movement, and his best work is of a purely lyric character. M. von Strachwitz’s (1822–1847) promising talent did not flourish in the political atmosphere; Annette von Droste-Hülshoff (1797–1848), and the Austrian, Nikolaus Lenau (1802–1850), both stand far removed from the world of politics; they are imbued with that pessimistic resignation which is, more or less, characteristic of all German literature between 1850 and 1870.
(b) Mid-Century Literature.—When once the revolution of 1848 was over, a spirit of tranquillity came over German letters; but it was due rather to the absence of confidence in the future than to any hopefulness or real content. The literature of the middle of the century was not wanting in achievement, but there was nothing buoyant or youthful about it; most significant of all, the generation between 1848 and 1880 was either oblivious or indifferent to the good work and to the new and germinating ideas which it produced. Hegel, who held the earlier half of the 19th century in his ban, was still all-powerful in the universities, but his power was on the wane in literature and public life. The so-called “Hegelian Left” had advanced so far as to have become incompatible with the original Hegelianism; the new social and economic theories did not fit into the scheme of Hegelian collectivism; the interest in natural science—fostered by the popular books of J. Moleschott (1822–1893), Karl Vogt (1817–1895) and Ludwig Büchner (1824–1899)—created a healthy antidote to the Hegelian metaphysics. In literature and art, on which Hegel, as we have seen, had exerted so blighting an influence, his place was taken by the chief exponent of philosophic pessimism, Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860). Schopenhauer’s antagonism to Hegelianism was of old standing, for his chief work, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, had appeared as far back as 1819; but the century was more than half over before the movement of ideas had, as it were, caught up with him, before pessimism became a dominant force in intellectual life.
The literature produced between 1850 and 1870 was pre-eminently one of prose fiction. The beginnings which the “Young German” school had made to a type of novel dealing with social problems—the best example is Gutzkow’s Ritter vom Geiste—developed rapidly in this succeeding epoch. Friedrich Spielhagen (born 1829) followed immediately in Gutzkow’s footsteps, and in a series of romances from Problematische Naturen (1860) to Sturmflut (1876), discussed in a militant spirit that recalls Laube and Gutzkow the social problems which agitated German life in these decades. Gustav Freytag (1816–1895), although an older man, freed himself more successfully from the “Young German” tradition; his romance of German commercialism, Soll und Haben (1855), is the masterpiece of mid-century fiction of this class. Less successful was Freytag’s subsequent attempt to transfer his method to the milieu of German academic life in Die verlorene Handschrift (1864). As was perhaps only natural in an age of social and political interests, the historical novel occupies a subordinate place. The influence of Scott, which in the earlier period had been strong, produced only one writer, Wilhelm Häring (“Willibald Alexis,” 1798–1871), who was more than a mere imitator of the Scottish master. In the series of six novels, from Der Roland von Berlin to Dorothe, which Alexis published between 1840 and 1856, he gave Germany, and more particularly Prussia, a historical fiction which might not unworthily be compared with the Waverley Novels. But Alexis had no successor, and the historical novel soon made way for a type of fiction in which the accurate reproduction of remote conditions was held of more account than poetic inspiration or artistic power. Such are the “antiquarian” novels of ancient Egyptian life by Georg Ebers (1837–1898), and those from primitive German history by Felix Dahn (born 1834). The vogue of historical fiction was also transferred to some extent, as in English literature, to novels of American life and adventure, of which the chief German cultivators were K. A. Postl, who wrote under the pseudonym of Charles Sealsfield (1793–1864) and Friedrich Gerstäcker (1816–1872).
Of greater importance was the fiction which owed its inspiration to the Romantic traditions that survived the “Young German” age. To this group belongs the novel of peasant and provincial life, of which Immermann had given an excellent example in Der Oberhof, a story included in the arabesque of Münchhausen. A Swiss pastor, Albrecht Bitzius, better known by his pseudonym “Jeremias Gotthelf” (1797–1854), was, however, the real founder of this class of romance; and his simple, unvarnished and naïvely didactic stories of the Swiss peasant were followed not long afterwards by the more famous Schwarzwälder Dorfgeschichten (1843–1854) of Berthold Auerbach (1812–1882). Auerbach is not by any means so naïve and realistic as Gotthelf, nor is his work free from tendencies and ideas which recall “Young German” rationalism rather than the unsophisticated life of the Black Forest; but the Schwarzwälder Dorfgeschichten exerted a decisive influence; they were the forerunners of a large body of peasant literature which described with affectionate sympathy and with a liberal admixture of dialect, south German village life. With this group of writers may also be associated the German Bohemian, A. Stifter (1805–1868), who has called up unforgettable pictures and impressions of the life and scenery of his home.
Meanwhile, the Low German peoples also benefited by the revival of an interest in dialect and peasant life; it is to the credit of Fritz Reuter (1810–1874) that he brought honour to the Plattdeutsch of the north, the dialects of which had played a fitful, but by no means negligible rôle in the earlier history of German letters. His Mecklenburg novels, especially Ut de Franzosentid (1860), Ut mine Festungstid (1863) and Ut mine Stromtid (1862–1864), are a faithful reflection of Mecklenburg life and temperament, and hold their place beside the best German fiction of the period. What Reuter did for Plattdeutsch prose, his contemporary, Klaus Groth (1819–1899), the author of Quickborn (1852), did for its verse. We owe, however, the best German prose fiction of these years to two writers, whose affinity with the older Romanticists was closer. The north German, Theodor Storm (1817–1888) is the author of a series of short stories of delicate, lyric inspiration, steeped in that elegiac Romanticism which harmonized so well with mid-century pessimism in Germany. Gottfried Keller (1819–1890), on the other hand, a native of Zürich, was a modern Romanticist of a robuster type; his magnificent autobiographical novel, Der grüne Heinrich (1854–1855), might be described as the last in the great line of Romantic fiction that had begun with Wilhelm Meister, and the short stories, Die Leute von Seldwyla (1856–1874) and Züricher Novellen (1878) are masterpieces of the first rank.
In the dramatic literature of these decades, at least as it was reflected in the repertories of the German theatres, there was little promise. French influence was, in general, predominant; French translations formed the mainstay of the theatre-directors, while successful German playwrights, such as R. Benedix (1811–1873) and Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer (1800–1868), have little claim to consideration in a literary survey. Gustav Freytag’s admirable comedy, Die Journalisten (1852), was one of the rare exceptions. But the German drama of this epoch is not to be judged solely by the theatres. At the middle of the century Germany could point to two writers who, each in his way, contributed very materially to the development of the modern drama. These were Friedrich Hebbel (1813–1863) and Otto Ludwig (1813–1865). Both of these men, as a later generation discovered, were the pioneers of that dramatic literature which at the close of the century accepted the canons of realism and aimed at superseding outward effects by psychological conflicts and problems of social life. Hebbel, especially, must be regarded as the most original and revolutionary German dramatist of the 19th century. Unlike his contemporary Grillparzer, whose aim had been to reconcile the “classic” and the “romantic” drama with the help of Spanish models, Hebbel laid the foundations of a psychological and social drama, of which the most modern interpreter has been Henrik Ibsen. Hebbel’s first tragedy, Judith, appeared in 1840, his masterpieces, Herodes
