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GERMANY 



again into immediate touch with popular life. 

 But it is with the names of Klopstock, Lessing, 

 Wieland, and Herder that the brilliant epoch of 

 modern German literature begins. Their influence 

 Avas alike great and varied ; for, while Klopstock's 

 poem of the Messiah, and his Odes, in which he had 

 taken Milton as his model, re-echoed the tender 

 piety of the old reformers, and were so thoroughly 

 German in their spirit that they at once met 

 with an enthusiastic response in the hearts of the 

 people, Lessing's comedy of Minna von Barnhelm 

 and his drama of Nathan der Weise may be said to 

 have created anew the dramatic art in Germany. 

 Wieland, on the other hand, was the complete 

 antithesis of Klopstock, although, like Klopstock 

 and Lessiug, he was the founder of a new style. 

 He gave a graceful flexibility to German diction 

 which it had never before been made to assume, 

 imparted to his numerous tales and romances 

 an undisguised sensuous materialism, which, like 

 his style, had been borrowed from the French philo- 

 sophers of his day, and thus introduced into the 

 language and literature of Germany the germs of 

 many defects, as well as graces, to which they had 

 hitherto remained strangers. Herder is the typical 

 representative of those who resorted for their in- 

 spiration to the simplicity of the Volkslieder and 

 the poetry of nature and of the Orient. His pre- 

 dominant tendencies are indicated in his favourite 

 motto, ' Light, love, life.' And he also did admir- 

 able work as a philosopher and critic. In fact, his 

 philosophical critiques of foreign and German 

 literature contributed materially to the complete 

 literary revolution which ushered in the modern 

 period of German poetry. The influence exerted 

 on German literature by these writers, who may 

 be regarded as its regenerators, was soon appreci- 

 able in every branch of knowledge. The Swiss 

 Salomon Gessner shows some literary kinship 

 with Klopstock in his sweetly sentimental idylls. 

 Blumauer and Kortum, seeking to perpetuate the 

 irony of Wieland, made travesty of more serious 

 effusions. And it was in the same vein, but sea- 

 soned with stronger satire, that Lichtenberg wrote. 

 From the impulse communicated by Lessing came 

 the critical aesthetic writings of Winckelmann, and 

 the books of men like Zim merman n (author of 

 On Solitude) and Moses Mendelssohn. The aims 

 which Herder had set before him were adopted by 

 a band of writers whose chief characteristics con- 

 ferred upon the age they lived in the name of the 

 Sturm- und-Drang period. But the poetic spirit 

 raged in them too violently and refused to be sub- 

 jected to the laws and restraints of artistic pro- 

 duction. Klinger, one of whose dramas gave 

 title to the school, and ' Maler ' Miiller were the 

 champions of the movement. Hamann, in spite 

 of his oracular and enigmatical utterances, had 

 much in common with this school, though he did 

 not belong to it. 



Among the galaxy of great names which have 

 imparted renown to the literary and scientific annals 

 of Germany during the last hundred years we can 

 only instance a few of the principal writers who 

 have more especially enriched the several depart- 

 ments of learning with which they have been associ- 

 ated. Philosophy, which originated, as stated, with 

 Leibnitz (1646-1716), who, however, wrote in Latin 

 and French, assumed a degree of individuality and 

 completeness through the intellectual acumen and 

 subtle analysis of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and 

 Hegel which have no parallel in any other country. 

 Other names worthy of mention in this department 

 are Fries, Jacobi, Herbart, Schopenhauer, Zeller, 

 Feuerbach, Baader, Ed. von Hartmann, Lotze, 

 Haeckel, Fechner, Wundt, and Pfleiderer. In theo- 

 logy Reinhard, Paulus, Schleiermacher, De Wette, 

 Marheineke, Neander, Julius Miiller, Liicke, Baur, 



Strauss, Mohler, Dollinger, Ewald, Hase, Lipsius, 

 Dorner, Ritschl, Wellhausen, Holtzmann, and a 

 host of others have infused new life into biblical 

 inquiry. Invaluable results have been attained 

 by the philological and critical researches of F. A. 

 Wolf, Hermann, Miiller, J. and W. Grimm, Bopp, 

 Lassen, Gesenius, Schlegel, W. Humboldt, Lepsius, 

 Bunsen, Von der Hagen, Lachmann, Sirnrock, 

 Moritz Haupt, Benfey, Pott, Schleicher, Stein thai, 

 Diez, &c. In archa-ology, history, and jurispru- 

 dence all nations owe a debt of gratitude to 

 Winckelmann, Heeren, Lobeck, Von Raumer, 

 Schlosser, Von Hammer, Gervinus, Dahlmann, 

 Waitz, Ranke, Bluntschli, Niebuhr, Mommsen, 

 and Duncker. 



In poetry and belles-lettres the name of Goethe 

 is a host in itself. In his Leiden des Jungen 

 Werther ('The Sorrows of Young Werther') 

 he carried the sentimental tendencies of the 

 Stnrm-und- Drang school to their culminating 

 point ; but his own later and very numerous works 

 became in time more and more free from its 

 blemishes, and rose to an almost Olympic calm, 

 a Hellenic strength, and grace, and proportion. 

 In Goethe's middle period he was intimately 

 associated with Schiller (1759-1805), whose early 

 works, The Robbers, Ficsco, and Don Carlos, threw 

 the whole German people into a frenzy of excite- 

 ment. Schiller's later dramatic works, if less 

 exciting than these, gave evidence of more matured 

 taste, while some of his ballads and lyrics may be 

 said to stand unrivalled. The tendency of the 

 German poets for drawing together into schools 

 Avas again exemplified in the case of the Gottinger 

 Dichterbund, formed at Gottingen about 1770. Its 

 leading spirit was Voss, better known for his 

 translation of the Homeric poems than for his 

 idyllic Luise. With him were associated more or 

 less closely Burger (author of Lenore), Holty, the 

 two Counts Stolberg, and Claudius. They took 

 Klopstock for their high-priest, and sang of friend- 

 ship, love of country, and all high and noble ideals. 

 Among the works of prose fiction which appeared 

 soon after this period are the novelettes of Zschokke, 

 the romantic tales of Vulpius, the artistic romances 

 of Heinse, and the humorous romances of Hippel 

 and J. G. Miiller. IfHand attained great reputation 

 as a writer of sensational dramas, and Kotzebue 

 as an inexhaustible composer of light effective 

 comedies. 



The Romantic school, which succeeded the Sturm- 

 und- Drang period, found for a while its inspiration 

 in the medieval romances and in Shakespeare, 

 admirably translated by Schlegel and Tieck. Its 

 chief representatives and defenders were A. W. 

 Schlegel, Friedrich von Hardenberg, better known 

 as Novalis (1772-1801), Tieck, Fr. Schlegel, Schell- 

 ing, and Wilhelm von Humboldt. Kleist is the 

 chief dramatist of the school. Among the writers 

 who were smitten with the same tendencies are the 

 poet Holderlin, and De la Motte Fouque, E. T. W. 

 Hoffmann, and Chamisso, who loved to dwell on 

 the mysterious agencies of nature, which they 

 attempted to individualise and bring into asso- 

 ciation with material forms, as in the Undine of 

 the first, the fantastic tales of the second, and the 

 Peter Schlemihl of the third. Jean Paul Richter, 

 the satirist and humorist, though sometimes in- 

 cluded in the Romantic school, in reality occupies 

 a position apart from and far above bis compeers ; 

 and few novelists ever exerted so lasting an influ- 

 ence on the literature and mode of feeling of their 

 compatriots as that which Richter exercised over 

 the minds of the middle classes of Germany during 

 the close of the last and the early part of the 

 present century. Poetry has also found noble 

 representatives in the so-called Vaterlandsdichter 

 (Po&ts of the Fatherland), among whom we may 



