GER 216. German
Civilization
An Online
German Culture Course from the Reformation to the Present Day
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Lesson 5 |
Assignments for Lesson 5 |
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Late 18th-Century Culture
On the eve of the French
Revolution, Austria and Prussia politically overshadowed the other German
states and principalities - over 200 disparate units - although many
intellectually significant advances took place in the smaller states as well.
As Lesson 4 indicated, Dresden, Leipzig, and Goethe's city of Weimar in the
small state of Saxe-Weimar, had emerged as important cultural capitals in
central Europe besides Vienna, Munich, and Berlin. Prussia's king Frederick the Great
and his adherence to Enlightenment ideals had captured the imagination of the
Germans. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe captured the situation well when he said:
"We were not partisans of Prussia, but partisans of Fritz."
Goethe and
Schiller are literary figures better known in Europe than in North America.
Their youth-oriented, romantic, and revolutionary "Sturm und Drang"
("storm and stress") movement of the 1770s celebrated the notion of
individual genius, praising freedom of etiquette and emotion, and rediscovering
the heroic German past. To many in Europe, Goethe and Weimar symbolized
Germany's growing cultural and political influence. Germany's separate cultural
identity was shaped by its relation to France, whose culture it had to admire
and at the same time had to reject during the upheaval of the French Revolution.
Lesson 5 focuses on the period of Classicism
as a cultural climax in central European arts and letters from the 1780s to early
1830s, particularly in the fields of music, opera, theater, and literature. The
movement exalted clear and harmonious aesthetic ideals, and the humanist
synthesis of nature and culture, freedom and necessity, individual and communal
responsibilities.
Germany and the French Revolution
In many quarters of the German
speaking countries, there was a negative reaction to the ideas and ideals
[equality, liberty, and brotherhood) of the French
Revolution right after its outbreak in 1789. The influence of the French
Revolution was strongly felt in northwestern Germany, particularly in the
cities of Brunswick and Hamburg and in the Rhineland. But in Prussia and
eastern Germany as well as in southern Germany and Austria there was little
sympathy for the violent political upheaval in France.
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Among the admirers of the French Revolution [pamphlets]
in Germany were the composer Ludwig van Beethoven, the poet Friedrich
Hölderlin, and the philosopher Immanuel Kant, who considered the revolution a
great and formidable event comparable to Luther's reformation or the Germanic
migrations during the early Middle Ages. |
The revolution's concepts of
natural law, the social contract and its radical implications derived by John Locke
and Jean Jacques
Rousseau had limited appeal, and found few enthusiasts in Germany's Enlightenment
movement, known as Aufklärung. Unlike France, it was argued, Prussia and
Austria were governed by enlightened monarchs who did not subject their peoples
to political abuses so prevalent under the old French regime. Most Germans were
quite content, therefore, to have the revolution stay west of the Rhine River.
The German reaction was also driven by a response to Napoleon Bonaparte's wars of
aggression rather than the export of revolutionary ideologies. Many Germans
considered the Napoleonic wars as a continuation of the French Revolution,
which they were of course. In this way the struggle against the Revolution
became the fountainhead of patriotic fervor in Germany, and the birth of German
nationalism.
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In
1806, after Napoleon's victories over Germany at Jena and Auerstädt, he rode
in triumph into Berlin passing under the Brandenburg Gate. The four-horsed
chariot or Quadrige on top of the gate caught Napoleon's eye. He gave the
order for the work to be brought to Paris. After Napoleon's defeat,
and the arrival of Prussian forces in Paris in 1814, the statue group was
taken back to Berlin, where it became a symbol of national identity, freedom
and victory. |
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Paradoxically, Napoleon's defeat
of Germany in 1806, his dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire
of German Nation, and his occupation of Germany and Austria was both
exploitive as well as civilizing. On the one hand, there were requisitions,
raids, and political persecutions. But Napoleons occupation also brought an end
to absolutist governments and feudalism in central Europe. Among the most
emancipatory outcomes of the occupation were the freedom of worship for Jews in Germany, and the adoption of a modern
code of law known as the Code Napoleon.
In this sense, the legacy of the French Revolution in Germany encompasses both
liberalism and nationalism, two opposing ideologies, which shaped much of
19th-century German politics and culture.
Music in the Classical Period
The Classical Period (1750-1820) came at a time of
radical political and social changes. The French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars
changed the face of Europe. The American Revolution and the signing of the U.S.
Constitution and Bill of Rights shaped democracy of America. In Europe, the
middle classes could enjoy and participate in leisure activities. In the music
world, the Classical Period saw the first public concerts where people paid
admission to attend. From roughly 1750
to 1820, musicians as well as artists and architects moved away
from the heavily ornamented styles of the Baroque period and later the Rococo,
and instead embraced a clean, uncluttered style they thought reminiscent of
Classical Greece. The newly established aristocracies were replacing monarchs
and the church as patrons of the arts, and were demanding an impersonal, but
tuneful and elegant music. Dances such as the minuet and the gavotte
were provided in the forms of entertaining serenades and divertimenti.
At the end of the 18th century, the Austrian capital
of Vienna became the
musical center of Europe, and works of the period are often referred to as
being in the Viennese style. Composers visited from all over Europe to
work in Vienna, and gradually they developed and formalized the standard
musical forms that were to dominate European musical culture for the next
several decades.
A reform of the extravagance of Baroque opera was undertaken by Christoph von Gluck. Johann Stamitz contributed greatly to the growth of the orchestra and developed the idea of the orchestral symphony. For the first time, instrumental music became more important than vocal music. The Classical period reached its majestic culmination with the masterful symphonies, sonatas, and string quartets by the three great composers of the Viennese school: Franz Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Ludwig van Beethoven. During the same period, the first stirring of the burgeoning Romantic movement can be found in the music of Viennese composer Franz Schubert.
Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Born in Salzburg, Austria,
on January 27, 1756, Mozart
was renowned as a child prodigy, who composed his first sonata at age four. He
spent most of his youth in Salzburg, where he learned music composition on the
violin and the harpsichord. His father, Leopold Mozart, was a violin teacher,
court composer, and vice conductor at the Prince Archbishop's court. Leopold
Mozart was aware of his son's exceptional talent and groomed him musically from
an early age. Wolfgang's mother had seven children, but five died shortly after
birth. Wolfgang had one surviving sibling, his sister, Maria Anna Mozart, who
was a talented piano player. She accompanied her brother on many of his
concerts. Mozart began his musical career as a six-year-old boy in 1762, when
he visited Munich with his father and sister to perform a concert. By June of
1763, Mozart was a resounding success as he performed throughout central
Europe. By the time Mozart died at age 35,
he had composed seven major operas, over 40 symphonies, 27
concertos, 23 string quartets, and a good deal of chamber and church music as
well. His most memorable operas include The Marriage of Figaro,
The
Magic Flute, and Don
Giovanni.
Many of Mozart's most impressive
works date from the last decade of his life, 1781 to 1791, in which he got
married to Constanze Weber, and lived primarily in Vienna. In these years,
Mozart experienced some notable professional successes. in March 1786. In 1786,
The Marriage of Figaro was first performed in Vienna, then in Prague
(now the Czech Republic), and other cities to enthusiastic public response. In
1787 the premiere of Don Giovanni in Prague received a similar response.
During the last years of his life Mozart was plagued at times by financial
difficulties. The resounding success of The Magic Flute, which had its
premiere in late 1791, would have solved these problems, but it came too
late for Mozart, who died on December 5, 1791. On his deathbed, Mozart labored
on the Requiem Mass in D Minor (K. 626), while suffering from delusions
that he had been poisoned. He died with the Requiem unfinished. The
cause of his death is uncertain and has been the subject of much speculation.
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Mozart has been
viewed as the quintessential classical composer. While drawing on various
national traditions, he brought the classical style to its highest development.
This style, which evolved from about 1750 to 1800 when Vienna was the center of
European music, can be characterized by both lively contrasts of musical themes
and by harmonious symmetries of musical forms. Both, the simplicity and
richness of his musical compositions and the subtlety and depth of his
psychological insights portrayed by his operatic masterpieces find parallels in
much of Mozart's instrumental music as well. If his music embodies something of
the elegance and refinement of the privileged aristocratic world before the French
Revolution (1789-1799), it also affirms values subversive to that world.
Mozart often lodged his critique of social inequities in the depiction of
ruthless or flawed aristocrats. He did so in Marriage of Figaro and Don
Giovanni, and in the glorification in The Magic Flute of the
egalitarian ideals of the Freemasons,
who were deemed dangerous and revolutionary by Austria's aristocracy.
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Audio Files |
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) |
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Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) |
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Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) |
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Born in the city of Bonn (near
Cologne) to an alcoholic father and an unstable mother, the young Beethoven was
subjected to an unhappy training in music at the hands of his father, who hoped
that the boy would prove to be another prodigy like Mozart.
Failing in this, the young Beethoven nevertheless embarked on a musical career,
moved to Vienna in 1792, and studied
for a short time with Franz
Joseph Haydn. Hailed as a master of improvisation at the piano, Beethoven
soon made a name for himself, and by 1794 was known throughout the German
speaking countries. At first, he adopted the classical Viennese musical styles,
but then proceeded throughout his career to upstage and revolutionize these
traditions. Beethoven's earliest compositions reflect the classical restraints
of Haydn and Mozart, yet there were revolutionary flashes of what was to come. The
emotion he displayed while playing his own music was unheard of in his day, and
the fiery intensity of his early Piano Sonata in C minor,
known as the Pathetique is one of the first works in which Beethoven
gives vent to his own dramatic musical genius.
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By 1800, Beethoven had become aware of his advancing deafness -- surely a most horrible
fate for a musician and unendurable to a composer. Agonizing over his failing
health, Beethoven embraced life, determined to go on composing, if no longer
performing. Unhappy with his own adherence to traditional compositional styles
up to that time, Beethoven began composing music such as had never before been
heard. His Symphony no. 3 in E-flat
major, subtitle the "Eroica", was completed
in 1804, and was almost twice as long as any symphony written before that time.
Taking the classical symphony
as a starting point, it introduces more themes, more contrasts, more
instruments, more weight and more drama than previously heard in the symphonic
form. His sixteen string quartets reflect his development from the
classical restraint of the six early quartets to the overwhelming yet sublime
late quartets, which contain music of such personal pain, and suffering, that
one wonders if an audience was intended to hear them at all. Beethoven's
musical ideas, and the themes he used were revolutionary for his day. With the
storming opening of the Piano Concerto
no. 5 in E-flat, Beethoven boldly broke with the tradition of the
orchestral presentation of the theme before the entrance of the piano, and
introduced the notion of the nineteenth century virtuoso concert-pianist.
Beethoven's affirmation of freedom and nature led to his composing one of the
earliest of program symphonies, the "Pastoral"
Symphony no. 6 in F major, complete with musical images of flowing brooks,
thunderstorms, and bird calls. This work would later come to influence the
symphonic works of Romantic composers like Hector Berlioz
and Franz
Liszt.
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With
plans for the future and sketches of a tenth symphony begun, Beethoven
contracted a chill, which led to a long illness, compounded by ear ailments and
complete deafness. In and out of consciousness for weeks, Beethoven succumbed
on March 26, 1827. Some 10,000 people lined the streets of Vienna at his
funeral to pay homage to the composer who had forever changed the musical
climate of Western Europe. With Beethoven's passing, the stage was set for a
new movement in western music: Romanticism.
German Arts and Sciences around 1800
Besides philosophy, mathematics,
and physics, many other areas of arts and sciences were on
the rise in late 18th-century German civilization. Poetry and theater blossomed
under the creative influence of authors like Goethe and Schiller, whose works
ushered in the classical era of German literature known as Weimar Classicism.
In literature, the turn of the century saw the rise of the novel to
predominance among the different genres of prose. Music saw even more
innovations, with the rise of the piano, the orchestra, and opera. The
formidable list of accomplished writers, artists, musicians and scientists
active around 1800, when historical attention was concentrated on the great
drama of the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, laid the foundations for
the advances of German civilization in the next century.
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In
the history of women's writing in Germany, few authors have had more
influence than Sophie von La Roche (1731-1807). |
Weimar
Classicism 1786-1832
The Weimar revival of the aesthetic principles of classical Greek and Roman art
and architecture refers to the adoption of such principles in German music,
painting, and literature around 1800. The philosophical ideals behind the
movement focused on a harmonious realignment of culture and nature, freedom and
tolerance, individual and society. Weimar classicism represents one of the
major achievements of the classical period in German literature—an era notable
for its emotional restraint, temperance of thought, and lucidity of expression.
During this period, the city of Weimar in today's state of Thuringia became the
center of the movement, with Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Friedrich Schiller at
its center.
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Today, the archives house over 110 personal
collections of poets, scholars, philosophers, composers and artists,
including those of Goethe and Schiller themselves, as well as those of other
Classical figures, among them Herder, Wieland, Knebel, Riemer, Eckermann,
Kanzler von Müller, Johann Heinrich Meyer and Bertuch, and figures from the
late nineteenth century, including Nietzsche, Büchner, Freiligrath,
Immermann, Mörike, Otto Ludwig, Fritz Reuther and Hebbel. Source: Stiftung Weimarer Klassik |
Schiller
believed in absolute ethical ideals, which provided the motive force of his
greatest dramatic works: the Wallenstein trilogy (1798-1799), Maria
Stuart (1800), Die Jungfrau von Orleans (The Maid of Orleans,
1801), and Wilhelm Tell (1804). Goethe derived his philosophy from his
experiences as lyric poet, balladeer, dramatist, novelist, essayist, scientist,
and political figure. He lived according to the ideal expressed in his Faust:
never to be satisfied with what one is, but to strive incessantly to learn, to
improve, and to accomplish. His writings reflect his development from the
youthful rebellion expressed in works such as the Sorrows of Young Werther
to the more mature search for emotional restraint, objectivity, beauty, and the
ideal human personality expressed in his later classicist works. The two parts
of Faust, moreover, have often been considered representative of the
prevailing tendencies of German literature; the first part contained many
"Storm and Stress" elements, whereas the second part represented the
classicism most admired by Goethe.
Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
Early Life and Works. Goethe
describes his happy and sheltered childhood in his autobiography, Dichtung
und Wahrheit (1811-33). In 1765 he went to Leipzig to study law. There he
spent his time in the usual student dissipations, which perhaps contributed to
a hemorrhage that required a long convalescence at Frankfurt. His earliest
lyric poems, set to music, were published in 1769. In 1771 he completed his law
studies at Strasbourg, where an acquaintance with the German poet Herder filled
him with enthusiasm for Shakespeare, for Germany's medieval past, and for the
German folk song. Among the lasting influences of Goethe's youth were J. J.
Rousseau and Spinoza, who appealed to Goethe's mystic and poetic feeling for
nature in its ever-changing aspects. It was in this period that Goethe began
his lifelong study of animals and plants and his research in biological
morphology. Goethe first attracted public notice with the drama Götz von
Berlichingen (1773). More important was the epistolary novel Die Leiden
des jungen Werthers (1774, The Sorrows of Young Werther) that Goethe,
on the verge of suicide, wrote after an unrequited love affair. Werther
gave him immediate fame and the novel was widely translated in Europe. While
the writing had helped Goethe regain stability, the novel's effect on his
readership was the opposite; it encouraged morbid sensibility.
The Weimar Years. In 1775, Goethe was
invited to visit the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, at whose court he was to spend the
rest of his life. For ten years Goethe was chief minister of state at Weimar. He
later retained only the directorship of the state theater and the scientific
institutions. A trip to Italy (1786-88) fired his enthusiasm for the
classical ideal, as Goethe describes it in his travel account, and in Winckelmann and His
Century (1805). Also written under the classical impact were the historical
drama Egmont (1788), well known for Beethoven's incidental music; the
psychological drama Torquato Tasso (1789); the domestic epic Hermann
und Dorothea (1797); and the final, poetic version (1787) of the drama Iphigenie
auf Tauris. In 1792 Goethe accompanied Duke Charles Augustus as official
historian in the allied campaign against revolutionary France. He appreciated
the principles of the French Revolution but resented the methods employed. A
reformer in his own small state, Goethe wished to see social change
accomplished from above. Later he refused to share in the patriotic fervor that
swept Germany during the Napoleonic Wars.
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Source: http://www.goethe-bytes.de/ |
His most enduring work, indeed, one of the peaks of
world literature, is the dramatic poem Faust. The first part was
published in 1808, the second shortly after Goethe's death. Goethe recast the
traditional Faust
legend and made it one of the greatest poetic and philosophic creations the
world possesses. His main departure from the original is no doubt the salvation
of Faust, the erring seeker, in the mystic last scene of the second part. Women
friends and companions played a big role in Goethe's life and work, with
Charlotte von Stein probably the most influential and intellectual of them. He
married (1806) Christiane Vulpius (1765-1816), who had born him a son. Goethe's
unsuccessful marriage offer (1822) to Ulrike von Levetzow inspired his poems Trilogie
der Leidenschaft [trilogy of passion]. Westöstlicher Diwan (1819), a
collection of Goethe's finest lyric poetry, was inspired by his young friend
Marianne von Willemer, who figures as Suleika in the cycle. The Diwan
strikes a new note in German poetry, introducing Eastern elements derived from
Goethe's reading of the Persian poet Hafiz.
Other Accomplishments.
Increasingly aloof from national, political, or even literary partisanship,
Goethe became more and more the Olympian divinity, to whose shrine at Weimar
all Europe flocked. The variety and extent of his accomplishments and
activities were monumental. Goethe knew French, English, Italian, Latin, Greek,
and Hebrew and translated works by Diderot, Voltaire, Cellini, Byron, and
others. His approach to science was one of sensuous experience and poetic
intuition. Well known is his stubborn attack on Newton's theory of light in Zur
Farbenlehre (1810). A corresponding treatise on acoustics remained
unfinished. Goethe's aim was to make his life a concrete example of the full
range of human potential, and he succeeded as few others did. The friendship of
Friedrich von Schiller
and his death (1805) made a deep impression on Goethe. He is buried, alongside
Schiller, in the ducal crypt at Weimar. The opinions of Goethe are recorded not
only in his own writings but also in conversations recorded by his secretary J.
P. Eckermann and in extensive correspondence with the composer Zelter and with
Schiller, Byron, Carlyle, Manzoni, and others. It would be difficult to
overestimate Goethe's influence on the subsequent history of German literature.
Friedrich von
Schiller (1759-1805)
Johann Christoph Friedrich von
Schiller was born on November 10, 1759, in Marbach,
near Stuttgart in southern Germany, where his father worked for Duke Karl Eugen
of Württemberg. When he was 13 years old, Schiller entered the Duke's military
academy. He studied law and later turned to medicine. At 21 years of age,
Schiller was appointed to a Stuttgart regiment as an officer.
Schiller's first literary work was
a Storm and Stress play entitled The Robbers (1781). When the Duke
learned that Schiller had, without permission, left the military regiment to
stage his play at a Mannheim
theater, the Duke put the young officer under arrest and forbade him to publish
other works. Schiller fled to Mannheim, and later settled in Leipzig, where he
wrote the poetic drama Don Carlos (1787). His plays helped to establish
Schiller, along with Goethe, as one of Germany's most accomplished dramatists
and as a major figure, first of the Storm and Stress period and later of Weimar
Classicism. Partly to be near Goethe, Schiller moved to Weimar in 1799, which
began his most prolific period as a playwright and dramatist. The psychology of
people in crisis was the dominant theme in such plays as the Wallenstein
cycle (1798-99), Mary Stuart (1800), The Maid of Orleans (1801),
and William Tell (1804).
Schiller also wrote poetry and
essays, including Ode to Joy, which was later set to music by Ludwig van
Beethoven in his Ninth Symphony. Influenced by the philosophy of Immanuel
Kant, Schiller wrote several important treatises on aesthetics, foremost among
them On
the Aesthetic Education of Man. His History of the Revolt of the
United Netherlands (1788) won Schiller fame as a scholar and led to his
appointment as a professor of history at the University of Jena near Weimar.
Schiller edited The Hours, a journal published by Johann Friedrich
Cotta, and maintained a long correspondence with Goethe. He continued to write
and translate and until his health gradually failed. He died in Weimar on May
9, 1805.
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Schiller's plays, considered by many to be Germany's
greatest dramas, highlight human dignity, optimism, and moral idealism. His
masterpiece is Wallenstein (1798-1799), a historical drama set during
the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). Schiller also produced important
historical works, philosophical tracts, and poetry, and, together with
Goethe, became one of the influential writers of Weimar Classicism. Source: studiocleo.com |
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Assignments
for Lesson 5
(1) Read the second half of
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's novel The Sorrows of Young Werther.
An online text
version is available at: http://jollyroger.nbci.com/xlibrary/TheSorrowsofGJ/TheSorrowsofGJ1.html
An online synopsis of Jules
Massenet's Opera Werther, which is based on Goethe's novel, is
available at
http://www.laopera.org/98-99/werthersynopsis.htm
(2) Discuss this Lesson
on the Discussion Board
Preview:
Reading Assignment for Lesson 6
Read Don Giovanni and The
Earthquake in Chile in Six
German Romantic Tales. Heinrich von Kleist, Ludwig Tieck. Paperback ISBN: 0802312950.
Where do you want to go
next?
Ø Quiz 1 for Lesson 5 [civilization]
Ø Quiz 2 for Lesson 5 [text]
Ø Discuss
this Lesson on the Discussion Board
Sources: Books and Web Pages of Interest
Beethoven, Ludwig van. The Internet
Public Library http://www.ipl.org:2000/exhibit/mushist/clas/beethoven.htm
"Classic,
Classical, and Classicism," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2001. http://encarta.msn.com
© 1997-2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. http://encarta.msn.com/find/concise.asp?ti=761571505&sid=4
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Classical Period http://www.ipl.org:2000/exhibit/mushist/
Classical Period http://www.ntsd.wednet.edu/THS/orchweb/classical.htm
Goethe audio files http://www.goethe-bytes.de/
Goethe http://www.fortunecity.de/lindenpark/goethe/1/goethebio.htm
Goethe Year 1999 GOETHE
(1749-1832) - ON HIS 250TH BIRTHDAY, Conversations of Goethe by Johann Peter Eckermann, John Oxenford, tr., Havelock Ellis
(1998)
Goldberg, Frederick G., Ph.D. Late Adjunct Professor of German,
Baruch College of the City University of New York. Clayton Koelb, B.A.,
M.A., Ph.D. Professor of German and Comparative Literature, University of North
Carolina. "German Literature," Microsoft® Encarta® Online
Encyclopedia 2001 http://encarta.msn.com/ © 1997-2001 Microsoft
Corporation. All rights reserved.
Internet Public Library, The Classical
or Viennese Period http://www.ipl.org:2000/exhibit/mushist/clas/index.htm
La Roche, Sophie von. Sophie,
A Digital Library
Mozart Gallery http://www.starnews2001.com.br/mozart.html
Mozart http://www.sheetmusicusa.com/tp/mozart/index.htm
Mozart, Das Musical. http://krdirekt.de/musikels/mozart-hamburg/mozart.html
Napoleon Bonaparte, Fondation Napoléon
Napoleon http://www.napoleon.org/home_us.html
Rempel, Gerhard. Western New England College, http://mars.acnet.wnec.edu/~grempel/courses/germany/lectures/04prussian.html.
Schiller, Friedrich von. On the Aesthetic Education of Man
Schiller, Friedrich von. studiocleo.com
Weimarer Klassik http://www.weimar-klassik.de/sprache.html
Weimarer Klassik Schulprojekt http://www.ikg.rt.bw.schule.de/virkla/names/schuels/deutsch2/wklassik/weimakla.htm
A. Lixl. August 2001