GER 216. German
Civilization
An Online
German Culture Course from the Reformation to the Present Day
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Lesson 7 |
Assignments for Lesson 7 |
Where do you want to go next? Ø
Quiz 1 for Lesson 7 [civilization] Ø
Quiz 2 for Lesson 7 [text] Ø
Course Exam One (Lessons 1-7) Ø
Discuss
this Lesson on the Discussion Board |
Outline to Lesson 6 and Lesson 7 on German
Romanticism 1790-1848
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Lesson 6. Romanticism Ø
Historical background 1790-1815 Ø
Romanticism's Social Background Ø
Introduction to Romanticism Ø
Romanticism in Painting Ø
Romanticism in Literature Ø
Kleist, Hoffmann Biographies Ø Introductions to Don Giovanni and The Earthquake in
Chili |
Lesson 7. From Romanticism to the Revolutions
of 1848 ·
Historical background 1815-1848 ·
Germans in Exile: Heine and Marx ·
The Emerging Women's Movement ·
German Fairy Tales ·
Tieck, Hoffmann Biographies ·
Text introductions: Eckbert the Fair, The
Runenberg, The Jesuit Chapel in G. ·
Romanticism in Music ·
Preparation for Course Exam I |
Historical and Political Background: Germany
1815-1848
Romanticism and its culture of creative genius,
subjectivity, and individuality occurred at a time of rapid technological and economic changes brought on by the
"Industrial Revolution." The rise of the modern factory was 
the most
direct outcome of the Industrial Revolution, but the mass-production of goods
drastically changed everywhere the way people worked, lived, and played
(example: the mass-produced piano). Inventions
like the steam engine, the cotton jenny (see illustration: Yarn machine
1820-1840), and, above all, the railroad affected everyone in their wakes. The
railroad, in particular, created vast new labor forces employing thousands of
workers. The creation of huge investment opportunities and financial
transactions, the economic development of rural or remote areas (example: the
United States' interior), the development of new city architecture, mass
entertainment, mass literature, and the
creation of standard time impacted millions of people, and changed forever the
course of European civilization.
In Germany, industrialization proceeded at a much
slower rate than in England, the cradle of the Industrial Revolution. During
the first three decades of the century, the economic impact was limited
primarily to the mining and steel industries. However, with the creation of an
open market (Zollverein) in 1834, the construction of better roads, faster mail
service, and rapid railroad connections 
between the
urban centers (see illustration: German railroad outside Nuremberg 1836), Germany developed
as an emerging industrial power. Despite these successes, unemployment remained
high in Germany, due primarily to an increase in population, which quickly
outpaced the opportunities created by industrial developments. Moreover, a
flood of inexpensive factory goods brought hardship to artisans, craftsmen, and
small home industries, particularly the textile workers and weavers (see picture:
Carl 
Wilhelm
Hübner. The Silesian Weavers, 1846.
Impoverished families selling their wares to a factory owner). Their homemade
products could no longer compete
with the influx of mass-manufactured goods. Bad harvests, famine, and inflation
added to the problems, which brought poverty to many working families in the
1840s. These economic and social hardships contributed to the massive
emigration movements from Germany to the new world throughout the nineteenth
century, as well as the political appeal of liberal and socialist ideologies
among middle class and working families. Many of the emancipation
ideologies, which still influence today's political landscapes, can be traced
back to these early 19th century movements. It is important to remember, though,
that "Liberalism" and "Socialism" in the nineteenth century
referred to very different sets of beliefs and principles then than they do
now. Back then, liberalism involved the extension of Romanticism's themes of
"individualism" and "emancipation" to politics. At their
core, most liberal movements opposed aristocratic privilege and divine-right
monarchy.
The Liberal
Revolutions of 1848
1848 marked the year of political revolutions in many
European monarchies, including Austria and Germany. Though the specific causes
and aims varied from country to country, the revolutionary movements all arose
against a common background: economic depression, caused by bad harvests and
famine in the countryside, as well as unemployment and recession in industrial
and urban areas. Liberal and emancipatory political movements, many of which
were inspired by American and French revolutionary ideals, aimed at replacing
monarchial forms of government through parliamentary democracies. Although the
uprisings, abdications, and political storms continued throughout 1848, the
revolutions produced few lasting effects. Particularly in Germany, the outcome
of the revolution was essentially one of liberalism's failure. As a case in
point, in February 1848, when the newly formed German parliament in Frankfurt
recommended the formation of a parliamentary monarchy, and offered the German
crown to the Hohenzollern dynasty, the Prussian king declined to accept a crown
from "the gutter". By the end of the year, conservative forces
prevailed and the liberal revolution collapsed.
The Socialist Movements
Socialism, gathering strength from the failure of
liberalism, became a formidable political force in Germany after 1848. For many,
socialism's appeal was grounded in a reaction to a rapidly industrializing
society in which the traditional successes of skilled crafts and agricultural
work were being replaced by monotonous, miserable and alienating factory work
of the new industrial order. If anything, "socialism" in Germany had
an even more diverse set of meanings than liberalism. The various brands of
socialism included Utopian Socialism like that of the French thinker Fourier,
as well as Christian Socialism and other revolutionary egalitarian movements,
all of which envisioned a state directing economic progress for collective
justice. Utopian and socialist movements led to the foundation of German
colonies in America, the foundation of Christian socialism, and revolutionary
socialism. It is particularly important to remember that the revolutionary
theories of Karl Marx (1818-83) and Friedrich Engels, which later
developed into Soviet-style communism, was only one of many varieties of
socialism popular in the 19th century.
Germans in Exile: Marx and Heine
Karl Marx was born in 1818 into a German-Jewish family in Trier, and
was educated at the universities of Bonn, Berlin, and Jena. In 1842, shortly
after contributing his first article to the Cologne newspaper Rheinische
Zeitung, Marx became editor of the paper. His writings in the Rheinische
Zeitung, which strongly criticized contemporary political and social conditions,
embroiled him in controversy with the German authorities, and in 1843 Marx was
compelled to resign his editorial post, and soon afterward the Rheinische
Zeitung was forced to discontinue publication. In Paris in 1844, he met his
compatriot Frederick
Engels. The two began a life-long collaboration to elucidate the
theoretical principles of 
egalitarian social rule, and to organize an international
working-class movement dedicated to revolutionary principles. Their first
publication, the now famous Communist
Manifesto, was a systematic analysis of modern socialist doctrine. The Manifesto
outlines historical progress as a series of social struggles between ruling and
oppressed, social classes. Shortly after publishing The Manifesto, Marx
was arrested and tried in Cologne on a charge of incitement to armed
insurrection; he was acquitted but was expelled from Germany, and went into
political exile in France, then Brussels and London, where he died in 1883.
During his residence in England Marx devoted himself to building an
international communist movement [see First
International], and wrote a number of works that are regarded as classics
of communist theory. These include his greatest work, Das Kapital (1867),
in which he developed the theory that the capitalist class exploits the working
class by appropriating the "surplus value" produced by the working
class. [See Capital]
Marx also contributed articles on contemporary political and social events to
newspapers in Europe and the United States. He was a correspondent of the New
York Daily Tribune, and in 1857 and 1858 he wrote a number of articles for
the New American Cyclopedia. Marx's
influence during his life was limited, but it increased with the growth of the
German labor movement. Marx's ideas and theories came to be known as Marxism,
or scientific socialism, which later constituted one of the principal currents
of 20-century political thought. His analysis of capitalist economy and his
theories of historical materialism, the class struggle, and surplus value have become
the basis of modern socialist doctrine.
(Source:
Adapted from "Marx, Karl," Microsoft® Encarta® Online
Encyclopedia 2001. http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2001 Microsoft Corporation.
All rights reserved.)
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German cover page of the Manifesto of the Communist
Party, published in London in 1848 by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. [Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei. Veröffentlicht im
Februar 1848. Proletarier aller Länder vereinigt euch. London.] (Source: |
Prologue A
specter is haunting Europe--the specter of communism. All the powers of old
Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this specter: Pope and
Czar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police spies. Where
is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its
opponents in power? Where the Opposition that has not hurled back the
branding reproach of communism, against the more advanced opposition parties,
as well as against its reactionary adversaries? Two
things result from this fact: I. Communism is already acknowledged by all
European powers to be itself a power. II. It is high time that Communists
should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their
aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the specter of
communism with a manifesto of the party itself. Part I: Bourgeois And Proletarians The
history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman
and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman,
in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another,
carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each
time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or
in the common ruin of the contending classes. [...] |
The poet
and cultural critic Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) was well known for
his liberal political opinions and for his satirical attacks on German nationalism.
Heine's writings and controversial political activities brought him into
disfavor with German authorities, but made him famous as a rebel poet
throughout Europe. He gained lasting fame for his lyrical poems and ballads,
which were noted for the themes of romantic irony, passionate yearning, and the
subtlety of emotions they expressed.
Born into a German-Jewish family in Düsseldorf, where he
attended schools until he moved to Hamburg to work in the bank of his uncle
Salomon Heine. In 1819 Heine began to study law, first in Bonn and then in
Göttingen. In 1821 he moved to Berlin, where he came into contact with the
noted German philosopher G.
W. F. Hegel, who profoundly influenced Heine's philosophic outlook. From
1824 to 1825 he returned to study law in Göttingen. In order to obtain his
university degree, Heine converted to Christianity in 1825, because the
profession of law was prohibited to Jews in Germany at that time.
From 1827 to 1831 Heine lived in England and Italy as
well as in various parts of Germany. During that period he wrote travel stories
and a number of prose works in which he displayed sympathy with the democratic
ideas of the French
Revolution (1789-1799) and bitterly satirized the feudal regimes of the
German kingdoms and duchies. In the
1830s Heine became a prominent member of a literary group known as Junges
Deutschland (Young Germany), which attacked the German school of Romanticism
for having come under the domination of the monarchy and the church. He had
hoped to obtain a position as a professor of German literature, but his political
ideas brought him into the disfavor of the established German governments.
Seeking a friendlier political and literary atmosphere, Heine left for exile in
Paris in 1831. Except for two brief visits to his native land, he spent the
rest of his life in France.
In Paris, Heine wrote for several German newspapers
and became friends with fellow German exiles like Karl Marx, and with writers like
Honoré
de Balzac and George
Sand, and composers such as Hector
Berlioz and Frédéric
Chopin. Heine's writings continued to circulate throughout Europe. Some of
his most notable works such as the volume of poetry Romanzero (1851)
date from the last years of his life. This and his verses in the Book of Songs
inspired many accomplished composers, including Franz
Schubert of Austria and Robert
Schumann of Germany, who wrote music to accompany these verses.
(Source: "Heine, Heinrich," Microsoft® Encarta®
Online Encyclopedia 2001 http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2001 Microsoft
Corporation. All rights reserved)
The Emerging Women's Movement
The feminists and writers Louise
Otto-Peters (1819-1895) and Hedwig Dohm (1831-1919) were among of
the most vocal women's rights advocates in 19th-century Germany. Their
Enlightenment-style writings about social poverty and lack of education
illuminated the plight of women and advocated the abolition of discriminatory
laws and practices. Hedwig Dohm (see picture insert) attacked misogynous
traditions, which prohibited women 
to study at colleges and universities,
to participate in the political system, and to vote in elections. In 1849,
Louise Otto Peters founded the first women's newspaper, the
"Frauen-Zeitung", which she published and edited with much success in
Leipzig. Along with Auguste
Schmidt and Henriette Goldschmidt, Peters founded the General German
Women's Society in 1865 to promote interest and participation in the women's
movement.
Most male politicians, including liberals, showed little interest in the
condition of women before and after 1848. This was due to a number of factors,
including (1) a rather narrow understanding of democracy which restricted
suffrage to educated and prosperous voters; (2) patriarchal views about the
subservient role of women in the family; and (3) an alleged incapacity of women
to be educated and to participate fully in the economy. Later in the century, science was
also used as the means to justify women’s inferiority. The German scientist Dr.
P. Moebius had this to say about women: "If we wish women to fulfill
the task of motherhood fully she cannot possess a masculine brain. If the
feminine abilities were developed to the same degree as those of the male, her
maternal organs would suffer and we should have before us a repulsive and
useless hybrid". Hedwig Dohm, on the other hand, repudiated
such ideas in her book Of Women's Nature and Law (1878), in which she
wrote: "They say: because women give birth to children, they should not
have political rights.
I say this: because men can't give birth to children, they should not
have political rights, and I find one statement at least as thoughtful as the
other."
Important Dates of the German Women's Movement (Die
Frauenbewegung) 1848-1918
1849 Foundation
of the first women's newspaper by Louise Otto Peters (Frauen-Zeitung)
1850 Advocacy
for women to take part in political meetings, and to found and join political
associations in Germany
1865
the first women's conference and the foundation of the "Public German
Women's Association" under the chairmanship of Louise Otto and Auguste
Schmidt ("Allgemeiner Deutscher Frauenverein" ADF)
1874 First women workers hired by German railroad and telegraph
companies
1875 the German
Socialist Worker Party (SPD) demanded for the first time the right to vote for
all women
1889 First high school (Gymnasium) for girls founded in Berlin
1891 SPD demands
abolition of laws, which discriminate against women
1894 the foundation of
the "German Federation of Women's Associations" ("Bund
Deutscher Frauenvereine" BDF) under the chairmanship of Auguste
Schmidt
1896
"International Congress for Women's Work and Efforts" and the
splitting of the women's movement into middle class and proletarian women's
movement
1908 Abolition
of the Prussian Association Laws. Women are now allowed to take part in
political associations. German universities open to female students
1918 Women's
Suffrage in Germany and Austria
Romanticism in Music
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Robert
Schumann (1810-1856), the rebel leader of early
German Romanticism, experimented with less traditional musical forms than
Brahms and Schubert to convey a broad spectrum of moods and melodies in his
music. Music sample Richard
Wagner, the dominant figure of the last half of
the 19th century of German music, introduced a new kind of opera known as
music drama, which emphasized the Romantic notion of Gesamtkunstwerk, or "total work of art" combining
music, theater, painting, dance, architecture, literature, and song. |
Symphony
No. 4 by Felix Mendelssohn, from Italian Symphony Carnaval
Op. 9: Estrella by Robert Schumann, from Carnaval - Kinderszenen -
Papillons Die
Rose from "Dichterliebe" by Robert Schumann, performed
by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, from Schumann: Liederkreis and Dichterliebe Music from Richard
Wagner's opera Der
fliegende Holländer Scene from Symphony
No. 4 in G Major, movement 4" by Gustav Mahler, performed by
The Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra |
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Romantic Folk Legends and Fairy Tales
The Grimm
Brothers, two 19th-century German scholars and writers, were leaders in the
study of German philology, folklore, culture and mythology. [Insert: Jacob
Ludwig Karl Grimm, 1785-1863, and Wilhelm Karl Grimm 1786-1859] Both were born in the quaint village of Hanau, and studied
law at the University of Marburg, where they supported the liberal cause of
German unification. Jacob was primarily interested in old German literature and
customs. His greatest scientific work was a German Grammar,
generally considered the 
foundation of Germanic philology. Wilhelm was more
interested in Germanic mythology and literary history. Determined to
research the historical roots of their native Germanic language and culture, the brothers collaborated on numerous scientific projects
and publications, including a German Mythology, and
a monumental German Dictionary. It was
these scholarly endeavors, which formed the framework for the folk tale
projects, published as the Household
Tales in two volumes from 1812 to 1815,
followed by German Legends in 1816 and 1818. These collections, expanded
in 1857, became known as Grimm's Fairy Tales. Both
Jacob and Wilhelm regarded their work as part of a political effort to foster a
sense of social justice among the German people, and to deepen the pride in the
country's folk traditions.
While most of the folk tales and
legends were handed down by word of mouth for generations, some were collected
from printed sources. The majority of the stories came from Hessia in central
Germany, whereas some others had French origins. Jacob and Wilhelm collected and
recorded the stories to document the evolution of peasant folklore and culture.
Each story was published essentially as it was told or published at the time.
The Brothers thoroughly analyzed the texts, searching for phrases and
linguistic signposts to Germanic folklore, myths and legends. To the scholars,
the imaginary references to elves, fairies, giants, kobolds and 
dragons
helped uncover the history of peasant customs and superstitions, and presented
profound truths about the origins of German civilization. In the philologists’
eyes, a tale's bowl of milk on a hearth at night, set there by the wife to
please the kobolds, harked back to pagan rituals on ancient altars. Read
against the grain of time, the collected tales could illuminate a distant
literary landscape, where giants could be as old as the hills, though dwarfs
could grow up in three years: where knotholes in wood could become doors
through which elves and fairies entered human habitations along with sunlight. The appeal
of these tales went far beyond what the brothers had intended. Grimm's
Fairy Tales are still one of the most translated, illustrated, and read books
in the world today.
The Grimm Brothers acted not alone
in their endeavors to uncover Germany's ancient and medieval literary
traditions. The prolific writer and storyteller Benedikte Naubert
(1756-1819) [see insert], August Musäus and others also published Romantic
tales and anthologies, which appeared between 1789 and 1792. Noteworthy among
Naubert's historical novels and anthologies was her collection of fairy tales
entitled Volksmärchen, which included many popular stories about
"Frau Holle", "Erlkönig", the legend about the
"Treasure cove of the Nibelungs", and the "Pied Piper of
Hameln".
(Source: Adapted from "Grimm Brothers,"
Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2001
http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved,
and Jack Zipes, "Once there were two brothers named Grimm" in The
Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm. New York, 1992.)
Short
Biographies: Ludwig Tieck, and E.T.A. Hoffmann
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Text introductions: Eckbert the Fair, The
Runenberg, and The Jesuit Chapel in G.
The folktales Eckbert the Fair
and The Runenberg come from Tiecks collection of "Märchen",
published in 1797. The mythological, timeless and fantastical settings of the
stories take the reader into the realm of the supernatural, where hidden forces
take control over of human lives and destinies. The uncanny characters, events
and happenings are designed to remind readers of the frail structures of their
own existence within a world full of uncertainty and change.
Written in the year of Napoleon's
defeat in 1815, The Jesuit Chapel in G. alludes to the invasion of
everyday life by the violence unleashed by the French Revolution. The story
focuses on an "art fanatic", and Jesuit priest, and a young painter
commissioned to decorate a chapel in Silesia (now Poland). The painter's inner
torments and emotional disorders illuminate the modern rifts between art and
life, mind and body, the divine and the mundane, which unveil an alienating
world of irreconcilable polarities.
Preparation for Course Exam One
Study the
following items, topics and questions to prepare for Exam One:
(1) Know how to identify and describe the
historical epochs and cultural movements since 1500 (Reformation, Baroque,
Storms and Stress, Classicism, Romanticism)
(2) Prepare to describe your reader responses to the
assigned texts for the course (Faust I, Mother Courage, Sorrows of Young
Werther, and Romantic Tales). Explain what concepts, notions, and topics in the
readings you found challenging, appealing and/or disconcerting.
(3) Prepare your thoughts for a 300-word essay. .
Which of the cultural periods we studied so far (Reformation, Baroque, Storms
and Stress, Classicism, Romanticism) did you find most interesting? Why?
Assignments
for Lesson 7
(1) Read the
tales "Eckbert the Fair", "The Runenberg" by Ludwig
Tieck, and "The Jesuit Chapel in G." by E.T.A. Hoffmann in the book Six
German Romantic Tales. Heinrich von Kleist, Ludwig Tieck, ETA Hoffmann.
Paperback. ISBN 0-8023-1295-0.
An online
English version of Tieck's "Eckbert the Fair" tale is available at
http://www.vcu.edu/hasweb/for/tieck/eckbert_e.html.
The German text for "The Jesuit Chapel in G." can be found at Projekt
Gutenberg at http://gutenberg.aol.de/.
(2) Discuss this Lesson
on the Discussion Board
Preview: Reading Assignment for Lesson 8
Read the poems from page 53 (To
George Sand) to page 79 (Future Generations) in The
Defiant Muse: German Feminist Poems from the Middle Ages to the Present. Susan L.
Cocalis (ed.). The Feminist Press: New York, 1986. ISBN:
0935312536
Where do you want to go
next?
Ø
Quiz 1 for Lesson 7 [civilization]
Ø
Quiz 2 for Lesson 7 [text]
Ø
Course Exam One [Lessons 1-7]
Ø
Discuss
this Lesson on the Discussion Board
Resources and Webpages of Interest
·
Karl Marx http://www.mlwerke.de/me/default.htm and http://www.gutenberg.aol.de/autoren/marx.htm
·
Heinrich Heine http://encarta.msn.com/find/Concise.asp?ti=03BE8000.
"Heine,
Heinrich," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2001 http://encarta.msn.com/©
1997-2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved
·
Karl Marx. "Marx, Karl," Microsoft® Encarta® Online
Encyclopedia 2001
http://encarta.msn.com/
© 1997-2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
·
History of the
German Women's Movement at http://www.channel1.com/users/bobwb/gwmtext/ and
http://famousfemales.tripod.com/4.htm
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Famous German Women at http://mscd.edu/~mdl/gerresources/frauen/
·
German Women's texts at http://humanities.byu.edu/sophie/home.htm
·
Grimm's Fairy Tales http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~spok/grimmtmp/and German Folklore http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~pkonow/german.htm
and http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~spok/grimmtmp/
·
Benedikte Naubert at http://www.ualberta.ca/~mhenn/Naubert/deutsch.html
·
Women's Movement. http://www.frauennews.de/themen/bewegung.htm, and http://www.uni-kassel.de/frau-bib/dohm.htm, and http://www.asfh-berlin.de/~goedde/sozfrau.htm
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Ludwig Tieck at http://www.sewanee.edu/german/Literatur/tieck.html
·
Romantic Era Music Links at http://classicalmus.hispeed.com/romantic.html
·
The
Grove Concise Dictionary of Music, edited by Stanley Sadie © Macmillan
Press Ltd., London.
·
The Classical Music Pages at http://w3.rz-berlin.mpg.de/cmp/classmus.html
·
Romanticism in music at http://www.essentialsofmusic.com/eras/romantic.html
·
the Internet Public Library. Music History 102. The Romantic
Era http://www.ipl.org/exhibit/mushist/rom/index.htm
A. Lixl. August 2001