old Romantic Germany of his childhood for which, to the last, he retained so warm an affection. Personal disappointments and unhappiness added to the bitterness of Heine’s nature, and the supremely gifted lyric poet and the hardly less gifted satirist were overshadowed by the cynic from whose biting wit nothing was safe.
Heine’s contemporary and—although he was not mentioned in the decree against the school—fellow-fighter, Ludwig Börne (1786–1837), was a more characteristic representative of the “Young German” point of view; for he was free from Romantic prejudices. Börne gave vent to his enthusiasm for France in eloquent Briefe aus Paris (1830–1833), which form a landmark of importance in the development of German prose style. With Karl Gutzkow (1811–1878), who was considerably younger than either Heine or Börne, the more positive aspects of the “Young German” movement begin to be apparent. He, too, had become a man of letters under the influence of the July revolution, and with an early novel, Wally, die Zweiflerin (1835), which was then regarded as atheistic and immoral, he fought in the battle for the new ideas. His best literary work, however, was the comedies with which he enriched the German stage of the ’forties, and novels like Die Ritter vom Geiste (1850–1851), and Der Zauberer von Rom (1858–1861), which have to be considered in connexion with the later development of German fiction. Heinrich Laube (1806–1884), who, as the author of lengthy social novels, and Reisenovellen in the style of Heine’s Reisebilder, was one of the leaders of the new movement, is now only remembered as Germany’s greatest theatre-director. Laube’s connexion (1850–1867) with the Burgtheater of Vienna forms one of the most brilliant periods in the history of the modern stage. Heine and Börne, Gutzkow and Laube—these were the leading spirits of “Young Germany”; in their train followed a host of lesser men, who to the present generation are hardly even names. In the domain of scholarship and learning the “Young German” movement was associated with the supremacy of Hegelianism, the leading spirits being D. F. Strauss (1808–1874), author of the Leben Jesu (1835), the historians G. G. Gervinus (1805–1871) and W. Menzel (1798–1873), and the philosopher L. A. Feuerbach (1804–1872), who, although a disciple of Hegel, ultimately helped to destroy the latter’s influence.
Outside the immediate circle of “Young Germany,” other tentative efforts were made to provide a substitute for the discredited literature of Romanticism. The historical novel, for instance, which Romanticists like Arnim had cultivated, fell at an early date under the influence of Sir Walter Scott; Wilhelm Hauff, Heinrich Zschokke (1771–1848) and K. Spindler (1796–1855) were the most prominent amidst the many imitators of the Scottish novelist. The drama, again, which since Kleist and Werner had been without definite principles, was, partly under Austrian influence, finding its way back to a condition of stability. In Germany proper, the men into whose hands it fell were, on the one hand, undisciplined geniuses such as C. D. Grabbe (1801–1836), or, on the other, poets with too little theatrical blood in their veins like K. L. Immermann (1796–1840), or with too much, like E. von Raupach (1784–1852), K. von Holtei (1798–1880) and Adolf Müllner (1774–1829)—the last named being the chief representative of the so-called Schicksalstragödie. In those years the Germans were more seriously interested in their opera, which, under C. M. Weber, H. A. Marschner, A. Lortzing and O. Nicolai, remained faithful to the Romantic spirit. In Austria, however, the drama followed lines of its own; here, at the very beginning of the century, H. J. von Collin (1771–1811) attempted in Regulus and other works to substitute for the lifeless pseudo-classic tragedy of Ayrenhoff the classic style of Schiller. His attempt is the more interesting, as the long development that had taken place in Germany between Gottsched and Schiller was virtually unrepresented in Austrian literature. M. von Collin (1779–1824), a younger brother of H. J. von Collin, did a similar service for the Romantic drama. Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872), Austria’s greatest poet, began in the school of Müllner with a “fate drama,” but soon won an independent place for himself; more successfully than any other dramatist of the century, he carried out that task which Kleist had first seriously faced, the reconciliation of the classicism of Goethe and Schiller with the Romantic and modern spirit of the 19th century. It is from this point of view that works like Das goldene Vliess (1820), König Ottokars Glück und Ende (1825), Der Traum, ein Leben (1834) and Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen (1831) must be regarded. As far as the poetic drama was concerned, Grillparzer stood alone, for E. F. J. von Münch-Bellinghausen (1806–1871), his most promising contemporary, once so popular under the pseudonym of Friedrich Halm, soon fell back into the trivial sentimentality of the later Romanticists. In other forms of dramatic literature Austria could point to many distinguished writers, notably the comedy-writer, E. von Bauernfeld (1802–1890), while a host of playwrights, chief of whom were F. Raimund (1790–1836) and J. Nestroy (1801–1862), cultivated the popular Viennese farce and fairy-play. Thus, in spite of Metternich’s censorship of the drama, the Viennese theatre was, in the first half of the 19th century, in closer touch with literature than that of any other German centre.
The transitional character of the age is best illustrated by two eminent writers whom outward circumstances rather than any similarity of character and aim have classed together. These were K. L. Immermann, who has been already mentioned, and A. von Platen-Hallermund (1796–1835). Immermann’s dramas were of little practical value to the theatre, but one at least, Merlin (1832), is a dramatic poem of great beauty. In his novels, however, Die Epigonen (1836) and Münchhausen (1838–1839), Immermann was the spokesman of his time. He looked backwards rather than forwards; he saw himself as the belated follower of a great literary age rather than as the pioneer of a new one. The bankruptcy of Romanticism and the poetically arid era of “Young Germany” left him little confidence in the future. Platen, on the other hand, went his own way; he, too, was the antagonist both of Romanticism and “Young Germany,” and with Immermann himself he came into sharp conflict. But in his poetry he showed himself indifferent to the strife of contending literary schools. He began as an imitator of the German oriental poets—the only Romanticists with whom he had any personal sympathy—and with his matchless Sonette aus Venedig (1825) he stands out as a master in the art of verse-writing and as the least subjective of all German lyric poets. In the imitation of Romance metres he sought a refuge from the extravagances and excesses of the Romantic decadence.
Meanwhile the political side of the “Young German” movement, which the German Bund aimed at stamping out, gained rapidly in importance under the influence of the unsettled political conditions between the revolutions of 1830 and 1848. The early ’forties were in German literature marked by an extraordinary outburst of political poetry, which may be aptly compared with the national and patriotic lyric evoked by the year 1813. The principles which triumphed in France at the revolution of 1848 were, to a great extent, fought out by the German singers of 1841 and 1842. Begun by mediocre talents like N. Becker (1809–1845) and R. E. Prutz (1816–1872), the movement found a vigorous champion in Georg Herwegh (1817–1875), who in his turn succeeded in winning Ferdinand Freiligrath (1810–1876) for the revolutionary cause. Others joined in the cry for freedom—F. Dingelstedt (1814–1881), A. H. Hoffmann von Fallersleben (1798–1874), and a number of Austrians, who had even more reason for rebellion and discontent than the north Germans. But the best Austrian political poetry, the Spaziergänge eines Wiener Poeten, 1831, by “Anastasius Grün” (Graf A. A. von Auersperg, 1806–1876), belonged to a decade earlier. The political lyric culminated in and ended with the year 1848; the revolutionists of the ’forties were, if not appeased, at least silenced by the revolution which in their eyes had effected so little. If Freiligrath be excepted, the chief lyric poets of this epoch stood aside from the revolutionary movement; even E. Geibel (1815–1884), the representative poet of the succeeding age, was only temporarily interested in the political
