in 1842 he had ceased to be a force in German literature. _The lyric genius of the circle of Berlin Romanticists was a young French nobleman, L. C. A. de Chamisso, 1 known to German literature as Adelbert von Chamisso (1781-1838). Chamisso, whose family had fled from Champagne at the Revolution, had scientific interests, and between 1815 and 1818 he made a voyage round the world ; on his return he was appointed curator of the Royal Botanical collections in Berlin. He had contri- buted poems to Berlin almanachs early in the century, but his first collected edition of Gedichte did not appear until 1831. It is one of the freaks of literary history that this French aristocrat should have become one of the most German of German poets ; his gentle senti- mentality, his delight in the simple joys of the people, have made many of his songs, such as the cycle Frauenliebe imd Leben (1831), genuine Volkslieder ; and .his ballads (Die Giftmischerin, 1828; Die Lowenbraut, 1829; Salas y Gomez, 1830; Mateo Falcone, 1830), al- though lacking in the dramatic notes of a Schiller or Uhland, have all the high lights of Romanticism. Cha- misso is also the author of one of_the most popular_tale_s_ of the century^ Peter Schlemthls wundersame Geschichte (1814), the story of the man who sells his shadow to the devil and gets into all kinds of difficulties owing to the want of it. The simplicity of Chamisso's artless EICHENDORFF. 205 narrative, combined, as it is, with realistic touches, reminds one at times of the great Danish fairy-tale writer, H. C. Andersen. The chief lyric singer of this third phase of Romanti- cism was hardly associated personally with the Berlin circle. Joseph von Eichendorff (1788-1857) was a Silesiaiij whose poetic genius had been kindled in 1 lddi.:l- l^erg. He served as a soldier in the War of Liberation, and when the war was over, entered the government service, rising rapidly to high and responsible positions in Danzig, Konigsberg, and Berlin. He retired from the public service in 1845 and died in 1857. In his lyric poetry (Gcdichte, 1837) Eichendorff is to be seen at his best. His range of expression is not as wide as Goethe's or Heine's, but within its limitations it is perfect. He is, like all the Romantic lyric poets, esse_nntially_ji poet of nature^ and he possesses in a peculiar degree the art of attuning human emotions to nature's moods ; he is the poet of the German forest, whose magic voices sang round his cradle and accompanied him all through his life. Eichendorffs dramatic attempts were ineffective, and his literary criticism (Die neue romantische Poesie in Deutsch- land, 1847) was coloured by his Catholicism. But as a novelist he occupies a position _of somejmportance. His first novel, Ahnung und Gegenwart (1815), stands in the direct line of the evolution of the Romantic novel from Wilhelm Meister as starting-point ; but, as with most of the Romantic novels, the achievement falls considerably short of the intention. Ahnung und Gegenwart is more a record of subjective emotions and moods than a novel ; it has little construction of any kind and hardly any connecting thread. A second novel, Dichter und ihre Gesellen (1834). has even less homogeneity. On the other hand, Eichendorff has left one masterpiece as a prose writer, in the little story, Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts (1826), one of the gems of Romantic fiction. A~story it hardly is, being merely the description of a young musician's romantic wanderings ; but into this little book Eichendorff poured all the poetry of his- 2O6 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT. own inimitable Wanderlieder, his dreamy delight in nature and his yearning for Italy, that goal of all Romantic souls. To the three centres of Romantic activity,_Jena, Heidelberg, and Berlin, might be added a fourth, Dresden.^ We can hardly speak of a Dresden " school," but the - 4 chief dramatist of the age, Jileist, was for a brief period of his career associated with this town. In the editing of his journal Phobus, which he published here, Kleist was assisted by Adam H. Miiller (1779-1829), who, together ,, with his friend Friedrich von Gentz (1764-1832), illustrates c.p the reactionary influence of the early Romantic movement, \ when applied to the sphere of practical politics ; both v -these men entered the service of Austria and became apologists of the Metternich regime. The same tendency v in Romanticism which led back to the catholic church, ' ^o tended to a suppression of liberal ideas in politics and a 3 return to absolutism. Before leaving this period of Romantic ascendancy, we have to consider a group of poets who, although not con- nected immediately with any of the schools or centres, yet supplemented the patriotic ideals of the Heidelberg writers. These are the poets of the " Befreiungskrieg," the young singers who inspired and celebrated Germany's national rising against Napoleon. Chief among these were three : Korner, Arndt, and Schenkendorf. Karl Theodor Korner (1791-1813) was a son of Schiller's best friend, and the most precocious of the three. Any other form of comparison is difficult, for Korner died a soldier's death as a member of Liitzow's volunteer corps at the age of twenty-three. And yet, young as he was, he had already written a number of dramas in the manner of Schiller and of Kotzebue ; the best of these, Zriny (1812), has, however, more of Schiller's rhetoric than his poetry. In 1814, after his death, his father published his patriotic war songs under the title Leier und Schwert. It is always difficult for a later generation to appreciate the patriotic lyric called forth by a special event or circumstance, and it is particularly difficult in the present THE PATRIOTIC LYRIC. 207 case to understand the enthusiasm which Korner's songs evoked. One might again say of them what Lessing said of Gleim's patriotic lyric : the patriot's voice has drowned ( the jooet^sj and doubtless the heroic career of the young soldier was an important factor in the popularity of his songs. Ernst Moritz Arndt_(i 769-1860) has greater claims for serious consideration in a history of literature ; he was an older and maturer man in 1813. His poems ap- peared in a collected edition in 1818. As a patriotic singer he renewed, we might say, the protestant war song of the Thirty Years' War that is to say, he combined the best traditions of the German Volkslied with the sturdy protestantism of Luther ; to him patriotism and protestantism were one ; his nature was at bottom deeply religious. As a prose writer Arndt is equally important. His work on the Napoleonic era, Der Geist der Zeit (1806- 18), is an invaluable document of the time, laying bare the hidden springs of the national rising, a rising which was not merely a revolt against a foreign oppressor, but also the vindication of the German nation as a nation. Less immediately stimulating than either Korner or Arndt, Maximilian von jSslmnkendprf (1783-1817) was a more gifted lyric poet than either. He had more, too, of the historic sense of the Romanticists ; he looked back to the mediaeval glories of the old Roman Empire as well as forward to a new, united German empire. He was Romantic, too, in so far as he brought the poetry of medievalism into the service of patriotism. These three men were the chief patriotic poets or 1813; but there were many others, such as I'Yiedrirh Riickert and Hoffmann von Fallersleben, who, although their real work belongs to a later epoch, began their careers amidst the enthusiasm of this year. jt_8i3 was, in fact, a year of the greatest significance for the history of Romanticism ; for it marked the triumph of that national and patriotic movement which had been initiated by the Heidelberg school ; but it alsojbrmed the starting-point fora new development, realistic and modern, which, as the years moved on, had less and less to say to the -Vo, 2O8 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT. unworldly idealism of Romanticism. The decay of Rom- anticism as a literary force began with the fall of Napoleon, not because that movement was indifferent or antagonistic to the national triumph, which it certainly was not ; but because the growing self- confidence of the German people brought with it more pressing practical interests and duties, and these inevitably pressed the old Roman- tic dreams into the background. 209 CHAPTER XIX. THE DRAMA UNDER ROMANTIC INFLUENCE. NOTWITHSTANDING the fact that the first Romantic School had translated and interpreted Shakespeare, that the poet to whom they gave the first place, Calderdn, was a drama- tist, and that the Romantic critics busied themselves in- cessantly with the theatre, they produced no great, or even minejntj_drarnatic poet : the drama of the School might never have been written and German literature would not have been appreciably the poorer ; certainly the German stage would not. The dramatists who put their stamp upon the Romantic age all stood outside the Romantic coteries ; they had no belief in Tieck's or Brentano's im- practicable ideals of a non-theatrical drama ; and were obliged by the very nature of their craft to keep in touch with the stage. Not the Romantic drama, but the drama under Romantic influence, was the dominating force in the theatre of the nineteenth century. Schiller himself, as we have seen, had written Romantic plays, the greatest of all Romantic tragedies, the first part of Goethe's Faust appeared in 1808, and the entire dramatic production of Germany from Kleist to Hebbel and Ludwig stood under Romantic influence. Zacharias Werner (1768-1823) was, of all the drama- Jjsts now to be considered, most deeply mjrflfrsed in the Romantic stream. He was born at Konigsberg and, after a dissolute and unsettled life, ended his days as a priest and popular preacher in Vienna. He had already attracted attention as a playwright before Schiller's death, o 2IO THE DRAMA UNDER ROMANTIC INFLUENCE. with a strange Romantic play, Die Sohne des Tales, in two parts, entitled respectively, Die Templer auf Cypern and Die Kreuzesbriider (1803). The subject is the fall of the order of the Templars and the establish- ment of a new order of " sons of the valley " in their place ; it afforded Werner an opportunity for displaying that combination of religious fervour and theatrical mysticism in which he revelled. His second play^Das Kreuz an der Ostsee (1806), is dramatically an advance on his first ; it is, moreover, patriotic as well as historical ; for Werner, with all his Romanticism, was keenly sensi- tive to the humiliation of his country under Napoleon. Das Kreuz an der Ostsee its theme is the struggle of the Teutonic Knights against the Slavs was planned as the first of a cycle of patriotic dramas drawn from Prussian history. Werner's next play leapt over centuries, to the Reformation ; Martin Luther, oder die Weihe der Kraft (1807), had the greatest success of all his dramas, a success which, a few years later, when Werner became a convert to Catholicism, he regretted. More significant, however, was a little one -act tragedy, Der vierund- zwanzigste Februar (performed 1810, published 1815), which shows an extraordinary command of weird effects. It forms the connecting link between Schiller's Braut von Messina and the " Schicksalstragodien," or " fate tragedies," in which a curse or fate overhanging the characters is asso- ciated with a definite day and a fatal weapon. The chief "fate dramatist'" was Adolf Milliner (1774- 1829), who was an advocate by profession. In 1812 he produced Der neunundvierzigste Februar, an imitation of Werner's play, in which, however, there is more theatrical than tragic effect. A year later appeared at Vienna his typical "fate drama," Die Schuhl, which for a time was exceedingly popular in all German theatres. Die Schuld is not without gleams of poetry of a kind, but the impression it makes is rather that of a skilfully con- structed criminal melodrama. A young Spaniard, who, according to a prophecy, is to kill his brother, is brought up in the north of Europe, but returns to his native land ; MttLLNER AND KLEIST. 211 to win the woman he loves, he kills her husband on a hunting expedition, and the dead man turns out to be his own brother. Die Schuld is written in the trochaic measure of the Spanish drama, a measure which Grillparzer employed with wonderful effect in the greatest of all the "fate tragedies," Die Ahnfrau (1817). Milliner wrote other plays and was for a time an influential journalist ; but he had exhausted all that he had to say to his age as a poet in Die Schuld, and from that tragedy the later " fate dramatists " borrow freely. The general tendency, how- ever, as is to be seen from such plays as Der Leuchtturm (1821) and Das Bild (1821) by C. E. von Houwald (1778-1845), was to sentimentalise the tragic motives and adapt them to the shallow theatrical purposes of Kotzebue. The first master of the drama in the period after Schiller's death was Heinrich von Kleist, who was born at Frank- fort-on-the-Oder on October 18, 1777. He came of a military family, and was brought up amidst military sur- roundings that were distasteful to him : he wandered restlessly first to Paris, then to Switzerland. Even when he was fairly launched on a literary career and had gained confidence in his genius, his work met with no general recognition ; Goethe, in what was the one serious mis- judgment of his life, saw in him only a poet of mediocre talent. Life remained to the end an insoluble riddle to Kleist; he was torn asunder by unhappy love-affairs, and Tn November 181 1 he put an end to his life on the shore of the Wannsee near Berlin. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that the work he has left us should con- trast strangely with the classic poetry of Weimar. He began with a turbulent, unbalanced tragedy, Die Familie Schroffenstein (1803), which, were it not for an infusion of distinctly Romantic ideas, might have come straight from the " Sturm und Drang " of the previous genera- tion. Amphitryon (1807), again, is a Romantic adaptation of Moliere's play of that name ; Penthesilea (1808), a lurid tragedy of the Homeric age, in which love, hate, and scorn are projected as on a screen in superhuman proportions. 212 THE DRAMA UNDER ROMANTIC INFLUENCE. The dramas that followed were less stormy. jDer zerbrochene Krug (1808, published 1811), a one -act comedy centring in a village trial over a broken jar, is a masterpiece of its kind, one of the few German comedies of the first rank. Das Kathchen von Heilbronn, oder die Feuerprobe (1810), is a bustling Romantic drama, recalling the " Ritterdramen " which originated with Gb'tz von Berlichingen. But the mediaevalism of Kleist's play is, again, unmistakably Romantic, and not of the " Sturm und Drang"; the love which inspires his Kathchen to follow the Ritter vom Strahl is more akin to that of Goethe's Mignon than of his Maria. The plot of the play is inept and even absurd ; it is not even as good as that of many of the despised " Ritterromane " ; but its crudities are atoned for and ennobled by the wealth of poetry with which Kleist has surrounded it. Die Hermanns schlacht (1808, not published till 1821) is, again, a tragedy in Kleist's intense manner ; its theme, the heroic struggles of the Germans under Arminius against the Roman legions at the dawn of German history, serves, however, only as a cloak for Kleist's patriotic hatred of the French oppressor of Germany. His dramatic masterpiece is J)cr Prinz von Homburg (rSio, first published 1821). This historical drama, in which history is perhaps made unduly subservient to poetry, sets out from the historical fact that Prince Friedrich von Homburg won the battle of Fehrbellin in 1675 in disobedience to the commands of the Elector of Brandenburg. The prince is condemned to die ; the Elector refuses to entertain the pleading of his niece Nathalie, who loves the prince, and even of the whole army. The half-intrepid, half-cowardly young man is awakened to a sense of responsibility and the need of military discipline, as soon as the Elector places the decision of his fate in his own hands ; Friedrich frankly recognises the justice of his sentence and, in doing so, wins the Elector's pardon. With__Zter Prinz von Homburg Kleist has given Prussia her greatest national drama. KLEIST AS A NOVELIST; GRABBE. 213 Kleist was also a novelist : two volumes containing eight Erziihlungen appeared in 1810 and 1811. The best of these, and one of the finest novels of its time, is the powerful story of MMaet -J&hlAaas. Kohlhaas was a historical personage, a horse-dealer of the six- teenth century, who in sullen determination to obtain justice from a nobleman who has taken advantage of him, brings his country to the brink of civil war; and he ultimately lays his head on the block with the proud conviction that the deed for which he does penance has helped towards improving the justice of the world. The spirit of this story, which is told in a straightforward, realistic way, is very different from the dreamy passivity of the Romanticists, and reveals some- thing of the forces which underlay the revolt against Napoleon. But Kleist, who thus opened up new possibilities of development for the German drama, failed to win the sympathy of the Romantic critics, as he failed to con- vince the classicists that Schiller had not said the last word in dramatic poetry. Meanwhile the North German drama on Romantic lines did not rise above mediocrity. The historical drama was particularly in favour, owing to the stimulus which the later Romantic movement had given to the study of the national past ; F. L. G. von Raumer's Geschichte der Plohenstaufen und Hirer Zeit {1823-25) was an inexhaustible mine for the dramatists of the period. From this source Ernst von Raupach (1784-1852) constructed a series of no less than twenty- four historical dramas, which, however, show little origin- ality and very modest poetic attainment. A much more gifted playwright of the epoch, C. D. Grabbe_( 1801-36), whose unbalanced, dissolute life recalls the careers of the early "Stiirmer und Dranger," also planned a cycle of Hohenstaufen dramas, of which, however, only two were completed, Kaiser Friedrich Barbarossa (1829) and Kaiser Heinrich VI. (1830). Better known is Grabbe's bold imaginative flight in his Don Juan imd Faust (1829), a grandiose attempt to weld together two themes 214 THE DRAMA UNDER ROMANTIC INFLUENCE. with which Mozart and Goethe had already familiarised their countrymen. Admirable, too, both in construction and sharpness of dramatic characterisation, is Grabbe's Napoleonic drama, Napoleon, oder die hundert Tage (1831). Without doubt, Grabbe was the strongest dramatic talent that North Germany produced between Kleist and Hebbel. But the real home of the German drama in the earlier nineteenth century was Vienna ; the great Hofburgtheater m Vienna maintained undisputed all through the century its leading position in the German-speaking world. The Hapsburgs had done much by liberal patronage to help their theatre into this position at the close of the eighteenth century, but the real secret of its success lay in the dramatic instincts of the Viennese people. The Austrians are in this respect the most gifted of the German races, and since early in the eighteenth century a living Viennese popular drama had existed quite independently of the literary drama. In its general culture, however, Austria lagged considerably behind North Germany, even at the zenith of the classical period : H. J. von Collin (1771-1811), for instance, the first prominent Austrian dramatist at the opening of the century, had closer ties with the earlier classical or pseudo-classical drama than with Schiller. Collin's first drama, Regulus, a severely classical play, was received with extravagant favour in 1 80 1, a favour which seems to have blinded Collin's countrymen to the higher merits of his later plays, Coriolan (1804) and Bianca delta Porta (1808). His fame, however, soon grew pale before the rapid im- provement of Austrian taste, the greater familiarity with Schiller, above all, before the rise of an Austrian drama- tist of the very first rank in Franz Grillparzer. Grillparzer's life was tragic, not as Werner's or Grabbe's had been, owing to a want of moral balance, but in a negative and passive way : nio^ temperament, but the lack" of a strong individuality and an energetic will, was trie rock on which Grillparzer made shipwreck ; he endured and renounced where a strong man would have asserted GRILLPARZER. 215 himself and rebelled. It is this peculiarity in Grillparzer that makes him so unique a figure in the modern dramatic literature of Europe. The antithesis of a Schiller or Victor Hugo, he gave the Europe of the age of pessimism a drama which corresponded better to its spiritual needs and reflected more faithfully its spiritual conflicts. Franz Grillparzer was born in Vienna on January 15, 1791 ; the associations of his childhood and boyhood made him always look back on the spacious, liberal era of Joseph II. as a kind of golden age ; for it was the tragedy of Grillparzer's life that he had to spend his best years under the crushing tyranny of the regime of Prince Metternich. Except for journeys to Italy, to Germany, where he made Goethe's acquaintance, to France and England, and to Greece, his career was the uneventful one of j. Viennese government official. He ultimately rose to be director of the Imperial Archive, a position which he retained until 1856, long after he had ceased to take an active interest in the theatre. His death took place at Vienna on January 21, 1872. Like Schiller, Grillparzer leapt into fame with his first play; Die^ Ahnfrau was produced in 1817 in Vienna, and mad_e so deep and lasting an impression that Grillparzer was, all his life long, associated with the group of " fate Dramatists." But Die Ahnfrau, in spite of its ghostly, romantic subject an ancestress, who for a crime com- mitted in life is doomed to haunt the family until her last descendant is extinct, and a robber-lover, who turns out to be the brother of his betrothed, is a powerful tragedy, and has more in common with Schiller's Brant von Messina and Shakespeare's Macbeth than with the tawdry "fate tragedies" of Milliner. The command of dramatic effect in this tragedy is the more surprising when we compare it with Blanka von Castilien, a verbose experi- ment in the style oiDon Carlos, on which Grillparzer had practised his hand a year or two before. In 1 8 1 8 appeared Saggho, a play on avowedly classic lines, jthe poet hoping that he might remove with it the impression that he be- longed to a school of dramatists he despised. Sappho is the 2l6 THE DRAMA UNDER ROMANTIC INFLUENCE. tragedy of genius ; the Greek poetess realises that the price of fame is the renunciation of earthly love and happiness. Classic, too, is Grillparzer's next work, the trilogy of Das goldene Vliesj (1820). In agreement with a.n opfmbn which Schiller, unknown to Grillparzer, had once expressed about the theme to Goethe, he dramatised, as none of his many predecessors had attempted to do, the whole saga of the Argonauts, the love and hate of Jason and Medea from the beginning, and not merely the final catastrophe in Medea's life. Gastfreund, the first part of Das goldene Vliess, is in one act, and describes the fatal murder of Phryxus by Medea's father ; this crime clings like a curse to the Fleece and brings misery and death to all through whose hands it passes. In " Die Argonauten Jason comes to Colchis in search of the Fleece ; he sees Medea, loves her, and with her aid secures the coveted trophy ; she returns with him to Greece as his wife. In the third drama of the trilogy, Medea,^ Grillparzer brings the conflict between husband ancTwHe, which he has thus carefully prepared, into touch with quite modern ethical problems. Weak and vacillating, Jason cannot face the scorn that his barbarian wife draws down on him in Corinth ; he turns away from her to find a gentler partner in Kreusa, daughter of the Corinthian king. In revenge for the wrong of which we are better able to judge from Grillparzer's work than from other Medea dramas, for we have known Medea as a girl in Colchis Medea slays her children and sets the palace on fire. At the close of the tragedy she takes a last farewell of Jason, to bear the symbol of evil, the Golden Fleece, back to Delphi, whence it came. With Das goldene Vliess, or at least with Medea, Grill- j>arzer won a place for himself in the first rank of dramatic poets. In his next two works he turned to the historical drama. Konig Ottokars Gliick und Ende (1825) is in Austrian literature what Der Prinz von Hamburg is in Prussian, the representative national tragedy ; it has even been claimed, and with considerable justice, as the greatest GRILLPARZER'S MASTER-WORKS. 217 historical tragedy of the nineteenth century. The theme of the drama is the rise and fall of Ottokar of Bohemia in his vain struggle against Rudolf of Hapsburg. With greater originality than Kleist, Grillparzer has here broken with the historical style of Schiller and created a tragedy which combines faithfulness to the spirit of history and to the psychology of character, with ideas of the poet's own time, a time that was dominated by the rise and fall of a mightier than Ottokar Napoleon. Grillparzer's second historical tragedy, Ein treuer Diener seines Herrn (1828), the story of the Hungarian Bankban's almost in- human self-effacement in the service of his king, gave the poet an opportunity of depicting in its most ruthless aspects that eternal conflict between will and duty which was so real to himself. Once more in Des Meeres und der Liebe VVellen (1831), Grillparzer returned to Greek antiquity ; the subject is the love-story of Hero and Leander, as related by the late Greek poet Musaeus. Into this, the most Romantic of all the sagas that have come down to us from antiquity, Grillparzer introduced a very modern element of psycho- logical analysis. Love converts the passive, irresolute Leander, who has caught a glimpse of Hero within the precincts of her temple, into a man of all too daring action ; while Hero develops from the na'ive child to a heroine of tragic dignity. The scene in Hero's cell after Leander has swum the Hellespont is, in its naive sincerity and poetic truth, one of the most beautiful love-scenes in modern dramatic literature. On a second attempt to swim across, a storm arises, the guiding light in Hero's window is treacherously extinguished, and the waves of the sea triumph over those of love. Next morning Leander's body is washed up on the shore, and Hero dies of grief. Der Traum ein Leben (1834), Grillparzer's next drama, was begun as early as 1817, and is written in the same Spanish trochaic verse which he employed so effectively in Die Ahnfrau. As Calder6n had, in the play La vida es sueno in German, Das Leben ein Traum which suggested Grillparzer's title, depicted a prince 2l8 THE DRAMA UNDER ROMANTIC INFLUENCE. who believes that the life he lives is a dream, so here Rustan, an ambitious country youth, _is_ made to^see in ' a dream his overweening ambitions realised. With his uncle's slave Zanga at his side, he sees himself saving the life of the King of Samarcand, and rapidly rising into favour at the latter's court ; but his success is attained by deceit and crime. He is ultimately unmasked, and, fleeing for his life, awakens at the critical moment. The nightmare has taught him that quietist faith which the Metternich regime had engrained in the Austrian people, that peace of soul and contentment with one's lot are the only ideals worth striving for. In 1838 Grillparzer's first and only comedy, WeK dem der lugt, was produced in Vienna and failed ignominiously. The disappointment brought about a crisis in the poet's life ; he withdrew from all active interest in the theatre, and his remaining plays, with the exception of a beautiful fragment of a drama on the subject of Esther, which ap- peared in 1863, were not published until after his death in 1872. These were three in number Libussa, a master- piece of dramatic poetry, although lacking in the life and movement which make an effective stage-play ; a historical tragedy, Ein Bruderzivist in Hapslmrg, and Die Jildin von Toledo, an admirable adaptation of a play by Grillparzer's favourite dramatist, Lope de Vega. Of the poet's other works, mention must be made of his lyric poetry, especially the group of verse which bears the title Tristia ex Ponto (1835). Here all the bitterness of the poet's dis- appointed life, his own lack of confidence in his genius, and his passive renunciation, are expressed with an emotional sincerity which gives him a high place among Austria's lyric poets. In prose he has left us a volume of penetrating criticism on Spanish literature, records of his life and travels, and two short stories, Das Kloster bei Sendomir (1828) and Der arme Spielmann (1847), the latter one of the best Austrian " Novellen " written under Romantic auspices. Grillparzer, like Schopenhauer, whose pessimistic outlook on life he shared, came late into his kingdom. The generation that had grown up on OTHER AUSTRIAN DRAMATISTS. 2IQ Schopenhauer's philosophy and had felt the spell of Wagner's masterpieces, first discovered the great poet in Grillparzer; only within the last two decades has his genius been generally recognised. There were many other Austrian dramatists in the first half of the nineteenth century, but only a few can be mentioned here. E. F. J. von Miinch-Bellinghausen (1806-71), writing under the pseudonym of " Friedrich Halrn," enjoyed a greater reputation in his day than Grill- parzer ; but his work, like that of his predecessor Collin, was only of ephemeral interest. Plays like Der Sohn der Wildnis (1842) and Der Fechter von Ravenna (1854) are, to modern taste, disfigured by an effeminate senti- mentality and a lack of poetic seriousness. A finer, if also somewhat evanescent talent was that of Eduard von Bauernfeld (1802-90), who in his long series of comedies gave admirable pictures of the Viennese life of his time. His strength lies in the fineness and delicacy of his work- manship, but his talent was not robust enough to assert itself beside the undisguised striving after effect in the imported French comedy. The Austrian taste for the Spanish drama, which Grillpar/er shared and helped to foster, is seen in the hold which the Spanish drama had luTcTstill has on the Viennese stage. Joseph Schreyvogel (1768-1832), the first important director of the Hofburg- theater, translated under the pseudonym of " C. A. West " dramas by Calderon and Moreto, which are still in the German repertory, and Der Stern von Sevilla (1830) and Kerker und Krone (1834), once popular plays by J. C. von Zedlitz (1790-1862), were strongly influenced by Spanish models. The best tribute to the dramatic genius of the Vien- nese" is their " Volksdrama," or popular drama. The """Wiener Posse," a distinctly Austrian development of the Italian " commedia dell' arte," and consequently akin to the older English pantomime, had a large number of talented writers in its service at the beginning of the nineteenth century; and to the tradition which they created belong the works of two playwrights of genius, 220 THE DRAMA UNDER ROMANTIC INFLUENCE. Ferdinand Raimund (1790-1836) and Johann Nestroy (1801-62). After Grillparzer, Raimund is the most original dramatic genius that Austria has produced ; by temperament moody and misanthropic, by profession a comic actor at a Viennese suburban theatre, Raimund shot himself in a fit of melancholy at the age of forty- six. His literary significance lies in the fact that he invested the traditional "Posse " with a poetic seriousness hitherto lacking in it; Der Bauer als Milliondr (1826), and above all, Der Alpenkonig imd der Menschenfeind (1828) and Der Verschwender (1833) are creations of a natural genius that has been little influenced by higher literary considerations, but they deserve a place beside the best German comedies of the century. A very different type of writer was Nestroy, whose successful rivalry with Raimund was one of the hardest blows the latter had to bear ; there is no poetry, no sentiment, no depth in Nestroy's work, but it is extraordinarily brilliant and witty. In Der biise Geist Liunpacivagabundus (1833), his first and best known farce, and still more in plays that are less familiar outside Austria, like Das Madl aus der Vorstadt (1841) and Einen Jux will er sich machen (1842), Nestroy shows himself the equal of the best French farce-writers of the century ; he stands alone in the German drama as a master of the wit of situation. No history of the German drama in the first half of the nineteenth century can afford to ignore the music- drama or opera. For Jn Germany, as in the Italy of the seventeenth century, the opera was, and still is, a pro- vince of the national drama. The heritage of Gluck had passed, as we have seen, to Mozart, whose dramatic work was intimately associated with Austria ; Mozart's last masterpiece, Die Zauberflote (1791), was a national play, a Viennese " Posse," inspired by the Josephine ideals. Fidelw, the only opera by the next in the line of great German musicians, Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), was produced in Vienna in 1805, and formed a link be- tween Mozart and the Romantic music-dramatists. Of these the most important is Karl Maria von Weber (1786- THE OPERA. 221 1826), whose three masterpieces, Der Freischiitz (1821), Euryanthe (1823), and Oberon (1826), are in many ways a more faithful reproduction of the Romantic mood than any of the literary dramas of the period. Weber was fol- lowed by the no less Romantic Heinrich Mavschner (1795- 1861), the composer of Der Vampir (1828), Der Templer und die Jildin (1829), and Hans Heiling (1833). For a time, under French influence, the German opera abandoned this national form to cultivate the insincere pseudo- Romanticism of the so-called "grand opera," a form of which Jakob Meyerbeer (1791-1864) was the chief representative. But with Richard Wagner (1813-83), whose early work, Rienzi (1842), was still "grand opera," the music-drama was led back again to Romantic sincerity; Der fliegende Hollander (1843), Tannhauser (1845), and Lohengrin (1850) were great steps in its regeneration. But even these works, rooted in Romanticism as they were, were in advance of their time, and the second half of the century was well advanced before Wagner found recogni- tion as a national dramatist. 222 CHAPTER XX. LITERATURE IN SWABIA AND AUSTRIA. THE nationalism with which the nineteenth century_ opened was all in favour of the development of what might be called the spirit of place in German literature. Dialect literature was cultivated to a degree unknown before, and purely tribal and local ideas found an ex- pression in poetry which would not have been tolerated in earlier centuries, or in periods which aimed at metro- politan concentration. The Low German races, which in the seventeenth century had futilely attempted to assert their literary individuality, now produced a novelist of such eminence as Fritz Reuter, while in the South we find a Swabian literature, an Austrian literature, and even the beginnings of a Swiss literature in German. The Swabian movement of the nineteenth century offers the greatest possible contrast to the cosmopolitanism of the two greatest Swabians of the eighteenth, Wieland and Schiller ; the new school was an offshoot of the Romantic movement. The Swabian poets, who looked up to Uhland as their leader, preserved faithfully the Romantic ideals, if not those of the first Romantic School, at least of the Heidelberg Romanticists ; in Swabia, in fact, Romanticism seemed best protected against that disintegration and decay which rapidly overtook the movement elsewhere, after the fall of Napoleon had changed the political aspect of Germany. The mission of the Swabians, it might be said, was to keep alive the Romantic traditions during the barren age of "Young LUDWIG UHLAND. 223 Germany" and to hand them on to the generation Johann Ludwig Uhland, a native of Tubingen, where he was born in 1787, was a man of very varied interests, poetry occupying a comparatively small place in his life. The son of the university secretary in Tubingen, he re- mained all his life long in close touch with academic circles, and was for a time himself professor of German philology in his native town; his scholarly publications, collected between 1865 and 1873 m ei g nt volumes under the title Schriften zur Geschichte der Dichtung und Sage, and especially his admirable collection of Alte hoch- und niederdeutsche Volkslieder (1844-45), are st iU invalu- able to the student. His philological pursuits were interrupted by an active interest in political questions. He hoped no less ardently than the most advanced demagogues of his time that the national rising of 1813 might result in a free and constitutionally governed Ger- many, and he shared their disappointment when the reaction set in. In 1848, when a brighter day seemed at last about to dawn for German freedom, Uhland again came forward as a politician, and was a prominent member of the short-lived German parliament which held its sittings in the Pauluskirche in Frankfort. He died at Tubingen on November 13, 1862. Uhland's two dominant interests in life, that in the history of the German past and in the political questions of the present, gave his work as a poet its stamp. His ballad - poetry, for instance and it is as a ballad-poet that Uhland is greatest, shows how much he had gained from His careful study of mediaeval poetry, Romance as well as German ; and his warm interest in the contemporary strivings of his people made him more of a realist than his Heidelberg predecessors. Never, even in his most Roman- tic flights, did Uhland lose his common - sense outlook upon life, his feeling for the realities of things ; he allowed no Romantic veil to come between him and the "Volk." He has been well called the " Klassiker der Romantik." Typical ballads of his earlier period are Das Schloss am 224 LITERATURE IN SWABIA AND AUSTRIA. Meer (1805), Klein Roland (1808), Konig Karls Meerfahrt (1812), Taillefer (1812), Des Stingers Much (1814), and Graf Eberhard der Rauschebart (1815); of his later years, Das Gliick von Edenhall (1834). These, together with Uhland's wonderful imitations of the Volkslied, such as Der gute Kamerad (1809) and Der Wirtin Tochterlein (1809), belong to the masterpieces of German ballad and lyric poetry. Uhland was also ambitious of fame as a dramatist, but neither Ernst, Herzog von Schwaben (1818), nor Ludwig der Bayer (1819), full of genuine poetry as they are, is written with a knowledge of the needs and conditions of the theatre. Of the lesser poets who revolved like satellites round Uhland, the most considerable is Justiflus^Kernjer (1786- 1862), who, like Uhland, had a profession apart from his literary interests. He was a doctor, and his hospitable home in the little Swabian town of Weinsberg was a centre of pilgrimage for the poets and literary enthusiasts of the time. His first book, Reiseschatten, von dem Schauspieler Luchs (i 8 1 1), is in its mixture of poetry and prose, humour and seriousness, a kind of forerunner of the later " Reise- bilder " of Heine and other "Young German" writers. His Gedichte first appeared collected in 1826. Less gifted than Uhland, Kerner had more of the irresponsible spontaneity of the older Romanticists ; his songs, especi- ally those in the manner of the Volkslied, are unin- fluenced by that historical culture which gives classic polish to Uhland's ; and his subjective poetry is tinged with a mysticism which was equally foreign to Uhland's lucid and sober mind. Like Brentano, with whom Kerner had many points in common, he gave himself up in later years to the study of the mystic borderland between the natural and the supernatural ; his strange book, Die Seherin von Prevorst (1829), the study of a peculiar case of somnambulism, belongs, in its imaginative interpreta- tion, rather to literature than to medical science. Another member of Uhland's circle, Gustav jscjhwab^ (1792-1850), was a pastor, and devoted his leisure to an extensive and varied literary activity. He wrote a life MINOR SWABIAN WRITERS. 225 of Schiller, revived the memory of older writers such as Rollenhagen and Paul Fleming, translated Lamartine, and, best of all, edited the German Volksbiicher (1836-37), a work that is still one of the treasures of the German household. Several of his songs have become popular, but on the whole his lyric is not inspired. Hermann Kurz (1813-73), a younger man than Schwab, also distinguished himself as a translator and interpreter of the older literature ; his novels, Schillers Heimatjahrt (1843) and Der Sonnenwirt (1854), are among the books of this time which are still read in Germany. Karl Mayer (1786-1870) and Gustav Pfizer (1807-90), two other members of the group, are, undeservedly, more forgotten to-day than Schwab ; while Wilhelm Waiblinger (1804-30), the most genuinely Romantic and the most unhappy of them all, certainly deserves a better place in his country- men's memory than that which he occupies. He belonged to the group, however, only by virtue of his birth ; his work was in a different vein from theirs ; he spent the best years of his short life in Italy and wrote enthusiastic lyrics in the cause of Greece (Lieder der Griechen, 1823). Wilhelm Hauff (1802-27), the novelist of the Swabian circle, was cut off in early manhood ; but we owe to him one of the best German imitations of the Waverley Novels, Lichten- stein (1826), some excellent short stories, such as Das Bild des Kaisers (1828), and a fantastic sketch in the manner of Hoffmann, Phantasien im Bremer Ratskeller (1827). The Hmitations of this Swabian group of poets may be inferfedTrom the writers that have just been discussed their_parochialism and their somewhat narrow outlook ; literature was to them the pastime of idle moments, rather thlfn the main business of their lives. Only Uhland and Waiblingen allowed themselves to venture beyond the Swabian horizon, and to take an interest in the political and intellectual movements of the outside world. And yet this little circle did produce, and from the very midst of its limitations, a_ lyric poet of the first rank, Eduard Morike (1804-75)", P astor in the Swabian village of p 226 LITERATURE IN SWABIA AND AUSTRIA. Cleversulzbach, and subsequently lecturer on German literature in Stuttgart. A quiet, retiring man, who wrote little and hardly came into contact with the world of letters at all, Morike is a better representative of the Swabian spirit than Uhland ; for here we have the pecu- liarly Swabian form of Romanticism at its best. His Gedichte, which appeared collected in 1838, contain a number of poems, such as Jung Volker (1826), Das verlassene Mddchen (1829), Agnes (1831), Schon-Rohtraut (1837), Soldatenbraut(\^^~)^ and Ein Stiindlein wohl vor Tag (1837), which are unsurpassed in the whole range of German lyric poetry. Morike's charm lies in a perfect truth and simplicity combined with a reticence which implies more than it expresses, which spiritualises rather than lays bare the emotions of the soul. And so delicate and fragile is this art that it can hardly even be adapted to the robuster type of ballad. The lyric quality is also prominent in Morike's prose writings. One of these, and the most ambitious, is an unfinished novel, Maler Nolten (1832), which forms a landmark in the development of the Romantic novel from its original starting-point in Wilhelm Meister. Morike, however, has but little of the talent that goes to the making of a good novelist ; Male?- No/ten is fragmentary and formless, and has as good as no plot or construction : its characters are neither conceived nor presented dramatically ; but and here lies the peculiar charm of the book they are drawn with that "delicacy of insight into the hidden workings of heart and mind which is so peculiarly characteristic of Morike's lyric poetry. In the German literature of the last two centuries every literary movement has been associated more or less closely with some line of philosophic thought ; every school has had its philosopher. The Swabian thinker who provided the philosophical background for the present school was not, as might perhaps have been expected, the greatest of all Swabian philosophers, Hegel, whose influence was then in the ascendant, but F. Th. Vischer (1807-87), whose Asthetik (1847-58) was one of the influential books of MORIKE AND VISCHER; AUSTRIAN POETS. 227 its time. But Vischer was not merely a professor of philosophy, he was also a literary critic and a poet; his Lyrische Gdnge (1882) contains verse of originality and vigour, and his humorous and satiric novel, Auch Einer (1879), is still popular. WhiJeiri_S w abia the great Romantic traditions were kegPalTve by^this group of poets until a period when these traditions had long ceased to be anything but a memory to the rest of Germany, a parallel movement of a similar character is to be observed in Austria. But Austria being geographically further removed from the Romantic focuses, her literature was less narrowly Romantic in its character. The Austrians were influ- ed by the Swabians, certainly by Uhland, but they were also to a greater extent influenced by, the chief poetic force in Europe at the beginning of the century, Byron. In the foregoing chapter we have seen how they had built up for themselves a national drama out of elements drawn from eighteenth-century classicism and German and Spanish romanticism ; a similar individuality and independence is to be traced in their lyric poetry. Earlier than in North Germany the Napoleonic con- quest called forth a patriotic lyric in Austria, the best example of which is the Wehrmannslieder (1809) of the dramatist H. J. von Collin ; and at a later date the tyranny of Metternich provoked a poetry of political revolt which preceded in time the political lyric of North Germany. Of this later movement the chief representative was Graf Anton Alexander von Auersperg (1806-76), who was known to literature as " Anastasius Griin." Griin's liberalism is most definitely expressed in the volume- entitled Spaziergdnge ernes Wiener Poeten (1831), a frank, although in its satire somewhat guarded, challenge to the Austrian government. Political, too, are, more or less, the poems Der letzte^ Ritter (Maximilian I.) (1831), Schutt (1836), and Nibelungen im Frack (1850). Satire soon, however, grows old, and the modern reader is likely to give Griin a higher place as the purely lyric poet of Blatter der Liebe (1830). 228 LITERATURE IN SWABIA AND AUSTRIA. Lyjic poets of no mean order were also two of the dramatists of the period, Grillparzer and Zedlitz. The former's Tristia ex Ponto (1835), a cry of very real per- sonal suffering from the dark days of his life between 1825 and 1835, has been already mentioned; and in his later years he gave vent to his dislikes and antipathies in epigrams and satire. The tyranny of the autocracy weighed heavily on Grillparzer ; it ate into his soul and threw a shadow over all his life. Zedlitz, on the other hand, who showed distinctly higher powers as a lyric poet than as a dramatist, kept aloof from the political discontent of the time and sought refuge in the Romantic poetry of Italy or in the more modern phase of Romanticism repre- sented by Byron, whom he translated and imitated. His famous Totenkranze (1827), threnodies at the graves of famous personalities in history and fiction Wallenstein and Napoleon, Romeo and Juliet, Tasso and Byron are among the best imitations of Byronic poetry in German literature, while some of his ballads, notably Die ndcht- liche Heerschau (1829), are worthy of the great German traditions. But the master-singer of Austria, the greatest Austrian lyric poet since Walther von der Vogelweide, was the unhappy T-PJ^H. Nikolaus Franz Niembsch von Streh- lenau, to give him his full name, was born at Csatad in Hungary in 1802. He came into the world under an unhappy star, and his whole life was a continuous battle with untoward circumstances. He studied at the university of Vienna, and in 1831 came into touch with the Swabian circle of poets ; with their encouragement and assistance he published in the following year his first volume of Gedichte. There is little, however, that is Swabian in his poetic talent ; the conditions he grew up under were different, and his verse was influenced by other models than those which they admired. At times we hear an echo of Eichendorff, at times of Goethe ; but of all the poets of his epoch the one that touched the deepest chord in Lenau's nature was Byron. Unlike Byron, however, Lenau had not the power of rising above NIKOLAUS LENAU. 22Q his misery, or defying it, like Heine, with contempt and cynicism ; Jiis_jDessimism is the pessimism of blank, un- relieved despair. This is the dominant note of his poetry, which compares with that of Eichendorff as his wind- swept Hungarian pustas in autumn with the leafy vaults of the summer forest of which Eichendorff sings so jubilantly. The political tyranny in Austria rested less heavily on Lenau than on others among his contem- poraries, because his own personal life was more dis- traught ; at the same time, it was with great hopes and expectations that he turned his back on the old world and greeted America as a new fatherland. For a brief space his melancholy was forgotten in the pristine world of the West ; the veil of pessimism lifts in his American poems, such as Der Indzanerzug, Das Blockhaus, ~h'iagdra~. '"But if was only a brief respite ; disenchantment dogged him even here, and he returned to Europe with his one great hope shattered. He settled for a time in Vienna, then near his Swabian friends in Wiirtemberg, and when life was beginning to assume a more kindly aspect and its enigmas to press less insistently on him, he suddenly be- came insane. This was in 1844, and after some years in an asylum he died in 1850. Lenau's work comprises, besides the lyrics of his Gedichte (1832) and Neuere Gedichte (1838, 1840), an epic drama on the subject of Faust (1836), into which he poured his own scepticism and despair, and two epic poems, Savonarola (1837) and Die Albigenser (1842), which are hardly less unrelievedly pessimistic. The lyric poets of the middle of the century who were associated with the political and revolutionary movement between 1840 and 1848, will be discussed in a subsequent chapter. There is, however, one writer who stood aloof from both the political and literary m overrent, and whose place is more obviously with the great Swabian and Austrian lyricists than with the political singers : Annette von Droste-Hiilshoff (1797-1848), Ger- many's greate^poefessT" ""A" native of Westphalia and a strict Catholic, this unassuming, retiring writer had lew 230 LITERATURE IN SWABIA AND AUSTRIA. ties with her contemporaries ; and her poetry bears the stamp of a strong, original personality. No doubt Byron influenced to some extent, her longer narrative poems, such as jJas Hosptk auf dem grossen St Bernhard (1838), and the magnificent epic of the Thirty Years' War, Die Schlacht im Loener Bruch (1838) : there is a touch of the pessimistic mal de siecle in her work, but nothing of the sentimental Romantic sweetness common to most of her contemporaries ; indeed, she is at times almost repellent in her ascetic strength. As a poet of nature, Annette von Droste-Hiilshoff saw with unerring truth, a truth that is never blinded by human sentiments or emotions. Her Westphalian Haidebilder are as unforgettable as Lenau's ; and in Das geistliche Jahr, which was not published until after her death (1851), she has written the finest German y of the nineteenth century. 231 CHAPTER XXL THE END OF ROMANTICISM. LIKE all literary movements, Romanticism passed through the various stages of organic growth ; its tentative begin- nings were followed by the soaring idealism of youth, and this in turn gave place to the definite and practical aims of maturity. It now remains for us to consider the disintegration and decay of the movement. From the very first there were elements of an abnormal and un- healthy character in German Romanticism, and the germs of decadence may be traced back to the very inception of Romantic ideas in the first Romantic School. The ultimate dissolution was brought about by 'the one-sided development of certain tendencies, vby the increasing mediocrity of the literature itself, and, above all^Jby the change in the general thought of the nation, which became unfavourable and even antagonistic to Romanticism. The decay of Romanticism set in most conspicuously in the centre where it was born, in Berlin. Here, as we have seen, Brentano and Arnim settled after they left Heidelberg, and, for a time, the literary circles of the capital, which were at least unanimous in their admiration of Goethe, afforded a favourable soil for the Romantic ideas. Eichendorff, who was associated with this Berlin phase of Romanticism, was a lyric poet of the first rank, and Chamisso's perfect sincerity lent strength to his genius. But mediocrity began to creep in with the work of the most popular novel - writer of the circle, Friedrich de la Motte Fouque (1777-1843). In his many 232 THE END OF ROMANTICISM. novels un themes of chivalry and on subjects drawn from northern mythology and saga, Fouque illustrates the clanger to which Romantic fiction was peculiarly exposed, that of falling back into the manner of the " Ritterroman " of the later " Sturm und Drang." Deficient in the psychological insight of the more gifted Romanticists^ Fouque is satisfied to people his books with crudely drawn ^conventional figures, and he has recourse in his treatment of incident and motive only too readily to the supernatural. His novels, such as Der Zauberring (1813) and Die Fahrten Thiodulfs des Islanders (1815), which, no doubt, responded to a need of their time, are long forgotten. Fouque only lives to-day by two shorter stories, Undine (1811), a charming fairy-tale of a water- sprite, who by virtue of her marriage with a mortal becomes endowed with a soul, but who is ultimately lured back to her native element ; and the hardly less charming Sintram und seine Gefiihrten (1814). It is here that Fouque's talent, not very strong at the best, is seen to most advantage. J5ut Jthe master-novelist of this period of Romantic decay is without question Ernst Theodor Wilhelm or Amadeus, as he called himself in honour of Mozart Hoffmann. Born at Konigsberg in 1776, Hoffmann was educated at the university of his native town with a view to a legal career; he held, between 1796 and 1800, official posts in Glogau, Berlin, and Posen. In the last mentioned town his satirical talents got him into difficulties, and he was virtually exiled to Plozk, a small town on the Vistula. Later we find him in Warsaw, where he re- mained until 1806, when the occupation of that city by the French deprived him of his post. He had a decided talent for music, which in those years had been the chief occupation of his leisure time, and now he resolved to make it his profession. He obtained the position of conductor of the theatre-orchestra in Bamberg. With a view of eking out his meagre income, he turned to litera- ture, and with his first book, Phantasiestiicke in Callots Manier (1814-15), to which Jean Paul Friedrich Richter E. T. A. HOFFMANN. 233 wrote the preface, he attracted more attention than he had ever done by his compositions. Callot, it should be added, was a French artist of the early seventeenth century, whose imagination had much in common with Hoffmann's. The grotesqueness of the Phantasiestiicke is, however, of quite a different order from the more sentimental humour of Richter, by whom Hoffmann was naturally influenced; his style, too, is much more vivid and concise, and his outlook on life, although Romantic enough, is free from eighteenth-century pathos and senti- jnent. In 1814 Hoffmann was again in Berlin, where he obtained an official position in connection with the law courts. He was soon the heart and soul of the literary circles of the Prussian capital, and Fouque and Chamisso were for a time his closest friends ; but he lacked balance, and gradually slipped into a life of dis- sipation which brought his career to a premature end in 1822. "Hoffmann's stories fall into several well-defined groups. Best known are those in which the fantastic side of his imagination is allowed to run riot : gruesome tales which depend for their horrors on the supernatural. To this group belongs the novel, Die Elixiere des Teufels (1815-16), a powerful story of a Capuchin monk who tastes of a mysterious elixir preserved among the reliques of his monastery, with the consequence that he is driven from one crime and one horror to another, to end ultimately in contrition and repentance. We have obviously here the old tale of terror, as it was cultivated by Monk Lewis in England, and by Lewis's models, the successors of the " Sturm und Drang " in Germany ; but it is told with a power of plastic presentment and a realism which none of the older German writers had at their command. To the same group of stories belong most of the Nacht- stiicke (1817), where mysterious " Doppelganger " and still more gruesome automata which come to life, cause even more of a shudder than the Teufels Elixiere. This class of story, which was really only representative of one period of Hoffmann's work, culminates in the morbid 234 THE END OF ROMANTICISM. novel of Klein Zaches, genannt Zinnober (1819). Zaches is an " Alraune," that weird goblin of German folklore, which was dug up at the base of a gallows ; and he upsets the moral order of the world by taking credit for the good that others do, while throwing on to other people's shoulders the responsibility of his own misdeeds. The story has more than its share of morbid horrors, but it is only fair to say that it does not depend for its sole or even main interest on the supernatural. To Hoffmann's second period belong a number of admirable stories, in which the supernatural plays either no role at all, or at best a very subordinate one. These were introduced by Das Majorat, one of the Nachtstiicke, and they make up the greater part of the volumes that are entitled Die Serapionsbriider (1819-21). As the best stories of this group may be mentioned Der Arttishof, Meister Martin der Kufner und seine Gesellen, and Hoff- mann's masterpiece, Das Frdulein von Scuderi. In the last group of Hoffmann's work, of which the representa- tive novel is the unfinished Lebensansichten des Katers Murr nebst fragment arischer Biographic des Kapellmeisters Johannes Kreisler in zufdlligen Makulaturbldttern (1820- 22), a reversion may be detected to Richter's peculiar form of humour, namely, a humour that is reflective, senti- mental and, although not free from exaggeration, rarely grotesque. The hero of Kater Murr, which, no doubt, contains some of Hoffmann's maturest writing, is a cat, and the cat is assumed to write its life and opinions on the proofs of Kreisler's autobiography, the whole being printed and bound up together. Strong, vivid, and powerful as Hoffmann's work is and Germany possessed no greater master of fiction in the first half of the nineteenth century it belongs, none the less, to a period in which Roman- ticism had outlived itself; the delicate touches of the great Romantic art are still there, but the morbid exagger- ation and extravagance with which the themes are treated is an unmistakable sign of decadence. Although not in the same sense indicative of decay as Hoffmann's novels, the stories which one of the leaders of THE HISTORICAL NOVEL. 235 the first Romantic School, Ludwig Tieck, wrote about the same time, bear testimony to the change that had come over Romantic ideas in the space of little more than twenty years. Tieck's many Novelkn, written between 1821 and 1840, his excellent historical story, Der Aufni/ir in den Cevennen (1826), and the interesting novel on the lines of Wilhelm Meister, Der junge Tischlermeister (1836), are in workmanship superior to his early books, but the old Romantic idealism appears a little incongruous in an age that had come through the political realities of the rise and fall of Napoleon. The most promising form of Romantic fiction was undoubtedly the historical novel ; and there seemed every prospect that Germany would at this time build up a national historical fiction on the basis which writers like Arnim had prepared. But this hope reckoned without the*' influence of Scott, who held all Europe under his spell ; the German writers had no option but to abandon their old models and learn anew from the Waverley Novels. This was the case with the two chief authors of historical fiction at this time, Wilhelm Hauff, who has already been mentioned, and W. H. Haring (1798-1871), known to literature as " Willibald Alexis." The former belongs t^jf this category by virtue~bF his Lichtenstein (1826), which, if anything, errs by excessive indebtedness to its models. Alexis deserves more careful attention, for, although deeply influenced by Scott, he did succeed in creating a distinctly original type of novel for Prussia. He began his career not merely as an imitator of Scott, but even passed off his first books as actual translations of Scott. He soon, however, outgrew this dependence, and in 1832 appeared his first important novel, Cabanis, a story of the time of Frederick the Great. Between 1840 and 1856 followed a series of six novels from national Prussian history (Der Roland von Berlin, 1840 ; Der falsche Waldcmar, 1842 : Die Hosen des Herrn von Bredow, 1846-48 ; Ruhe ist die erste Biirgerpflicht, 1852; Isegrimm, 1852, and Dorothea, 1856), on which his reputation as a master of the German historical novel rests. From Scott he has borrowed the 236 THE END OF ROMANTICISM. power of vivifying the historical details of a past age, but he did not, like Scott's other imitators, copy slavishly the technical details of his master. His originality is to be seen in hfs more modern, matter-of-fact method of presenting his story, although, unfortunately, there still clings to him that old failing of the German Romantic movement, the want of clear, plastic outlines. His books are consequently not as interesting to read as their sub- jects might lead us to expect. Apart from these two writers, the historical novel stood high in favour in Germany in the early nineteenth century. Der, Jude (1827), by Karl _Spindler (1796-1855), was one of "the better novels orthis~clas? ; and Heinrich Zschokke (1771- 1848) endeavoured in his Btider \jaus^er_Sclm)eizj(i?>2^- 26) to do for Switzerland what Scott had done for Scotland in his Waverley Novels. Zschokke was a native of Magdeburg, but a Swiss by adoption. His earliest book, AballinO) der grosse Bandit (1794), was a popular example of the pre-Romantic robber-stories which owed their origin to Schiller's Rduber. He might be described as the first writer who put forward the Swiss point of view, and is thus the forerunner of Gotthelf and Keller. This peculiarly Swiss quality is, however, more evident in his pedagogic novel, Das Goldmacherdorf (\&\']\ and in the devotional poems of his Stunden der Andacht (1809- 16), than in his historical Swiss stories. The Romantic spirit, chilled by the sober realism of the new epoch, sought refuge in the poetry of the East; it was Goethe, who here, with his Westostliche Divan, pointed out the way. The master of German oriental poetry is Friedrich Riickert (1788-1866), who began with "his" Geharnischte Sonette (1814) as a patriotic poet of the War of Liberation. He soon, however, outgrew this mood, and under the influence of the Viennese orientalist, J. von Hammer-Purgstall, became an ardent student of oriental poetry. The poems of his Ostliche Rosen (1822) were, like Goethe's Divan, inspired by Hafiz, and in the following year Riickert published a large number of trans- lations of Eastern literature. Chief of these are the RUCKERT AND SCHULZE. 237 Makamen of Hariri (1826-37), the merry adventures of an Arabian rogue, the Sanskrit Nal und Damajanti (1828), the Chinese Schi-King (1833), the Persian ^Rostem utid Suhrab (1838), and a collection of the oldest Arabian "Volkslieder, Die Hamasa (1846). His longest and most ambitious reproduction of oriental poetry is Die Weishcit dcs Brahnianen (6 volumes, 1836-39), a didactic poem, "or rather collection of didactic, aphoristic verse. Apart from his oriental work, Riickert belongs with his Liebes- frilhling (1834) and Haus- und Jahreslieder (1832-38) to the group of Romantic lyric poets which includes Eichen- dorff and Chamisso ; his lyric vein is akin to theirs, but he is lacking in their concentration ; his verse came too easily and is correspondingly diffuse. As he became more immersed in oriental studies, he showed a tendency to introduce exaggerated imagery and far-fetched metaphors "Into his German poetry. But Riickert remains with Platen one of. .the great verse artists in German poetry ; his wealth of rhythmic form is inexhaustible. Romanticism in its decay is also to be seen in the work of E. K. F. Schulze (1789-1817), whose two epics Catilie and Die l>ezauberte Rose (both 1818) stand out as isolated produc- tions in an age that cared but little for the allegorical epic. At times Schulze reminds us of Wieland, but he was too much of a Romanticist to have sympathy for the latter's lighter tone ; and his brief life was wholly overshadowed by the death of a woman for whom he cherished an almost morbid passion. A more significant transformation of the Romantic spirit is to be seen in the active sympathy of a number "of the younger poets for the struggle for liberty then acute IrTGreece and Poland ; for the second time in its history, "we might say, Romanticism placed itself at the service of a great political ideal. Byron, of course, was here a leader and example. Among the champions of Greek independence in Germany the chief was Wilhelm Miiller (7794-1827), a native of Dessau, whose Liedcr der Griechen (1821-24) awoke a warm echo in German hearts. To the"modern reader these songs, seem monotonous : 238 THE END OF ROMANTICISM. their reiterated sentimental patriotism rings a little false ; but no such criticism can be brought against Miiller's unpolitical lyric. Here he appears as a poet in many ways akin to Chamisso ; in his love poetry especially he has the same power of simple, direct utterance, perhaps also the same limited horizon. His MulkrUeder^ a cycle of love songs, the most popular of all his verses, gives voice even more precisely than Chamisso's love poetry to the unsophisticated emotion of the German " Volk." In his Wander lieder, again, there are points of similarity_with Eichendorff ; and his sea poetry most original of all no doubt influenced Heine's. His first collection of purely lyric poetry appeared in 1821 under the title Gedichte aus den hinterlassenen Papieren eines reisenden Waldhornisten, a second volume appearing in 1824; his sea poetry is to be found in the beautiful cycles, Muscheln von der Insel Riigen (1825) and Lieder aus dem Meerbusen von Salerno (1827). In estimating Miiller's contributions to the storehouse of German lyric poetry it must not be forgotten that he was cut off at the early age of twenty-nine. The Byronic fever and the Byronic enthusi- asm for suppressed nationalities are to be traced in most German poets of this epoch, in F. von Gaudy (1800-40), Chamisso's friend and the German translator of Beranger, and in Julius Mosen (1803-67), whose many novels and Romantic dramas, but rarely read now, mark the gradual tapering-off of the Romantic literature. Nor must it be forgotten that one of the greater German poets of this epoch, August von Platen, also wrote a series of noble Polenlieder (1830-33). August, Graf von Flaten-Mallermiinde (1796-1835), a native of Ansbach, occupies a solitary position in the literature of the age. He, too, was a Romanticist, but li "Romanticist 'who realised, and felt keenly the degenera- tion of the Romantic movement ; his poetry might be described as an effort, perhaps only vaguely conscious, to stay the decay of Romanticism, He began, like Riickert, with Ghaselen (1821), imitations of the orientalism of the Westbstliche Divan, and the materials for his last epic. PLATEN AND IMMERMANN. 239 Die Abbasiden (1834), also came from the East. It was, moreover, a genuine Romantic impulse that led him to dramatise the popular fairy-tale in Die gltiserne Pantoffel (1824). On the other hand, no one poured out more con- temptuous scorn on the degenerate Romanticists of the day than did Platen in his Die verhdngnisvolle Gabel (1826), and in Per romantische Oedipus (1829), in which Immer- mann came in for the main share of the blows. In these plays Platen reveals himself as a powerful satirist, although TTis satire was limited to literary matters. The regenera- TTon of Romantic poetry he sought in Italy, which from 1826 on he made his home. He adapted to German "needs the metres and rhythms of Romance literature, and attained a mastery of form and purity of classical expres- sion which even Goethe in his most classic days did not surpass. In a higher degree than Goethe's antique measures, Platen's poetry lays itself open to the reproach of coldness ; no German poet, indeed, so completely expunged the personal and subjective element from his poetry as Platen did. With all his coldness, however, he remains the supreme artist of form among German poets ; his Sonette aus Venedig (1825) are the finest sonnets in the German tongue. Although born into an age of decadence, he has left his stamp upon the poetic language of the Germans as no other; _he vindicated for the last time the high ideals of the first Romantic School. The last of the Romanticists was Karl Leberecht Immermann, who was born at Magdeburg in 1796 and died in 1840 the last, not chronologically, but by his qualities as a writer ; he stands, it might be said, on the borderland between Romanticism and the movement that succeeded it. He experimented in every form of Romantic poetry ; he wrote dramas in the style of Arnim, of Tieck, and of the " Schicksalsdramatiker." His Trauerspiel in Tirol (1828) is an imposing tragedy, with Andreas Hofer as hero ; his Alexis (1832), a trilogy based on the history of Peter the Great; while jn Merlin (1832) he created, if not a drama for the stage, a dramatic poem of singular beauty, an essentially Romantic variant of the classical 240 THE END OF ROMANTICISM. Faust theme. Merlin in this modern mystery is a kind oT Antichrist, in whom Immermann has embodied the distraughtness of his own age, the conflict of the Romantic soul between renunciation and happiness. Immerrnarm has left a deeper mark on his time as a novelist than as ITctfarriatist. As the author of the romance Die Epigonen (1836), he has thrown off his exclusive allegiance" "to Romanticism and stands out as the pioneer of that new fiction which was to dominate German literature through- out the last third of the century. Nowhere, indeed, is Jp__be_seen more clearly than in this novel the transT^ tion from the Romantic novel/" inspired by Wilhelm AfetsTer, to the new fiction of social problems. Without any very clearly planned plot, Die Epigonen is a veiled biography of the author himself ; for he, too, felt bitterly that he was only an " Epigone," " late-born " in an age that was rapidly passing away. Immermann's second romance, Miinchhausen, eine GeschicJiW~in ~Arabesken, ap- peared TrTr 838-39,"~and in form is a relapse into the Romantic, or more specifically, Richterian confusion. It might be described as a receptacle for Immermann's own likes and dislikes, his frank opinions of his time ; but he had neither the imagination nor the humour which, as so often in Jean Paul's case, make up for the confused formlessness of the whole. In Miinchhausen, however, there lies embedded a short story of German peasant life T Per jQberhof, which is a masterpiece of its kind. Here, again, Immermann, "Epigone" although he was, was building for the future ; his Oberhof'^ the first modern peasant-story in European literature, and the forerunner of a vast literature of the peasant, in which the German "writers of the next generation were peculiarly to excel. Immermann's last work of importance was a modernisation of Tristan und Isolde (published 1841), which he did not live to finish. As director of the theatre in Diisseldorf, where he had settled as Landgerichtsrat in 1827, he con- tributed in no small degree to the artistic and literary development of the German theatre. 241 CHAPTER XXII. YOUNG GERMANY AND THE POLITICAL LYRIC. THE__group of writers known as " Young Germany " represents the complete antithesis to the Romantic move- ment. That ideal, unworldly spirit which, in spite of patriotic zeal and national aims, clung to the Romantic poets^ to the last, here gives place to a p_racticaj material- ism ; "the individualism and the lyricism of Romanticism are discarded for social philosophies and politics ;-" and "tHese find their natural" ntlrary outlet in the newspaper- yeuilleton and the social novel. The change had been due partly to the broadly collective tendencies in-^Hegel's philosophy, partly to the less healthy influence of Saint- Simon ; partly, too, to theMisappointment of the German people in their hopes of becoming, as a consequence of the national rising against Napoleon, a great free nation. The political fiasco of the first half of the century destroyed all faith in the wider issues of Romanticism, and the new generation felt that nothing was to be achieved by that form of nationalism which found its expression in the Romantic literature. The new watchword was cosmo- politanism, and the ideal^ of the "Young German" was to approximate as much as possible his mode of thinking and writing to that of the French. That France was the saviour of Europe was first realised by the disheartened German patriots at the Revolu- tion of 1830, and the literary group of " Jungdeutsch- land" may be said^To""have taken its origin from that event. Phrases like " Young Germany " were in the air Q 242 YOUNG GERMANY. at the time ; and in the dedication of a volume of ad- vanced literary criticism, Asthetische Feldziige, published in 1834, Ludolf Wienbarg (1802-72), a " privatdocent " in the university of Kiel, wrote : " Dir, junges Deutschland, nicht dem alten, widme ich diese Reden." In the follow- ing year a review was projected, which was to have borne this title. Before, however, the first number appeared, the German Bundestag issued a_decre, dated December 10, 1835, which ordered the suppression of the literary school "known under the name of Young Germany," and mentioned expressly the names of Heinrich Heine, Karl Gutzkow, Ludolf Wienbarg, Theodor Mundt, and Hein- rich Laube. Of these men the first, Heine, was the oldest, and exemplifies most clearly the transition from Romanticism to "Young Germany," for Heine learned his art in the school of Romanticism, and, in spite of all later political enthusiasms and French veneer, he remained at heart a Romantic poet to the last. Heinrich, or rather Harry, Heine was born at Diisseldorf, of Jewish parentage, on December 13, 1797. Originally intended for a com- mercial career, he turned, with the support of his uncle, a wealthy Hamburg banker, to the study of law, and spent several years at the universities of Bonn, Gottingen, and Berlin. In Berlin he was taken up by the literary coteries and published his first volume of Gedichte (1822), as well as two dramas, Almansor and William Ratcliff (1823). It was not, however, until the Harzreise Ap- peared in 1826, the description of a " sentimental " tour made in the Harz Mountains in 1824, that general attention was attracted to him. This book formed, together with two cycles of poems, Die Heimkehr and Die Nordsee, the first volume of the Reisebilder. In 1827 appeared his Buck der Lieder, which caused an enormous stir and made "Heine at once the most popular poet of Germany. The novelty of the book was due to the fact that it combines with an unsurpassed felicity of lyric expression a boldness,, of imagery which was foreign to the Romantic lyric poets of the earlier period, and occasionally a biting irony. HEINRICH HEINE. 243 This irony with which Heine regarded himself, his scathing gibes at his own emotions were, in themselves, a negation of the intense sincerity of the Romantic lyric ; the spirit of self-criticism, for such it is when reduced to its ultimate, elements, was quite in harmony with the anti- romantic tendencies of European letters in the epoch between the Revolutions of 1830 and 1848. It perhaps also explains why Heine's claims to greatness should have been more readily conceded by other nations than by his own. Germany, being closely identified with the spirit of Romanticism, was correspondingly less accessible to the new materialism, and resented Heine's irony and apparent insincerity as a wanton offence against her great poetic traditions. But the Buck der Lieder stands out, notwith- standing, as, with the possible exception of Des Knaben Wunderhorn, the most widely influential collection of lyric poetry of the nineteenth century. Heine made the German lyric cosmopolitan, just as Byron, a few decades earlier, had made English poetry the common posses- sion of Europe. In the same year as the Buck der Lieder Heine pub- lished the second part of his Reisebilder, which contained, besides a continuation of Die Nordsee, Das Buck Le Grand; a third volume (Reise von Miinchen nach Gemea, Die Bdder von Lucca) appeared in 1830, a fourth (Die Stadt Lucca, Englische Fragmente) in 1831. In his Nordsee lyrics Heine struck perhaps the freshest note of all, for he "IFthe only German poet who has felt to the full the magic and the mystery of the sea. In 1831 Heine made Paris Jus home, where he supported himself as correspondent for German newspapers, and worked in the interests of the Young German party with which the government decree had associated him. His warm sympathy for France also commended him to the French government, which, from 1836 to 1848, provided him with a pension. In the winter of 1834-35 Heine made the acquaintance of Eugenie Mirat, a French shop-girl who, years later, became his wife; kind and good-natured, Mathilde, as he called her, was entirely without understanding for her 244 YOUNG GERMANY. husband's genius, and dragged him down rather than helped him. His prose writings in these years, apart from journalistic feuilletons on French affairs (Pranzosische Zustdnde, 1833; Der Salon, 1834-40; Lutezia, 1854), were not of a kind to win him friends in Germany ; Die romantische Schule. (1836) is disfigured by tasteless per- sonalities, Ludwig Borne (1840) is an attack on one who in life had been his friend. The biting satire of Deutschland, ein Wintermdrchen (1844) was even less to German taste. But there is something of the magic of the old Romantic spirit in Atta Troll, ein Sommernacht- straum (1847, but written in~i84i), which Heine him- self called the " swan-song of the Romantik " ; nowhere, indeed, is Heine's genius seen to better advantage than in this, the most original poem of the whole age. One forgets, amid the Romantic surroundings of the story of the Pyrenean dancing bear which, escaping from its keeper, finds refuge in the romantic vale of Roncevaux, that the poem is merely an allegorical veil covering a satire on the political poetry of the day. In 1848 Heine was struck down by a terrible disease of the spine, which condemned him to a "mattress-grave " Jorjthe last eight years of his life, and in these years he rose, as a lyric poet, to heights he had never reached before. The spirit of the romances and lyrics which make up the collection of the Romanzero^ ( 1 8 g i ), is nobler and more sincere than the sentimentality and irony of the Buck der Lieder. The strange fantastic love for the poetess, Camilla Selden, who nursed him in his last years, completed the transformation of Heine from a brilliant poet of genius to one of the greatest of lyric singers. The poetry of his closing years differs from that of the Jwige Leiden, as the conventional roses and violets of that early poetry differ from the large white passion-flower which he pictured as overshadowing his own marble sarcophagus. Heine died in Paris on February 17, 1856. Heine's comrade in arms in his battle for " Young German " Liberalism was Ludwig Borne, or to give him LUDWIG B5RNE. 245 his real name, Lob Baruch. He was considerably older than Heine, having been born in the Frankfort ghetto in 1786, and he died in Paris in 1837. Borne was not expressly mentioned in the decree of the Bundestag suppressing " Young Germany," but his influence on the movement was greater than Heine's. Both Heine and Borne suffered under the brutal persecution to which their race was subjected, both turned their backs on Germany, and found in Paris the new Jerusalem, a home of spiritual freedom and progress ; and yet neither was able to wipe out entirely from his heart a strong sentiment of affection for his hand-and-tongue-tied German compatriots. Their peculiar talents were the complement of each other. JBorne, essentially a practical man, saw political reform from its practical side, while Heine indulged in visionary panegyrics of freedom. Borne became the greatest jour- nalist of the " Young German " epoch, Heine its greatest lyric poet. Like Heine, Borne had made his reputation in Germany before the Revolution of 1830, an event which both writers hailed as the beginning of a new era. As the editor of various periodicals, the chief of them being Die Wage (1818-20), Borne had, more perhaps than any other journalist in this age, influenced and moulded public opinion ; and had the authorities not kept a watchful eye on him, he would doubtless have succeeded in kindling in his countrymen that spirit of revolt which was to lie dormant until 1848. In 1830, weary of the fruitless struggle against the press-censorship, Borne found his way to Paris, from which he wrote the originally private Brief e aus Paris. They were published in the years 1830 and 1833, and "as^a natural result of their suppression by the government, "were read with avidity throughout Germany. Borne here attempted to show Germany herself in the mirror of French events, to teach her the part she ought to play in the glorious war which France was waging for the freedom of humanity. Although more a document of the time than an abiding contribution to German prose literature, these letters mark an epoch in the history of the German 246 YOUNG GERMANY. newspaper ; jthey reformed German prose, and taught Ger- man journalists a brilliant, witty, and incisive prose style. Apart from such work, Borne's contributions to German literature are of small account. His literary criticism was limited by his political outlook and rarely inspired by purely aesthetic considerations. The democrat in him, for instance, sympathised with the " biirgerliche " humour and sentiment of Jean Paul, and rose in rebellion against Goethe's aristocratic nature. His own short stories, such as Der Narr im weissen Schwan and Der Esski'mstler (1822), are unimportant and represent merely another side of his journalistic activity. In the earlier part of their work Borne and Heine were virtually predecessors of the "Young German" movement. Tne actual leader of the school in its narrower limits was Karl Gutzkow (1811-78). As a man of letters Gutzkow was the immediate product of the July Revolution, for it was in the year 1830 that his thoughts first turned to a literary career. An ironical romance, Maha - Guru, Geschichte eines Gottes, appeared in 1833 and attracted some atten- tion, and Wally die Zweiflerin (1835) ^ rs ^ ma de his reputation. This appears a colourless enough novel to us now, but in its day its religious scepticism and out- spoken tone caused great"~c>rTence, and cost its author three months' imprisonment. Wally die Zweiflerin is the " Young German " interpretation of the theme that Friedrich Schlegel had treated in his Lucinde, and it exerted a decisive influence on the fiction of the time. Gutzkow's best work, both as a novelist and a dramatist, belongs to a later period. His longer novels, of which Blasedow und seine S.ohne (1838-39), Die Ritter vom Geiste (1850-52), and Der Zauberer von Rom (1858-61) are the most important, are unwieldy and formless, and one and all " Tendenzromane " or "novels with a purpose." But Die Ritter vom Geiste is, to a certain extent, the starting-point for the modern German social novel ; it is an attempt not merely to tell a story, but also to reproduce an entire epoch, the reactionary epoch that set in after the failure of the Revolution of 1848. The actual story, GUTZKOW AND LAUBE. 247 however, recalls too frequently the old "family novels" of the eighteenth century to be attractive to modern readers. As a dramatist Gutzkow has enjoyed longer favour; for his best plays are still occasionally to be seen in German theatres. Zopfund Schwert (1843) is an effec- tive historical comedy of the court of Friedrich Wilhelm I. of Prussia, which shows the influence of Scribe and of the French intrigue comedy of the time. In 1847 he pro- duced two plays, also historical, but in different ways; Das Urbild des Tartiiffe, a comedy founded on an incident in Moliere's life, and Uriel Acosta, a blank-verse tragedy, the hero of which is Spinoza's master and predecessor. The popularity of the latter play was, however, less due to its poetic qualities than to its bearing on the question of the moment; it is an echo of the conflict that raged round D. F. Strauss's Leben Jesu, a kind of Nathan der Weise of the nineteenth century. Gutzkow's last important p\ay,J)er Konigsleutnant (1849), is a drama- tisation, with no very conscientious adherence to facts, of an episode in Goethe's boyhood described in Dichtung und Wahrheit, and was written for the Goethe centenary in 1849. Heinrich Laube (1806-84), a native of Silesia, was another of the leaders of "Young Germany," but his liter- ary work had even jess vitality than Gutzkow's^ He con- tributed to the movement volumes of essays and criticism, a series of lengthy novels under the collective title Das junge Europa (1833-37), in which the ideas of the time are enunciated and advocated with the warmth of a special pleader; unfortunately the form, or rather formlessness of the novels, makes them unreadable to-day except as docu- ments of their time. There is even less vitality in the six volumes of Reisenovellen, which he published between 1834 and 1837 in imitation of Heine. His chief work of fiction, Der deutsche Krieg (1863-66), is a historical novel in nine volumes, Healing with the epoch of the Thirty Years' War, and in a realistic manner that contrasts sharply with the imaginative standpoint of the Romantic writers. J\s a dramatist Laube was an avowed enthusiast for the French 248 YOUNG GERMANY. stage ; he translated and adapted the best French plays of Fe day. and all his own dramatic work has the stamp of clever French workmanship. Like Gutzkow, he attained his chief success with a comedy on a literary subject, Die Karlsschiiler (1847), f which the young Schiller is the rather impossible hero. Like Gutzkow, too, he wrote historical tragedies in blank verse, of which the most im- portant is Graf Essex ( 1 8 5 6). In one respect Laube has left a deep mark on his time ; he was the greatest Ger- "mah theatre-director of the century. For twenty-five years, from 1850 onwards, he controlled the fortunes of the German stage, first as director of the Hofburgtheater in Vienna, then of the Municipal theatres in Leipzig, and again in Vienna, of the Stadttheater there. The record of his work in this field, which is to be found in three volumes, Das Burgtheater (1868), Das norddeutsche Theater ( 1 8 7 2 ), and Das Wiener Stadttheater (1875), is the part of his writings which has retained its value and interest longest. A characteristic member of the " Young German " move- ment was Theodor Mundt ( 1 808-6 r), whose Madonna* Unterhaltungen mit einer Heiligen created hardly less stir in 1835 tnan did Wally die Zweifterin ; for here, too, the craving for emancipation from traditional re- ligious orthodoxy and the moral conventions of the day tound^venL The model for Mundt's "Madonna " was a certain Charlotte Stieglit/. who, in 1834, put an end to her life in the hopes that a great sorrow would awaken the poetic genius of her husband, Heinrich Stieglitz (1801-49). But it must be confessed that that poet's Bilder des Orients (1831-33) hardly justify his wife's tragic self-sacrifice. More interesting than Mundt is Bettina von Arnim (1785-1859), who has already been mentioneonSTan earlier chapter. She formed, one might say, a link between the " Young German " movement and the Romantic period. She had sat in devout adoration at Goethe's feet, and poured out her soul in the half- fictitious Goethes Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde_(i%$4), a book that has not unjustly been called one of the most THE POLITICAL LYRIC. 249 beautiful of the whole Romantic movement. She wrote also the life of Karoline von Giinderode (Die Gimderode, 1840), the unhappy friend of Wilhelm von Humboldt, who killed herself in 1806. But the meeting of the waters of Romanticism and the new spirit is perhaps seen best of all in Bettina von Arnim's last book, which bears the fantastic title, Dies Buck gehort dem Konig (1849); _here she lays at the feet of the romantically minded King of Prussia a description of the sufferings of the industrial 'hisses under the new social conditions, a book of liberal political ideas set forth with Romantic fervour. Just as the Heidelberg Romanticists brought the visionary dreams of the earlier Romantic School to a more definite focus, so now the movement associated with " Young Germany " advanced from theories to practical and concrete ends. The "Young German" enthusiasm for the__Revolution of 1830 was followed by the political lyric^ which enjoyed a great vogue in Germany from 1840 to tfie Revolution of 1848. This lyric, like all political poetry, had, however, only a very transient interest, and it seems even less sincere to us to-day than that which was inspired by the War of Liberation a generation earlier. In its beginnings the new poetry was not restricted to re- volutionary propaganda, but was also inspired by a growing distrust of the enemy beyond the Rhine, who under the " Young German " regime had enjoyed a high degree of favour. The movement began with a group of Rhine songs, Per deutsche Rhein by Nikolaus Becker (1809-45), with its famous refrain, " Sie sollen ihn nicht haben, den freien deutschen Rhein " ; the still more famous Wacht am Rhein by Max Schneckenburg (1819-49), and a Rhein- liedty Robert Prutz (1816-72), which brings out clearly the relation of the political movement to the radicalism of the " Young German " era. All three songs date from the year 1840. Of the three poets only Prut/, has any further claim on our attention. He wrote ballads and histori- cal tragedies, as well as political poetry, and he narrowly escaped summary punishment for a satirical comedy, Die poiitische Wochenstube (1843). In later life Prutz pro- 250 THE POLITICAL LYRIC. duced a few lyrics that have been remembered, but, once he had enlisted his talent in the service of politics, it was difficult for him to regain his freedom ; and this was true not only of Prutz, but of most of his fellow- singers as well. The revolutionary lyric broke out in earnest in the following year, 1841. Towards the end of that year Ferdinand Freiligrath in a poem, Aus Spanien, made an appeal to his brother poets to stand " _auf einer hohereo Warte als auf den Zinnen der Partei." This called forth a passionate retort from a young Swabian, Georg Herwegh, that party spirit was the mother of all enthusiasms an.d^all victories ; why should the poet hold himself aloof from it ? PY>r the first time the unworldly idealism of the Romantic lyric was challenged, and before long the young revolution- aries of 1841 had carried with them some of the last out7 posts of Romanticism, and even Freiligrath himself. Herwegh and Freiligrath were the most eminent poets of this group. The former of these was born in Stuttgart in 1817, and passed a somewhat stormy youth, which culminated in an insult to an officer, as a consequence of which he had to flee to Switzerland. Here he published his Gedichte ernes Lebendigen in 1841, a second collection following" in 1844. Hervvegh's verse recalls in its youth- ful exuberance the lyric of 1813, but it also falls frequently into the bombastic tone that disfigured much of the latter. He has, however, written not a few verses which justify the belief that he might have produced poetry of a higher kind, had he once been able to outgrow his revolutionary fever. On the strength of his Gedichte eines Lebendigen Herwegh became a celebrity ; he returned to Germany, and was granted an interview by the Prussian king in which the latter expressed the hope that, if they must be enemies, they would at least be honourable ones. But this it was not in Herwegh's nature to be ; he took advantage of the occasion to make political propaganda, and when the authorities intervened, he wrote a letter to the king in a tone which led to his immediate expulsion. The role of exiled political martyr was not, however, dis- HERWEGH AND FREILIGRATH. 251 tasteful to Herwegh, and when the Revolution of 1848 broke out, he placed himself at ...the head of a band of French and German revolutionaries who invaded Baden with the intention of converting that state into a republic. This was the end of Herwegh's career as a politician and also as a poet. His death did not take place until 1874. Ferdinand Freiligrath was a much more staid and pro- ductive writer than Herwegh. He was born at Detmold irT 1810 and died at Cannstadt in 1876. His early poetry was permeated by Romanticism, less, however, by the old German Romanticism than by that blend of Byron and Victor Hugo which was to the taste of the younger generation ; the brilliant exotic colouring of the East had a special attraction for his imagination in these early days. But soon after Herwegh sounded his call to arms, Freiligrath abandoned Romanticism as mere trifling, and became a political poet. In Ein Glau- bensbekenntnis (1844) he declared himself openly a friend of revolution and reform, with the consequences that, to escape prosecution, he was obliged to flee, first to Belgium and then to Switzerland, ultimately to make a more or less permanent home for himself in London. In 1846 appeared another volume of revolutionary poetry under the provocative title Ca ira; and in 1848 Die Toten und die Lebendigen brought upon his head a trial for lesc- mq/este, which, however, ended in his acquittal. Lastly, in 1849 and 1850, he published his Neuere politische und soziale Gedichte, which mark, on the whole, the high-water mark of the revolutionary lyric. In spite of these ten years of immersion in political strife, Freiligrath remained at heart a staunch friend of Romanticism, and, like other poets of that time, he returned to his old love in the more peaceful days that followed. JPowerful as the best of his political poetry is, one cannot help feeling nowadays that he is a greater poet when he follows in the footsteps of the classic and romantic masters, or when he translates Byron, Burns, or Hugo; at least this is the poetry by which he now lives. 252 THE POLITICAL LYRIC. The other poets of this group, as far at least as they wrote political poetry, are now forgotten. Franz Dingel-^ stedt (1814-81), for example, was the author of provocative Lieder eines kosmopolitischen Nachtwachters (1842), but he was only too glad to forget this youthful indiscretion when, in later years, he became an able and successful director j)f j:he Court Theatre^in Stuttgart, then in Munich and in Weimar, where he was responsible for a memorable cycle of Shakespeare's histories produced on the occasion of the Shakespeare Tercentenary in 1864; ultimately he became director of the Vienna Hofburgtheater. In this practical activity lay his strength, not in his lyric, his dramas, or his novels. A. H. Hoffmann von Fallersjeben (1798-1874) was also only apolitical poet by the way. A distinguished German philologist, he was obliged to resign his professorship at Breslau as a consequence of the publication in 1840 and 1841 of two volumes of Un- politische Lieder. From 1843 on ne lived a wandering, unsettled life, which brought him into touch with all classes of the German people. His_lyrics, without break- ing fresh ground as, for instance, Freiligrath's so often do, approximate more closely to the Volkslied ; at the same time his purely political verses are rarely so arid of genuine lyric feeling as most of the political lyric of the time. Hoffmann's poetry may not soar very high, but it is always poetry ; and songs like Deutschland, Deutschland iiber alles have still a warm place in the nation^TTeartT Austria had, as we have seen, been more mercilessly ground under the heel of bureaucratic tyranny in the earlier half of the nineteenth century than North Germany ; it is consequently not surprising that here^ too, the political lyric of the forties should have found an echo. But by this time the character of Austrian political poetry had become resigned, and the Austrian poets who did contribute to the political lyric, such as Karl Beck (1817- 79), Moritz Hartmann (1821-72), and A. Meissner (1822- 85), leave the impression that the revolutionary ideas no longer stood in the foreground of their interests. If these men are remembered at all to-day, it is for other than MINOR POETS AND CRITICS. 253 political reasons Beck for his sympathetic pictures of Hungarian life, Hartmann as the able editor of the Neue Freie Presse, Meissner as an exponent of the Byronic spirit in Austrian poetry. Greater than any of these was the Tyolese singer, Hermann von Gilm (1812-64), whose strength also lay rather in the lyric of emotion than in his championship of liberal opinions in politics. Other poets who came more or less under the influence of the revolutionary movement were Gottfried Kinkel (1815-82), a victim of the rising of 1848, who was rescued from prison in 1850 by the subsequent German-American leader, Karl Schurz; Emanuel Geibel (1815-84), to whom we shall return later, his connection with the political lyric being comparatively brief; and Moritz von Strach- witz (1822-47). Of these, Kinkel enjoyed great popu- larity in his day; but both his Gedichte (1843) and his poetic romance Otto der Schiitz (1846) seem to us now sentimental and superficial. Strachwitz, on the other hand, a young Silesian nobleman who was cut off at the age of twenty-five, was the most promising of them all. His Lieder eines Envachenden (1842) are poems of extra- ordinary promise and show that he had learned his art from the best of masters, August von Platen. Through all this age the ideals of " Young Germany " prevailed in German history and literary criticism. Wolf- gang Menzel (1798-1873) gave voice in trenchant form to the popular predilections and antipathies ; while G. G. Gervinus (1805-71) wrote in a more measured style, tem- pered by the philosophy of Hegel, the history of German literature ( Geschichte der deutschen Nationalliteratur, 1835. Meanwhile, in Berlin, K. A. Varnhagen von Ense (i7 8 5- 1858) fought almost single-handed to overcome the in- difference of the younger generation to Goethe and the great Romantic poetry. 254 CHAPTER XXIII. MIDCENTURY FICTION. AFTER the storms of the revolutionary epoch, which, as we have just seen, were reflected in the political lyric of the time, German literature entered uponji calmer and more even period of its history. The third quarter of the century was not deficient in germinative ideas and important works, but it was, as far as literature was con- cerned, a period of intellectual indifference; the movement of the time was not favourable to poetry. The philosophy of (i. \V. T 7 . Hegel (1770-1831) had dominated the era of Romantic decay, and especially that which followed the Revolution of 1830. Hegel's first notable work, Die Phdnomenologie des Geistes, appeared in 1807 ; his Logik between 1812 and 1816, and his Philosophic des Rechts in 1820. Hegel set out from a Romantic basis, but his collectivism and his extraordinarily synthetic mind were Jiosiilfi_Jo.___that unfettered individualism which was the life-blood of Romanticism. It is strange that this great thinker, who opened up to the nineteenth century a new world of thought, should have exerted so barren, and even blighting, an influence on literature. As time went on, his philosophy gave place- to the more radical, if less constructive, thinking of the so-called "Young Hegel- ians," like Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-72), author of Das Wesen des Christentums (1841), and David Friedrich Strauss, (1818-74), whose Das Leben Jesu made so great a stir in the world in 1835 ; and this in turn was ousted by the pessimism of Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860). HEGEL AND SCHOPENHAUER. 255 Schopenhauer's chief work, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, appeared as early as 1819, but only became a force of magnitude in German intellectual life after the middle of the century. His philosophy, negative as it was, afforded the basis for a revival of poetry, on something akin to the earlier Romantic basis, in the sixties and seventies. Schopenhauer has another and more special claim to a p. ace in the history of literature by virtue of his style, which is to be seen at its best in the essays of the collection, Parerga und Paralipomena (1851); he is one of the most eminent German prose writers of the first half of the nineteenth century. The supremacy of literature in these decades was threatened" From another side, namely, by the rise of an absorbing interest in science, which, thanks to new discoveries, new theories of matter and force, and, above all, of biological evolution, was making an appeal to the popular imagination, as it had never made before. It is consequently hardly sur- prising that, amidst so many conflicting interests, poetry should have been relegated to a subordinate place ; it also explains why the literature which attracted chief attention in these years, was a " Tendenzliteratur," a literature with a purpose. As in the classical period the drama, in the Romantic the lyric, so now, when classicism and Romanticism had alike receded into the past, it was the novel which held the first place in popular favour. The stamp of this age is to be sought in its fiction. The midcentury novel may be said to have arisen directly out of the _social and political tendencies of the time ; but it was also deeply influenced by contemporary masters in French and English literature, such as Balzac and Dickens. Rarely, as in the case of Keller's Der griine Heinrich or Storm's " Novellen," do we find books which are predom- inantly inspired by the traditions of Romanticism ; even the historical novel preferred, to its disadvantage, to follow the methods laid down by an exacting science of history rather than to go back to the more spacious imaginative art of Scott and his earlier German imitators. 256 MIDCENTURY FICTION. The interestinJhe_L'JV.olk," which the later Romanticists had cultivated and of which the " Young German " realists had at least not disapproved, now brought in a rich harvest. Immermantrs Oberhof was the starting-point ; and the first important representative of the peasant-novel was Albert IJitzius, better known by his literary pseudonym of "Jeremias Gotthelf" (1797 1854). This Swjss_paslar.'s stories, of which the best are Wie Uli der Knecht gliicklich ward (1841), Uli der Pdchter (1846), and Elsi, die selfsame Magd (1850), are not free from a moralising purpose, which recalls the social novels of the eighteenth century ; but so whole-hearted and sincere is his realism that, if we have to seek an old-world analogy for his art, we look rather to the bucolic, Homeric simplicity of Voss. Less true to nature are the famous Schwarzwal- der__Dprfgeschichten (1843-57) by Berthold Auerbach__ (1812-82); for Auerbach was less able to sustain the tone of 'naivete, less able to keep himself free from the literary and social tendencies of his time ; the Schwarzwal- der Dorfgeschichten were the products of a very definite epoch, the ideas of which were soon to pass away. None the less, these stories were, in their time, a welcome relief from the novels with a purpose of the " Young German " school, and they were the forerunners of a liter- ature of the peasant that has steadily increased down to our own time. Auerbach's longer novels, such as Auf der Hohe (1865), Das Landhaus am Rhein (1869), and Wald- fried (1874) were less successful; for here his philosophic and sociological ideas, which show how closely he was bound up with the " Young German " period, had freer play ; moreover, he was deficient in constructive talent. The note of artistic sincerity which is lacking in Auer- bach and his imitators is to be found in the idylls and stories (Studien, 1844-50) of Adalbert Stifter (1805-68), the prose poet of the Bohemian Forest, and in the works of the North German novelist, Fritz Reuter (1810-74), who, _of all the writers of this time, is most akin in his art and methods to Dickens. But Reuter is more of a realist than Dickens, and the scope of his art more REUTER AND FREYTAG. 257 limited. _He__re&tricts himself in his best work to his own province of Mecklenburg, and writes in Mecklenburg "jPlattdeutsch," but he gives us a picture of the life of that province in its totality. Like Dickens, lie occasionally yields to the temptations of sentimental writing, but he never caricatures. In his three greatest novels, Ut de Franzosentid (1860), Ut mine Festungstid (1863), and Ut mine Stromtid (1862-64), he has drawn largely on the experiences of his own unhappy life, which, on a mere suspicion of political disaffection, the Prussian government ruined by seven years' imprisonment in a fortress. Only in the Stromtid, the story of his later life as " Strom " or agriculturist in Mecklenburg, do we find a more restful outlook upon life. With these books Reuter achieved what the satirists of the seventeenth century attempted without success ; _he_ made " Plattdeutsch " a literary language ; and it is largely due to him that this alone or the German dialects has effectively resisted the levelling influence of literary High German. What Reuter did for "Plattdeutsch" prose, Klaus Groth (1819-99), trie author of Quickborn. (1852). a collection of simple lyrics written in the Ditmarsch dialect, did for the language as a vehicle of lyric expression. The novel of ideas at the middle of the nineteenth century was pre-eminently the social novel ; the tentative and experimental beginnings of Laube and Gutzkow are here developed. The master of this form of fiction was Gustav Freytag (1816-95), a native of Upper Silesia. He made his reputation first, however, as a dramatist. After attaining a certain ephemeral success with plays such as Die Valentine (1847) and Graf Waldemar (1848), he produced in Die Journalisten (1852) what may be re- garded as the besT comedy of modern life of its time, a play whictThas still a place on the repertory of most German theatres. But excellent as Die Journalisten is and its strength lies rather in its brilliant and witty dialogue than in any merit or novelty of form or theme- it rather brings to a greater perfection the comedy of the previous generation than inaugurates a new stage in the R 258 MIDCENTURY FICTION. development of the German drama. In Die Journalist en, in other words, Freytag nationalised the French corned^ of the era of Scribe. In 1855 appeared his Soil und JTahcn, the best novel of its epoch. This is a story on f the model of the English novel, dealing with modern German commercial life. In seeking the German people, "where it is to "be found most efficient, at its work," Freytag put the literary stamp on the new democratic ideals which had come into power with the Revolution of 1848. His broad outlook on the rising German de- mocracy, his constant assertion of the worth and dignity of commercialism beside the prestige of noble birth, and the kindly optimism with which he brings the hero of this story of industry and application to the headship of a great Hamburg commercial house, make Freytag's Soil und Haben one of the representative books of its time. His next novel, Die verlorene Handschrift (1864), was an at- tempt to do for the German professor what he had already done for the German merchant. But the kind of con- flict which Freytag introduced here on the quest of a lost manuscript of Tacitus the professor neglects his young wife and exposes her to the wiles of a princely lover lay somewhat outside Freytag's sphere, and de- manded a finer poetic insight than he had at his com- mand. The consequence is that the novel degenerates often into triviality, and the possibilities of the theme are not fully taken advantage of. In later life Freytag devoted himself to historical studies. Under masters like Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886) and his disciples, G. Waitz (1813-86), W. Giesebrecht (1814- 89), and Heinrich von Sybel (1817-95) to whose work must be added the magnificent basis for the study of the national past provided by the Monument a Germanics historica, which Stein had founded in 1819 history was becoming an element of growing importance in German culture. But the historians did not limit themselves to \ "German history; as early as 1854-56 Theodor Mommsen (1817-1904) had given the world that Romische Geschichte which laid an indispensable basis for the study of ancient ?xf I * FREYTAG'S HISTORICAL NOVELS. 259 Rome; and in 1860 Jakob Burckhardt (1818-97) in- vestigated the spiritual forces of the Renaissance in his fundamental Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien. Between i859"and 1862 .b'reytag published his Bilder aus - der deutschen Vergangenheit, a series of vivid pictures of the great epochs of German history ; and on the basis of these studies he planned a great prose epic, J)ic Ahncn, in the form of a succession of historical romances illus- trating German national life from the fourth to the middle of the nineteenth century. The series opened well in 1872 with Ingo and Ingraban, which were followed by Das Nest der Zaunkonige (eleventh century, 1874), Die Briider vom deutschen Haus (thirteenth century, 1875), Marcus Kdnig (sixteenth century, 1876), and gradually tapered away in Die Geschivister, two stories of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries (1878), and Aus einer kleinen Stadt (1880), which culminates with the Revolution of 1848. Freytag did not complete his task with the same freshness and zeal with which he had begun it ; and indeed none of the novels touches the heights of Soil und Haben or Die verlorene Handschrift. What was more unfortunate for the German historical novel is that in these books he opened the door to an inartistic : ,c[idacticism,,..a desire to be his- torically instructive, which has proved fatal to this form of fiction in modern Germany. The development of the historical novel on antiquarian lines is to be seen especially in the work of Georg Ebers and Felix Dahn. .Ebers (1857-98) was professor of Egyptology in Leipzig, and made his reputation by a bold and novel attempt to embody the results of his science in a romance of ancient Egypt, Eine_Jigytisc/ie_ Konigstochter (1864). This book was followed by a long series of historical novels on similar lines, ranging in their subjects from biblical times and antiquity to the Reforma- tion. Ebers's strength lay in his faculty of reproducing and synthesising the conditions of a remote historical _gast; but apart from this, his books are common- place, sentimental stories, of no distinctive literary worth. The same criticism applies generally to the historical 260 MIDCEN'TURY FICTION. fiction of Felix Dahn (born 1834), whose scholarly investigations into the early history of the Germanic peoples (Die Konigeder Germanen, 1861-72) are of real importance! Even Darin's most popular novel, Ein Kampf um Rom (1876), a story of the Gothic invasion of the Roman "empire, becomes, when stripped of its historical deckings, merely a not very original novel of sensational happenings. The German movement is anal- ogous to that represented in England by the historical rfovels of Bulwer Lytton, whose rehabilitations of past ages show, it may be, less knowledge and conscientious study, but more literary power. But all these writers pale before Gottfried Keller (1819-90), the greatest German novelist of the middle of the nineteenth century. Keller was born at Zurich on July 1 8, 1819, and grew up in the conviction that his natural bent lay in painting. He spent two years in Munich studying painting, then gave it up for literature. Between 1850 and 1855 lie was in Berlin, where he wrote his first romance, Der grilne Heinrich (1854-55). ^Der griine^Hdnrich js^the last of_the great _ Romantic novels that trace their lineage back in the direct line to Wilhelm Meister^ Like its model, it is the history of a young man's apprenticeship to life, the record of a would-be artist's struggles, temptations, and dreams up to the point where he grows courageous enough to face the truth that he has chosen the wrong vocation. The book has little form and little story to tell, but no novel of the nineteenth century is richer in poetic beauties than this uneventful story into which Keller, with Romantic subjectivity, has woven much both of the " Dicfrtump' and the "Wahrheit" of his own life. Keller's powers are, however, seen to even better ad- vantage TrTThe^'^NoveTTe"" or_short story. In 1856 and In 1874 appeared two volumes entitled Die Leute -von ^j. in 1872, Sieben Le^enden ; in '1878, Zit 'richer Novellen, and 1882, Das Sinngedicht^ The stories which "make Up these collections are of unequal value, but the best of them, such as Romeo und Julia auj dem Dorfe, KELLER AND STORM. 2 6l Das Fdhnlein der sieben Aufrechten, Der Landvogt von Greifensee, are unsurpassed in the literature of the century. As in his long novel, a certain formlessness, combined with a blunt, unsentimental style, has stood in the way of the widest popularity; but his vision is extraordinarily true, and his imagination reveals powers of Romantic insight in which he was not approached by any other German writer of his time. In 1861 Keller was ap- pointed "erster Staatsschreiber " of the canton of Ziirich, a position which he occupied for fifteen years ; he retired in 1876 and died in 1890. He has left one other long novel, Martin Salander, published in 1886, which shows, however, some falling-off in his powers. As a lyric poet (Gedickte, 1846; Neuere Gedichtc, 1851), his originality is no less marked than in his prose works, and he deservedly takes a high place in an age which, as far as lyric poetry was concerned, was content to move in traditional grooves. Theodor Storm (1817-88), the North German master of the mid-century " Novelle," forms another link between the old Romanticism and the modern spirit. But Storm stood more under the shadow of the Romantic traditions than his Swiss contemporary. His Gedichte (1853) are, for the most part, influenced by Eichendorff ; and all his writings^ whether prose or verse, are filled with' a Romantic love for the moors and coasts of his Schleswig-Holstein home. His " Novellen " fall into two groups; the older ones, such as Immensee (1852), Im Sonnenschein (1854), Ein griines Blatt (1855), are pessimistic in tone, and delight in jetrospect and__._r.esignatioj} ; while a second group includes the more realistic, psychological, and even dramatic stories^which he cultivated from 1877 on. The best examples of this second group are Psyche (1877), Aquis Submersus (1877), Renate (1878) the two latter belonging to a series of realistically archaic " Chronik- novellen." Storm's last two stories, John Rieiv 1 (1886) and Der Schimmelreiter (1888), bear witness to his desire to keep abreast of the modern movement in fiction towards psychological realism^ 262 MIDCENTURY FICTION. The third of the leading German short-story writers of this period is Paul .Heyse (born 1830), whose first volume of Novellen appeared as early as 1855. This was followed by an almost endless series of short stories Meraner Novellen (1864), Moralische Novellen (1869 and 1878), Troubadour- Novellen (1882), etc. which show a marvellously fertile imagination and invention. Heyse is superior both to Keller and Storm in the matter of form. A passionate lover of Italy, he began his life as a student of the Romance literatures and learned from them a lesson in style which he has never forgotten. He fashions his stories with the eye of the sculptor or the painter ; _beauty_ of form and expression is the constant end he has in view, however much he may be tempted by problems of piquant psychological interest to wander into irrelevant byways. And yet, although Heyse has outlived both Keller and Storm, his work has been less able to stand the test of time than theirs. His style seems nowadays too scintillating and clever to be sincere, and the types of character and incident which attract him, belong rather to the "Young German " era than to our modern time. The best of his " Novellen " still remain the early Italian ones, where his objectivity is most complete and his vision least warped by per- sonal prejudices. Heyse has also written several long novels, of which o n e^jaL. leasi,. ^Kinder der Welt .,.(1873), is of the first Importance. Kinder tier }\\'lt is a "Zeitroman" and the representative novel of its time : its main theme is the antagonism between the "children of the world" and the "children of God," which was a very real one to the generation which came through the midcentury conflict between ^orthodoxy and science ; but the new forces of pessimism, of social democracy, and imperialism also play a large part in the book. A second novel, Im Paradiese (1876), deals more exclusively with Munich artist-circles, and did not make so wide an appeal ; while Heyse's more recent novels are, with the exception of Der Roman der Stiftsdame (1886), mainly occupied with HEYSE AND SPIELHAGEN. 263 attacks on modern literary movements with which Heyse is not in sympathy. As a dramatist, Heyse has failed to win a permanent place for himself in the repertory of the German theatre, but some of his plays, especially Hans Lange (1866) and Colberg (1868), are classic in their well-balanced form and polished style. Gutzkow's most immediate successor was Friedrich Spielhagen (1829-1911), a much more militant repre- sentative of the social novel than I'Yeytag. His Prol>- lemattscht Naturen (1860) deals, like Gutzkow's 'Ritter vom (jeiste, with the period of the Revolution of 1848, but in a more modern way ; it is to that epoch what .Kinder der Welt is to the later sixties. Spielhagen here holds the mirror up to the generation that had come through the fever and the fret of 1848, and voices its hopes and aspirations and despairs. The phrase " problematic natures " was originally Goethe's, and is applied to those vacillating, indecisive people who are unequal to any situa- tion in which they happened to be placed, and unable to obtain either satisfaction or happiness from life. Spiel- hagen's hero, Oswald Stein, who dies fighting in the Rev- olution of 1848, is such a nature, a dreamer of dreams, for whom the enigma of life remains to the end unsolved. Problematische Naturen was followed by In Reitt und Glied (1866) and Hammer und Amboss (1869), excel- lent novels, in which the socialistic and economic ideas of the time form the background. Spielhagen was an exceedingly voluminous writer, but his development as a literary artist did not keep pace with his ideas, which remained to the last in sympathy with all that was liberal and advanced in German thought. Of his later books, hardly more than one, namely, Sturmflut (1876), which deals with the financial crises in Berlin after the Franco-German War, can stand comparison with his earlier masterpieces. These are the leading novelists of this period. Of the many minor writers of fiction mention may be made of two German-American writers, Charles Sealsfield, whose real name was K. A. Postl (1793-1864), and Friedrich 264 MIDCENTURY FICTION. Gerstacker (1816-72), both of whom have left vivid if somewhat highly coloured sketches and novels of American life. The works of the Grafin Ida Hahn-Hahn (1805-80), again, are surrounded by an atmosphere of catholic ascet- icism, and describe aspects of the social life of their time which lay outside the range of the "Young Germans" and their immediate successors. CHAPTER XXIV. NEW BEGINNINGS IN THE DRAMA ; THE MUNICH SCHOOL. ALTHOUGH the novel occupied the chief place as a vehicle for the social and intellectual ideas of the middle of the century, the drama was at the same time passing through an interesting phase of its development, a phase which was to be of great significance for the later time. The representative dramatists of this period were Christian Friedrich Fiebbel, Otto Ludwig, and Richard JA'a^np-r. All three were born in the year 1813; Hebbel died in 1863, and Ludwig in 1865, just as Wagner was entering his period of maturity. Hebbel is one of the most original dramatic writers of the nineteenth century. A native of Holstein, where his childhood was spent amidst the direst poverty, he made a beginning to his literary life in Hamburg ; in spite of his poverty he studied for two years at the universities oi Heidelberg and Munich, and when fame began to come to him, he was able, with the help of a pension from the King of Denmark, to spend some time in Italy. On his return in 1845 he settled in Vienna, where, after his marriage with Christine Enghaus, a leading actress of the Hofburgtheater, his life passed into quieter waters. Hebbel made his debut under " Young German " auspices in 1840 w\t\\ Jiidith. This is a powerful tragedy in prose, on which the~struggles of Hebbel's own early life have left their traces, but it is mainly significant as a plea for the rights of personality, of which Hebbel makes his heroine THeTspokesman. From amidst the unrestrained and often 266 NEW BEGINNINGS IN THE DRAMA. crude brutality of this tragedy, the figure of Judith stands out as a type of dramatic heroine that was new to the dramatic literature of Europe. In Genoveva (1843), Hebbel's second play, he went back to a theme of which the Romantic poets were fond, but he treated it in a quite unromantic and modern way ; in his hands it becomes a psychological study of an uncontrollable passion against a" picturesque mediaeval background. Maria Magdalene^ (1844) is a " biirgerliche Tragodie," an excellently con- structed play of the type that had come down from Lessing and Schiller ; but with his love for the bizarre in human relations, and his tendency_to_accentuate the psychological problem, Hebbel has invested his simple townsfolk with thoughts and emotions which often seem too complex for their station in life. The series of Hebbel's greater dramas began with Herodes und Mariamne in 1850. The Jewish story, which in its original form presents a complicated enough psycho- logical problem, is treated with boldness and originality. In Hebbel's eyes Herodes loves Mariamne with a superhuman passion that stretches out its arms even beyond the grave ; the play becomes a tragedy of marriage, in which love alone is unable to make up for that infringe- ment of the rights of the woman's individuality of which Herodes is guilty in his treatment of Mariamne. Here Hebbel is clearly the predecessor of the drama of the later nineteenth century, and particularly of that of Ibsen. The same or a similar ethic theme is presented in historic guise in the tragedy of Agnes Bernauer (1852), in which the rights of the individual are brought into conflict with the claims of the state ; cold political reasoning demands the sacrifice of Agnes, a sacrifice which, like that of Schiller's Maria Stuart, is doleful rather than tragic. In Gyges und sein Ring (1856), the fable of which comes from Herodotus, Hebbel found a subject peculiarly adapted to his strange talent. In the centre of the action again stands a woman, who resents the slight on her personality inflicted on her by her own husband, and wipes out the disgrace by murder and suicide. Of FRIEDRICH HEBBEL. 267 all Hebbel's tragedies this seems the one in which the conflict has most vraisemblance and is least at variance with normal human experience ; it is also, as poetry, the most uniformly sustained. Hebbel's last and most ambitious work, Die Nibelungen (1862), is a trilogy on which he spent seven" years. "The immediate stimulus was a mediocre tragedy by Raupach, Der Nibelungenhort, in which his wife had made an unforgettable impression upon him as Kriemhild ; but to interpret in terms of his own delicate psychological art the rough mediaeval simplicity of the German national epic had, no doubt, a fascination for Hebbel's genius. He regarded the Nibelungenlied as a picture in outline, in which he had to fill in the psychological details. He put, moreover, his powers to a peculiarly severe test by accepting the epic virtually as he found it ; he altered little or nothing, unless in so far as it was necessary for dramatic purposes to concentrate the action ; such additions ^.s he made for instance, the ethic conflict between the new Christianity and the old heathendom, which forms the background were only by way of inter- pretation. He retained as far as he could the simplicity of the characters, and in Hagen and in the Kriemhild of the closing drama, Kriemhilds Rache, he has created con- vincing dramatic figures of tragic dignity and grandeur; but, on the whole, the limitations which the poet set himself were detrimental to the full development of his peculiar talent. The trilogy is neither genuinely mediaeval nor genuinely modern. At his death Hebbel left, like Schiller, a tragedy on the subject of Demetrius (1864); he is also the author of several comedies, Der Diamant (1847), Der Rubin (iSs'i^'W^M Angela (1855), but these are of subordinate interest. Among his non- dramatic writings his Gedichts (1842, 1848, 1857) are remarkable for their strength and originality, although lacking in the suaver qualities of the German lyric ; his epic idyll, Mutter und Kind (1859), is a contribution to the form of literature on which Goethe had set his stamp in Hermann und Dorothea; and his Tagebiicher, 268 NEW BEGINNINGS IN THE DRAMA. which occupy four volumes of his works, afford a glimpse into the workshop of a poet to which it would be difficult to find a parallel in any other modern literature. Hebbel's contemporary, Otto Ludwig (1813-65), was a very different type of man. By birth a Thuringian, he was one of those " problematic natures " in which the period was so rich ; he lived isolated from the world and suffered keenly under its rebuffs. His two most important dramas, JDer _Erbforster (1850) and Die Makkabaer_ (1853), are, to a certain extent, supplementary to Hebbel's ; they are no less modern, but in quite a different way. Ludwig is a realist, in so far as his strength lay in the observance of detail and the faithful reproduction of milieu ; and although he avoids the complicated psychological realism of Hebbel's character- drawing, character is to him no less the mainspring of dramatic action. But Ludwig's dramatic work suffered from his preoccupation with theory and a self-conscious- ness which led him to model and remodel his work until it lost all its original spontaneity. He was, as is to be seen from his Shakespeare- Studien, an uncompromising admirer of Shakespeare, and this blinded him to the merits of other dramatists and other forms of the drama. His comedies are ineffective, and Der Erbforster, in spite of its somewhat sensational and melodramatic plot, has remained the only one of his plays which is still occa- sionally to be seen on the stage. As a novelist, how- ever, Ludwig is still a very real force in German litera- ture. Here his finely chiselled style, the delicacy of his descriptions of nature, and his delight in the infinitely little, found far fuller scope than in the drama. His Zwischen Himmel und Erde (1856) is one of the finest German stories of the middle of the century ; and its perfect sincerity makes it as fresh and vital to-day as when it was written. Hardly less interesting are the two stories of Thuringian village life, Die Heiteretei and Aus dem Regen in die Traufe (1857). Of the three dramatists born in the year 1813, Richard Wagner (1813-83) undoubtedly left the deepest mark on LUDWIG AND WAGNER. 269 his time; but Wagner had the advantage of being not only a born dramatist, but also a musician of the first rank. Born in Leipzig, he went through a musical apprenticeship in provincial German theatres; in 1839 he visited Paris in the quest of a success he could not find at home. The disappointments and privations of these Paris years are reflected in the stories of Eiu^. deutscher Musiker in Paris (1840-41). Meanwhile his one " - T grana " opera, J&enzi (1842), had met with some favour in Germany, and in Paris he wrote Der fliegende Hollander^^^\ on a weird ballad-like theme, which broke with the operatic traditions of the time. This was followed by the two music-dramas, Tannhduser und der Sdngerkrieg auf Wartburg (1845) *&& Lohengrin (1850). These are typically Romantic works, Romantic both in form and ideas ; and they remained throughout the whole nineteenth century Wagner's most popular operas. In 1849 ne was involved in the revolutionary movement in Dresden and obliged to flee to Switzerland. Here he wrote the three treatises which contain the theoretical principles of his art, Die Kunst und die Revolution (1849), D_ as Kunstwerk der Zukunft (1850), and Oper und JDrama^iS^i). In these books Wagner brought to clear expression ideas that had busied Gentian writers on the theory of the drama since the eighteenth century ; he maintained that the highest model for the national drama of the Germans was the drama of ancient Greece ; that is to say, music, acting, and painting, should lend their combined aid to interpret a dramatic theme of national significance. Above all, he insisted that music should again Become what" it had been in earlier times, a means to the dramatic and poetic end, and not, as the Italians of the early nineteenth century had made it, an end in itself. The trilogy, or rather tetralogy, Per Jling jles Nibe- htngen, written in 1853, is an illustration of what Wagner regarded as a German national drama. The poem was not published until ten years later, and its musical composition occupied him, with interruptions, 270 NEW BEGINNINGS IN THE DRAMA. from 1853 to 1870. The two first dramas, Das Rhein- gold and Die Walkiire, were performed at Munich in 1869 and 1870; the other two, Siegfried and Gqtter^- ddmmerung, not until 1876, when the whole work was produced in the " Festspielhaus " at Bayreuth. This performance of Der Ring des Nibelungen, which Wagner carried through in spite of almost insuperable difficulties, might be described as the first national achievement of German art, after the establishment of the new empire. Der Ring des Nibelungen is written in a kind of allitera- tive verse, this being in Wagner's opinion better adapted for singing than rhymed verse; and it is based to a larger extent on the Scandinavian sagas than on the German Nibelungenlied. Wagner fused the story of the Vohungasaga with the German traditions of Siegfried and the Burgundians, and retained the mythological back- ground of the northern saga. By this means he was able to utilise picturesque events that appealed to his imagination, such as the rainbow-bridge to Valhalla, Briinnhilde's fire- girt mountain, and Siegfried's fight with the dragon, and to embody in the whole an ethic idea which assumes grandiose proportions in the final catastrophe of the "twilight of the gods." Der Ring des Nibelungen gives joice to the pessimism of the nineteenth century as hardly another work of its time; poets like Lenau and Leopardi have given finer, more intimately personal ex- pression to their despair, but Wagner rises superior to purely personal issues ; his pessimism is closely akin to Schopenhauer's, with whose work he was not, however, familiar until after his poem was written. More closely identified with Schopenhauer's philosophy is the pessimism of the music-drama Tristan und Isolde (1865), where, with a masterly command of dramatic effect, Wagner succeeded in forging out of the loose and endless narrative of Gottfried's poem a love-tragedy of Greek dignity and strength. In 1868 followed Die Meistersinger von Niirnberg, in which he endeavoured to realise that ideal of the Romantic theorists, a national German comedy which should embody the life and MINOR DRAMATISTS. 271 aspirations of the German "Volk." For Die Meister- singer, Wagner not only made extensive studies in the literature of the sixteenth century, but he also borrowed situations and motives from Hoffmann's Meister Martin der Kufner und seine Gesellen, and a drama Hans Sachs, by an Austrian dramatist, J. L. Deinhardstein. From jiie purely literary point of view, it is his most notable creation ; no other German dramatist of the century has handled so complicated a theme with such technical mastery and such apparent spontaneity as he has done here. His last drama, Parsifal, a dramatisation of Wolfram's epic, as Tristan iind Isolde had been of Gottfried's, was produced in 1882. The serene beauty and religious earnestness of this poem presents still another phase of Wagner's genius. Parsifal is steeped, like its predecessor, in pessimism, but it is a transfigured pessimism ; for Wagner had gone the way of all pessi- mists, and turned to the fatalism of the East. But by 1882 the spell of Schopenhauer on the German mind had ceased to be all-powerful, and the younger gener- ation was beginning to face life with more energy and hopefulness ; Parsifal was felt rather to represent the close of its era than the beginning of a new one. The other dramatic literature of this period is of com- paratively small account ; in the fifties and sixties the theatre was almost exclusively dominated by "Young German " ideas, and the playwrights who wrote for it, such as Robert Griepenkerl (i 810-68), R. von Gottschall (1823-1910), O. von Redwitz (1823-91), and A. E. Brachvogel (1824-78), were, for the most part, belated "Young Germans." The most popular playwrights, the successors of Iffland and Kotzebue, were Roderich Benedix (181 1-73) and Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer (1800-68). In the following decade the German theatre suffered under the importation of French plays, and such serious writing as there was, tended to fall back into imitations of Schiller's drama. It was not until the beginning of the eighties that there was much hope for a removal of the stagnation into which theatre and drama had 272 THE MUNICH SCHOOL. fallen in Germany ; meanwhile the initiative of Hebbel was forgotten. In the epoch before the Franco-German War the only group of writers to whom the word " School " could be applied was that which the Bavarian king, Maximilian II., gathered round him in Munich from abouT'TS^oT inwards. The chief of these writers, in the earlier period at least, was Emanuel Geibe.1 (1815-84), who has already been mentioned as a contributor to the poli- tical lyric of the earlier generation. His share in that movement was restricted to a collection of poems entitled Ztitstimmen (1841), the tone of which, moreover, is conciliatory and anti-revolutionary. Geibel's Juniuslieder (1847) contain, however, some of the most inspired purely lyric poetry of the revolutionary epoch. In 1851 he accepted the royal invitation to Munich and spent seven years there, the most productive years of his life. To this period belong the longer poems, Der Mythus vom Dampf, Der Bildhauer des Hadrian, Der Tod des Tiberius, and the cycle of lyrics, Ada, in memory of his wife, whom he lost in 1855, all of these being included in the collec- tion of Neue Gedichte (1857). Geibel was the heir of the vast literary tradition of the Romantic lyric, and it proved too much for him ; his own poetic individuality was not strong enough to allow him to strike out a distinctive path for himself. Gifted with undeniable lyric powers, he has left less mark on the development of German poetry than any other of the greater lyric poets. Geibel was also a dramatist, but his plays, of which the comedy, Meister Andrea (1855), and the drama, Brunhild (1858), the subject of which is drawn from the Nibelungenlied, may be mentioned, are deficient in dramatic force and in understanding for the needs of the theatre. Friedrich Bodenstedt (1819-92), another poet of the Munich circle, made his reputation with a single book, the Lieder des Mirza Schaffy (1851), which was extraordinarily popular in its day. There is, however, little originality either of thought or lyric inspiration behind his some- what shallow imitations of oriental poetry, and the J. V. VON SCHEFFEL. 273 interest in them soon waned. Graf Adolf Friedrich von Schack (1815-94) is better remembered nowadays as an art-patron than as a man of letters ; his original verse does not display much talent, but he made some admir- able translations of oriental, Spanish, and Portuguese poets, and his Geschichte der dramatischen Literatur und Kunst in Spanien (1845-46) established his reputation as an authority on Spanish literature. Other poets of the circle were the unhappy Heinrich Leuthold (1827-79), whose Gedichte (1879) have something of the tragic earnestness of Lenau's pessimism ; Hermann Lingg (1820- 95), the author of an ambitious epic, Die Volkenvanderung (1866-68), and Martin Greif (the pseudonym of Hermann Frey, 1839-1911), whose lyrics and dramas, although written under Romantic influences, show no signs of Romantic decadence. One of the most widely popular writers of the Munich circle was Joseph Viktor von Scheffel (1826-86). His poetry, especially the verse-romance Der Tromfcter von Sdkkingen (1854), has verve and charm, in spite of an excess of that sentimentality which was the least valuable heritage of Romanticism ; it appealed exactly to the tastes of the day, and gives an idea, if not of the best the Munich poets could do, at least of the public taste to which they had to appeal. On a higher level stands Scheffel's historical romance, JEkkehard^ eine Geschichte aus dem zehnten Jahrhundert (1857), an excel- lent historical novel, in which the author was poet enough not to substitute, as so many of his conhMiiporarii's did. mere antiquarian research for poetic imagination. Scheffel made the story in verse popular, and he had several more or less successful followers, such as Julius Wolff (1834- 1910), author of Der Rattenf anger von Hameln (1875) and Der wilde Jdger (1877), Rudolf Baumbach (1840- 1905), whose Zlatorog appeared in 1878, and F. W. Weber ( 1 8 1 3-94). The last-mentioned of these was a Westphalian catholic, of manly and independent talent : his epic romance Dreizehnlinden (1878), in spite of a somewhat obtrusive religious tendency, certainly deserved its popu- s 274 THE MUNICH SCHOOL. larity. These years appear to have also brought a certain revival of popular interest in the epic ; the most original representative of this form of poetry was Wilhelm Jordan (1819-1904). Jordan began his career in the political epoch ; his philosophy, which obtrudes to an excessive degree in his poetry, is that of the scientific reaction at the middle of the century, and his chief work, the epic Die Nibelunge (1869-72), is in its patriotic fervour not free from the tendencies of the " Young German " epoch. But Jordan, no doubt, impressed his contemporaries by his vigorous personality, his imagination, and his zeal. About the same time, poets like Karl Simrock (1802-76) and Wilhelm Hertz (1835-1902) were, with their excellent translations, making the great Middle High German epics themselves a force in modern life. The undeniable lack of artistic seriousness in the litera- ture of the Munich group was atoned for by a strongly marked pessimistic strain. In this period the zenith of German pessimism was reached ; it had been made palatable to the time by Eduard von Hartmann (1834- 1906), with his Philosophic des Unbewussten (1869), a kind of compromise between the pessimism of Scho- penhauer and Hegelianism. In literature the pessimistic note is to be found in the verse of Heinrich Leuthold, who has just been mentioned, and in the still more despairing Gedichte (1870) of the deaf and ultimately blind Moravian poet Heinrich Landesmann, who wrote under the name of " Hieronymus Lorm " (1821-1902). Sombre, too, in spite of occasional exotic touches, is the poetry of Ferdinand von Schmid, known to literature as " Dranmor " (1823-88). The chief representative of pessimism among the poets of this age was, however, the Austrian Robert Hamerling (1838-89), whose reputation rests on two epics, _Ahasver in Rom (1866), on the theme of the Wandering Jew, and J9gr JCo^gpon -$f{>n <"i86o\ a historical epic dealing with thensing of the Anabaptists in Miinster in 1534. These are perhaps the most ambitious experiments in epic poetry which the age has to show. Hamerling was unquestionably highly gifted ; he had R. HAMERLING; K. F. MEYER. 275 grandiose ideas, a sense for colour and splendour, and a mastery of dramatic effects ; and yet, in spite of all this, the reader is conscious of a certain emptiness in his verse, a suspicion of lack of sincerity, which reduces the general impression of his work to one of rhetoric and theatrical effect. Hamerling's poetry has not, it must be admitted, stood the test of time well. A drama, Danton Robespierre (1871), a philosophic novel, Aspasia (1876), and a satire on modern life, Homunculus (1888), failed to win the enthusiastic admiration which had greeted the epics. The chief representative of the novel in the Munich circle was Paul Heyse, who has already been discussed in an earlier chapter ; and with him might be associated W. H. Riehl (1823-97), whose finely chiselled Kultur- geschichtliche Novellen (1856) must be numbered among the best short stories of the time. But the master of the " Novelle " in this age was a fellow-countryman of Gottfried Keller, Konrad Ferdinand Meyer (1825-98). Meyer, who made a name for himself as a lyric and epic poet before he turned to fiction, has left us a series of short stories, all distinguished by a polished style and perfect workmanship. Jiirg Jenatsch appeared in 1876, Der Heilige, a story of Thomas a Becket, in 1880, and these were followed in rapid succession by Das Amulet, Der Schuss von der Kanzel, Plautus im Nonnenkloster, Die Hochzeit des Monchs, and Die Versuchung des Pescara. As a stylist Meyer has an Austrian counterpart in Ferdinand von Saar (1845-1906), whose Novellen aus Osterreich (1877-97) are, however, tinged by a pessimism which is foreign to Meyer's robuster genius. The longer novel of this epoch is represented by W. Jensen (born 1837) and A. Wilbrandt (1837-1911), of whom the latter endeavoured to keep pace with more modern develop- ments of German fiction, even although he remained in style and manner faithful to the older school. Wil- brandt was also a dramatist of some distinction, but his conservative tendencies are more marked in his drama than in his fiction. The chief humourists of the period 276 THE MUNICH SCHOOL. are Wilhelm Raabe (1831-1910), whose work has a Dickensian flavour, without Dickens's optimism ; and Wilhelm Busch (1832-1908), author of the famous Max und Moritz (1865), Der heilige Antonins (1870), and other poems, in which the wit is often eclipsed by somewhat cruel irony. The period during which the Munich School domin- ated German literature was, although unproductive of work of the first order in poetry, markedly active in other fields ; it was the age in which Germany under Bismarck was fighting her way to the front rank of European peoples. This alone diverted the attention of the Ger- mans from literature, and it is not surprising that in a time of such great political changes the interest in histori- cal studies should have shown no abatement. As the representative historian of this later period, Heinrich von Treitsr.hke (1834-96) may be mentioned, whose most im- portant work is \\\sDeica. 1000. Hrotsuith of Gandersheim. ca. 952-1022. Xotker of St Gall, [ca. 955-ca. 1020. Aelfric.] ca. looo. De Heinrico. 1024-39. Konrad II. ca. 1030. Ruodlieb. [ca. 1040. Vie de Saint Alexis. ] 1039-56. Heinrich III. MIDDLE HIGH GERMAN PERIOD. Transition from Old to Middle High, German. ca. ipjp-i I 1056-1106. Heinrich IV. ca. 1060. Memento rnori. 1063. The Ezzolied. Willeram, Das hohe Lied. [1066. The Battle of Hastings.] ca. 1070. Genesis. Exodus. Dreikonigsspiel. 1076-85. Heinrich's conflict with Pope Gregory VII. (Hilde- brand). ca. 1080. The Annolied. [The Chanson de Roland and the earliest 'chansons de gestes. '] 102^22,. The First Crusade. 1106-25. Heinrich V. Hartmann's Vom Glauben. Frau Ava (died 1127). 1125-37. Lothar the Saxon. ca. 1130. Lamprecht's Alexanderlied. Vorauer Genesis. ca. 1135. Konrad's Rolandslied. 1138-52. Konrad III. (the first Hohenstaufen emperor. ca. 1130-50. The Kaiserchronik. [ca. 1079-1142. Abelard. ca. 1100-54. Geoffrey of Monmouth.] 1147-49. The Second Crusade. ca. 1150. Isengrimus. [ca. 1155. Wace, Roman de Brut.~\ 1152-90. Friedrich I. (Barbarossa). ca. 1160, Kdiiisr Rather. Heinrich von Melk, Von des t&des gehugede and Priesterleben. [Wace's Brut (1155). Benoit de Sainte More, Roman de Troie."\ ca. 1 1 70. Wernher, Lieder von der Jimgfrau. Anegenge. Floris und Blanche/lur. Heinrich von Veldeke, Servatins. [ca. 1170-80. Chretien de Troyes, Yvain, Perceval.] ca. li6o-ca._jJ9O. ' Springtime of the Minnesang.' Kurenberg, Diet- mar von Aist, the Burggraf von Regensburg, Meinloh von Sevelingen, Friedrich von Hausen (died 1190), Herger, 'Der Spervogel'). CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES. 289 ca. II7S-86. Heinrich von Veldeke's Emit. ( ca. 1180. Eilhart von Oberge, Tristrant. Herzog Ernst. Salman und Morolf. Orendel. Oswald. Wernher von Elmendorf, Tugendlehre. Heinrich der Glichezare, Reinhart. [Maiie de France, Fables. ~\ 1184. Barbarossa's Festival at Mainz. 1 1 88. Tegernsee Antichrist drama. 1190-97. Heinrich VI. 1190-92. The Third Crusade. [1189-99. Richard Cceur de Lion.] - ca. 1190-1200. The Nibelungenlied. ca. 1190. Albrecht von Halberstadt, Metamorphosen. Walther von der Vogelweide's earliest lyrics. Heinrich von Morungen. Reinmar von Hagenau (died ca. 1210). ca. 1191. Hartmann von Aue, Erec. ca. 1195. Ulrich von Zatzikoven, Lanzelet. Herbert von Fritslar, Lied von Troja. The Lucidarius. ca. 1198. Walther leaves Vienna, [ca. 1137-ca. 1208. Walter Map.] 1198-1208. Philipp of Swabia. 1198-1215. Otio IV. 1198-1216. Pope Innocent III. 1200-4. The Fourth Crusade. ca. I2OO. Hartmann's Gregorius ; Der arme Heinrich. ca. 1205. Hartmann's hvein. Wirnt von Gravenberg, Wigalois. Der IVinsbeke. [Layamon's Brut. The Ormuhtm.] ca. 1205-10. Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival. ca. 1210-15. Gj^fned_y^n^S\iass^bji[g, Tristan. Wolfram's Titnrcl and Willehalm. Gudnm. [ca. 1205-13. Villchardouin. Chronique.~\ 1212. Walther's political activity on behalf of Otto IV. 1215-50. Friedrich II. 1216-20. The Fifth Crusade. [1215. Magna Charta in England.] I2l6. Death of the Landgraf Hermann of Thuringia. ca. 1215. Thomasin von Zirclsere, Der welsche Cast. [Robert de Boron. ] ca. I22O. Heinrich von Tiirlin, Die Krone. Kor.rad Fleck, Flore und Blanc hsjlttr. ' Der Strieker.' Biterolf und Die tlieb. Der Rosengarten. Laurin. [The Ancren Riwle. Owl and Nightingale.] ca. 1225. Rudolf von Ems (died 1254), Der gute Gerhard, Barlaam undjosaphat. Eike von Repgdve, Der Sachsenspiegel, 1227. Walther takes Friedrich's part against the Pope, ca. 1225-40. The Later Minnesang. Neidhart von Reuental (ca. Ii8o-ca. 1230). Hiltbold von Schwangau (ca. 1221-56). Ul- rich von Singenberg. Leuthold von Sa'ben. Reinmar von Zweter (ca. 1200-60). Burkhart von Hohenfels. Ulrich von Winterstetten. Gottfried von Neifen (ca. 1234-55). T ^ 2QO CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES. ca. 1217-30. Freklank, Bescheidenheit. ca. 1235. Rudolf von Ems, Wilhehn von Orlens. [ca. 1237. G. de Lorris, Roman de la Rose. Matthew Paris. ] ca. 1240. Ulrich von Tiirheim. Rudolf von Ems, Weltchronik. Rein- bot von Duren. Der heilige Georg. Wernher, Meier Heltn- brecht. 1248-50. The Sixth Crusade. ca. 1250. Willem's Reinaert de Vos. [The Harrouiitig of Hell.] 1255. Ulrich von Lichtenstein (ca. 1200-76), Frauendienst. Bert- hold von Holle. 1257- Ulrich von Lichtenstein, Das Franenbuch. ca. 1260. Konrad von_ Wurzburg's early poems (Alexius, Der Welt Lohn, Die goldene Schmiede). Religious prose : David von Augsburg (died 1272), Berthold von Regensburg (ca. 1220-72). Der Schivabenspiegel, 1268. Death ofKonradin, the last Hohenstaufen. 1270. The Seventh and last Crusade. ca. 1265-ca. 1275. Konrad von Wurzburg's Herzemdre and Engelhart. ' Der Pleier.' Der jiingere Titurel. Alpharts Tod. ' Der Marner.' Heinrich von Meissen (' Frauenlob ') (ca. 1250-1318). [Roger Bacon. Rutebeuf. 1265. Dante born.] 1273-92. Rudolf of Hapsburg. ca. 1277. Konrad von Wurzburg's Partenopier. fj. de Meung, con- tinuation of the Roman de la Rose.] ca. 1280. Lohengrin. Konrad von Wiirzburg's Trojanischer Krieg. Ulrich von Eschenbach. Dietrichs Flitcht. Die Raben- schlacht. ca. 1285. Seifried Helbling. [Havelok. King Horn. Sir Tristrem.] 1287. Konrad von Wurzburg's death. ca. 1300. Hugo von Trimberg, Der Renner. Heinrich von Freiberg. Der Warlburgkrieg. Johannes Hadlaub. Heinzlein von Konstanz, Die Minnelehre. [Cursor Mundi.] 1327. Death of Meister Eckhart. [1321. Death of Dante.] ca. 1335. Wisse and Colin, Parzival. [Petrarch and Laura. Rolle of Hampole. L. Minot. Manning of Brunne.] ca. 1340. Hadamar von Laber, Die Jagd. [The Tale of Gamely n. Michel's Ayenbite of Inwyt.] TRANSITION PERIOD (ca. 1350-1500). 1348. Founding of the University of Prague. 1349. Ulrich von Boner, Der Edelstein. [ca. 1350. Boccaccio's Decameron, Revival of alliterative poetry in England.] CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES. 2QI 1350-1550. The flourishing-period of the German Volkslied. ca. 1350. Heinrich Seuse (ca. 1295-1366). Johannes Tauler (ca. 1300-61). [Sir Gawan and the Grene Knight. 1362 ff. Piers Plowman, ca. 1360-1400. Froissart's Chroniques.} ca. 1375. West Flemish version of Reinke l-'os. Peter Suchenwirt. [1374. Petrarch dies. 1376. Barhour's Bruce.'} 1386-88. Historical ballads on the Battle of Semper. [1387-98. Chaucer's Canterbury Talcs.'] Beginning of I5th Century. Hugo von Montfort (1357-1423). Os- wald von Wolkenstein (ca. 1367-1445). Heinrich von Witten- weiler, Der Ring. [John Lydgate.] ca. 1450. The Invention of Priming. [1455-71. Wars of the Roses.] ca. J45O-ca. 1460. Hans Rosenpliit (ca. 1427-60). Michael Beheim (i4i6-ca. 1480). Muskatblut. Heinrich von Laufenberg (died 1460). [Charles d'Orleans (ca. 1415-65). F. Villon.] 1453. Hermann von Sachsenheim, Die Mbhrin. 1459-1519. Maximilian I., 'the last of the knights.' 1466. The first German Bible printed at Strassburg. 1470. Wimpfeling's Stylpho. [ca. 1470. Maitre Patelin.~\ 1472. The Dresdener Heldenbuch. Albrecht von Eyb. [1475. The Babees' Book.} ca. 1475. Der Pfaffe von Kalenberg. ca. 1480. Ulrich Flietrer, Buck der Abenteuer. Theodor Schernberg, Spiel von Fraufutten. 1483. Eulenspiegel. Martin Luther born. [Malory's Morte d 1 Arthur, publ. 1485.] 1494. Sebastian Brant, Das Narrenschiff. Hans Sachs born. [1492. Columbus discovers America.] 1497. Reuchlin's Henno. 1498. Reinke de Vos. [Lancelot of the Lai k.} THE SIXTEENTH CKNTURY. ca. 1500. Johann Geiler of Kaisersberg (1445-1510). [Jean Marot. John Skelton.] 1505. Wimpfeling, Deutsche Geschichte. 1506. Reuchlin, Hebrew Grammar. 1508. Luther goes to Wittenberg. 1509-13. Erasmus in England. 1509. Erasmus, Enchiridion militis christiani, Enconium Mori<. [The Ship of Fools.} ca. 1510. Early Niirnberg Fastnachtsspiele (Hans Folz). 1512. Maximilian I., Der Weisskbnig. Th. Murner, Die Nan-en- beschwbrung. [Gringoire, Le Jcu du Prince dcs Sots.} CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES. 1515. Eulenspiegel printed at Strassburg. 1515-17. Epislola obscur- orum virorum. 1516. Pamphilus Gengenbach. Die Gouchmat. [Arioslo's Orlando Furioso. More's Utopia. Skelton's Magnificence.] ' 1517. Luther, Thesen wider den Ablass. Maximilian I., Teuerdank. Gengenbach, Der Nollhart. Hans Sachs's earliest Fastnachts- spiele. 1519-55. Charles V. [1509-47. Henry VIII. in England.] 1519. Th. Mourner, Die (leuchmat. [Skelton's Colyn Clout] 1520. Luther, An den christlichen Adel deutscher Nation, De cap- tivitate babylonica ecclesice, Von der Freiheit eines Christen- menschen. 1521. Ulrich Y9fl Hutten. Gesprdchbiichlein. 1522. Luther's translation of the New Testament published. N. Manuel, Vom Papst und seiner Priestschaft. Th. Murner, Der grosse lutherische Narr. J. Pauli, Schiinpf tind Ernst. 1523. Hans Sachs, Die wittetnbergiscke Nachtigall. Hutten's death. 1524. Luther's Geistliche Lieder. Melanchthon. Epitome doctrines christiana;. 1525. The Peasants' War. N. Manuel, Der Ablasskramer. [Tin- dale's Neiv Testament] 1527. Burkard Waldis, Parabell vani vorlorn Sohn. 1528. Luther's hymn, Eine feste Burg ist unser Gott in the Witten- berg Gesangbuch. N. Manuel, Von der Afesse Krankheit. Death of Albrecht Diirer. [Castiglione, // Cortegiano.] 1530. Luther's Fabeln. 1532. Sixt Birck, Susanna. [1532-64. Rabelais, Garganlua and Pantagruel. 1532. Macchiavelli, // Principe published (writ- ten 1513).] 1533. Hans Sachs's first Biblical dramas. [Death of Ariosto.] 1534. Luther's Bible completed. Erasmus Alberus, Fabeln. 1535. P. Rebhun, Susanna. [First complete English Bible (Cover- dale).] 1538. P. Rebhun, Die Hochzeit zu Cana. Naogeorgus, Pammachius. 1539. J. Wickram, Ritter Galmy aus Schottland. 1540. Naogeorgus, Mercator. 1542. E. Alberus, Z>er j9a?/w'j^r ^/(/r^ ^?^/ ?o\\\ written 2g6 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES. 1647-50). Schottelius, Die deutsche Hauptsprache. [1663-78. S. Butler, Hudibras.'} 1664. J. Rachel, Satirische Gedichte. Death of Gryphius. 1665. Lohenstein, Agrippina. [Larochefoucauld, Maximes. 1606. Moliere, Le Misanthrope. Furetiere, Le Roman bourgeois. Dryden, Essay of Dramatic Poesie.] 1667. P. Gerhardt, Geistliche Andachten. [Milton's Paradise Lost. ] 1668. C,. Weise. Uberjlilssige Gedanken der griinenden Jugend. 1669. J. J. C. von Grimmelshausen, SimpHcissimus ; Die Landstbr- zerin Courasche. Anton Ulrich of Brunswick, Aramena (1669- 73). [Dryden, The Conquest of Granada. Moliere, Le Tar- tuffe. Racine, Britannicus.~\ 1670. Schaubiihne der englischen und franzbsischen Kombdianten. Grimmelshausen, Der selfsame Springinsfeld. [Pascal, Pensees. ] 1672. C. Weise, Die drei drgsten Erznarren. Grimmelshausen, Das wunderbarliche Vogelnest. [Moliere, Les femmes savantes.] 1673. C. Weise, Die drei klugsten Leute. [W. Wycherley, The Country Wife. 1674. Boileau, L'Art poetique. Death of Milton.] 1675. Ph. Spener, Desideria pia. [1676. Dryden, Aureng-Zebe. Otway, Don Carlos. Wycherley, The Plaindealer.~\ ca. i675-ca. 1700. Pietistic religious poets : Ph. Spener, J. Neander, G. Tersteegen, N. L. von Zinzendorf. 1677. Anton Ulrich of Brunswick, Die rbmische Oktavia. [Racine's Phedre. N. Lee, The Rival Queens.] 1678. C. Weise, rector in Zittau. Hofmannswaldau's translation of Guarini's Pastor Jido. 1678-1738. German opera in Hamburg. [1678. Lafontaine's Fables. Dryden, All for Love. 1678-84. Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress.] 1679. C. Weise, Der bdurische Machiavell. J. Neander, Btindeslieder und Dankpsalmen. Ph. von Zesen, Simson. [Th. Otway, The Orphan.} 1680. Hofmannsvvaldau, Heldenbriefe. D. K. von Lohenstein, Sophonisba. Abraham a Santa Clara, Merk's Wien ! and Atif, auf, ihr Christen ! [Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel. N. Lee, Theodosius.~\ 1682. The Acta Eruditorum begin to appear at Leipzig. C. Weise, Masaniello. [Bunyan, The Holy War. Th. Otway, Venice Preserved. ] 1686. Abraham a Santa Clara, Judas der Erzschelm. [Dryden, The Hind and the Panther. ] 1687-88. Ch. Thomasius lectures in German at the University of CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES. 297 Leipzig. 1688-89. Thomasius, Scherz- und ernsthafte Gc- danken. 1688. A. von Ziegler, Die asiatische Banise. [La Bruyere, Carac- teres. 1688-97. Perrault, Paraltiles.} 1689-90. Lohenstein, Arminius und Tkusnelda. [1689. Racine, Esther. 1691. Athalie. 1690. Dryden, Don Sebastian. J. Locke, Essay concerning Human Understanding.} 1692. A. Francke in Halle. [1698. Congreve, The Old Bachelor, The Dottble Dealer.} 1694. Founding of the University of Halle. 1695. B. Neukirch, Herrn von Hofmannswaldau und anderer Dent schen auserlesene Gedichte. 1696. C. Reuter, Schelmuffsky. [Regnard, Le Joiieur.} 1697. C. Wernigke, Epigrammata. Leibniz, Unvorgreifliche Ge- danken. [Bayle, Dictionnaire. J. Vanbrugh, The Relapse. 1699. Fenelon, Telhnaque.} THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. ' &* 1700. Founding of the Berlin Academy. R. von Canitz, Nebensttm- den unterschiedener Gedichte. [Death of Dryden. Congreve, The Way of the World.} 1701-13. Friedrich I. of Prussia. 1705-11. Joseph I. of Austria. [1697-1718. Charles XII. of Sweden. 1701- 13. War of the Spanish Succession. 1702-14. Queen Anne.] 1705. C. Weise, Komodie von der bosen Katliarina. [1704. Swift, The Tale of a 7u&. I. Newton, Optics. 1707. Le Sage, Le Diable boiteux. G. Farquhar, The Beaux' Stratagem.} 1710. Leibniz, Essais de Theodicce. [1709-11. The Tatler. 1711-15. The Spectator. 1711. Pope, Essay on Criticism. 1712. J. J. Rousseau born.] 1711. J. von Besser, Schriften. 1713. Der Verniinftler (Hamburg). [The Guardian. Addison, Cato.} 1713-40. Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia. [1714-27. George I. in England.] 1715. B. H. Brockes, Bethlemitischer Kindennord. [1715-35. Le Sage, Gil Bias.} 1719. Death of Leibniz. [1718. Voltaire, Oedipc. 1719. Dubos, Reflexions sur la poesie et la peinture. Defoe, Robinson Crusoe.} 1720. Ch. Wolff, Verniinftige Gedanken von Gott, der Welt und der Seele des Menschen. 1721. Bodmerand Breitinger, Diskurse der Maler (1721-23). Brockes, 2Q8 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES. Irdisches Vergniigen in Gott (vol. ix., 1748). [Montesquieu, Lettres per sane s. } 1724. J. C. Giinther, Gedichte. Gottsched comes to Leipzig. Klop- stock and Kant born. 1724-26. Der Patriot. [1723. Voltaire, Henriade. 1723-25. L. Holberg's comedies.] 1725-27. Gottsched, Die verniinftigen Tadlerinnen and Der Bieder- mann. 1725. [G. B. Vico, La nuova scienza. 1726. Swift, Gulliver s Travels. 1726-30. J. Thomson, The Seasons. 1728. Pope, The Dunciad. ] 1729. F. von Hagedorn, Versuch einiger Gedichte. Lessing born. 1730. Gottsched, Kritische Dichtkunst. [Voltaire, Brutus.} I 73 I -43 J- G. Sclmabel, Die Insel Felsenburg. [1731, G. Lillo, The Merchant of London. 1731-41. Marivaux, Marianne.} 1732. A. von Haller, Versuch sehiveizerischer Gedichte. Bodmer, translation of Paradise Lost. Gottsched, Der sterbende Cato. [Voltaire, Z,a'ire. Destouches, Le Glorieux.} 1732-44. Gottsched, Beitrdge zur kritischen Historic. 1733. Wieland born. 1734. Haller, Die A/pen. [Voltaire, Lettres anglaises.} 1735-40. A. G. Haumgarten in Halle. [1735. Prevost, Manoti Lescaut. } 1738. Hagedorn, Fabeln und Erzdhhmgen. ! 739- C. L. Liscow, Satirische und ernsthafte Schriften. [D. Hume, Treatise on Human Nature.} 1740-86. Frederick the Great. 1740-80. Maria Theresa. [1727-60. George II. in England.] 1740. Conflict between Gottsched and Bodmer and Breitinger. Brei- tinger, Kritische Dichtkunst and Kritische Abhandlungvonden Gleichnissen. Bodmer, Kritische Abhandlung von dem Wun- derbaren. 1740-45. Gottsched, Deutsche Schaubuhne. [1740. Richardson, Pamela.} 1741. K. W. von Borck, translation of Shakespeare's Julius Cicsar, [G. F. Handel, The Messiah. Nivelle de la Chaussee, Me/anide. } 1742. Hngedorn, Oden und Lieder. [Fielding, Joseph Andrews.} 1743. ! E. Schlegel, Hermann. [Young, Night Thoughts} 1744. F. W. Zacharia, Der Renonunist. 1744-45. J- ^ Gleim, Scherzhafte Lieder. Herder born. 1744-48. Bremer Beilrdge. [1744. Death of Pope. ] 1745. Pyra and Lange, Freundschaftluhe Lieder (written 1737). [Vol- taire, Merope. Laplace, Le the&tre anglais. 1745-48.] 1746-48. Lessing in Leipzig. C. F. Gellert, Fabeln und Erzahlungen. 1747. J. E. Schlegel, Canut ; Die stumme Schonheit. 1747-48- Gellert, Die schivedischc Grtifin. [Voltaire, Zadig} CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES. 2QQ 1748. Gottsched, Deutsche Sprachkunst. J. E. Schlegel, Dei- Triumph der gutett Frauen. Klopstock, Der Messias, i.-iii. Lessing, Derjimge Gelehrte. [Richardson, Clarissa Harlotve. Smollett, Roderick Random. Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois. ] 1 74^-55- Lessing in Berlin. 1750-52. Voltaire in Berlin. 1749. Ch. E. von Kleist, Der Fruhling. J. P. Uz, Lyrische Gedichtc. Goethe born. [Fielding, Tom /ones. Voltaire, JVanme,] 1750. A. G. Baumgarten, Aesthetica(l'j$Q-$'S>). Hagedorn, Aloralischc Gedichte. Bodmer, Noah. Klopstock in Zurich. Lessing, Beitrdge zur Historic und Aufnahme des l^heaters. [Young, Conjectures on Original Composition. Th. Gray, Elegy in a Country Churchyard.] 1751. Klopstock, Der Messias (vol. i.). Lessing, Kleinigkeiten. [Vol- taire, Le Siecle de Louis XIV. Smollett, Peregrine Pickle.} 1751-55. G. W. Rabener, Sammlung safirischer Schriften. 1751-69. Gellert professor in Leipzig. [1751-80. L' Encyclopedic.] 1752. Wieland in Zurich ; Die Natur der Dinge. C. F. Weisse, Der Teufel ist los ! 1753-54. Lessing, Rettiingen. [1753. Richardson, Sir Charles Grandi- son. E. Moore, The Gamester. 1753-58. Voltaire, Essai sur les mceurs.] 1754. S. Gessner, Daphnis. 1754-58. Lessing, Theatralische Biblio- thek. [1754-76. L'Annee h'tteraire.] 1755. Lessing, Miss Sara Sampson. Uz, Theodicee. Winkelmann, Gedanken uber die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke. A. G. Kastner, Vermischte Schriften. [Johnson, Dictionary. .] I 756-63- The Seven Years' War. 1755-58. Lessing in Leipzig. 1756. Gessner, Idyllen. Klopstock, Der Messias, vol. ii. Zimmer- mann, Betrachtungen uber die Einsamkeit. 1757. Gellert, Geistliche Oden und Lieder. Klopstock, Der Tod Adams. Gottsched, Notiger Vorrat, vol. i. (vol. ii.. 1765). [Diderot, Le fils nature!.'] 1758. Gleim, Preussische Kriegslieder von einem- Grenadier. Klop- stock, Geistliche Lieder. Gessner, Der Tod Abels. Wieland, Lady Johanna Gray. J. F. von Cronegk, Codrus. J. W. von Brawe, Der Freigeist. [Voltaire, Candide. Diderot, Le perc de famille.] 1758-65. Lessing, Literaturbriefe. 1759. Lessing, Philotas ; Fabeln. C. F. Weisse, Richard III. Hamann, Sokratische Denkwurdigkeiten. Kleist's death. Schiller born. [Burns born. I759- 6 ?- Sterne, Tristram Shandy. ] 1760. Wieland becomes Kanzleidirektor in Biberach. 1760-65. Lessing in Breslau. 300 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES. 1761. Th. Abbt, Vom Tod furs Vaterland, Wieland, Araspes una Panthea. [Rousseau, La nouvelle Heloise.~\ 1762-66. Wieland, translation of Shakespeare. 1762. Gluck, Orfeo. [Rousseau, Entile, Le Contrat social. Macpherson, Ossian.} 1763. A. L. Karschin, Auserlesene Gedichte. 1764. Klopstock, Salomo. Wieland, Don Sylvia von Rosalva. Winkelmann, Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums. Ossian translated. M. von Thummel. Wilhelmine. [Voltaire, Dic- tionnaire philosophique.~\ 1765-68. Goethe in Leipzig. 1765. Th. Abbt, Vom Verdienste. [Percy, Reliques of English Poetry, .] 1766. Lessing, Laokoon. 1766-67. Wieland, Agathon. H. W. von Gerstenberg, Gedicht eines Skalden ; Briefe iiber die Merk- wiirdigkeiten der Literatur (1766-70). [Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield.~\ 1767. Lessing, Minna von Barnhelm, Hamburgische Dramaturgic (1767-69). Mendelssohn, Phddon. Herder, Fragmente. [Beaumarchais, Eugenie.} 1768. Wieland, Musarion ; Idris und Zenic/e. Gerstenberg, Ugolino. Goethe, Die Laune des Verliebten. [Sterne, Sentimental Journey. ] 1769. Klopstock, Der Messias, vol. iii. ; Hermannsschlacht. Herder's voyage to France. C. II. von Ayrenhoff, Der Postzug. 1770. Lessing becomes librarian in Wolfenbiittel. 1770-71. Herder and Goethe in Strassburg. Hegel born. 1771. Klopstock, Oden (first collected edition). 1771-75. M.Claudius, Der Wandsbecker Bate. 1772. Klopstock, David. Ramler, Lyrische Gedichte. M. Denis, Lieder Sineds des Barden. Lessing, Emilia Galotti. Wie- land, Der goldene Spiegel. Goethe in Wetzlar. Founding of the ' Gottinger Hain.' 1773. Klopstock, Der Messias, vol. iv. (and last). Von deutscher Art und Kunst. Goethe, Gotz von Berlichingen. G. A. Burger, Lenore. C. F. Nicolai, Sebaldus Not hanker. 1773-89. Wieland, Der Teutsche Merkur. 1773-81. Schiller as ' Karlsschliler.' 1774. Klopstock, Deutsche Gelehrtenrepublik. Lessing, Wolfenbiittler Fragmente (1774-78). Wieland, Die Abderiten. Goethe. Werthers Leiden ; Clavigo. J. M. R. Lenz, Der Hofmeister. J. Moser, Patriotische Phantasien. 1775. Goethe goes to Weimar. Nicolai, Freuden des jungen Wer- thers. F. M. von Klinger, Otto. 1775-78. J. K. Lavater, Physiognomische Fragmente. [Beaumarchais, Le Barbier de Seville. Sheridan, The Rivals.'} CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES. 301 1776. Wieland, Gandalin. G. C. Lichtenberg, Brief e aus England (1776-78). Herder called to Weimar. Goethe, Stella. Klinger, Die Zwillinge; Sturm und Drang. Leisewitz, Julius von Tarent. H. L. Wagner, Die Kindermorderin. Maler Muller, Faust ( 1 776-78). J. M. Miller, Siegwart. Shakespeare's Hamlet in Hamburg. The Hofburgtheater in Vienna. [Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations.'} 1777- WK\&n& t GeronderAdlige. H. Jung-Stilling, Jugend. 1777-79. F. H. Jacobi, Woldemar. [Sheridan, The School for Scandal. ] 1778. Lessing, Anti-Goeze ; Ernst und Falk. Biirger, Gedichte (Der wildejdger). Hippel, Lebensldufe (1778-81). [Death of Vol- taire and Rousseau.] 1779- Lessing, Nathan der Weise. The brothers Stolberg. Gedichte. Gluck, Iphigenie en Tauride. The National theater in Mann- heim opened. 1780. Lessing, Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts. Wieland, Oberon. Frederick the Great, De la literature allemande. O. von Gemmingen, Der deutsche Hattsvater. J. A. von Torring, Agnes Bernauerin. 1781. Death of Lessing. Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft. J. H. Voss, translation of the Odyssey. Schiller, Die Raitber. 1782. Schiller's flight from Stuttgart. 1782-83. L. H. C. Holty, Gedichte. 1782-86. J. K. A. Musaus, Volksmdrchen. [1782-88. Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.'} 1783. Schiller, Fiesco. Jean Paul's literary beginnings. 1784. Klopstock, Hermann und die Ftirsten. K. A. Kortum.y^- siade. Voss, Luise. Schiller, Kabale und Liebe. 1784-91. Herder, Ideen sur Philosophic der Geschichte der Menschheit. [Beaumarchais, Le Mariage de Figaro.'} 1785. Voss, Idyllen (first collected edition). K. Ph. Moritz, Anton Reiser. Schiller in Leipzig, An die Freude. A. W. Iffland, Die Jdger. 1786. Death of Frederick the Great. 1786-88. Goethe's Italian Tourney. 1787. Klopstock, Hermanns Tod. Schiller, Don Carlos. J. J. Heinse, Ardinghello. Goethe, Iphigenie auf 7'auris. F. von Matthis- son, Gedichte. [St Pierre, Paul et Virginie.} 1788. A. Knigge, Uber den Umgangmit Menschen. Goethe, Egm ont. Schiller, Abfall der Niederlande. Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft. A. Schopenhauer born. 1789. The Beginnings of the French Revolution. Schiller professor in Jena. Schiller, Der Geisterseher ; Die Kiinstler. Kojtzebue, Jtfenschenhass und Reue. 302 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES. 1790. Goethe, Faust, ein Fragment; Tasso. Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft. 1791. Schiller, Geschichte des dreissigjdhrigen Krieges (1791-93). J. G. Forster, Ansichlen vom Niederrhein. Klinger, Medea ; novels (1791-98). Mozart, Die Zauberflble. Grillparzer born. Goethe takes over the direction of the Weimar theatre (1791- 1817). [Volney, Les Ritines.~\ 1793. Schiller, Uber An/nut tind Wiirde. Richter, Die tinsichtbare Loge. J. G. von Salis-Seewis, Gedichte, Goethe, Der Burger- general. 1794. The friendship of Goethe and Schiller (1794-1805). Goethe, Reineke Fucks. H. Zschokke, Abdllino. Fichte, Wissenschafts- lehre. 1795. Goethe, Romische Elegien ; Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795- 96). Schiller, Die Horen (1795-97); Musenalmanach (1796- 99) ; Briefe iiber die dsthetische Erziehung des Menschen ; tJber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung (1795-96). J. P. F. Richter, Hesperus. J. L. Tieck, William Lovell (1795-97). M. G. Lewis, The Monk.} 1796. Goethe and Schiller, Xenien. Richter, Quintus Fixlein ; Siebenkds (1796-97). [Coleridge, Poems. ~\ 1797. Goethe, Hermann und Dorothea. Goethe and Schiller, Ballads {Balladenalmanach, 1798). Tieck, Der gestiefelte Kater. Wackenroder and Tieck, Herzensergiessungen. F. Holderlin, Hyperion (1797-99). A. W. Schlegel, translation of Shakespeare (1797-1801, 1810). F. Schlegel, Die Griechen und Romer. 1798. Goethe, Die Propylden (1798-1800). Schiller, Wallensteins Lager. Das Athendum (1798-1800). Tieck and Wackenroder, Franz Stembald. F. W. J. von Schelling, Von der Weltseele. [Coleridge and Wordsworth in Germany, Lyrical Ballads.] 1799- Schiller, Die Piccolomini ; Wallensteins Tod ; Das Lied von der Glocke. W. von Humboldt, Asthetische Versuche. Tieck, Romantische Dichtungen (1799-1800). F. Schlegel, Lucinde. Schleiermacher, Reden iiber die Religion. Schiller settles in Weimar. 1800. Wieland, Aristipp (1800-2). Schiller, Maria Stuart, Richter, Titan (1800-3). Novalis, Hymnen an die Nacht. Schleier- macher, Monologen. [Scott's translation of Goethe's G'dtz von Berlichingen. ] THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 1801. Schiller, Die fungfrau von Orleans. C. A. Tiedge, Urania. C. M. Brentano, Godwi. Death of Novalis. Hegel in Jena (1801-6). H. J. von Collin, Regulus. [Chateaubriand, Atala.'} CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES. 303 1802. F. Schlegel, Alarkos. Novalis, Heinrich von Ofterdingen. L. A. von Arnim, Hollins Liebeleben. [Chateaubriand, Genie du Christianisme. ] 1803. Schiller, Die Braut von Messina. Goethe, Die natiirliche Tochter. Death of Klopstock and Herder. J. G. Seume, Spaziergang nach Syrakuse. J. P. Hebe], Alemannische Gedichte. Z. Werner, Die Sbhnc dcs Thalcs (1803). II. von Kleist, Die Famille Schroffenstcin. 1804. Schiller, Wilhelm Tell. Richter, Flcgeljahrc (1804-5). Tieck, Kaiser Oktavianus. A. W. Schlegel joins Madame de Slael. Tieck goes to Rome. Der grime Almanack (1804-6). [Chateau- briand, Rene.} 1805. Schiller's death. Herder, Der Cid. Goethe, Winkelmanu. Brentano and Arnim in Heidelberg. DCS Knaben Wunder- horn, vol. i. Beethoven, Fidelia. 1806. The I'.attle of Jena. E. M. Arndt, Der Geist der Zeit (1806- 18). Z. Werner, Das Kreuz an der Ostsee. 1807. Richter, Levana. Z. Werner, Martin Luther. Kleist, Amphi- tryon. Gb'rres, Die teutschen Volksbiicher. Hegel, Pheno- menologie des Geistes. Fichte, Reden an die dentsche Nation (1807-8). [Mad. de Stael, Corinne. Wordsworth, Poems. ] 1808. Goethe, Faust ', Erster Teil. Goethe's interview with Napoleon at Erfurt. Die Zeitungfiir Einsiedler, Kleist, Penthesilea ; Der zerbrochene Kriig ; Die Hermannsschlacht (publ. 1821). La Motte Fouque, Sigurd der Schlangentbter. F. Schlegel, Die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier. [Scott, Marmion.} 1809. Goethe, Die Wahlvcrwandtschaften. A. W. Schlegel, Vor- lesungen iiber drainatische Kunst und Literal ur (1809-11). Arnim und Brentano in Berlin. Arnim, Grafai Dolores. Z. Werner, Der vierundzwanzigste Febrnar (publ. 1815). 1810. Goethe, Pandora; Farbenlehre. Kleist, Michael Kohlhaas ; Kiithchen von Heilbronn ; Der Prinz vnn Hamburg (publ. 1821). 1811. Goethe, Dichtung und Wahrheit (1811-33). Arnim, Halle und Jerusalem. Kleist's death. Fouque, Undine. B. G. Niebuhr, Romische Geschichte (1811-32). [Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility.'} 1812. Tieck, Phantasus (1812-16). The brothers Grimm, Kinder- und Hausmdrchen (1812-15). Arnim, Isabella von Agyflen. K. Th. Korner, Zriny. A. Milliner, Der ncunundz-wanzigste Februar. [Byron, Childe Harold.} 1813. The Battle of Leipzig. Death of Wieland. Ilebbel, Lud- wig, and Wagner born. Arndt, Lieder fiir Tcutsche. Fouqu?, 304 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES. Der Zauberring. Milliner, Die Schuld. [Shelley, Queen Mab.~\ 1814. Founding of the ' Deutsche Bund.' Korner, Leier und Schwert. F. Riickert, Geharnischte Sonette. A. von Chamisso, Peter Schlemihl. E. T. A. Hoffmann, Phantasiestiicke (1814-15). [Scott, Waverley, Wordsworth, The Excursion.] 1815. The Battle of Waterloo. Goethe, Des Epimenides Er- ivachen. Brentano, Die Griindung Prags. J. von Eichendorff, Ahnungund Gegentvart, Hoffmann, Die Elixiere des Teufels. J. L. Uhland, Gedichte first collected. [Beranger, Chan- sons. ] 1816. Goethe, Italienische Reise (1816-17) '> Kunst und Altertum (1816-32). Oehlenschlager, Correggio. Uhland, Vater- Idndische Gedichte. 1817. A. W. Schlegel professor in Bonn (1817-45). Arnim, Die Kronenwdchter. Brentano, Geschichte vom braven Kasperl. Hoffmann, Nachtstiicke. H. Zschokke, Das Goldmacherdorf. Mad. de Stael, De FAllemagne published. Grillparzer, Die Ahnfrau. [Keats, Poems.'] 1818. Grillparzer, Sappho. E. K. F. Schulze, Cdcilie and Die bezauberte Rose. Uhland, Ernst, Herzog in Schwaben. W. Mu'ller, Mullerlieder. [Keats, Endymion.~\ 1819. Goethe, Der westostliche Divan. Hoffmann, Klein Zaches ; Die Serapionsbriider (1819-21). Tieck settles in Dresden. J. Grimm, Deutsche Grammatik (1819-37). A. Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. Assassination of Kotzehue. [Byron, Don Juan, I. -II. Shelley, The Cenci.] 1820. Grillparzer, Das goldene Vliess. [Lamartine, Meditations. Scott, Jvanhoe.] 1821. Goethe, Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (1821-29). Tieck, Novellen (1821-31). W. Miiller, Gedichte; Lieder der Griechen (1821-24). Hoffmann von Fallersleben, Lieder und Romanzen. K. M. von Weber, Der Freischutz. A. von Platen, Ghaselen. [De Quincey, The Opium-eater. Shelley, Adonais.] 1822. F. Riickert, Ostliche Rosen. H. Heine, Gedichte (first collec- tion). [V. Hugo, Odes. Vigny, Poemes. Lamb, Essays of Elia. ] 1823. F. Riickert, Liebesfriihling. W. Alexis, Walladmor (1823-24). Heine, Tragbdien. W. Waiblinger, Lieder der Griechen. F. Raimund, Der Barometer macher. F. L. G. von Raumer, Geschichte der Hohenstaufen (1823-25). [V. Hugo, Han d' Island.] 1824. H. Zschokke, Bilder aus der Schweiz (1824-26). W. Menzel, Geschichte der Dezttschen. [Death of Byron. ] CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES. 305 1825. Platen, Sonette aus Venedig. Grillparzer, Kbnis; Ottokars Gliick und Ende. [Carlyle, Life of SchilUr. Manzoni, / Promessi Sposi.~\ 1826. Tieck, Der Aufruhr in den Cevennen. Eichendorff, Aus dan Leben eines Taugenichts. W. Hauff, Lichtenstein. Platen, Die verhdngnisvolle Gabel. Heine, Harzreise. J. Kerneri Gedichte. Raimund. Der Bauer als Milliondr. [A. de Vigny, Cinq-Mars.} 1827. Heine, Buck der Lieder ; Reisebilder, II. Heine's visit to Eng- land. K. Spindler, Derjude. Zedlitz, Totenkrdnze. [V. Hugo, Cromwell. Bulwer, Pelham.~\ 1828. Platen, Gedichte. Grillparzer, Ein treuer Diener seines Herrn. Raimund, Der Alpenkonig und der Menschenfeind. Immer- mann, Das Trauerspiel in Tirol. G. Schwab, Gedichte (1828-29). Death of Duke Karl August of Weimar. 1829. Platen, Der romantische Oedipus. Grabhe, Don Juan und Faust. M. Beer, Struensee. J. Kerner, Die Seherin von Prevorst. [V. Hugo, Orientales. A. Dumas, Henri III. Balzac, Comedie humaine (1829-50).] 1830. [The July Revolution in Paris.] Chamisso, Frauenliebe und Leben. Platen, Polenlieder (1830-33). L. Borne, Brief e aus Paris (1830-33). A. Griin, Blatter der Liebe ; Der letzte Ritter. [V. Hugo, Hernani. Tennyson, Poems.} 1831. Chamisso, Gedichte (first collected). Grillparzer, Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen. Grabbe, Napoleon. A. Grtin, Spaziergdnge eines Wiener Poeten. Heine settles in Paris. [V. Hugo, Nolre-Dame de Paris ; Marion Delorme. Stendhal, Le Rouge et le Noir. ] 1832. The death of Goethe. Goethe, Faust, Zweiter Teil. Immer- mann, Merlin. Riickert, Haus- undjahreslieder. E. Mo'rike, Maler Nolten. W. Alexis, Cabanis. N. Lenau, Gedichte (first collected). 1833. Raimund, Der Verschivender. H. Laube, Das junge Europe (1833-37). J. Nestroy, Lumpacivagabuniius. F. Freiligrath, Gedichte (first collection). Heine, Franzbsische Ztistande. [G. Sand, Lelia. Carlyle, Sartor Resartus.] 1834. Eicliendorff, Dichter und ihre Gesellen. Riickert, Gedichte (1834-38). I,. Wienbarg, Asihetische Feldziige. Heine, Der Salon (1834-40). Grillparzer, Der Trauin ein Leben. C. Sealsfield, Der Virey tmd die Aristokraten. L. von Ranke, Die rbmischen Pdpste (1834-36). [Lamennais, Paroles dun croyant. Bulwer, The Last Days of Pompeii.} 1835. The decree against ' Jungdeutschland.' B. von Arnim, Goethes Briefwechsel mit einem Kind. Grillparzer, Tristia ex Ponto. U 306 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES. K. Gutzkow, Wally die Z~<.veiflerin. Th. Mundt, Madonna. D. F. Strauss, Das Leben Jesu. G. G. Gervinus, Geschichte der deutschen Nationalist 'eratur. 1836. Tieck, Der junge Tischlermeister. Riickert. Weisheit der Brahmanen (1836-39). Immermann, Die Epigonen. Lenau, Faust. [Musset, Confessions d"un enfant du siecle. Lamar- tine, Jocelyn. Dickens, Pickwick Papers. Gogol, The Revisor. ] 1837. [Accession of Queen Victoria in England.], Eichendorff, Gedichte (first collected). Lenau, Savonarola. B. Auerbach, Spinoza. [G. Sand, Mauprat. Carlyle, The French Revolu- tion. ] 1838. Grillparzer, Weh' dei, der lugt. Morike, Gedichte (first col- lected). Immermann, Miinchhattsen. A. von Droste-Hulshoff, Gedichte. K. Beck, Gepanzerte Lieder. [V. Hugo, Ruy Bias.] 1839. Ranke, Deutsche Geschichte (1830-47). [Stendhal, La Char- treuse de Panne. ~\ 1840. Accession of Friedrich Wilhelm IV. of Prussia. Tieck, Vittoria Accorombona. Heine, Lud-vig Borne. Immer- mann, Dilsseldorfer Anfiinge. Hoffmann von Fallersleben, Unpolitische Lieder (1840-41). W. Alexis, Der Roland von Berlin. E. Geibel, Gedichte. C. F. Hebbel, /*&*/&. [Dickens, Oliver Twist. Browning, Sordello. Scribe, Le verre d'eau. Merimee, Colomba.~\ 1841. The political lyric (N. Becker, R. E. Prutz, M. Schneckenburg, F. Freiligrath, G. Herwegh). G. Herwegh, Gedichte eines Lebendigen (1841-44). E. Geibel, Zeitstimmen. J. Gotthelf, Uli der Knecht. Feuerbach, Das Wesen des Christentums. [A. Dumas, Monte Cristo (1841-45). Carlyle, On Heroes. Emerson, Essays. ] 1842. Lenau, Die Albigenser. W. Alexis, Der falsche Waldemar. F. Dingelstedt, Lieder eines kosmopolitischen Nachtwcichters. M. von Strachwitz, Lieder eines Erivachenden. \' . Halm, Der Sohn der Wildnis. Hebbel, Gedichte (1842, 1848, 1857). R. Wagner, Rienzi. [G. Sand, Consuelo. Gogol, Dead Souls. Macaulay, Lays of Ancient Rome.] 1843. Gutzkow, Zopf und Schwert. Hebbel, Genoveva. Auerbach, Schwarzwalder Dorfgeschichten (1843-54). E. Geibel, Volks- lieder und Romanzen der Spanier. R. Wagner, Der Jliegende Hollander. [Ponsard, Lucrece.~\ 1844. Heine, Neue Gedichte ; Deutschland. Freiligrath, Ein Glau- bensbekemitnis. A. Stifter, Studien. Hebbel, Maria Mag- dalene. I. Hahn - Hahn, Aus der Gesellschaft. F. Th. CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES. 307 Vischer, Kritische Gating. [A. Dumas, l.cs trots Monsqite- taires.] 1845. R. Wagner, Tannhduser. A. von Humboldt, Kosmos (1845-58). 1846. Freiligrath, Ca ira. W. Alexis, Die Hosen Jus Herrn von Bredow. G. Kinkel, Otto dcr Schiitz. [Thackeray, Vanity Fair (1846-48). Dickens, Dombey and Son. Dostoevski, Poor Folk.] 1847. Heine, Atta Troll. Eichendorff, Die neuc roinantische Poesic in Deutschland, Gutzkow, Uriel Acosta. Laube, Die Karh- schiiler. G. Freytag, Die Valentine. Geibel, Juninslieder. [Ch. Bronte, Jane Eyre. Merimee, Carmen. Longfellow, Evangeline. ] 1848. [The March Revolution.] Grillpaizer, Der arme Spielmann. Freytag, Graf Waldemar. Ch. Birch-Pfeiffer, Dorf und Stadt. Freytag and Julian Schmidt become editors of the Grenzboten. [E. Augier, L Aventuriere. Macaulay, History of England (1848-61).] 1849. Bettina von Arnim, Dies Buck geh'drt dein Konig. Freiligrath, Nette politische und soziale Gedichte. Gutzkow, Der Konigs- leutnant. O. von Redwitz, Amaranth. R. Wagner, Die Kunst nnd die Revolution. [Chateaubriand, Memoires d~oi 60 f., 112 Beck, K., 25 2 f. Becker, N., 249 Beethoven, L. van, 22O f. Beheim, M., 64 Benedix, R., 271 Berthold von Holle, 45 Berthold von Regensburg. 55 Besser, J. von, 100, 190 Bible, German translations of the, 67, 69 f. Bible, the Gothic, 5 Biblical drama, 19, 73 f. Bierbaum, O. J., 280 Birch- Pfeiffer, Ch., 271 Birck, S., 73 Biterolf tmd Dietlieb, 29 Bleibtreu, K., 285 Blumauer, J. A., 132 Blumenorden, Der gekronte (Pegnitz Shepherds), 83 Bodenstedt, F., 272 f. Bodmer, J. J., 101 f., 105, 107 f., U3 Bohlau, H., 285 Bohme, J., 87 INDEX. 313 Boie, H. C., 138 Boner, U., 60 f. Bonifacius (Winfrith), 7 Borck, K. W. von, no Borkenstein, H., no Borne, L. , 244 ff. Brachvogel, A. E., 271 Brant, S., 62, 67, 71 Brawe, J. W. von, 122 Breitinger, J. J., 101 f., 105, 107 f. Bremer Beitrage, Die, 109, 116 Hrentano, C. M., 200 ff., 231 Brockes, B. H.. 104 Biichner, G., 104 Bucholtz, A. H., 97 Burckhardt, J., 259 Burger, G. A., 140 f. Biirgerliche Tragodie, the, 121 f., 127, 150, 157, 184, 266 Burkhart von Hohenfels, 52 Busch, W., 276 Busse, K., 280 Byron, influence of, 227 ff. , 237 f- Canitz, R. von, 100 Carmina Bur ana, 18 Chamisso, A. von, 202, 204 f. , 231 Charles the Great (Charlemagne, Karl der Grosse), 7, 29, 58 Christus und die Samariterin, 9 Claudius, M., 140 Colin, Ph., 58 Collin, H. J. von, 214, 227 Conrad, M. G., 285 Conradi, H., 285 Court epic, 17, 32 ff. Cramer, J. A., 109 Cronegk, J. F. von, 122 Crusades, the, 16 ff., 57 f. Dach, S., 84 Dahn, F., 259 f. Dauthendey, M., 280 David of Augsburg, 55 Dedekind, F., 76 Dehmel, R., 280 Deinhardstein, J. L., 271 Denis, M., 118 f. Deutsch, meaning of, I Dietmar von Aist, 18 Dietrich von Bern (Verona), 20, 24, 28 ff. Dietrichs Fluckt, 30 Dingelstedt, F. , 252 Disticha Catonis, 53 Dorfpoesie, hofische, 51 f. Drama, beginnings of the, 19, 72 ff. Dranmor (F. von Schmid), 274 Dreikonigsspiel, 1 9 Droste-Hiilshoff, A. von, 229 f. Easter Plays, 19 Ebers, G., 259 Ebert, J. A., 109 f. Ebner-Eschenbach, M. von, 285 Ecbasis Captivi, 11,17 Eckenlied, Das, 29 Eckhart, Meister, 67 Eichendorff, J. von, 205 f., 228 f. Eike von Repgowe, 55 Eilhart von Oberge, 17, 33 Ekkehard of St Gall ( Walthari- lied), 10 Elbschwanenorden, the, 83 Engel, J. J., 133 Englische Komodianten, 80 f. Epic, Court, Popular, &c. See Court Epic, &c. Kpiphany Plays, 19 Epistola: obscuroruiii zv/wv/w, 68 f. Erasmus, D., 68 Ermanarich, 5, 20, 65 Eulenspiegel, Tyl, 60 Exodus, Middle High German translations of, 14 Ezzolied Da:, 14 f. Fables, 60 f., 112 Falke, G., 280 Fastnachtsspiele, 7 2 > 75 Fate-tragedy (Schicksalstragodie), the, 210 f. , 239 Faust (Volksbuch), 78. See also Goethe, Grabbe, Klinger, Lenau, Lessing, F. Mtiller Feuerbach, L. A., 254 Fichte, J. G., 179 f., 199 Fischart. J., 76 f.. 92 314 INDEX. Fitger, A., 281 Fleck, K., 44 Fleming, P., 84, 86 Floris und Blancheflur, 1 7 Folz, H. , 60, 64, 72 Fontane, Th., 284 Forster, J. G., 152 Fouque, F. de la Motte, 231 f. Frauenlob ( Heinrich von Meissen), 64 Frederick the Great, 100, 112, 114 Freidank, 54 Freiligrath, F., 250 f. Frenssen, G., 285 Freytag, G., 257 ff. Friedrich von Hausen, 48 Frischlin, Ph. N., 73 Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft, the (Palmenorden), 83 Fiietrer, U., 58 Fulda, L., 284 Gartner, K. C., 109 Garve, Ch., 133 Gaudy, F. von, 238 Geibel, E., 253, 272 Geiler, J., 67, 71 Gellert, Ch. F., 109, ill f. , 114 Gemmingen, O. H. von, 150 Genesis, Old Saxon, 8 Genesis, Voratier Genesis, 14 Gengenbach, P., 72 Gentz, F. von, 206 Georg, Das Lied vom heiligen, 9 George, S., 280 Gerhardt, P., 88 f. German, meaning of, i Gerstacker, F., 263 f. Gerstenberg, H. W. von, 118, 143, 148 Gervinus, G. G., 253 Gessner, S. , 1 19 Giesebrecht, W., 258 Gilm, H., 253 Gleim, J. W. L., ii3ff., 118 Glosses, Old High German, 7 Gluck, C. W. von, 125 Gockingk, L. F. G. von, 140 Goldemar, 29 Goliards, the, 18 Gorres, J. J. von, 200 ff. Goethe, 'J. W. von, 134, 136 f., 143 ff., 154, 161 ff., 184 ff. ; Dichtnngund Wahrheit, iSjf.; Egmont, 165; Fails t, 147 f. , 162, 187 ff. ; Gbtz von Berlich- ingen, 142 f., 146$. ; Hermann und Dorothea, 169 f. ; Iphigenie auf Tauris, 162 ff. ; Lyric poetry, ballads, 162, 170; Tasso, 164 f. ; Die Wahlver- ivandtschaften, 185 ; Werlher, 146 f., 151 f. ; Der ivestbstliche Divan, 186 f. ; Wilhelni Meis- ter, 152, 166 ff., 181 ff. Gothic Bible, the, 5 Gotter, F. W., 138 Gottfried von Neifen, 52 Gottfried von Strassburg, 33, 39 ff., 44, 48 Gotthelf, J. (A. Bitzius), 256 Gottinger Dichterbund (Hain), the, 137 ff. Gottschall, R. von, 271 Gottsched, J. Ch., looff., 107 ff. Gottsched, L. A., 101 Gotz, J. N., ii3f. Grabbe, Ch. D., 213 f. Gral, the, 36 ff. Greif, M. (H. Frey), 273 Griepenkerl, R., 271 Grillparzer, F., 214 ff., 228 Grimm, J. and W., 202 Grim melshausen, J. J. Ch. von, 93 f- Grobianus, 76 f. Groth, K., 257 Griin, A. (A. A. von Auersperg), 227 Gryphius, A., 84 f., 95 Gudrim (K'udrun), 26 ff. Gtinther, J. Ch., 100 Gutzkow, K., 242, 246 f., 263 Hadamar von Laber, 59 Hadlaub, J., 52 Hagedorn, F. von, 104 ff., 112 f., 158 Hahn-Hahn, I., 264 Hain, der Gottinger, 137 ff. Halbe, M., 284 INDEX. 315 Haller, A. von, io6f., 114 f. Halm, F. (E. von Munch- Belling- hausen), 219 Hamann, J. G., 134 Hamerling, R., 274 f. Happel, E. W., 97 Hardenberg, F. L. von. See Novalis Harsdorffer, G. P., 83 Hart, H. and J., 280 Hartleben, O. E., 284 Hartmann ( Vom Glatiben], 14 Hartmann von Aue, 33 ff. , 42 f. , 48 Hartmann, E. von, 274 Hartmann, M., 252 f. Hauff, W., 225, 235 Hauptmann, G., 281 ff. Haupt- und Staatsaktionen, 101 Haym, R.. 276 Hebbel, Ch. F., 265 ff. Hebel, J. P., 183 Hegel, G. W. F., 241, 254, 274, 278 f. Heidelberg Romanticists, the, 200 ff. Heine, H., 242 ff. Heinrich der Glichezare, 18 Heinrich Julius, Duke of Bruns- wick, 80 Heinrich von Freiberg, 42 Heinrich von Laufenberg, 66 Heinrich von Meissen (Frauen- lob), 64 Heinrich von Melk, 14 Heinrich von Morungen, 48 Heinrich von Mtigeln, 64 Heinrich von Tiirlin, 43 Heinrich von Veldeke, 33, 48 Heinrico, De, 9 Heinse, J. J., 152 Heinzlein of Constance, 59 Helbling, Seifried, 54 Heldenbuch, Das, 28 ff., 59 Heliand, Der, 8f., 12 Henckell, K. , 280 Herbert von Fritslar, 33 Herder, J. F., I34ff., 142, 144 f., 201 Herger, 19 Hermann von Sachsenheim, 59 Hermann (or Johannes) von Salz- burg, 66 Hermes, J. T., 133 Heroic novels, 97 Hertz, W., 274 Herwegh, G., 250!. Herzog Ernst, 1 6 Hesse, H., 285 Hettner, H., 276 Heyse, P., 262 f. , 275 Hildebrandslied, Das, 6, 8, 12, 65 Hillebrand, K., 276 Hiltbold von Schwangau, 51 Hinrik van Alkmar, 61 Hippel, T. G. von, 133 Hofburgtheater in Vienna, the, 151, 214, 248 Hofische Epos, the, 17, 32 ff. Hoffmann, E. T. A., 232 ff. Hoffmann von Fallersleben, A. H., 207, 252 Hofmann von Hofmannswaldau, C. H. von, 96 Hofmannsthal, H. von, 284 Hofpoeten, the, 100 Holderlin, F., 183 f. H61ty, L. H. C., I39f. Holz, A., 280 Houvvald, C. E. von, 211 Hrotsuith (Roswitha) of Ganders- heim, 1 1 f. Huch, R., 285 Hugo von Montfort, 62 f. Hugo von Trimberg, 54 f. Humanism, 67 ff., 81 Humboldt, K. W. von, 180 Hutten, U. von, 71 Hymns of ancient Germans, 4 ; Protestant, 66, 70, 86 ff. Iffland, A. W., i5of. Immermann, K. L., 239^, 256 Isidore, Old High German trans- lation of, 7 Isengrimns, 17 Jacobi, F. H., 143, 152 Jager, J. (Crotus Uubianus), 69 Jean Paul. See Richter, J. P. F. Jensen, W., 275 Jordan, W., 274 INDEX. Jung Stilling, H., 144 Jutten, Spiel von Frau, 66 Kaiserchronik, Die, 15 Kalenberg, Der Pfaffe von, 60 Kant, I., 129, 160, 178 f., 278 Karsch (Karschin), A. L., 115 Kastner, A. G., in Keller, G. , 255, 260 f. Kerner, J., 224 Kinkel, G., 253 Kirchbach, W., 284 Kirchmayer, Th. (Naogeorgus), 73 Kirchhoff, H. W., 78 Klage, Die, 26 Kleist, E. Ch. von, H5f. Kleist, H. von, 206, 211 ff. Klinger, F. M. von, 148 f., 155 Klopstock, F. G., 112 ff., 116 ff. Knigge, A. von, 133 Konig, J. V. von, 100 Konig Rather, \$l. Konrad von Kegensburg, 17, 33 Konrad von Wiirzburg, 44 f. Korner, K. Th., 206 f. Kortum, K. A., 132 Kosegarten, G. L., 182 f. Kotzebue, A. von, 184 Kretschmann, K. F., 118 Kretzer, M., 285 Ktidrun, 26 ff. Klirenberg, Herr von, 18 Kurz, H., 225 Kurz, L, 285 Lamprecht (Alexander lied), i6f.. 33 Lange, S. G. , 113, 121 Laroche, S. von, 133 Latin literature, 10, 72 f. Laube, H., 242, 247 f. Lauremberg, J. , 86 Laurin, 29 Lavater, J. K., 143 Leibniz, G. W., 103 Leisewitz, J. A., 149, 155 Lenau, N., 228 ff. Lenz, J. M. R., 148 f. Lessing, G. E., 112, I2off. , 135 Leuthold, H., 273 Leuthold von Saben, 51 Leu/en, Histori Peter, 60 Lichtenberg, G. C., 133 Lichtwer, M. G., 112 Liliencron, D. von, 280 Lindener, M., 78 Lindner, A., 281 Lingg, H., 273 Liscow, C. L., in Liturgy, Old High German trans- lations of the, 7 Logau, F. von, 85 Lohengrin, 43 Lohenstein, D. K. von, 96 f., 100 Lorm, H. (H. Landesmann), 274 Lucidaritis , 55 Ludwig, O., 268 Ludwigslied t Das, 9 Luther, M., 68 ff., 75, 88 Lyric poetry, beginnings of, 18, 47 ff. See also Minnesang and Meistergesang Mann, Th., 285 Manuel, N., 71, 73 Marienlieder, 14 Markolf(Morolf), 16, 60 Marner, Der, 64 Marschner, H., 221 Matthisson, F von, 182 Maximilian L, 58 f. Mayer, K. 225 Meiningen Court Theatre, 281 Meinloh von Sevelingen, 18 Meissner, A., 252 f. Meissner, A. G., 133 Meistergesang,Meistersingers,63f. Melanchthon, Ph., 71 Memento mori, 14 Mendelssohn, M., 122 f., 133 Menzel, W., 253 Mersebiirger Zauberspriiche, Die. 6 Meyer, K. F., 275 Meyerbeer, G. (J. Beer), 221 Migrations, the (Volkerwande- rung), 5 f., 10, 20 Miller, J. M., 139, 152 Minnesang, 18, 47 ff., 62 f., 65 Mommsen, Th., 258 f. Monseer Fragmente, Die, 7 Montanus, M., 78 INDEX. 317 Mtirike, E., 225 f. Moritz, K. Ph., 152 Moscherosch, H. M., 91 Mosen, J., 238 Moser, J., 133, 136 Mozart, W. A., 151, 220 i. Miiller, A., 206 Miiller, F. (Maler Miiller), 150 Miiller, W., 237 f. Milliner, A., 210 f. Mundt, Th., 242, 248 Murner, Th., 71 f. Musaus, J. K. A., 133 Music-drama (opera), 151, 220 f., 268 ff. Muskatblut, 64 Muspilli, 7 Mysticism, 14, 67, 87 Ndfels, Lied von der Schlacht bei, 65 Naogeorgus (T. Kirchmayer), 73 Neander, J., 102 Neidhart Fuchs, 60 Neidhart von Keuental, 51 f. Nestroy, J., 220 Neuber, J. and K., 101 Neukirch, B., 96, 100 Nibelungenlied, Das, 21 ff. ; later versions, 267, 270, 272, 274 Nicolai, C. F., 122 f. Nietzsche, F. W., 278 ff. Nissel, F., 281 Notker of St Gall, 12 Novalis(F. von Hardenberg), 193, 196 Opitz, M., 8 1 ff. Oremiel, 16 Ortnit, 30 Oswald, 1 6 Oswald von Wolkenstein, 62 f. Otfrid, 8 f. Palmenorden, the (Fruchtbrin- gende Gesellschaft), 83 Passion plays, 19 Patriot, Der, 105 Patriotic lyric, 113 f., 206 ff. Pauli, J., 60 Pegnitzschafer, the (Der gekronte Blumenorden), 83 Petrus, Bittgesang an den heili- gen, 9 Pfeffel, G. K., 112 Pfintzing, M., 59 Pfizer, G., 225 Pietsch, J. V., 100 Platen - Hallermiinde, A. von, 2.37 T. Pleier, Der, 43 Polenz, W. von, 285 Political lyric, 249 ff. Popular epic, 20 ff., 32 Popular philosophers, 123, 133 Prutz, K. E., 249 Pyra, I. J., 113 Raabe, W., 276 Rabanus Maurus, 8 Rabener, G. W., 109 ff. Rabenschlacht ', Die, 30 Rachel, J., 86 Radern, Von den vier, 14 Raimund, F., 220 Ramler, K. W., 115 Ranke, L. von, 258 Rationalism ( Aulklarung), 103 f., 113, 129, 178 f. , 183 Raurner, F. L. G. von, 213 Raupach, E. von, 213 Rebhtm, P., 73 Red wit/, O. von, 271 Reformation, the, 67 ff, 80, 86 Reformation drama, the, 72 ff. Regensburg, Der Burggraf von, 18 Reimsprecher, 60 Reinhot von Duren, 43 Remkede Vos, 61 f., 166 Reinmar von Hagenau, 49 Reinmar von Zweter, 53 Renaissance, the, 68, 74, 79 ff. Reuchlin, J., 68 Reuter, Ch., 95 Reuter, F., 222, 256 f. Richter, J. P. F. (Jean Paul), 180 ff., 232 f. Riehl, W. H., 275 Ringwalclt, B., 78 Rist, J., 83 INDEX. Ritterdramen, 150, 184, 212 : Ritterromane, 232 Robinsonaden, 94, 105 f. Rolandslied, Das, 16 f. Rollenhagen, G., 78 Romanticism, 135, 171, 181 ff., 192 fF. ; Decay of, 231 ff. Rosegger, P. K., 256, 285 Rosen gart en, Der, 29 Rosenpliit, H., 60, 72 Roswitha(Hrotsuith), of Ganders- heim, II f. Ruckert, F. , 207, 236 ff. Rudolf von Ems, 44 f. Runic alphabet, 4 f. Rtiodlieb, II, 18 Saar, F. von, 275, 281 Sachs, Hans, 64, 74 ff. Sachsenspiegel, Der, 55 Salis-Seewis, J. G. von, 182 Salman und Morolf, t6 Schack, A. F. von, 273 Schede, P. (Melissns), 81 Scheffel, J. V. von, 273 Schefflei , J. (Angelus Silesius), 87 Scheidt, K., 76 Schelling, F. W. J. von, 199 Schenkendorf, M. von, 206 f. Scherer, W., 276 Schernberg, Th., 66 Schiller,J. F. von, 154 ff., i68f., 170 ff. ; Die Braut -von Mes- sina, 174 f., 210, 215 ; Don Carlos, 142 f. , 156 ff. ; Die Jtmgfrau von Orleans, 173 f . ; Kabale und Liebe, 150, 157; Lyric and ballad poetry, 157, 1 60, 170; Maria Stuart, 173; Die Rditber, 143, 155 f.; Wai- lenstein, 92, 169, 171 ff. ; Wil- helm Tell, 175 f. Schlegel, A. W. von, 141, 193, 197 f. Schlegel, Caroline (C. Schel- ling), 197 Schlegel, Dorothea, 199 Schlegel, F. von, 193, 197 ff. Schlegel, J. A., 109 Schlegel, J. E., 109 f., 121 Schleiermacher, F. E. D., 199 Schmid, F. von (Dranmor), 274 Schnabel, J. G., 106 Schneckenburger, M., 249 Schnitzler, A., 284 Schonherr, K., 284 School Comedy, 72 f., 95 Schopenhauer, A., 218 f., 254 f., 270 f., 274, 278 f. Schreyvogel, J. (C. A. West), 219. Schroder, F. L., 151 Schubart, C. F. D., 155 Schulze, E. K. F., 237 Schupp, J. B., 91 f. Schwab, G., 224 f. Schwabenspiegel, Der, 55 Schwankdichtung, 45, 60 f., 77 f. Sealsfield. Ch. (K. Postl), 263 f. Seifried, Das Lied vom hitmen, 59, 65 Sempacher Schlacht, Lied von der, 65 Seume, J. G., 153 Seuse (Suso), H., 67 Shakespeare, W., 81, no, 123, 126, 130 ff., 136, 139, 144 f., 148, 151, 167, 195, 197, 252, 268 Sigenot, 29 Silesian School, first, 84 ff. ; second, 96 f. Simrock, K., 274 Soden, F. J. H. von, 150 Spec, F. von, 87 f. Spener, Ph. J., 102 Spervogel, Der, 19 Spielhagen, F. , 263 Spielleute (Spielmann's epic), 10, 15, 20, 65 Spindler, K. , 236 Spruchdichtung, 18 f., 50 ff, 60, 6 .5 Steinmar, 52 Stieglitz, H. and Ch., 248 Stifter, A., 256 Stolberg, C. and F. L. zu, 139 Storm, Th., 261 ff. Strachwitz, M. von, 253 Strauss, D. F., 247, 254. 262, 279 INDEX. 319 Strassburger Eide, the, IO Strieker, Der, 45 Sturm und Drang, 114, 116, 119, 127 ff., 134 ff., 142 ff., 180 f., 192 Suchenwirth, P., 60 Sudermann, H., 281 ff. Swabian School, the, 222 ff. Swiss literature, 72 f., 106 ff., 236, 256, 260 f., 275 Sybel, H. von, 258 Tagelied, the, 18 Tannhauser, Der, 52, 65 Tatian (Evangelienharmonie), 7 f. Tauler.J., 67 Tersteegen, G., 102 Tetterdank, 59 Theodorich the Great (Dietrich von Bern), 5 f. , 20 Theophilus, 66 Thirty Years' War, the, 79 ff., 91 ff. Thomasin von Zirclsere, 54 Thomasius, Ch., 102 f. Thummel, M. A. von, 132, 152 Tieck, Dorothea, 197 Tieck, J. L., 193 ff., 235 Tiedge, C. A., 183 Titurel, Der jiingere, 43 Torring, J. A. von, 150 Treitschke, H. von, 276 Trojanische Krieg, Der, 45, 58 Uhland, J. L., 222 ff. Ulfilas (Wulfila), 4f. Ulrich von Eschenbach, 45 Uliich von Lichtenstein, 46 Ulrich von Singenberg, 51 Ulrich von Tiirheim, 42 Ulrich von Winterstetten, 52 Ulrich von Zatzikoven, 43 Uz, J. P., 113 f. Varnhagen von Ense, K. A., 253 Vernunftler, Der, 105 Viebig, C., 285 Virginal, 29 Vischer, F. Th., 226 f. Volkerwanderung (Migrations), 5 Volksbiicher, 59, 78, 225 Volksdrama (Posse), 219 f. Volksepos. See Popular Epic. Volkslied, the, 64 ff., 136, 200 ff., 223 Voss, J. H., 138 f., 169 Voss, R., 284 Wackenroder, W. H., 194 Wagner, H. L. , 149 Wagner, R., 221, 265, 268 ff., 278 f. Waiblinger, W. , 225 Waitz, G., 258 Waldis, B., 61, 73 iVa/thari/i'ed, Das, 10 Walther von der Vogelweicle, 48 ff. Wappendichter, 60 Wariburgkrieg, Der, 63 Wassermann, J., 285 Weber, F. W., 273 f. Weber, K. M. von, 221 Weckherlin, G. R. ; 81 Wedekincl. P., 284 Weise, Ch.. 94 f. Weisse, C. F., 122 Werner, Z., 209 f. Wernher (Lied von der Jwig- fran], 14 Wernher der Gartencere, 45 Wernher von Elmendorf, 53 YVernigke, Ch., 104 Wessobrimner Gebet, Das, 7 Wickram, J., 77, 90 Wieland, C. M., 130 ff., 142, 168 Wienbarg, L., 242 Wilbrandt, A., 275 Wildenbruch, E. von, 281 Willem ( Reiuaert de Vos), 61 Willeram von Ebersburg, 14 Wimpfeling, J., 68, 72 Winkelmann, J. J. , 124 Windesbach, Herr von (Der Winsbekc), 53 Winfrith (Bonifacius), 7 Winileod, 9 Wirnt von Gravenberg, 43 Wisse, C., 58 Wittenweiler, II., 60 Wochenschriften, moralische, 105 Wolfdietrich, 30 f. 320 INDEX. Wolff, Ch. von, 103, 105, in Wolff, J., 273 Wolfram von Eschenbach, 3" 35 ff., 42 f., 48, 58, 93 Wulfila (Ulfilas), 4 f. Wyss, J. R., 1 06 Young Germany, 241 ff. Zacharia, J. F. W., 109 f. Zedlitz, J. C. von, 219, 228 Zesen, Ph. von, 97 Ziegler. H. A. von, 97 f. Zimmermann, J. G., 133 Zincgref, J. W., 8l Zinzendorf, N. L. von, 102 Zschokke, H., 236 PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS. 000477359