1. Literature and Spiritual Life in the 19th Century

1795-1840

At the end of the eighteenth century, Goethe had reached the pinnacle of his development. Out of a mind that looked at the details of sensual experience as impartially as it was capable of exploring the deepest secrets of natural and human life, he had created a world view that appeared to be the fulfillment of what the best minds of the eighteenth century had longed for. This world view proved to be of unlimited fruitfulness for the subsequent period: an effect such as that exerted by Goethe on the nineteenth century can hardly be compared with anything else in the intellectual history of mankind. The reason for this lies in the universality of Goethe's spirit, which prompted Wieland to call his great contemporary the "most human of all men". This versatility of mind distinguishes Goethe from those who, together with him, brought about the great intellectual revolution at the crossroads of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Voltaire, Rousseau, Lessing, Herder, Kant and Schiller achieved great things by placing their work at the service of an ideal; Goethe, on the other hand, developed a multiplicity of human abilities in such a way that they were in perfect harmony.

How Goethe's natural disposition differed from that of his friend and greatest contemporary Schiller, he himself expressed in clear words: "He preached the gospel of freedom; I did not want to see the rights of nature abridged." Schiller started from the ethical demand of freedom, Goethe from the contemplation of nature and human beings. In "Faust", the work Goethe worked on until the end of his life in 1832, he did not portray a man who wanted to realize an ideal of freedom born of reason, but rather a man who wanted to work his way to a free personality by developing the highest potentials present in man. What is contained in human nature should emerge as Faust wanders through the "small and the great world". It was Goethe's conviction that nature is the source of all perfection, and that only those who follow in its footsteps can create the best.

Goethe's youthful poems were a protest against the unnaturalness he could observe in his age. He made Götz von Berlichingen the hero of a drama because he wanted to show his contemporaries, who had distanced themselves from nature through all kinds of artificial ideas, a man whose actions arose from his most original, most natural feelings. In "Werther", he portrayed the value of the natural from a different angle. The basic idea of this poem is that unnatural sentimentality must suffer shipwreck. What a person can experience through his innate character and through the circumstances in which fate has placed him was Goethe's focus. The sufferings and joys of life as they play out in different human natures, the conflicts that life brings and the pleasures that it offers, he portrayed in his dramatic and narrative poems in an incomparable way. "Clavigo", "Stella", "The Siblings", "Egmont", "Iphigenia" and "Tasso" are paintings of the soul, created by a mind to which the deepest secrets of human nature have been revealed.

Goethe's striving to follow the same laws in his own creations that nature follows led him to seek his ideal of art in the world of antiquity. The Greek works of art that he observed on his Italian journey led him to say: "I have the suspicion that the Greeks followed the laws that nature itself follows and that I am on the trail of." After he believed he had thus recognized what the goal of all true art must be, he sought to further develop the natural studies he had already begun before the Italian journey. He wanted to get to know the creative forces of nature in order to let them speak through his works of art. After his return from Italy in 1788, he was no less active in the field of natural research than in that of poetry. In his book on Winckelmann, Goethe expressed the fact that for him artistic creation was a kind of higher stage of the workings of nature: "When man is placed on the summit of nature, he sees himself again as a whole nature, which has to produce another summit in itself. To this end, he increases himself by imbuing himself with all perfections and virtues, calling upon choice, order, harmony and meaning, and finally elevating himself to the production of the work of art." Goethe was destined from the outset by his disposition to seek the natural, the original in things everywhere; but he believed that he had only become acquainted with the actual deeper essence of nature through the study of antiquity. He was now of the opinion that he had been faithful to nature in the past, but that only the ideal beauty of the ancients had lifted him to a higher level of existence and artistic activity. In his youth Goethe sought to reproduce things and people purely out of his nature; now he only accepted a work of art when the natural was transfigured into the ideal, when the simple and natural was subjected to the strict laws of style demanded by the sense of beauty of the ancients. Goethe was at this stage of development when the eighteenth century came to an end. The poem "Hermann and Dorothea", written in 1797, is a mature fruit of his view of art at that time. Life in a small town, real and simple . People from the people are depicted in the story like creations of nature itself; and the whole is poured out with the simplicity and grandeur that we admire in the works of art of the ancients. Perfect fidelity to nature and the highest art of style celebrate their marriage here.

Although it must be admitted that in Goethe's poems, which were written in the new century, the antique ideal of beauty is favored at the expense of the direct reproduction of the natural, it must not be overlooked that through the elevation to this ideal one of the highest heights of human culture was reached.

"What one desires in youth, one has in old age in abundance." Goethe placed this saying above the second part of his biography "Dichtung und Wahrheit" (Poetry and Truth). In the development of few people will this sentence have been fulfilled as it was in his own. What he admired in the ancient Greeks, that they achieved "the unique, the completely unexpected", because they united all the qualities and powers of man evenly in their nature, he was able to achieve again. His personality, in the progress of its development, is a reflection of the development of mankind as a whole. Goethe had to purchase this cultural height, however, by alienating himself from the interests of his contemporaries and fellow citizens. While Schiller, although he sought to come ever closer to Goethe's ideal of art in his creations, remained in the closest harmony with what the people wanted and felt, Goethe stood alone with his views and feelings after his return from Italy. His youthful poems had a captivating effect on many; the creations he produced in the "epoch of his perfection", on the other hand, were only understood by the best. Schiller, who in his profound essays "Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man" and "On Naive and Sentimental Poetry" characterized Goethe's intellectual and artistic nature as the highest that man can achieve, led the way. Goethe moved furthest away from his people's conception of art with his unfinished drama "The Natural Daughter", written at the beginning of the i9th century. Century drama "The Natural Daughter". Here he wanted to create characters from whom everything accidental and indifferent had been stripped away, who were merely representatives of the state into which fate had born them. Goethe believed he had achieved the higher truth precisely by setting aside the everyday, the individual - the human; his contemporaries missed this individuality, which speaks to the heart because it is the suffering and joy of the individual - the drama was called "marble-smooth and marble-cold". Schiller, on the other hand, judged: "It is entirely art and captures the innermost nature through the power of truth." And Fichte declared it to be Goethe's masterpiece.

The change in Goethe's view of art is most strongly felt in the works that began before the Italian journey but were only completed after it: in "Faust" and "Wilhelm Meister". From individual characters, which "Faust" and "Wilhelm" still were in the first parts of the poems, they were transformed into representatives of certain human species; indeed, Faust even became the image and symbol of all striving humanity. Goethe believed he had recognized that the facts of natural and human life, however varied and diverse they may appear on the surface, conceal certain great, simple, eternal laws. While in his youth he depicted changing events and individual people for their own sake, at the height of his life he increasingly came to regard events and people as a means of visualizing eternal laws. In the novel "Elective Affinities", written in 1809, the inclinations and passions of people are presented in such a way that eternal laws are revealed in them, as in chemical processes.

The all-round nature of Goethe's personality was revealed most directly in his lyrical poems. From the most intimate and tender feelings of the loving heart to the highest philosophical ideas of the world, he expressed the whole of human spiritual life in these creations. He had the naive natural tone of the folk song as well as the highest forms of art poetry under his control; he found the expression for the naked, overflowing sensuality in his "Roman Elegies" and knew how to depict spiritualized love in his "Trilogy of Passion". It is precisely this side of Goethe's work through which he spoke most to people's hearts; it was here that he had the most irresistible effect. "These songs are surrounded by an unspeakable magic. The harmonious verses embrace your heart like a tender lover, the word embraces you while the thought kisses you", said Heinrich Heine. Goethe's source of lyrical moods seemed inexhaustible; even in his old age, he created the wealth of delicious songs and sayings in the "Westöstlicher Divan", which have exerted a powerful influence on more recent poetry, especially on Rückert and Platen.

His urge to develop the highest spiritual culture within himself explains Goethe's attitude towards the great events of his time. His lack of interest in the uprising of spirits in the age of revolution and in the national enthusiasm during the wars of liberation has been much criticized. The works in which he dealt with the great revolutionary movement, the "Grand Cophta", the "Agitated", the "Citizen General", are among the weakest creations of his mind, and the wars of liberation, which inspired others to such rapturous tones, were unable to set his poetic powers in motion. The violence of the events of that epoch was repugnant to him, he longed for harmony of forces, so he quietly went his own way and withdrew from public life where it did not correspond to his nature. Life in a higher ideal reality, to which Goethe had elevated himself after a long experience and after absorbing the cultural world of the ancients, appeared to the poets of the following period, who described their direction as the romantic one, as the prerogative of the true artist. These poets were characterized by an urge for everything that was alien to ordinary life and born only of genius and imagination. In their creations, they preferred everything that had the appearance of the miraculous, the mysterious, the mystical; they made the rare sensations that are completely alien to people in the midst of real life the object of their poetry.

They believe they find justification for their views in Goethe's ideal of art and in Johann Gottlieb Fichte's view of the world. This philosopher, who will be dealt with in detail elsewhere, had sought to extract the highest knowledge of the world from man's own ego and proclaimed the doctrine of the sovereign personality with captivating eloquence, which was taken up and interpreted in its own way by the brothers August Wilhelm and Friedrich Schlegel. The man of genius should create his own world with special laws. However, this meant that the Romantics often disregarded all natural necessity and allowed subjective whim and arbitrariness to reign supreme. Friedrich Schlegel's novel "Lucinde", in which unbridled sensuality, ingenious idleness and personal arbitrariness are preached, grew entirely out of this one-sidedness. However, it is only the lack of original poetic power that wants to hide behind an artificially assumed higher view of life. Both Schlegels were only able to create something insignificant in their own works. They remained imitators of foreign forms. They achieved all the more as interpreters and mediators of the works of others. Friedrich Schlegel opened up broad vistas into foreign schools of thought and cultures in his works: "On the Language and Wisdom of the Indians" and "History of Old and New Literature". His journal "Athenaeum", founded in 1798, became a meeting point for spirits who wanted to counter the sober and banal Enlightenment with a sense of the highest artistic ideals. August Wilhelm Schlegel was born to be a translator and rewriter. Through his translation of Shakespeare, he created a new era for the understanding of the great British playwright and proved the extent to which the German national spirit is capable of absorbing the poetry of foreign countries. Through this mediation of foreign poetry and the immersion in the past of their own people, the German Romantics intervened deeply in the development of literature. A.W. Schlegel subtly explained Dante's poetic idiosyncrasy and rendered it in German, Ludwig Tieck translated Cervantes in an exemplary manner. Even where the study of foreign literary works led to an overestimation of certain artistic achievements, it nevertheless promoted an understanding of them. Even if, for example, Friedrich Schlegel called the Spaniard Calderön the greatest of all poets in a one-sided manner, he nevertheless earned lasting merit through the intellectual explanation of his character.

The cultivation of a sense of the German past was of no less importance to the majority of the Romantics. This preference for the medieval-Christian period arose from their disdain for the real world, the immediate present. The peculiarities of a higher, ideal life, to which these poets aspired, could be dreamed into the long vanished times, the essence of which has been handed down to us in vague outlines. The romantic voices about the former greatness of the German people, which is said to have been lost in the course of time, sound like a longing for a lost homeland. Tieck's renewals of older German poetry grew out of this cult of the past, such as the Minnelieder from the Swabian era: "König Rother", "Schildbürger", "Magelone", "Melusine", and, as the most outstanding phenomenon, the collection of old German songs: "Des Knaben Wunderhorn", which was written between i80o5 and 1808 by L. Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano published between i80o5 and 1808. This songbook did much to raise national enthusiasm. The flourishing of Germanic studies was linked to these endeavors of the Romantics. Jacob Grimm, with his "German Grammar", begun in 1819, and his works on "German Legal Antiquities" (1828) and "German Mythology" (1835), continued in a scholarly manner the immersion in the German past that August Wilhelm Schlegel had begun with his essays on Nordic poetry, the "Song of the Nibelungs" and numerous other older literary monuments of the German people. The brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm had already published the "Children's and Household Tales" in 1812-15 and the "German Legends" in 1816-18.

The fact that this turn to the sources of German nationality was deeply rooted in the Romantic school of thought is evident from the fact that two other phenomena arose in close association with it, which grew out of the national character of the Germans: the high flight of thought of idealistic philosophy through Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer and the wonderful expression that the German mind found in the poetry of this time, especially through Novalis and Eichendorff. German idealism celebrated its greatest triumphs in the fields of thought and emotion. Fr.W. J. Schelling, who built on Fichte's views and also worked in Jena, created a conception of the world that had the effect of a brilliant work of art on his contemporaries, through which he finally succeeded in showing the harmonious unity of the universe in the mirror of the human spirit. In the period from 1795 to 1805, the writings in which he developed his bold ideas about the bond between nature and the spirit appeared one after the other. In a different way, G.W. Fr. Hegel sought to bring the entire scope of what the human spirit is capable of encompassing into one building. What inspired Fichte, Schelling and Hegel was the idea that the highest revelation of all existence lies hidden in the human spirit and that one can only draw the deepest treasures of knowledge from one's own personality. The second half of the 19th century interpreted this emphasis on the individual power of the spirit as one-sidedness and turned more to the contemplation of external nature. However, it was precisely through this one-sidedness that they showed the height to which man can rise in thought, and thereby left their mark on the first half of this century, the idealistic age of the Germans.

The unworldly sense of Romanticism took on a different character in the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, who appeared in 1818 with his "World as Will and Representation". His disdain for reality became a world-wearied condemnation of all existence and the doctrine of the negation of the will as the sole salvation from the torments and suffering of this world. However, as we shall see later, this philosopher was only able to exert an influence when Hegel's star began to wane around the middle of this century.

These philosophers formed the romantic sense according to the direction of thought, the contemporary poets according to that of the mind. This side of Romanticism emerged morbidly, but with a certain intimacy, in the "Herzensergießungen eines kunstliebenden Klosterbruders" in 1797, which originated from the early deceased Wilhelm Wackenroder, the friend of Ludwig Tieck. Tieck's numerous poems, who was held in very high regard by the Romantics as a novelist, dramatist and fairy-tale poet, show precisely the less pleasant characteristics of this literary epoch. The deepening of the soul, of which Romanticism was capable, came to light through the real poets of the German mind: Friedrich von Hardenberg, called Novalis, and Josef von Eichendorff. Novalis wrote his "Hymns to the Night" (1797) out of wonderfully tender and deep feelings. He poured out the deep pain that the death of his bride had caused him and his longing for his own end in these songs, which are imbued with the highest verve of the imagination. In his novel "Heinrich von Ofterdingen", set at the time of the Crusades, the sentiments of the Romantic spirit found their most characteristic expression.

Overriding the laws of nature and living in a purely imaginary world often led the Romantics to make the wildest leaps in their depictions of people and events. They sometimes created truly distorted images of everything natural. What the characters they portray accomplish over the course of a period of time is not connected as it is with real people, but as it is with the figures that appear to us in dreams. When in "Heinrich von Ofterdingen" the two girls whom the hero loves, Mathilde and Cyane, merge into a single being in the course of events, this is an example of how the Romantics created figures that resemble dream images. But with Novalis it was all immersed in poetry; the Romantic spirit spoke here from a true poet. The amiability and enchantment of this attitude was also evident in Eichendorff's poetry. He first appeared in 1808 with songs, which were soon followed by further collections of poetry. However, it was in the novella "Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts" (From the Life of a Good-for-Nothing), published in 1826, that he created the peculiar magic of the Romantic mood. The good-for-nothing leads a life of purposelessness and idleness; he only does useless things. This makes him the representative of the Romantic ideal. But while Friedrich Schlegel painted a repulsive distorted picture of this ideal in his "Lucinde", here it is embodied in an attractive form by genuine poetic talent.

Romantic longing found a strange development in Friedrich Hölderlin. While the other poets of this movement usually came into personal contact with each other, he went his own way. He was only friends with Schelling and Hegel. For him, what was humanly great and worth striving for was to be found in Greekness. The novel "Hyperion or the Hermit in Greece", which he completed in 1799, shows how little Hölderlin felt at home in the time in which he lived. He only dreamed of the old Greek world. He also sings of it in his important lyrical poems. One might call Hölderlin the Romantic spirit that remained at the first stage; for the Schlegel brothers also started out from a rapturous admiration of Greek art and only later turned to the medieval-Christian.

The turning away from the natural brought something wavering and uncertain into this whole current. The Romantic spirit was accessible to the most diverse schools of thought. On the one hand, the representatives of this spirit felt drawn to a philosophy that wanted to gain all truth independently of religious ideas; on the other hand, they related to the philosophical innovator of the Christian religion, Friedrich Schleiermacher, the famous preacher and author of "Reden über die Religion an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verächtern". Friedrich Schlegel, in particular, became friends with him, and Schleiermacher wrote "Familiar Letters on Lucinde", in which he celebrated the Scheingeniality glorified in this novel as an expression of high sentiment.

In Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, this uncertainty and arbitrariness of Romanticism came to the fore most unreservedly. With him, everything was capricious and subjective. Everything that ran counter to the usual course of events was this poet's favorite subject. In 1814 he appeared with his "Fantasy Pieces in Callot's Manner"; in 1816 he wrote the "Elixirs of the Devil", in which a monk is described who drinks from the devil's elixir kept in a monastery, which originated from St. Anthony. He is thus driven into the most adventurous entanglements, his own ego is destroyed; sometimes it is himself, sometimes someone else. The romantic whim, which destroys even the firmly established ego of man, meets us here in its most daring form. The same lack of rules prevails in a different way in the "Lebensansichten des Katers Murr", completed in 1822.

The outlandish ideas of Romanticism are demonstrated by Chamisso's book "Peter Schlemihl's Wondrous Tale", published in 1814. On a journey, the absent-minded poet had lost his hat, coat sack, glove, hankie and other things, and his friend Fouqu& asked him whether he had kept his shadow. This gave rise to the story of Peter Schlemihl, the man who must wander the world without a shadow and whose fate is sealed by this lack of a necessary human companion. Chamisso's friend de la Motte-Fouqué published a heroic play "Sigurd the Serpent Slayer" in 1808, which formed the first part of the Nibelung trilogy "The Hero of the North" published in 1810. In 1811, he followed this up with the fairy tale "Undine", in which romantic nature poetry brought its most beautiful content to light.

The Romantic spirit seemed to resist dramatic poetry the most. Tieck wrote only worthless dramas; Arnim, Brentano and Fouque tried in vain in this field. All the more admirable is the genius of the great dramatist who did emerge from this direction: Heinrich von Kleist. After a life filled with doubts about himself and the world, tormented by terrible passions, this great poet shot a girlfriend and himself in his 34th year (1811). His first tragedy, "The Schroffenstein Family", appeared in 1803, followed by "The Broken Jug" in 1808, which is rightly considered one of the best German comedies, as well as "Penthesilea", the "Käthchen von Heilbronn", "Hermannsschlacht", "Prinz von Homburg" and the powerful story "Michael Kohlhaas". Kleist showed his affiliation with Romanticism through his preference for extraordinary states of mind. Penthesilea and Käthchen do not love like ordinary female beings, but the former like a tigress whose ferocity tears her lover to pieces, the latter like a hypnotized woman who follows the man she adores with canine fidelity. Kleist draws all of these characters, which are certainly drawn from the Romantic imagination, with Shakespearean power and art. The "Hermannsschlacht" was written in 809 with the German present in mind. The elevation of German national sentiment grew out of German Romanticism, just as this school of thought itself arose from a trait deeply rooted in the German people. One year after the Battle of Jena, Fichte delivered his "Speeches to the German Nation" in French-occupied Berlin, which were intended to put into effect everything the Germans had in them to shake off the foreign yoke. In 1805, the representatives of Romanticism gathered around Arnim and Brentano in Heidelberg, just as they had previously gathered around Fichte, Schlegel and Tieck in Jena. Here Josef Görres gave lectures on "The German People's Books", and the national enthusiasm for the German past had an effect on the energy of the present, so that Baron vom Stein could say that in the circle of the Heidelberg Romantics "a good part of the German fire was kindled, which later consumed the French". After all, Achim von Arnim had spoken of his belief in a rebirth of Germany in the introduction to the "Knaben Wunderhorn", which had grown out of this circle. One must look to Romanticism for the origins of patriotic poetry, which found such brilliant representatives in Ernst Moritz Arndt, Max von Schenkendorf and Theodor Körner.

Through Romanticism, the German spirit drew rich inspiration from the poetry of all cultural states, and this enabled it to depict the depths of its soul in the most perfect art forms. The effects of this manifested themselves in the following period. In 1821 Platen's perfectly formed Ghaselen appeared, in 1822 Rückert's "Eastern Roses". Both poets reaped the fruits of Romanticism. In the same way, Ludwig Uhland, who first appeared in public with his poems in 1815 and whose ballads made him the most popular German poet after Schiller, drew on the original power of his people and the art of his immediate predecessors. With Rückert, Platen and Uhland, the basic characteristics of Romanticism no longer came to the fore. The same was the case with another poet from the first half of the century, Wilhelm Müller, who was inspired to write his book "Songs of the Greeks", published in 821, by the struggle for freedom of this people.

Romanticism proper was ultimately driven completely into religious enthusiasm by its penchant for the unreal and mystical, and after the wars of liberation it rendered its services to reactionary endeavors. The preference for the Christian Middle Ages had ultimately become a preference for the suppression of the modern spirit unleashed by the French Revolution. It is therefore not surprising that "young Germany", which inherited the legacy of Romanticism at the beginning of the 1930s, initially found itself in the most pronounced opposition to the literary movement that preceded it.

Return to the original sources of human cognition and artistic creation characterized the German literary movements in the second half of the last century and the first half of this century. The world view was to be liberated from old ideas that had nothing but the authority of tradition for themselves, and art was to be freed from forms that had developed under the influence of French classicism in particular, and had gradually become pedantic artistic laws, an external manner that killed any artistic individuality.

The extent to which this world view and artistic trend had survived is also shown by the fact that the literary movement among the related English people took almost exactly the same direction at the beginning of the century.

Here it was the three poets of the so-called "Lake School", William Wordsworth, Robert Southey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who first strove to break away from the old, stiff classicism of which Pope seemed to be the main representative. They are grouped together under the name of the "Lake School" because they lived together for a time on the shores of the lakes of Westmoreland and Cumberland and the natural beauty of this region provided the material for many of their poems. Unlike their predecessors, they did not want to look at nature through the lens of traditional ideas and sing about it in traditional art forms, but rather to confront it naively and speak a natural language. The most important of these three poets, Coleridge, has much in common with the German Romantics. He too sought out the mystical, the rare in worldly phenomena and lived in a dream world that was alien to reality. Wordsworth was of lesser talent, whose rapture for nature had a somewhat naïve quality, and whose poetry usually destroys the natural tones it strikes with a moralizing ending. Of Southey's creations, only those written in his youth are interesting because of the sense of freedom that speaks from them. In old age, the revolutionary developed into a panegyrist of reaction.

The poet who had the greatest impact at the beginning of the Romantic movement in England, the Scotsman Walter Scott, has nothing of the world-embracing sense of the German Romantics in his creations. He did not seek the roots of humanity in the whole world, but only in his own people. Scott's "Song of the Last Minstrel", published in 1805, and his poem "The Maid of the Lake", published in 1810, are imbued with a genuine freshness of nature and true, original feeling, but nothing of the deep longing of German Romanticism. When Scott switched from poetry to prose, his depiction almost took on the expression of a historical reproduction of people and events. He became the creator of the historical novel. He depicted the natural conditions of a region, the historical conditions of a particular time. One of the many characteristics of Romanticism was that it abandoned the overestimation of the cultural state of the present that was characteristic of the Age of Enlightenment. At that time, people only had a sense for those ideas about religion, science, morals and so on that they themselves considered to be correct. Only Romanticism reawakened a love for people and cultures that grew out of circumstances other than those of the present. It was precisely this trait of Romanticism that Walter Scott developed. He allows people and facts to grow out of the soil on which they were born and to appear in the light of the time to which they belong. What a historian must regard as an ideal, to depict everything from the given circumstances, is fulfilled in Scott's novels. The fact that in 1822, for example, 145,000 volumes of Scott's novels were printed proves that he was meeting a need of his time. This writer exerted a tremendous influence on the whole of European novel literature. Imitators of his style were to be found everywhere.

Much more genuine romance was to be found in the Irishman Thomas Moore. He captures the tone of the people and at the same time revels in the colorful world of the Orient. His "Lalla Rookh" is a poem inspired by a lush sensuality and an imagination rich in colorful images. His most significant achievement, however, is his "Irish Melodies", begun in 1807, in which the ignominy of his Irish people, who endured unprecedented suffering under English rule, elicited sounds as grand and ravishing as only a singer of freedom has ever sung them.

Two poets belong to this period in whom a feeling of nature coming from the deepest sources of the human soul found a majestic lyrical expression: John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Their soul life seems like an elevation to the powers that rule the world as the highest, the most powerful, and their poems penetrate the heart like an eternal world music. Both died at a young age: Keats in 1821 at the age of 26, Shelley, not yet 30, drowned in the Gulf of Spezia. Nothing more beautiful can be said about Keats than to repeat Shelley's words in the dirge he dedicated to the man so close to him spiritually: "He is now one with nature." For Keats' whole life was a longing to become one with eternal forces. Byron said of his unfinished "Hyperion", begun in 1818, that the poem "is truly inspired by the Titans and as sublime as Aeschylus". Allegory was Keats' favorite form into which he poured his deep feeling for nature, and in it he achieved a greatness of creative power that can hardly be matched by anything else.

If one may speak of a philosophy of the heart, then Shelley's poetry must be called by this name. His mind was directed to the depths of the world's mysteries; but this mind was not an inquiring reason, but a heart that wished to embrace with its love the sublimest things in nature. In his poems, the elements of nature themselves seem to speak in their own innate language. Shelley combined this comprehensive sense of nature with an unlimited love of freedom. And this love also grew out of his sense of nature. He was completely absorbed in the life of nature, which breaks all fetters by the force of its powers, so that for him freedom was something without which he could not conceive of the world. That is why he contrasted the "Bound Prometheus" with his "Unbound", who bears the chains with dignity because he knows that the hour is coming when freedom will triumph. And Shelley depicts this victory of freedom with all the power that belongs to a necessarily invincible force of nature.

What emerged in Shelley from a natural feeling that reached the limits of humanity: an unconditional urge for freedom, was in Georg Gordon Lord Byron the result of a proud personality that defies and confronts with defiance and grandeur everything that seeks to limit it in the unfolding of its innate humanity. A sense storming heaven and hell lived in this poet. Everything that exerts compulsion was its antithesis from the outset. Byron is the singer who sings of the pride in human nature, and his "Manfred", which he began in 1816, is the song of this pride. Manfred is a great personality, a man whose soul is not crushed by the awareness that he has brought a heavy burden of guilt upon himself, but who, despite this guilt, wants to fight against the limits of what is humanly possible. Byron found words to express the most sublime things, but also words that hit like a sure arrow whatever his hatred or contempt was directed at. And he was a fine connoisseur when it came to tracking down the small things that were wrapped in the cloak of the great. His "Don Juan" is a masterpiece if you look at it from the point of view that the mask of all hypocrisy should be torn off, all untruth should be shown its lowly source. A sense of freedom drove him to devote his energies to the Greek movement, because he saw in the Greeks a people who, abandoned by the European powers, wanted to fight for their freedom from the Turkish oppressors. Byron put everything he had and himself at the service of the liberation of this people. He soon succumbed, not in battle, but to the efforts that his thirst for action entailed.

In France, where the political revolution revealed the break with the past in its most radical form, where the call for naturalness and freedom resounded loudest through Rousseau, the revolutionization of minds progressed most slowly. The truly free personalities spent their energy on the tribune or in popular assemblies; they found no time for art. But one poet must not be forgotten when speaking of the age of revolution, the French Hölderlin, André Chénier. He too found his ideal in Hellenism and developed his talent in fine, ear-catching lyrical poems. He was the forerunner of French Romanticism. His brother, Marie Joseph Chénier, was a radical representative of revolutionary poetry, to which he remained faithful even after the French popular uprising had landed in the harbor of Napoleonism. The poet of the "Marseillaise", Joseph Rouget de l'Isle, should also be mentioned as a revolutionary poet in the true sense of the word. It has been said, not without justification, that de l'Isle immortalized the enthusiasm, Andr& Chenier the pain of the popular uprising. But the latter also incurred the hatred of the men of liberty and had to end up on the scaffold of blood. The men of liberty could not bear the fact that someone also put the sad side of the revolution into words. Napoleon's ruthless greatness tolerated nothing of importance next to him; Antoine Arnault, Pierre Lebrun were the poets who found the tone that pleased the great Napoleon. Anne Louise Germaine de Staël, a woman who had absorbed the prevailing views in Germany on her travels and was a champion of modern ideas, did not meet with the Caesar's approval.

German Romanticism traveled the path from the glorification of Goethe's views, taken from ancient art, through the immersion in the mystical-Christian ideas of a bygone era, to the handmaiden services it rendered to Roman ultramontanism and the absolutist desires of the princes in the time of reaction. It was a path through a time of greatness into a disastrous decline. The French reached this final stage much more quickly. As early as 1802, "Génie du christianisme ou les beautés de la religion chrétienne" by François René Vicomte de Chateaubriand was published, in which the beauty and greatness of Christianity was praised in comparison to all the fruits that reason and enlightenment could bring. The same writer later continued this glorification of Christianity in his poem "Les martyrs". A lyrical successor to Chateaubriand was Alphonse de Lamartine, who added the necessary mood to the mystical sentiment. A poet with all the weaknesses and virtues of the French folk character was Pierre Jean Béranger, the amiable songwriter, who had charming sensuality, melodious rhetoric and also ingratiating triviality at his disposal. The prose writer Paul Louis Courier, who was a sincere, spirited advocate of freedom even in the gloomy period of French reaction, when voices like his were not welcomed, worked alongside these poets, who prepared the way for French Romanticism, which emerged much later than German and English Romanticism.

All the literary movements described here are related to the great political and intellectual aspirations at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They were superseded by the intellectual currents that went hand in hand with the political revolutions around the middle of the century.

1840 - I871

Goethe, Schiller and the Romantics had one artistic ideal in mind above all others: what demands the true artist must place on himself was what mattered to them. At the height of his development, Goethe immersed himself in the art of the Greeks because he believed that genuine artistry was most purely developed in them. Schiller sought to orientate himself on the conditions of artistic creation in far-sighted treatises ("On the Sublime", "Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man", "On Naive and Sentimental Poetry"). The Romantics studied the literatures of different times and peoples in order to find out more about the nature of creativity. This position of man towards art is different in the minds that replaced Goethe and the Romantics. They felt that such an emphasis on the artistic as such distanced art from life and that real life had to be brought closer to art again. This feeling dominates all the efforts of those poets and writers who, in the history of German intellectual life, are summarized under the name of "Young Germany", a designation that was first found in a book by the Kiel aesthete Ludolf Wienbarg "Ästhetische Feldzüge" (1834), which bore the dedication: "Dem jungen Deutschland, nicht dem alten, weihe ich dieses Buch". Here, war was declared on an art that places itself outside of life. Art should be born out of living reality, out of a harmonious existence that truly satisfies people. Wienbarg saw only one-sidedness in the Hellenic ideal of life, as well as in the newer ideal of life derived from Christianity. The Greeks were concerned with idealizing the sensual, with shaping the physically beautiful; the newer ideal of life favoured the spiritual. These two ideals were now to come together in a higher unity, sensuality and spirit were to be given equal rights. From this general point of view, judgments were reached that were essentially different from those of Goethe, Schiller and the classical as well as the romantic epoch in literature. Wienbarg valued Schiller's language and its ideal momentum, Goethe's stylish style of expression less highly than the prose that was as close as possible to immediate life.

Wienbarg has only clearly expressed in his book what took place in the intellectual life of Germany after the reign of the Romantics. Characteristic of this change was Ludwig Börne's work as a writer, whose basic trait was not an artistic but a political attitude. The word "political", when applied to this writer, must, however, be taken in the broader sense that it encompasses everything that relates to the development of humanity, to its progress in historical life. The more art places itself at the service of this human progress, the higher Börne regarded it. It was in the spirit of this conviction that he directed the journals he published (the "Zeitschwingen", from 1814, and later the "Wage", from 1818-21); it prevails in all his works and is particularly vivid in his "Dramaturgische Blätter", in which he judged dramatic works of art according to moral and political principles; he emphasized the poets' attitude, the moral content of their achievements. The great seriousness of his nature and a bubbling wit make up the magic of his works. Everything he wrote came from a morally upright nature and from a mind whose thoughts were as accurate as they were witty; his "Letters from Paris" (1832-34) are an incomparable treasure trove of such thoughts. Because of this nature, Börne was an opponent of Goethe, whose purely artistic attitude provoked his political and ethical pathos to contradiction; Goethe's conception of art and world view seemed to him hostile to life. Such a personality, Börne believed, drained life and the progress of mankind of its energy. The July Revolution made a deep impression on Ludwig Börne; in the tendencies underlying it, he saw something that was related to his goals, for he was a revolutionary spirit in his entire disposition. He wanted to shake up his fellow human beings so that they would accelerate the steps leading to freedom. When he became bitter and unjust towards people and conditions, it arose from the warmest enthusiasm for moral and political progress.

Heinrich Heine was a completely different kind of personality. He owed his artistic education entirely to the Romantic movement, but he was also the destroyer of this school of thought. In his poems, the dreaminess of Romanticism lives alongside a crude, realistic grasp of life. In the description of Romanticism, we have seen how the genius personality disregarded reality and wanted to build his own world according to his own free will. This sense of the sovereign personality lives on in Heine's wit. He takes a run-up to the highest feelings and mocks them again with the most capricious arbitrariness. It is precisely because of this peculiarity that Heine has become a much-disputed personality. The game he plays with emotion and expression has made him the enemy of those who only want to accept seriousness and dignity in the face of the most sacred feelings; his grace, lightness, elegance and richness of spirit make him the favorite of all those who strive above all for aesthetic and artistic pleasures. In his soul, the gifts of the truthful poet, the sensuous storyteller and the Mephistophelian cynic dwell side by side, and in his best creations, frivolity has its place alongside the noblest ideas. His "Book of Songs" (1827) clearly shows the influence of the Romantics, for example Eichendorff; in contrast, he appears as a completely independent spirit in his "Travel Pictures" (1826-31). The fresh, original character expressed in them soon made him a widely read writer. The most consummate grace of style and a sparkling wit appear in this book as the outflow of a superior spirit. However, the poet's personality sometimes comes to the fore, so that it often seems as if he was only interested in flirting with this personality; but no less often it seems as if Heine only wanted to help himself out of a painful mood in his soul through his wit, through his play with emotion and feeling. As a result, he felt drawn to the great poet of world-weariness, Byron. Tones that we are accustomed to hearing in the works of this poet can be heard again and again in Heine. However, what leads from such a basic mood to a higher satisfaction, a harmonious view of the world, was lacking in him. He wavers uncertainly back and forth between romanticism and sober intellectual enlightenment. In the preface to his "Atta Troll" (r84r), he made a telling statement about himself: "I wrote Atta Troll for my own pleasure and joy in the cricket-like dreamlike manner of that romantic school where I spent my most pleasant youthful years and finally beat the schoolmaster. In this respect, my poem is perhaps reprehensible. But you are lying, Brutus, you are lying, Cassius, and you too are lying, Asinius, if you claim that my mockery is directed at those ideas which are a precious achievement of mankind and for which I myself have fought and suffered so much. No, precisely because the poet constantly has those ideas in mind with the most glorious clarity and grandeur, he is seized all the more irresistibly by the desire to laugh when he sees how crudely, clumsily and clumsily those ideas are interpreted by the limited contemporaries." In "Atta Troll" and in the 1844 poem "Deutschland. A Winter's Tale", written in 1844, a mirror is held up to the Germany of the time with sharp satire and bitterness. In the "New Poems" (1844), the poet's merits take a back seat to a cynical view of life that is not free of frivolity.

Börne and Heine, by their very natures, strove to escape Romanticism. They were differently inclined people than Schlegel, Novalis, Görres and so on; that is why their work took on a different character from the Romantic current. However, the degree to which this current had already outlived itself in the twenties of the century can be seen most clearly in Karl Immermann. He was not a brilliant personality like Heine and would therefore certainly have achieved, if not outstanding, then at least solid things in the sense of the Romantic school, if his appearance had taken place during its heyday. However, he was forced to painfully feel that an important artistic epoch had outlived itself and did not have the strength within himself to bring forth new ideals. He felt like a latecomer to great ancestors, and he was one. This is clearly expressed in his novel "The Epigones" (1836). A world-wearied mood prevails in this work. The poet passes harsh judgment on his time and reproaches it for being so far behind the past. He himself could only achieve something by borrowing from great ancestors, from Shakespeare, Goethe, Calderón. His dramas "Das Tal von Ronceval", "Edwin", "Petrarca", "Auge der Liebe", "Cardenio", "Trauerspiel in Tirol", "Alexis" are certainly the creations of an independent spirit. They prove, however, that Immermann had a certain ability for dramatic construction, for the captivating composition of plots, which is why he was able to become the founder of a German model stage and a genuinely artistic dramaturgy. The lack of his talent was most evident in his "Merlin". Merlin is the antithesis of Christ, the son of a virgin and Satan; in him, evil becomes reality. The poet was not able to give this old legendary motif new poetic life. He was much happier in his novel "Münchhausen", published in 1838, in which he contrasted the hollowness and hypocrisy of higher society with the pithy, healthy nature of the German peasantry.

The development that German poetry underwent in the second third of the century can also be seen by comparing Franz Grillparzer and Friedrich Hebbel, who was 22 years younger. Grillparzer's sense of art was completely in line with Goethe's and Schiller's views, while Hebbel went beyond them to such an extent that he can almost be described as a forerunner of Henrik Ibsen due to the tasks he set himself. If one disregards Grillparzer's "Ahnfrau", the first drama to emerge entirely from the romanticists' ideas of fate, one can say that his aim was always to meet the requirements of classical beauty in the development of the characters and the shaping of the plot; he was guided by the artistic laws of inner harmony when he depicted human passions and portrayed events. Hebbel, on the other hand, turned his interest above all to the moral questions of the human soul; he sought a motivation based less on artistic than on psychological laws. This is why Grillparzer became the poet of a calm, perfect beauty, while Hebbel often disregarded the pure laws of beauty in order to give a certain trait of the soul, a strong passion, a characteristic expression. Grillparzer's dramas "Sappho", "Das goldene Vließ", "König Ottokars Glück und Ende", "Der Traum ein Leben", "Weh' dem, der lügt", "Die Jüdin von Toledo" and his unfinished "Esther" realize in the dramatic field what Goethe put forward as an artistic ideal after his Italian journey. Love in its ideal form is expressed in "Sappho", the natural nobility of soul and the nobility of a woman's feelings in "Medea" - the third part of the trilogy "The Golden Fleece" - and the masculine, heroic energy in "King Ottokar". Hebbel, on the other hand, did not shy away from exaggerating the human to gigantic proportions when it came to depicting female passion, as in his "Judith", male jealousy, as in "Herod and Mariamne", or the misfortune resulting from social prejudices and circumstances, as in "Mary Magdalene". In "Gyges and his Ring" he depicts the revenge a woman can take by violating her sense of shame, and in the "Nibelungen" he portrays human strength and weakness on a truly superhuman scale.

Another important poet who, like Grillparzer, was still completely under the influence of classical views of art was Otto Ludwig. Without an originally strong disposition, he sought to work his way up to a certain height by consciously immersing himself in the laws of art. The "Shakespeare Studies", which were only published after his death, show how conscientiously he pondered the secrets of poetic creation. Although he depicts strong passions in his dramas "The Hereditary Forester" and "The Maccabees", these works have something ingenious about them. Only the story "Between Heaven and Earth" makes us forget that it was not imagination but reason that guided the poet.

In a completely conscious manner, with the clear aim of bringing about a new conception of life and art, the spirits of "Young Germany", Gutzkow, Laube, Mundt, placed themselves on the ground that Wienbarg had described in his "Aesthetic Campaigns". The most important in this circle was Karl Gutzkow, who had listened to Hegel's lectures in Berlin at the end of the 1920s and had absorbed the ideas with which this philosopher explained the development of humanity in history. Hegel's idea that history is progress in the consciousness of freedom made a great impression on the then nineteen-year-old Gutzkow. And when the news of the July Revolution in Paris reached Germany, the urge for personal and social freedom received a powerful external impulse in his soul. From then on, he wanted to devote himself entirely to the cause of progress. The sharpness and clarity of his thinking enabled him to quickly familiarize himself with all the new ideas of the time, so that he soon became an outstanding exponent of them. However, it was not easy for him to completely cast off his Romantic views, and we still clearly encounter them in his first work "Letters from a Fool to a Fooless" (1832). In his next novel "Maha-Guru, Story of a God" (1833), however, a new view came to the fore. The glorification of the immediate life, of earthly ideals at the expense of the otherworldly, is the basic idea of the book. Gutzkow's opinion was that people should enjoy a free existence that is not shackled by traditional social and religious prejudices. In his novel "Wally, the Doubter" (1835), he set himself the task of showing the relationship between the two sexes in this sense. It had to be said that real modesty and chastity does not consist in the suppression but in the ennoblement of sensuality. The good man is not the one who must deny himself the satisfaction of his instincts, because otherwise they sink into immorality, but the one who can calmly abandon himself to his sensual life without having to fear such an aberration. Gutzkow also expressed this view in the preface he wrote to Schleiermacher's letters on Schlegel's "Lucinde" (1835). It denounced in the harshest terms those who declare an unbiased devotion to the world of the senses to be immoral, thereby demonstrating that the highest concept of morality is alien to them. It was no wonder that Gutzkow encountered fierce resistance with such views. Wolfgang Menzel was the one who raised his voice most loudly against it. This man, who was not insignificant as a historian, was dominated by the most one-sided judgments in the moral and artistic fields. In coarse, crude language, he rejected everything that did not agree with his philistine moral and political views. He also described Goethe's lifestyle and art as immoral from his pedantic judgment seat. He was a skilled journalist and exerted a significant critical influence on literature as editor of the Stuttgarter Morgenblatt in the 1930s. His steady gaze could not fail to recognize that the young Gutzkow had considerable power. He therefore first drew him close to him and had him work diligently for his newspaper. But when Gutzkow's way of thinking came to light in its full form through the aforementioned writings, Menzel became his fiercest public accuser. This literary agitation against the new world view was joined by a political one: in December 1835, a Bundestag resolution banned all writings of the new movement, those of Heine, Gutzkow, Wienbarg, Mundt and Laube - including future ones! Not even the names of these men were allowed to be mentioned in German writings for a while. Gutzkow's fine powers of observation for everything that goes on in intellectual life came to light in a series of remarkable writings in the following period. "Zur Philosophie der Geschichte" (1836) offers a thoughtful collection of aphorisms on the development of the human mind, "Goethe im Wendepunkt zweier Jahrhunderte" (1836) penetrates deep into the mind of the great poet, "Börnes Leben" (1840) provides an insightful characterization of this writer. Gutzkow also aptly portrayed the intellectual physiognomies of other contemporaries in a series of essays (later published under the title "Säkularbilder" in the Collected Works).

Karl Gutzkow had to experience to the full the hard battles faced by those who oppose traditional ideological circles. His writings, which were regarded as immoral, earned him a three-month prison sentence. It was particularly painful for him, however, that his world of thoughts and feelings also caused people with whom he had deeper affections to fall away from him. The short novella "The Sadducee of Amsterdam" emerged from such painful feelings. It depicts the contrast of a man with new, individual views on society. Gutzkow then expressed the same idea in a more perfect way in his drama "Uriel Acosta" in 1847; the poet experienced a good deal of the suffering that the hero of this drama had to endure in his own person. They also had the effect that in later life he withdrew more and more from the struggles of life and restricted himself to observing and depicting them without taking an active part in them himself. Even in his psychological novel "Blasedow and his Sons" (1838-1839), this observation of the conditions of the time from a point of view outside themselves predominates; however, it did not fully break through until the two great works of the fifties: "The Knights of the Spirit" (1850-52) and "The Wizard of Rome" (1858-61). In the former novel, all the trends and typical characters of the time are portrayed from a high vantage point in a cultural picture of the highest order. What ferments in the depths of the life of his time, where the spirits strive, what drives them forward and pushes them backwards: everything is vividly depicted in vivid breadth and from the most precise knowledge. How Gutzkow knew how to appreciate every legitimate aspiration is demonstrated by his support for a talented poet who unfortunately died in his 24th year (1837), for Georg Büchner. He published his tragedy "Danton's Death" in 1835, which was not fully developed but testified to true poetic power, and introduced it to literature.

Heinrich Laube moved in the same direction as Karl Gutzkow with his first works "The New Century" (1833), in which he glorified the Polish uprising, and in "Young Europe" (1833-37), in which he took a stand against social and state barriers. However, he had neither the same seriousness of purpose nor the same depth of outlook on life. He was basically a nature that looked at artistic extraordinariness. His dramas "Essex", "Die Karlsschüler" and others are achievements calculated for theatrical effect, cleverly using the rules of dramaturgy. He earned his main merits not as a writer, but as the director of the Leipzig City Theater and the Vienna Castle and City Theater. His dramaturgical and directorial work is still considered exemplary and unsurpassed in the circles of theater professionals today.

Theodor Mundt gained the least importance within "Young Germany". Although he professed the principles of the new world of thought, he did not have the artistic power to express them in his novels, which dealt with emancipated women and natures striving to escape their time in a doctrinaire, less than captivating manner.

At the same time as these representatives of "Young Germany", philosophically-minded spirits were fighting for a new world view. Hegelian philosophy, while its founder was teaching in Berlin (1818-30), had quickly taken hold of all minds striving for greater depth. Its influence on scientific, artistic, political and social life in the last years of Hegel's life was such as no philosophical system had ever had. The way in which this thinker encompassed all knowledge in a far-sighted body of thought meant that even those who would have arrived at more or less divergent opinions if they had listened to the language of their own minds joined him. After Hegel's death, these deviations came to the fore all the more vehemently. The younger philosophers no longer interpreted the teacher's words impartially, but reinterpreted them in their own sense or sought to develop them further according to their own views. Religious questions were included in this philosophical trend that developed out of Hegelianism and were the subject of lively discussion. Hegel was of the opinion that all truth finds its highest, most correct expression in the philosophical world of thought. But he was also of the opinion that philosophy is not the only form for truth - it is also present in religion, only not yet in a clear, conceptual way, but as a vivid idea in symbols. David Friedrich Strauß took up this idea and developed it further. In his book "The Life of Jesus" (1835-36), he subjected Protestant history to a perceptive critique and came to the conclusion that it is merely a mythical representation of philosophical truths. The whole history of man and every single human life are an embodiment of the divine essence. Everything that happens in the world at any time is a manifestation of this divinity. In Protestant history, the myth-forming tendency of the human mind has only in one individual case pictorially depicted what is always and everywhere taking place: the incarnation of God. Soon Bruno Bauer intervened in the dispute between the spirits in an even more radical way. He examined the Christian truths from the standpoint of human self-consciousness and only accepted faith in that which man can recognize as true from his own spiritual capacity. Thus war was declared on a particular church doctrine in addition to the doctrine gained from the spirit of man. Similar critical standards were now applied to other aspects of life, to morality, the state and society. Arnold Ruge and Echtermeyer founded a journal in 1838 to represent such issues, the "Hallesche Jahrbücher", which was soon (1841) considered so dangerous to the state that Prussia banned its publication and it had to move to Saxony.

A further step in this direction was Ludwig Feuerbach's book "Das Wesen des Christentums" (1841). Feuerbach started from the premise that man can only gain his knowledge from himself. But if this is the case, then man cannot have any knowledge about any higher being than himself. He should therefore above all pursue anthropology, the study of man. It was only because man was not satisfied with this in the course of his historical development that he resorted to religious ideas. He found in himself the idea of man, endowed it with all the perfections to which human qualities can be elevated, idealized the image of man and transferred it to the outside world as God. It is Feuerbach's view that man has created God in his own image. Therefore, once this has been recognized, anthropology should take the place of theology. Knowledge of the natural, which is perceptible to the senses in space and time, should now take the place of belief in the supernatural. This also had an important moral consequence. If man is regarded as the highest being, then action can have no other goal than to realize the ideal of humanity in the most perfect sense. In the sense of this morality, the closer a person approaches this ideal, the more virtuous he will be. The religious moral doctrine should be replaced by a humane one. Where Feuerbach dropped this idea, Max Stirner took it up again. He said to himself that if one only accepts the real, that which exists in space and time, then the ideal of the "perfect human being" must also fall. For only the individual human being really exists, not a general humanity. If Feuerbach still felt compelled to organize life in such a way that it came close to the ideal of man, if he thus felt responsible to a certain extent towards the whole human species, Stirner does not feel such responsibility. Whoever recognizes a general ideal of humanity must also admit that this ideal cannot be lived out in the individual, but only in the whole species. The individual perishes, the species lives on and also develops the ideal further. But if this ideal is presented as a spook, as a fantasy, as Stirner does, then man has no obligation towards it. He need not be guided by anything but his own inclinations; he is responsible only to himself. Stirner advocated this point of view in his work "Der Einzige und sein Eigentum" (1845).

It can be seen from this that within German thought there was a striving for a world view based on experiential reality. It is therefore understandable that it was precisely in Germany that Darwin's discovery of the natural origin of organic species was received with enthusiasm and endowed with a kind of natural religion by thinkers who had absorbed something of the spirit of Feuerbach and his time. The old Schelling stood in marked contrast to these ideas, which developed from the views of Hegel, who considered a world view gained only through the rational development of thought to be incapable of satisfying the highest spiritual needs of man and therefore strove to supplement it with a higher truth originating from the divine essence itself. Frederick William IV appointed this philosopher, who until then had taught his "Philosophy of Revelation" in Munich, to Berlin in 1840 in order to counterbalance the teachings of the younger thinkers, who were not very compatible with the king's romanticism and religious convictions. However, the influence of the new schools of thought was so great at the time that Schelling's appearance in Prussia's capital was completely ineffective.

The aim of "Young Germany" to establish a lively relationship between poetry and life found a radical continuation in the movement literature of the 1940s. Its main characteristic was that the political mood of the time was expressed directly in the poetic creations. The unease about public conditions sought poetic expression. Most of the poetry that emerged from this mood has no lasting significance. They were only able to make a deep impression at a time when the widest circles were moved by the same feelings as these political singers. The poverty of the thought content and the small scope of the subject matter could not be of interest to later epochs. The "Unpolitical Songs", which August Heinrich Hoffmann, known as " von Fallersleben", published in 1840 and 1841, mark the beginning in this direction. Aristocracy, muckraking and the police were attacked here in a coarse student tone and often with punchy jokes. Hoffmann von Fallersleben's real talent was not in this area, however, but in his depiction of childhood life, which he sang about in songs reminiscent of genuine folk songs. His ability as a researcher of linguistic monuments and folk poetry enabled him to do this in particular. - Georg Herwegh, whose "Gedichte eines Lebendigen mit einer Widmung an den Verstorbenen" (Poems of a Living Man with a Dedication to the Deceased) appeared in Zurich and Winterthur in 1841, had a captivating effect at this time. The lively eloquence and fearlessness with which freedom and human dignity are sung here stirred up emotions. Herwegh was for a time the favourite poet of many, until it was realized how little inner truth there was in his pathos, and that the enthusiasm that spoke from his songs was only artificial. The fresh, energetic spirit that prevailed in Germany at the time meant that many a less important personality also achieved valuable things. For example, the powerful song "Der deutsche Rhein" by Nicolaus Becker appeared in the "Rheinisches Jahrbuch" for 1841. "They shall not have it, the free German Rhine" was a word spoken in the truest sense of the word from the soul of the time. It was a response to the words that Alfred de Musset and other French poets had uttered about the Rhine. The political poet Robert Prutz also made himself known in wider circles with a Rhine song in 1840. "Der Rhein" is the poetry of a thoughtful and deeply emotional personality. But the fact that his creations originated more in the mind than in the artistic imagination meant that the acclaim Robert Prutz found with this song soon gave way to a much colder assessment. His "Politische Wochenstube", which appeared in 1843, is a dramatic satire on the political conditions of the time. It had just as little effect as his "Poems", which were published in separate collections in 1843 and 1849. Prutz found far more heartfelt tones later, when the period of political struggles was over. His poems "Aus der Heimat" (1858) and "Herbstrosen" (1865) were dedicated to love and an often playful, but often also truly intoxicating sensuality. He brought the breadth of his mind to bear in literary-historical works, such as the "Göttinger Dichterbund" (1841), a "Geschichte des deutschen Journalismus" (1845) and the "Vorlesungen über die Geschichte des deutschen Theaters" (1847).

Ferdinand Freiligrath occupied an outstanding position within the circle of political poets. He attracted general attention in 1838 with his "Poems", in which he mostly depicted oriental landscapes and animals as well as the life of the people of the Orient in glowing colors and sonorous language, and appeared in 1841 with delicate, cozy poems. At the time, he felt so distant from political life that he exclaimed in a poem in the Morgenblatt ("From Spain"): "The poet stands on a higher vantage point than on the battlements of the party!" But as early as 1844 he surprised his readers with his contemporary poems "Ein Glaubensbekenntnis" (A Confession of Faith), which emerged from a stormy desire for freedom and a deep national feeling. He, who had previously sung enthusiastically about the lion's ride in the desert, the prince of the Moors, the wildebeest and the carrots, and the power of love, now threw himself into political poetry. The collection "Ça ira" (1846) and his "Political and Social Poems" (1849) also belong to this genre. Freiligrath became one of the most radical revolutionary poets, who powerfully captured the hearts of his contemporaries through his vivid, lively depiction and his faithful, honest nature, which retained its naivety despite the most powerful calls for freedom and progress. Poems such as "Aus dem schlesischen Gebirge" (From the Silesian Mountains), full of deep compassion for the oppressed, make his free-minded tones appear in a nobler light than those of Herwegh or Hoffmann von Fallersleben. Just how genuine the poet's national enthusiasm was is shown by the glorious words with which he celebrated the victories of 1870.

How a general mood of the times can also sweep spirits into a movement that does not correspond to their nature at all is shown by Franz Dingelstedt, whose "Lieder eines kosmopolitischen Nachtwächters" appeared in 1841. The author had a night watchman say what he had to say against the German conditions of the time, describing what goes on in the houses he passes on his nightly rounds. The poems are full of wit and spirit, but were not as easy to sing as those of Hoffmann von Fallersleben or Herwegh and were therefore less popular. Dingelstedt also soon felt uncomfortable in the role of the poet of liberty; he felt the urge to seek influential positions in which he could develop a more rewarding activity that would satisfy his ambition. He found such positions as director of the court theaters in Stuttgart, Munich, Weimar and finally the Burgtheater in Vienna. His novellas and dramas did not receive the same recognition as his work as a dramaturge and as a translator and adaptor of Shakespeare's works.

In Austria, too, the desire for freedom of the time found expression in political poetry. The Hungarian Karl Beck owed the acclaim he received to a colorful and often exuberant style born of national temperament. His "Nächte, gepanzerte Lieder" (1838) depicted the sad situation of his people in a truly moving way. His later works "Der fahrende Poet" (1838), "Jankö, der ungarische Roßhirt" (1842), "Gesänge aus der Heimat" (1852) and a novel (1863) "Mater Dolorosa" also speak of his great talent. With their first poems, Moritz Hartmann and Alfred Meißner drew on the memories of their closer homeland, Bohemia, the former with his collection "Kelch und Schwert" (1845), the latter with his "Ziska" (1846). Both then followed up with lyrical and narrative poems, which won them the sympathy of their fellow Austrians in abundance.

Nikolaus Lenau, who was born in Hungary but of German parents, was a freedom singer in a completely different sense to those mentioned. His works did not emerge from political enthusiasm, but from a longing for spiritual, inner liberation; his painful laments were not directed at the conditions of the time, but at the imperfection of everything earthly. A view of the world that offers the human heart no consolation was combined with a high poetic power that enabled him to express the painful basic feelings of his being in an uplifting way. It is characteristic of Lenau that he felt Goethe had not "exhausted the Faust material to the bottom" and therefore treated it anew in his own way. The higher conception hovering above the contradictions of the world, which dominated Goethe, did not satisfy Lenau. In his "Poems", which appeared in 1831 and 1838, his ability to depict the moods of nature and the turmoil of his mind are revealed in the same way. In "Savonarola" (1837) and in the "Albigensians" (1842) he depicted religious struggles in gloomy images; in "Don Juan", which Anastasius Grün published after his death, he presented the fate of this personality, who indulged in sensual pleasure, in Iyrically beautiful detail, but did not achieve a planned, unified solution to the task set. The poet fell into incurable madness in 1844 and died in 1850. - In sharp contrast to Lenau's view of life was that of his friend Anastasius Grün (Anton Graf von Auersperg), the poetic advocate of a free-minded and Austrian-patriotic attitude. The favorable reception he received in his twenty-fourth year with his "Leaves of Love", the "Last Knight" and then in 1831 with the anonymously published "Walks of a Viennese Poet" can be explained in no small part by the fact that a member of an old, high aristocratic family placed himself in the service of freedom and progress in a pugnacious and victorious manner. His unreserved way of speaking about people and things, his courage and his hopeful view of the future development of political conditions had a convincing effect; he could say many a sharp word because the sincerity of his convictions and the genuineness of his patriotism were never called into question. In 1836 he published the epic-lyrical cycle "Schutt", in which he advocated a free organization of Austria from a superior point of view. "Der Pfaff von Kahlenberg" (1850), Grün's most mature work, is less significant in its basic idea, but contains a magnificent depiction of life in the surroundings of Vienna at the time of Otto the Merry. Through his recreations, Anastasius Grün introduced a treasure trove of Slovenian folk poetry into literature.

The aims and views of "Young Germany" and the political poets gave the literary movement of the German people in the period from Goethe's death to the revolution in 1848 its most prominent

character traits. However, there are also individual poetic personalities of this epoch in whose character nothing or only little of this general physiognomy of the time can be noticed. Ernst Raupach provided for the less profound spiritual needs with his dramas, which appeared from 1818 to 1850. The dramatist Chr. Dietrich Grabbe strove for high artistic tasks, whose poems can offer little to an educated taste despite the power of expression and an ingenious gift of representation. Karl von Holtei is the creator of Silesian poems, an attractive novel "Christian Lammfell" and excellent comedies, "Wiener in Paris", "Pariser in Wien". Johann Ludwig Franz Deinhardstein gave the stage tasteful plays: "Hans Sachs" (1829) and "Garrick in Bristol" (1834), which were a great success. Eduard Bauernfeld combined wit and characterization with great theatrical skill in his numerous comedies. In 1834, his "Confessions" brought him recognition as a comic playwright for the first time, and from then until the 1970s he enjoyed popularity in the widest possible circles. Alongside the prolific Roderich Benedix, whose situation comedy never goes into depth but often testifies to a healthy sense of humor, and Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer, who was well versed in theatrical effects and always worked towards emotion, Bauernfeld occupied a prominent place in the repertoire of German theatres at this time. In the field of more serious drama, Friedrich Halm (Baron von Münch-Bellinghausen) was active, whose tragedy "Griseldis" met with great acclaim at the Vienna Burgtheater in 1835, which was surpassed in 1857 by that of his "Fencer of Ravenna". His drama "Wildfeuer" (1864) has remained a popular stage play to this day.

The fairy-tale dramatist Ferdinand Raimund developed out of the witty and humorous Viennese, whose poems "Der Barometermacher auf der Zauberinsel", "Alpenkönig und Menschenfeind", "Der Verschwender", were initially only able to gain recognition in the creator's homeland, but were later fully appreciated and given a place of honor alongside his compatriot Grillparzer. He has found no equal successor in the field of Viennese farce.

The Swabian poet Eduard Mörike also went his own way, away from the great movements of the time. He always had Goethe's example in mind; his novel "Maler Nolten" (1832) is clearly influenced by "Wilhelm Meister", his cozy poems are influenced by Goethe's poetry.

Emanuel Geibel, whose poems went through 56 editions in the years 1840-64, made a significant impact as a lyric poet. Natural grace, a complete moderation of emotions and the ease with which his songs can be sung made Geibel a favorite of the broad masses of educated people. Carried by charming melodies, poems such as "Der Mai ist gekommen, die Bäume schlagen aus", "Ein lustiger Musikante marschierte am Nil", "Mag auch heiß das Scheiden brennen" have achieved a rare degree of popularity. Geibel avoided stormy passions; he was the poet of tender feelings. Even where his imagination immersed itself in nature, it did not seek the violent, but the sweet, as the spring, autumn and drinking songs of his "Juniuslieder" (1848) prove. The wild cries for freedom of the political poets were repugnant to him. On the other hand, long before the establishment of the German Empire, he dedicated many a beautiful word to the striving for national unity and the German Empire, whose coming he foresaw; the best of this was brought together in the collection "Heroldrufe" in 1887. Geibel's poetry displays all the traits that dominated literary life in the fifties and sixties. The demand for distant ideals and goals was replaced by an interest in the immediate present, in what could be achieved at the moment on the one hand, and a certain despondency and lack of joie de vivre on the other. Not only the poems of Oskar von Redwitz, Chr. Fr. Scherenberg, Otto Roquette and Friedrich Martin Bodenstedt, which brought about a counter-movement to political literature, but also those of Gustav Freytag, Gottfried Keller, Willibald Alexis, Adalbert Stifter, Countess Ida Hahn-Hahn and Fanny Lewald, as well as the works of Berthold Auerbach, stemmed from the first current. The other current found its expression in the profound influence exerted by the anti-life teachings of Schopenhauer (p. 20). This philosopher had remained virtually unknown up to this time. Now he acquired a value for all those who had been driven to a certain resignation towards reality because of the failed hopes of the forties and were therefore happy to have ascetic ideals and the negation of will justified by a thinker. In addition, however, Schopenhauer's "Parerga und Paralipomena", published in 1851, brought him back to mind, and in this work he expressed his world view in a more comprehensible way and with more wit than was the case in his earlier books.

The narrative poem "Amaranth" by Oskar von Redwitz was published in 1849 and made a significant impression, which is probably due less to its value as a narrative than to the delicate lyrical elements in which a wonderful natural mood is expressed. Scherenberg's importance lay in his ability to narrate world-historical events. The battle scenes he created in "Waterloo" (1849), "Ligny" (1849) and "Leuthen" (1852) have a sense of grandeur. Otto Roquette's "Prinz Waldmeisters Brautfahrt" (1851) is a graceful farce performed with all the Iyrian means that were also available to Redwitz. His poems have also become popular due to their similar basic character. Fr. M. Bodenstedt's substantial work "A Thousand and One Days in the Orient" (1850) caused a great stir, particularly due to the captivating descriptions and the songs that were included, which were republished in 1851 as "Songs of Mirza Schaffy". Like Goethe in the "West-Eastern Divan", the poet sought to express his feelings in the manner of the Oriental spirit and therefore appeared in a foreign mask.

Gustav Freytag's achievements were entirely under the spell of views that had come to terms with the failure of the March Movement, reckoned for the time being with what had been achieved and sought to shape the life of their time through poetry. We will have to come back to him and some of the other writers mentioned here in the third part, as some of their impact came later. However, Freytag conquered the German reading world as early as 1855 with his novel "Soll und Haben", in which the social conditions of the time were given an artistic treatment. The direction of the novel is indicated in the motto, which comes from Julian Schmidt, the witty literary historian who edited the "Grenzboten" together with Gustav Freytag for a time. It says: "The novel should look for the German people where they can be found in their efficiency, namely in their work." The commercial world is contrasted with other social circles, especially the aristocracy, in its promising activities, entirely in the spirit of a bourgeois, free-minded view of life. Freytag had already provided an excellent depiction of the political situation, the electoral machinations of the parties and the influence of the press in the constitutional state in his comedy "Die Journalisten" (The Journalists) in 1853, which is still widely regarded today as having no equal in German literature.

Gottfried Keller was a master in the reproduction of real life, a fine observer of the smallest features in events and characters, insofar as these are of essential importance. His novel "Der grüne Heinrich" attracted the attention of the first critics as soon as it was published (1854). With a rare fidelity to nature and high psychological artistry, the poet depicts the development of an artist with all the difficulties and aberrations to which a rapturous, impractical idealist is exposed. In the stories "Die Leute von Seldwyla" (1856), he achieved a classic perfection in his depiction of Swiss nature and its people. The novella "Romeo and Juliet in the Village", which belongs to this collection, rightly ranks among the pearls of German poetry thanks to the truth in the drawing of the characters, strength in the depiction of the plot and superior humor.

In Keller, we see the endeavor to seek a field of poetry that does not give rise to the expression of vague ideals of the future, but where the poet has the opportunity to immerse himself completely in what life offers with an artistic sense. The same urge underlies the creation of the "Dorfgeschichten" (Village Stories), of which Berthold Auerbach was the most outstanding caretaker. In the unpretentious circumstances of the people, in their health and originality, Auerbach believed that he had found material that corresponded more closely to the harmony in artistic representation that Goethe demanded than to the life of the educated classes. Auerbach's "Black Forest Village Stories" bring the inhabitants of the Black Forest before our eyes with artistic vividness. This poet was drawn to the idyllic, to the uneducated countryside; from it he created his stories "Barfüßele" (1856), "Neues Leben" (1852), "Josef im Schnee" (1861), "Edelweiß" (1861). In the great novel "Auf der Höhe" (1865), he then contrasted this world, with which he was most familiar, with that of the higher circles. Auerbach knew how to captivate in equal measure through the warmth of his portrayal and his sharp characterization.

Adalbert Stifter depicted natural things and processes with the imagination of a painter. His "Studies" (1844-50) and the "Colored Stones" (1853) are landscape paintings in words, imbued with a quiet devotion to the magnificent creations of nature and drawn with a touching devotion to the smallest details.

Aside from the progressive course of literature, there are still many a German poet who has temporarily acquired a circle of readers, even if a history of intellectual life has no reason to count him among the leading spirits. Thus Willibald Alexis (Wilhelm Heinrich Häring), influenced by Walter Scott, found recognition and interest in the widest circles of Prussia with his stories "Der Roland von Berlin" (1840), "Der falsche Woldemar" (1842), "Die Hosen des Herrn von Bredow" (1846-48), "Ruhe ist die erste Bürserpflicht" (1852), "Isegrim" (1854), "Dorothee" (1856). As a depictor of Prussian conditions and regions, he is of great power and fertility. In 1849 Salomon Hermann Mosenthal won much acclaim with his moving folk play "Deborah". He showed the same power in his acting in later dramas "Sonnwendhof" (1857), "Das gefangene Bild" (1858) and others. A personality hindered from harmonious development by sad living conditions was Albert Emil Brachvogel, whose tragedy "Narcissus" (1857) clearly shows its origin in a morbid mind. In contrast, Franz Nissel was a more pleasing poetic figure, who in 1858 treated the contrast between the emperor and the powerful vassal with great dramatic art in the tragedy "Henry the Lion".

The new spirit that asserted itself in the sciences had a decisive influence on poetry after the middle of the century. The time of the great philosophical constructions of ideas was over for the time being. The world of the senses and its phenomena and the laws of nature arising from this world came to the forefront of interest. We were on the eve of the event that was to exert a powerful influence on the way of thinking in the second half of the century, the emergence of Darwin's teachings. We encounter the interpenetration of scientific knowledge and poetry even earlier in Germany with Friedrich von Sallet. He began as a purely emotional poet, but then immersed himself in science and, in his "Laienevangelium" (1842), made an attempt to unite the stories of the Gospels with modern consciousness in order to provide a kind of religious edification book for all those for whom the radicalism of Strauss and Feuerbach went too far and who nevertheless felt the need for an account of biblical history that corresponded to the new age.

A personality like Sallet shows how strongly the German spirit tends to confuse poetry and thought. This phenomenon is even more striking in the case of Wilhelm Jordan, who can almost be described as a poetic prophet of the Darwinian view. In his large-scale poem "Demiurgos, ein Mysterium" (1852-54), he expressed ideas about the development of the human race that were scientifically illuminated by Darwinism. Demiurgos" is a poem of ideas in which a mind that dominates the scientific education of its time in the most comprehensive way expresses itself about the driving forces in the world and in life with the decisive intention of presenting all phenomena, including the apparent evils and evil in the world, in their justification for the whole of the universe. How he expressed this in his later works will be presented in the third part.

Jordan's weight of thought contrasts with the lively, cheerful tone that Joseph Viktor Scheffel struck almost simultaneously in his "Trompeter von Säckingen" (1853). The harmlessly amusing mood that dominates this depiction of the fate of the loyal German trumpeter, who receives his noblewoman through papal favor, quickly won the poet a large circle of readers, which expanded even further just one year later with the novel "Ekkehard, eine Geschichte des zehnten Jahrhunderts" (Ekkehard, a History of the Tenth Century), which sketches an appealing cultural picture of the time on the basis of great scholarship. In the songbook "Gaudeamus" (1868) and in the "Bergpsalmen" (1870), too, a cheerful, boyish humor makes itself felt, accompanied by an astonishing power of language and a jovial and witty art of description.

Paul Heyse's novellas (the first collection of which appeared in 1855) and Spielhagen's "Problematische Naturen" (1860) were the first manifestations of a new literary movement that was primarily concerned with solving artistic tasks. The struggle for the most perfect poetic form of representation characterized this movement. It was preceded by the scientific treatment of aesthetics, in which H.G. Hotho ("Vorstudien für Leben und Kunst" 1835), Christian Hermann Weiße ("System der Ästhetik"), Friedrich Theodor Vischer with his "Ästhetik oder Wissenschaft des Schönen" (1846-55) and Moritz Carrière ("Ästhetik" 1859 and "Die Kunst im Zusammenhange der Kulturentwickelung und die Ideale der Menschheit" 1863-73) took part in. The question of the most perfect form of the novel and the novella now occupied the minds, and poets were also influenced by it. The literary struggles and endeavors that began at this time continue to the present day.

At the same time that men such as Wienbarg, Mundt and Gutzkow were making new demands on German literary life, a huge change in the art of poetry was also taking place in France. However, the development of French conditions at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century gave it a substantially different character. Before the Revolution, the most important minds turned to Enlightenment philosophy, which dominated intellectual life and next to which poetry played only a subordinate role. In the period that followed, political and state activity consumed intellectual energies to such an extent that in the first two decades France had no idea of the creations of the forerunner of a new artistic movement, André Chéniers, who ended his life on the scaffold of blood in 1794. Almost none of his poems were published until 1819; only then were his poems from his estate published - the first appearance in France of the artistic spirit through which a young generation of poets sought new paths a few years later. The poetry of the French had been weighed down by the aesthetic formulas which they had long considered to be irrefutable, the true, eternal laws of beauty, and which had already dominated the art of the ancient Greeks. What Lessing recognized and explained with such mastery for the Germans as early as the last century, that one misunderstands ancient art if one believes it to be bound by such rules, was only begun to be understood in France around the year 1830. Before that, the ideas that Boileau had put forward in 1674 in his "Art poétique" and which found expression in Corneille's and Racine's classical dramas were essentially still alive in the views on poetry. People had a certain idea of what a work of art had to be like, and every material they worked with was forced into this. As late as the 1920s, attempts to bring Shakespeare to the stage were rejected. However, this changed within a few years. As early as 1826, English performances of Lear, Hamlet and Othello met with acclaim in Paris; the French translations of A.W. Schlegel's "Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature", which introduced people to the great Briton, had had an effect. It was now also recognized in France that there are no laws of art that apply to everything, but that the appropriate treatment must be found for each subject. Foreign influence contributed greatly to this realization. From Walter Scott one had learned that every region, every social class had to be carefully studied and depicted according to its individual nature; Byron had been studied and the free expression of feelings and passions, uninfluenced by any aesthetic rules, had been grasped. Goethe's poetry was sought to be understood, and the German Romantics, especially E. Th. A. Hoffmann, brought the free flow of the imagination into flow. Thus it came about that, beginning in 1825, a striving similar to that which led to the rejuvenation of all artistic ideals in Germany in the second half of the last century became apparent. This new direction found its expression in the journal "Le Globe", founded in 1824, with Victor Hugo as its leader. As early as 1824, in his "Odes et Ballades", he had struck a tone free of all conventional prejudices; the poetic form was no longer taken from an old theory of art, but was born from the nature of expressed feelings. And Hugo's drama "Hernani" (1830) meant a break with all tradition for France, as Schiller's "The Robbers" once did in Germany, with which it bears some resemblance in its subject matter. The drama initially provoked a storm of indignation. But the younger generation rallied around Hugo and brought his views to victory. A closer look reveals that much of the characteristic features of the old French conception of art still remained in this new literary movement, which was called Romanticism. It did not produce the kind of unbiased, nature-inspired poetry that we find in Shakespeare or the German classics. This is due to the character of the French people. There is always an urge to artificially create the natural. Poetry strives from the simple rendering of sentiment to pathos; in drama a person is not characterized as he ought to be according to the conditions of his individuality, but in such a way that he stands in a certain relation to other characters in the work; the elaboration of contrasts takes precedence over simple truth. This can be observed in all of Victor Hugo's creations. Within the boundaries thus drawn, however, he is able to achieve this in his dramas "Marion de Lorme" (1829), "Le roi s'? amuse" (1832), "Lucrèce Borgia" (1833) and others, as well as in his novels "Han d'Islande" (1823), "Notre Dame de Paris" (1831), "Le dernier jour d'un condamné" (1829), "Les travailleurs de la mer" (1866), he succeeded in overcoming stiff French classicism. He sought to understand people from the circumstances of their environment and their time and possessed an equally rich imagination as well as a vivid gift for representation that mastered all artistic means. His poems are the most captivating, which, despite all the rhetoric that prevails in them, are the expression of a personality that captures all aspects of human nature.

In Alfred de Musset, French Romanticism found its poet of world-weariness. In his work, a hopeless mood, a bitterness towards life, is evident everywhere. He described himself in his "Confessions d'un Enfant du siècle". A weak personality who knows nothing of himself, who expects nothing from any event, confronts us there. He preferred to take his material from the darker side of life; he loved unpleasant, repulsive events and morally questionable characters. In addition, there is something artificial in his portrayal, things do not take place according to natural laws but according to imaginary ones; he dealt with actions and people in the most peculiar ways. Occasionally, however, he achieved masterpieces of characterization, as in the little drama "Bettine". His development was profoundly influenced by George Sand, with whom he was friends for a time and also undertook a joint journey to Italy. But even this strong personality, who lived in thoughts of the future, did not significantly change the basic traits of his character. Marie Henry Beyle, who wrote under the name Stendhal, appears like a recluse alongside his contemporaries, who aroused the greatest interest in the widest circles. He was above all an intimate connoisseur of the human soul and a witty mind. Everything he created lacks a vivid fullness, but he was all the more characterized by clarity and transparency of ideas. Beyle had a strong inclination for great, splendid personalities. Napoleon was a model of humanity for him. He looked at people and things from a bird's eye view, as it were. In his novel "Le rouge et le noir" and a number of tragedies, it is not so much a symbolic fantasy as a certain abstract way of imagining things that is evident. This is why he had to renounce instant recognition. However, with the gift of the seer, he predicted what came to pass, that the century would not end without coming back to him. In recent decades, he has found his readership not only in France, but throughout educated Europe.

Among those who lived with him, he had only one admirer, his counterpart in every respect: Honoré de Balzac, a writer of the greatest conceivable fertility, a depictor of reality in its smallest details. He knew all the currents and forces of social life and set himself the goal of depicting them all-round, accurately and with the calmness of a naturalist. He wanted his works to come together to form a great "human comedy" that reflected the human activity and thinking of his time. He had little interest in perfect artistic form; he seized on every characteristic trait and portrayed it. This distinguishes him from his contemporaries. His sense of reality produced works such as "Scènes de la vie parisienne" and "Scenes de la vie de province". He had no illusions about the motives behind people's actions. He sought out self-interest in order to find it in the most hidden nooks and crannies. For a long time, Balzac had to struggle with the saddest living conditions. He encountered all kinds of adversities and had to put his talent entirely at the service of literary acquisition. From 1822 onwards, he wrote great novels, which he himself considered to be works of art. In 1831, he came to prominence with the work "La Peau de Chagrin", in which he showed himself to be an artist who knew how to depict the most diverse conditions and people in society in their interrelationships. However, his understanding did not extend beyond the social classes in which he himself lived. For this reason, the rural characters he depicts in "Les paysans" appear quite untrue.

In terms of his cool, scientific grasp of things, Prosper Mérimée is related to Balzac. He was only interested in things to the extent that something could be gained from them artistically. He strove for a simplicity and tranquillity of depiction that often gives the impression of searching. His novellas "Mosaique" (1833), "Contes et nouvelles" (1846), "Nouvelles" (1852) show a distinguished artist, but less a warmly feeling person. For Merimee, life has something that, like the processes of nature, takes place with a certain necessity; thus in the novella "Carmen" - the source of Bizet's famous opera - he depicts a man who becomes a murderer with the force with which a bullet rolls away on an inclined plane. The German Romantics wanted to use art to establish their own, higher life that had nothing to do with everyday life. The same trait is present in Merim&e. It goes so far with him that he, who was also active scientifically, as a historian, shows a completely different spirit in this field. There he becomes dry, pedantic, completely descriptive of the facts. Ordinary life should have so little to do with art that he completely separates the two in his own work. Théophile Gautier, Hugo's most enthusiastic follower, who took his romantic sense so far that he went around in the most adventurous costumes, was even more resolutely of this opinion. With him, the phrase "art for art's sake" became a creed. His book "Mademoiselle de Maupin" (1836) is the expression of this view, which knows only one goddess, beauty. He was an artistic man of pleasure; he literally hated the utilitarian, the purposes of daily life; his imagination revelled in sensual images and colors. The novel "Le Capitaine Fracasse" has the vivid effect of a room in which works of sculpture are displayed.

Hugo's views also inspired Casimir Delavigne and Alexandre Dumas, but both soon fell flat and did not live up to artistic ideals, but accommodated an uneducated taste. Delavigne was a master of verse and a witty dramatist ("Vêpres siciliennes", "Marino Faliero" and others), while Dumas wrote numerous novels that provided welcome material for the masses' desire to read. On an even lower level is Eugène Sue, who served sensationalism and in this way ("Les Mystères du Peuple") became one of the most widely read writers.

Just as in Germany Romanticism brought the critical sense to a high degree of perfection, so too in France, which in Charles Sainte-Beuve produced a spirit of the very first rank in this field. He had a reformatory effect by making works comprehensible from the conditions of their creation, from the individuality of their creator. His "Tableau de la poésie frangaise et du théâtre français au XVI siècle", published in 1827-28, was groundbreaking for the modern critical approach. In this direction, he increasingly trained the "tenth muse", as he called criticism. French philosophy at this time was significantly influenced by German philosophy at the same time. Victor Cousin traveled through Germany in 1817 and 1818 and became friends with Hegel. He transplanted his views to France.

The German spirit also made its way to England. Thomas Carlyle, who immersed himself with deep understanding in the works of Goethe and Schiller, became the mediator here. He is an idealistically inclined personality, with a tendency to emphasize the high points in the historical development of mankind. This led him to a kind of idolization of heroic personalities. For him, the great individuals are the bearers of cultural progress. What ferments in the masses is less of a consideration for him. He wants to understand the preferred spirits and characterize their influence in history. He had the most fruitful influence on the understanding of German thought and art in England. He described Schiller's life and translated Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. Carlyle's idealism is one of the basic traits running through England's intellectual development at this time. The other is a sober, unpoetic view of life, a utilitarian standpoint. Edward George Lytton-Bulwer, who in his numerous novels proves himself to be a storyteller of great skill in characterization and in the composition of plots, vacillated uncertainly between the two. However, the captivating quality of his narrative style stems more from a cleverly calculating mind than from a fertile, creative imagination. Nevertheless, his works found a large readership. But all the characteristic peculiarities of the English spirit at this time are united by the most effective storyteller of this epoch, Charles Dickens, who understood like few others how to create out of the popular soul. This was understood in the widest circles as soon as he appeared. His "Sketches of London" (1836) and even more so the "Pickwick Papers" (1837) made him a popular writer. He knew how to depict the most intimate events in the family circle, the most everyday occurrences, the simplest feelings and passions in the most graceful way. He listened to the customs of the people, their thoughts and feelings with the most refined senses and depicted them with the greatest vividness, with irresistible kindness and witty humor. He passed by nothing that moved the child of the people. Superstition, natural cleverness, coarse wit, everything finds its rightful place in his works. "David Copperfield", "Little Dorrit", his Christmas books, especially the exciting "A Christmas carol", are among the most widely read writings in world literature.

The moralizing tendency, which is strongly pronounced in Dickens, can also be found in William Makepeace Thackeray. However, he lacked the sentimentality of the former. The latter spoke to the heart and thus influenced the moral sense without wanting to preach morality directly; Thackeray's significance lies in the satire with which he castigates customs and circumstances. Cutting sharpness and humor determine the physiognomy of his works, which have been translated into many European languages. In terms of artistic intellect, the politician Benjamin Disraeli is related to him, although he lacks the appealing humor. Dissatisfaction with the conditions of the time has also found its poets in England, namely in Thomas Hood the lyric poet and in Charles Kingsley the novelist. In contrast, Alfred Tennyson is an artist of the lyrical form, a light, melodious language, which his poems carried into the widest circles. His "Enoch Arden" became world-famous. In 1836, a thoughtful poet, Robert Browning, introduced himself to literature with his drama "Paracelsus". Inspired by Shelley, he was preoccupied with the deepest questions of the striving human being. A Faustian trait runs through all his idea poems, the dramas "Strafford", "Sordello", and also through the poetry collections. Frederick Marryat provided a subordinate need for reading through his novels, the subject matter of which is mainly taken from sea and travel life.

A literature developed in North America from the 1920s as a result of English literature. James Fenimore Cooper followed in the artistic footsteps of Walter Scott. He depicts American life, like the latter depicts English life, on the basis of natural conditions. He shows us the characters in his novels "The Spy", "Lionel Lincoln", "Leatherstocking Tales" and "The Pilot" as they grow out of the geographical and cultural conditions in which they live. Washington Irving is a storyteller with an engaging sense of humor and an appealing gift for narrative. In the field of poetry, William Cullen Bryant stands out for his picturesque depiction of nature and masterful treatment of language. The novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne is a romantic like Nodier in France or E. Th. A. Hoffmann in Germany. Th. A. Hoffmann in Germany. The most powerful personality in the literary field at this time is Edgar Allan Poe, who had a special penchant for depicting the abnormal conditions of life, the inexplicable states of the soul, the gruesome in the world of appearances. His imagination lives in wild and desolate images that derive their origin from pathological facts. He did not write much, but made a great impression with little. His poems "The Raven", "Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque" and "The Fall of the House of Usher" have been widely disseminated, especially in the numerous circles that have become involved with spiritualism and mysticism, with the dark side of life in recent decades.

In Europe, the Dane Adam Gottlob Oeblenschläger became more influential. His tragedies "Axel and Valborg", "Flakon Jarl" and others, as well as his epics "Hrolf Krake", "Helge" and the fairy tale "Aladdin" have a thoroughly romantic character; they became truly popular in his homeland, but at the same time also the property of many educated people in all European countries. An amiable and naive Danish artist is Hans Christian Andersen, who conquered the whole world as a fairy tale poet, but also found recognition as a novelist.

In the Hungarian Alexander Petöfi, Eastern Europe has one of the most outstanding poets, whose creations, full of fervent patriotism and born of the strongest human passions, have reached the lowest strata of the people in his country. Pan-Slavism in Bohemia found a fiery singer in Jan Kollár. In Lithuania, the Pole Adam Mickiewicz gave his people narrative poems: "Konrad Wallenrod" (1828), "Pan Tadeuss" (1836) and poems which sprang from a rich emotional life and which are also widely read in translation outside Poland. The social movements within Polish literature are reflected in the poems of Sigismund Krasinski and Ignaz Kraszewski. The former depicts the declining culture and dreams vaguely of the rise of a new one; the latter paints pictures of moral and social life in a genuinely folkloristic way.

In Russia we encounter in V. A. Zhukovsky, Alexander Griboyedov, Alexander Pushkin and M. J. Lermontov poets who imbued the culture of their people with a Western European spirit. Pushkin is a Romantic through and through, a poet of great Iyrian power and a highly idealistic view of the world; Lermontov is an energetic individuality with a great capacity for representation. He found an excellent translator in Bodenstedt. A cultivator of Russian folk song, in whom the cultural influence of the West is evident everywhere, is Alexei Wassiljewitsch Kolzow. Poetry that grew purely from the soil of Russianness itself did not yet exist in this period.

1871-1899

The "Young Germany" and revolutionary poetry around the middle of the century strove for an intimate interpenetration of the general cultural ideas of political interests with artistic creation. The demands of the time found expression in the works of the poets. In the fifties, a literary movement emerged that took a different stance towards art. People now asked less what they wanted to express in poetry; they focused first and foremost on the most perfect way in which a process, an idea, a feeling could be shaped. What must a drama, a novel, a novella and so on be like? These were questions that preoccupied the consciousness of the time. Strict demands were made with regard to the technical perfection of the individual art forms. Two theoretical works by creative poets are clear testimony to this school of thought: Gustav Freytag's "Technik des Dramas" (1863) and Friedrich Spielhagen's "Beiträge zur Theorie und Technik des Romans" (1883). All the details of both types of poetry are carefully discussed in these two writings. In the creations of Friedrich Spielhagen, this basic trait of the artistic attitude is particularly clear. This poet has the most lively need to deal with all the questions and ideas that move his time; but the demands of art are more important to him than this. He strives for inner harmony and organic structure in all his works. In his first major novels "Problematische Naturen" (1860), "Durch Nacht zum Licht" (1861), "In Reih und Glied" (1866), "Hammer und Amboß" (1868), this striving for the pure art form still takes a back seat to the social goals that the poet sets himself. It appears at its most pronounced in "Sturmflut" (1876). In the former novels, the aim is to show the contrasts in the views and lifestyles of different classes and social strata or to portray the relationship of the individual to the whole. In these works, Spielhagen's interest in cultural history and his enthusiasm for freedom and progress have an equal share with his artistic intentions. In "Sturmflut", the phenomena of natural and human life are no longer juxtaposed as they appear to direct observation, but as the purpose of art demands. In the past, the poet was concerned with illustrating which currents in life are capable of defeating others; now he is primarily concerned with creating exciting conflicts and satisfying solutions. Spielhagen has remained true to this direction in his work to the present day. "Plattland" (1879), "Uhlenhaus" (1884), "Ein neuer Pharao" (1889), "Sonntagskind" (1893) are poems that still make a significant impression on those who do not take offense at the fact that art is in a certain sense alienated from real life. To an even greater degree than to Spielhagen, the above is applicable to Paul Heyse. He brought the form of the novella to its most mature development. He is a master in the artful interlinking of mental processes and relationships. He knows how to give the simplest conflicts a highly exciting development by giving them unexpected twists and turns. For him, art has become an end in itself. Heyse does not face reality like an impartial observer, but like a gardener of the plant world, who asks himself with every natural species: in what way can I refine it? He succeeds equally well in portraying the immediate life of the present ("Die kleine Mama") and the sensibilities and perceptions of past times ("Frau Alzeyer", Troubadour-Novellen); his tone sounds with perfect beauty, whether it is serious ("Der verlorene Sohn") or humorous ("Der letzte Centaur"). Heyse is not a creative nature in the highest sense of the word, but a perfecter of inherited artistic vision and outlook on life. The novel with which he achieved great success in the seventies, "Children of the World" (1873), grew out of the movement of thought that Hegel's successors (see page 48 ff.) had aroused. How the children of the world, who seek to satisfy their religious needs through the free views of the present, find their way in life is portrayed here by a poet in whom this new faith has taken on a worldly form. A calm, serene beauty is the basic character of this and the following novels by Heyse: "Im Paradiese" (1875), "Der Roman der Stifisdame" (1886), "Merlin" (1892). A luxuriant sensuality that is able to present itself gracefully, a wisdom that gives no thought to the hardships of existence, confront us everywhere in Heyse's creations, especially in his Iyric poems. Dramatic art is not suited to such a way of looking at things. The lively movement that drama needs can only emerge from the essence of a personality that descends deep into the abysses of life. This is why Heyse was unable to make an impression with his numerous dramas. Adolf Wilbrandt and Herman Grimm move along similar lines. Although the former loves powerful motifs and strong passions that unfold in glaring contrasts, he softens them both as a playwright and as a narrator through the softness of his lines and the dull colors. Herman Grimm is a personality whose whole soul is absorbed in aesthetic contemplation. He is only interested in nature and cultural development to the extent that they can be viewed with the judgment formed by art. His novel "Insurmountable Powers" (1867) and his "Novellas" depict reality as if it had been shaped not by the laws of nature but by the educated taste of a world artist. The pursuit of formal beauty reached its peak with Conrad Ferdinand Meyer. With him, the external artistic perfection of his creations corresponds to a significant content. His imagination deals with the strong passions and drives of the soul, and he is able to portray personalities on a characteristically drawn historical background. A novel such as "Jürg Jenatsch" (1876) or novellas such as "The Temptation of Pescara" (1887) and "Angela Borgia" (1890) shine a light into the abysses of the soul and are at the same time of sublime beauty. His Iyrian achievements "Ballads" (1867) and "Poems" (1882) were often marred by his imagination, which was always focused on great contrasts. He was all the more able to express himself in the illumination of heroic natures, as can be seen in his poem "Huttens letzte Tage" (1871). The poems of the Austrian Robert Hamerling are also based on similar points of view. He strives for the perfection of formal beauty as well as for a deep understanding of the world. In his "Ahasuerus in Rome" (1866), he contrasts the eternal, restless struggle of striving humanity, which longs for peace and redemption, with the passionate urge to live; in the epic "The King of Sion" (1869), a cultural-historical poem that combines the classical verse form of hexameter with a colorful, glowing style of depiction, he deals with the urge for a humane existence. In the novel "Aspasia" (1876), he seeks to present us with a picture of the Greek world, drunk with beauty and full of life, and in "Homunculus" (1888) he castigates the excesses of his time in a grotesque manner. His poetry presents itself less as that of a directly feeling poet and more as that of a contemplative, pathetic poet. A pessimistic streak runs through Hamerling's entire oeuvre. The poetry of Hieronymus Lorm (Heinrich Landesmann) is completely dominated by such a world-wearied mood. He combines the ability of a witty feuilletonist with that of an interesting storyteller and a moving lyricist. A hard personal fate has given his gloomy world view an individual character.

While poets such as Spielhagen, Grimm, Meyer, Heyse and Hamerling differ from the naive view only in their artistic treatment, this is also the case with Hermann Lingg, Felix Dahn and Georg Ebers with regard to the subject matter of their works. In addition to their impulsive imagination, the traditional artistic education of the latter also played a part in their work, while in the latter the learned culture of their time also played a role. In his epic poem "Die Völkerwanderung" (1866-68), Lingg incorporates a wealth of historical ideas and scientific insights, and the tendency towards historical images is also noticeable in his poetry. Felix Dahn searched for content for his poetry in Germanic prehistory and in the events of the migration of peoples, Georg Ebers in the ancient Egyptian world. Neither the one nor the other can deny that arduous study is one of the roots of their works. Dahn's "Kampf um Rom" (1876) and "Odhin's Trost" (1880) as well as Ebers' "Eine ägyptische Königstochter" (1864) are large-scale cultural paintings, but not the result of direct poetic power.

A poet, on the other hand, who is rooted in real life with all his feelings and thoughts, is Leopold von Sacher-Masoch from Galicia. The glaring contradiction between the baseness of human instincts and passions and the noble ideals that the mind dreams of occupies his imagination. Man wants to be a god and yet is only a plaything of his animal desires: this confession speaks from Sacher-Masoch's works. Idealism is a pious delusion that dissolves into nothing when nature is seen in its true form. In order to express this basic sentiment, this poet has at his disposal an imagination directed towards the piquant and garish, which revels in sumptuous images and does not shy away from depicting the wildest processes. Since Sacher-Masoch, in the course of his development, gave in to the latter tendency of his nature and to sensationalist prolific writing, the promising attempts he made in works such as "The Legacy of Cain" (1870) remained without effect. Influenced by him and Hamerling, the Viennese poet Marie Eugenie delle Grazie attempted to portray the idealistic dreams of humanity in their worthlessness in the face of the blind, base forces of nature in artistic poems and in a comprehensive epic "Robespierre" (1894).

An art that cares little for the great questions of existence, but instead seeks to accommodate an educated taste that penetrates little into the depths of things in a virtuoso manner, can be found in Julius Wolff and Rudolf Baumbach. The former's "Wilder Jäger" (1877) and "Tannhäuser" (1880) and the latter's "Zlatorog" (1877), as well as his "Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen" (1878) met the needs of a large audience in the 1980s. For Catholic circles, the Westphalian Friedr. Wilh. Weber provided a historical epic in his "Dreizehnlinden" (1878).

The poetry of Theodor Storms grew out of the Romantic view of art. This view, however, is in close harmony with a pithy mind firmly rooted in the life and nature of his native Schleswig-Holstein and a gift for observation that sees the outside world in soft, often misty shapes, but always in a healthy, natural way. He is a master at drawing atmospheric pictures. His depictions appear like a landscape covered in a delicate mist. A lyrical undertone speaks from all his creations. The novella "Aquis submersus" (1877) is of shattering tragedy; a powerful art of representation speaks from the "Schimmelreiter". Storm also has a gift for humor. As a lyrical poet, he is a master of expression, finding all tones from the most tender mood to pithy, sharp characterization. Related to Storm in his whole disposition is Wilhelm Jensen. His thinking is rooted in the social, liberal views of the present; his style of depiction is reminiscent of the fantastical spirit of Romanticism. He needs exciting scenes, bright lights to express what he wants. His novels "Um den Kaiserstuhl" (1878), "Nirwana" (1877), "Am Ausgange des Reichs" (1885) depict historical events in such a way that atrocity scenes and gruesome human destinies appear in comfortable breadth. Jensen's poems are characterized by lyrical verve, an artistic language, but also often a peculiar way of feeling.

As Heyse and Grimm stand by Goethe's conviction of art, Storm and Jensen by that of the Romantics, so the humorist Wilhelm Raabe by that of Jean Paul. Like the latter, Raabe interrupts the course of the narrative and speaks to us in his own person; like his predecessor, he does not develop the plot according to its natural course, but anticipates things or returns to them. His choice of subject matter is also reminiscent of Jean Paul. He moves in a circle of quiet, modest, idyllic sufferings and joys. He always seeks humor in the inner contradictions of human characters. He draws people and situations in sharp outlines, with a decided tendency towards the bizarre. Whether he is depicting nerdiness, as in "Hungerpastor" (1864), or philanthropy, which appears comical because it takes unsuitable paths, as in "Horacker" (1876), Raabe always succeeds in creating clear, distinct physiognomies. Original characters and social contrasts are his field. Hans Hoffmann's importance also lies in the humorous portrayal of characters. The main character in the novel "Ivan the Terrible and his Dog" (1889), a grammar school teacher, is comical because of everything about him: his appearance, his movements, his helplessness towards his pupils. The collection of novellas "Das Gymnasium zu Stolpenburg" (1891) reveals the jovial, serious artist on every page. Fritz Mauthner made a name for himself as a satirist. His talent for parody led him to caricaturingly imitate the style and sensibilities of others in his book "Nach berühmten Mustern" (1879). In his "Villenhof" (1891) he castigates discord in Berlin social life. Among the humorists must also be Friedr. Theod. Vischer, who in his novel "Auch einer" (One too) portrayed the comic type of a person whose mental state is thrown off balance every moment by the small, random disturbances of life. What is interesting about Vischer is the constant interplay between the theoretical results of his aesthetic studies and speculations and an unmistakable original poetic natural disposition. Because he has explored all types of artistic representation, he displays a rare fluency of form and style in many areas in his "Lyrical Walks" - because he is a poet by nature, he captivates us with the expression of his feelings and the bold sweep of his imagination. Vischer's treatises "Kritische Gänge" and "Altes und Neues" are gems of German literature due to the profundity of their ideas, the courage of their thinking that does not shy away from consistency and no less due to their mastery of the essay style. He is a universal mind that reaches out in all directions. He follows the philosophical, artistic, religious and scientific phenomena of the time and comments on them with critical judgments that make him appear as a leader of the intellectual movement of his time and at the same time as a pithy character who follows his own sure path. Vischer's development clearly reflects the turnaround that has taken place in German intellectual culture in recent decades. He started out from the idealistic convictions of Hegel's philosophy. He wrote his "Aesthetics" in the 1940s and 1950s based on this and then retracted important principles of these views in a self-criticism.

Like Vischer himself, Hegelian philosophy as a whole retreated from new views in the second half of the century. The great scientific results obtained by careful observation of natural facts and by experiment shook the faith in pure thought by which Hegel and his disciples had erected their proud edifice of ideas. Thus it came about that the consciousness of the time opted for philosophical directions that were characterized less by rigour and consistency of thought than by external means such as an easy, popular way of presentation and a spirited approach to things. Schopenhauer, with his dazzling, piquant, coarse style, prepared the ground for this trend. Only in such a mood could philosophical presentations such as Eduard von Hartmann's "Philosophy of the Unconscious" (1869) or Eugen Dühring's writings be applauded. It was not the undoubtedly valuable ideas contained in these works that made an impression, but the way in which they were presented. In the seventies and eighties, the philosophical spirit steadily disappeared from German education. This can be seen very clearly in the writing of literary history and in literary criticism. The subtle literary-historical observation of Hermann Hettner, which was directed through the facts to the driving ideal forces, the kind of Julian Schmidt, Gervinus et al, who searched for the causes of literary phenomena, were abandoned, and they were replaced by the approach of Wilhelm Scherer, who in his "History of German Literature" (1883) confined himself purely to the grouping of facts and to the visible parts of historical development.

It is understandable that in a period in which the educational materials gained in long intellectual struggles are in the process of dissolution, a wealth of literary products appears that is as unequal in value and effect as possible. Busy prolific writing, which only aims to satisfy the public's need for light entertainment, appears alongside unclear ideological literature; there are writers with a light, witty gift for presentation, as well as serious spirits who are unable to go their own way and cannot find a firm point of reference in the confusion of contemporary trends. Of the latter type is Eduard Grisebach, who uses Heine's style to express Schopenhauerian ideas in his poems "Der Neue Tannhäuser" (1869) and "Tannhäuser in Rom" (1875). Something similar can also be said of the highly ambitious Albert Lindner, who created dramas in a pathetic style, which nevertheless clearly bear the stamp of an epigonism striving for originality. More fortunate was Ernst von Wildenbruch, who created a long series of dramas with a certain poetic verve and excellent skill in scenic construction. A noble enthusiasm for heroic grandeur and an idealizing style of representation are characteristic of Wildenbruch, and in his short stories and poems an intimacy of feeling and a sympathetic disposition come to the fore. Richard Voß is a spirit who, out of an unhealthy nervousness, searches for stirring, strongly arousing motifs and lets them work in a blatant, often bloodcurdling way. But he also has the ability to depict intimate states of mind, which he, however, associates with all too stormy events, as in the dramas "Eva" and "Alexandra". That he also understands the pulse of the present is shown in his drama "Die neue Zeit", in which a pastor's son, who has grown into the free-spirited views of our time, comes into conflict with his father, who clings to the prejudices of the old world. Rudolf Gottschall, who sticks to the academic-aesthetic templates as a playwright and lyricist, Julius Grosse, who has proven himself to be a tasteful but uninspiring artist in drama, novels and poetry, and finally Hans von Hopfen, whose achievements hardly rise above mere light fiction,

A personality who deserves the highest respect is Adolf Friedrich Graf Schack, a poet who strives for depth and makes the highest demands on form. His ethical and artistic seriousness is admirable. This is expressed not only in his witty essays on literary history and in his self-biography "Half a Century", but also in the generous support he gave to artists and artistic endeavors. Heinrich Leuthold is also a master of strict artistic form, whose melancholy tones are partly the expression of agonizing personal experiences, but also of a deeply pessimistic view of the world. A reflective poet in the fullest sense of the word is the Swiss Dranmor (Ferdinand von Schmid), who is very similar to Leuthold in his passionate, restless manner and his gloomy view of the world. Schack, Dranmor and Leuthold are primarily lyric poets. Isolde Kurz with her "Florentinische Novellen" (1890), which emerged from a refined taste and a vivid imagination, can be seen as a pupil of Conrad Ferd. Artur Fitger appeared as a lyricist and dramatist. The gloomy view of the world that we have found in so many poets of the seventies and eighties is also a basic feature of his lyrical creations. His powerful drama "The Witch" (1876), although not very original in its structure, met with the liveliest applause for a time. The poems of Martin Greif were born out of a tender spirit in which the finest impulses of nature tremble harmoniously. He succeeded in writing songs of genuine Goethean simplicity and naturalness; for dramatic art, in which he also tried his hand, this soft and delicate spirit lacks creative power and sharpness of characterization. The South German Johann Georg Fischer is a sharply characterized poetic physiognomy. With him, one senses healthy strength and a joyful zest for life everywhere, which emerge in splendid language, often with unsought pathos, often with the simplest folksiness. He too is not up to the demands of the dramatic structure.

A genuine North German poet of austere beauty is Theodor Fontane. As a lyric poet, he is reserved in his feelings and extraordinarily succinct in his expression. He juxtaposes the impressions that arouse his feelings and then leaves us alone with our hearts. His imagination creates in monumental images and has a simple grandeur, which comes into its own in his "Ballads" (1861). Similar peculiarities also characterize him as a storyteller. His style is almost sober, but always expressive. Prussian life and North German nature have found a classic actor in him. He paints equally well in broad strokes as in the smallest details. His novels "Adultera", "Irrungen - Wirrungen", "Stine", "Stechlin" are equally appreciated by the public seeking only interesting reading and by the strictest critics. The Austrian Ludwig Anzengruber is a true dramatist of admirable accuracy in characterization and the ability to portray events in vivid development. His dramas are rooted in the intellectual life of the Austrian peasantry and middle class in the 1970s. In particular, he knew how to portray the striving for a free-minded view of religious ideas and the struggles that the peasant mind had to endure as a result of such goals, for example in "Pfarrer von Kirchfeld" (1870) and "Kreuzelschreibern" (1872). In "Meineidbauer" (1872), "G'wissenswurm" (1874) and "Fleck auf der Ehr" (1888), he showed how deeply he was able to draw motifs from the peasant soul. Ludwig Ganghofer, who wanted to treat Upper Bavarian folk life in plays such as "Der Herrgottschnitzer von Ammergau" and "Der Geigenmacher von Mittenwald" in a similar way to Anzengruber's treatment of Austrian folk life, did not hit the "true-to-nature" notes like Anzengruber did. In contrast, Lower Austria has an epic writer in Joseph Misson, who in his unfortunately unfinished poetic tale "Da Naz, a Niederösterreichischer Bauernbui, geht in d'Fremd" (1850) expressed the mood, imagination and behavior of his people in an incomparable way. The Styrian Peter Rosegger achieved the same to a high degree with his compatriots in a series of prose works that were born of a sensible mind, a brave character and a cozy narrative gift. In the second half of the century, folk poetry, which in most cases also seeks to intimately reflect the form of expression and way of looking at things of the people in the form of dialect poetry, blossomed beautifully. Franz von Kobell and his pupil Karl Stieler produced precious gems of folk poetry in the Upper Bavarian dialect. Franz Stelzhammer created poems in Austrian dialect that are so natural that they seem to have arisen from the spontaneity of the people. The dialect poetry of the Viennese J.G. Seidl is inspired by warm feelings, but of a much lesser power and originality. The Silesian dialect has found a poet of naive, humorous expression in Karl von Holtei, whom we have already mentioned (p. 58) as a storyteller and dramatist. The North German dialect was cultivated by Klaus Groth and Fritz Reuter. Groth, the singer of "Quickborn" (1852), writes like an educated man who has grown out of folk life, but his love of his homeland and his striving to make his dialect heard make up for what he lacks in originality. Fritz Reuter's poems stem entirely from the soul of the people, from their most intimate thoughts and feelings. He is a first-rate character painter. Reuter's first collection of poems, "Läuschen un Rimels" (1853), immediately won him a large circle of admirers. His brilliant narrative talent is at its best when he weaves his own experiences into the narrative, as in "Ut mine Festungstid" (1862) and "Ut mine Stromtid" (1863 to 1864). He vividly depicts the mood of the people before the events of 1812. It is the urge for the primal sources of poetry that is expressed in the rich applause that poems such as Anzengruber's, Rosegger's, Groth's and Reuter's found in almost all circles. People believed that they could find in the simple popular mind what they had distanced themselves from in the highly developed art poetry of the Heyses, Meyers and Hamerlings. At the same time as this trend, there was another, which renounced higher artistic demands and sought satisfaction in amiable wit, in brisk, if not very profound depiction. This direction found its field particularly in the lightly thrown feuilleton and in the skillfully constructed, sensationally exciting drama. Paul Lindau, Oskar Blumenthal, Hugo Lubliner, Adolf l'Arronge, Franz v. Schönthan, Gustav v. Moser, Ernst Wichert and others. were responsible for this taste, which gradually took hold in such wide circles that protests such as that of Hans Herrig, who in his essay "Luxustheater und Volksbühne" (1886) wanted to recapture the theater of true art, were initially ineffective. Above all, Herrig wanted to win over the people to his ideas, and this was also the goal of his Luther Festival.

However, even in the 1970s and 1980s, a strong receptiveness to genuine art remained clearly perceptible in individual circles. Proof of this is the steadily growing recognition that Gottfried Keller has received. However, the creations that he added, after a long intervening period, to those we had already acknowledged earlier (p. 62) were on a par with them. The "Seven Legends" (1872) represent a reform of the legendary style on a completely new, realistic basis. The "Sinngedicht" (1881) is a warmly felt, mature creation. The "Züricher Novellen" (1878) are cultural pictures from Zurich's past, painted with simplicity and grandeur; "Martin Salander" (1886) depicts the political situation in Switzerland with superior humor. While each new creation by Keller also testified to a higher level of artistry, Gustav Freytag continued to cultivate the style he had once acquired. Neither his "Pictures from the German Past" (1859-67) nor the series of novels "The Ancestors", which appeared after 1870, represented any artistic progress. One personality who reflects the true character of the last four decades in poetry is Wilhelm Jordan. Unfortunately, he lacked the poetic power to give artistic expression to his world view, which was fully in tune with the times. In his "Demiurgos" ($.65), he prophetically proclaimed Darwin's world view in advance; when it was scientifically substantiated, it also appeared with full clarity in his poetic products. The characters in his rewriting of the German heroic epic "Nibelunge" (1868-74) grew out of this view, and his novels "Die Sebalds" (1885) and "Zwei Wiegen" (1887) were written entirely in the spirit of contemporary scientific thought. If Jordan must be described as a genuinely modern spirit because of his world view, it was he who saw the truly poetic in going back to the simple, primitive conditions of cultural development. He wanted the last form of the Song of the Nibelungs that has come down to us to be regarded only as an attenuation of an older, much grander form. This is why he did not base his work on the later German Nibelungenlied, but on the older Nordic sagas. In such striving for the original sources, one can clearly see an echo of Goethe's and Herder's way of looking at things, which sees the root of the poetic in the naive and childlike world of imagination. Wilhelm Jordan's restoration of the stave rhyme can also be traced back to such a view.

In the 1980s, the younger generation of German poets became convinced that the paths that poetry had taken up to that point were no longer fruitful. They no longer wanted to solve the artistic tasks set by the views of Herder, Goethe, Schiller and the Romantics. After all, life and the circles of ideas had changed considerably since the times in which those minds had formed their thoughts. Scientific discoveries had led us to see the processes of the outside world and their relationship to man in a new light. Technical inventions had changed the way of life and the relations of the various classes of people. Entire classes that had previously not taken part in public life entered into it. The social question with all its consequences was at the center of thought. In the face of such a change in culture as a whole, it was felt impossible to hold on to old traditions in poetry. The new life should bring forth a new poetry. This call grew ever stronger. In 1882, the brothers Heinrich and Julius Hart led the way with their "Kritische Waffengänge", in which they used harsh language against the traditional, the outdated. They were then followed by other poets of the younger generation. In 1885, a selection of poems entitled "Modern Poetry Characters" was published, in which the striving for a new style of art was resolutely asserted. In addition to the Harts, Wilhelm Arent, Hermann Conradi, Karl Henckell, Arno Holz, Otto Erich Hartleben, Wolfgang Kirchbach participated in the new movement. In the same year, Michael Georg Conrad founded the "Gesellschaft" in Munich, a "Realistische Monatsschrift für Literatur, Kunst und öffentliches Leben", which was guided by the same goals, and Karl Bleibtreu issued a strong rejection of everything traditional in his "Revolution der Literatur". Alongside much immaturity, many a pleasing gift appeared within this movement. Karl Henckell's social songs often pulsate with true passion, despite his preference for party slogans. Hermann Conradi's phrase-like novels vividly reflect the ferment of the times, and in his Iyrian creations one finds the heart-warming tones of a man who unreservedly expresses himself, with all the faults and sins of human nature. Julius Hart's poems also express a genuine empathy with everything that arouses the times. In 1885, Arno Holz published his "Book of the Times", in which he found effective words for social hardship. Above all, it was the artificial, the life in ideas that had lost their connection with life, to which war was declared. They did not want to work according to old templates, according to the artistic sensibilities of a bygone era, but according to the needs and inspirations of their own individuality. Under the influence of such sentiments, a poet came into his own who, however, developed completely independently of the conscious, deliberate striving for something new: Detlev v. Liliencron. He is a nature full of vitality and artistic creativity, a fine connoisseur and depictor of all the charms of existence, a poet who has all tones at his disposal, from the wildest exuberance to the delicate depiction of sublime natural moods. In 1883 he drew attention to himself with his "Adjutant's Rides", and since then he has proved himself to be one of the most outstanding contemporary poets in a series of lyrical collections. Following in his footsteps were Otto Julius Bierbaum and Gustav Falke, the latter in particular having achieved something worthy of recognition through his striving for perfection of form. Karl Busse also made a good impression on his first appearance, but was unable to maintain the same level. Richard Dehmel is an energetic lyricist who, however, cannot find harmony between abstract thought and immediate feeling. The search for new goals generates the most diverse directions in the present. In contrast to idealism, which placed the spirit too high and forgot that sensuality underlies all spirituality, a counter-current emerged which indulged in the latter and sought only the raw animal instincts in every expression of life. Hermann Bahr celebrated true orgies in this area in his stories "Die gute Schule" (1890) and "Dora" (1893). In his drama "Toni Stürmer" (1892), Cäsar Flaischlen also sought to portray the idealism of love as contradictory and to show that only natural passion brings the sexes together. The social movement also had an impact on poetry. Works such as "Schlechte Gesellschaft" (1886) by Karl Bleibtreu, "Die heilige Ehe" (1886) by Hans Land and Felix Holländer and in Max Kretzer's "Die Betrogenen" (1882) and "Die Bergpredigt" (1889) are sharply critical of existing social conditions and the prevailing moral views. In his dramas "Hanna Jagert" (1893), "Erziehung zur Ehe" (1894) and "Sittliche Forderung" (1897), Otto Erich Hartleben shows the self-dissolution of social ideas and depicts human weaknesses with great satirical power in his novellistic sketches. As a lyric poet, he is characterized by a beautiful sculpture of expression and a simple, tasteful naturalness. John Henry Mackay gives expression to the striving for complete liberation of the individual, which has found a philosopher in Max Stirner (p. 5o), in his cultural painting "The Anarchists" (1891), in stories such as "The People of Marriage" (1892) and in his poems, which place the ideal of personal independence above all else (collected and published in 1898). Hermann Sudermann deals with the clash between the moral concepts of different classes in his dramas "Die Ehre", "Die Heimat" and "Glück im Winkel". In his more recent stage works "Johannes" and "Die drei Reiherfedern", he has set himself higher tasks. He portrays the tragedy inherent in human nature itself, a goal he also pursued in his stories "Frau Sorge" and "Der Katzensteg". The influence of the modern scientific world view on the human soul is illustrated by Wilhelm Bölsche in his novel "Mittagsgöttin" (i8g91). The most recent drama strives for the truth of nature in that it does not allow the development of events in poetry to proceed according to higher, artistic laws, but seeks a photographically faithful depiction of reality. Johannes Schlaf and Arno Holz led the way in this direction with their dramas "Meister Olze" and "Familie Selicke", in which the truth of nature is exaggerated to the point of merely copying external events. They were followed by Gerhart Hauptmann, who in his first works "Vor Sonnenaufgang" (1889) and "Das Friedensfest" (1890) still created entirely in this style, but in "Einsamen Menschen" (1891) rose to the level of depicting significant emotional conflicts and cohesive dramatic composition. In his "Colleague Crampton" (1892), he then delivered a character painting that was as true to nature as it was artistic. In "Hanneles Himmelfahrt" and "Versunkene Glocke", his style becomes idealistic and romantic despite its fidelity to nature. In "The Weavers" (1892), the depiction of reality becomes a complete dissolution of all dramatic form; in "Henschel the Carriage Driver", Hauptmann shows that he can unite fidelity to nature and poetic composition. Max Halbe was much acclaimed for his romantic drama "Jugend" (1893) with its atmospheric depiction of youthful passions. When he set himself higher goals, as in his character dramas "Lebenswende" and "Der Eroberer", he was unable to break through. Ludwig Jacobowski set himself a great task in his "Loki" (1898), the "novel of a god", in which he shines a light deep into the abysses of human nature and illustrates its eternal striving through the battle of the destructive Loki against the creative Asen. With his lyrical collection "Shining Days" (1899), he joined the ranks of the most outstanding modern poets. He combines simple beauty of expression with a harmonious view of the world and life. In the last decade, Friedrich Nietzsche exerted an incomparable influence on contemporary thought. Through a radical "revaluation of all values", he sought to portray the entire path that Western culture has taken since the foundation of Christianity as a great idealistic error. Humanity must discard all belief in the hereafter, all ideas that go beyond real existence, and draw its strength and culture purely from this world. Man should not see his ideal in the likeness of higher powers, but in the highest enhancement of his natural abilities up to the "superman". This is the meaning of his main poetic and philosophical work "Thus Spoke Zarathustra".

In France, literature in the last third of the century initially continued along the same lines as before. Through Emile Augier, Alexander Dumas the Younger and Victorien Sardou, drama developed into a morality play and social drama. In the latter, the main aim was to illustrate a moralizing tendency through exciting entanglements and corresponding solutions. Alongside this, a dramatic genre developed that placed the main emphasis on witty dialog and social satire. It has its main representative in Edouard Pailleron. The training in skillful scene direction blossomed in Labiche, Meilhac, Bisson. The truth and probability of events play no role in them, only the development of the plot, which is calculated for effect and must be rich in surprising twists and turns. In poetry, the striving for correctness of form, for smooth, pleasing expression prevails in the "school of the Parnassiens". Frangois Coppée, R. F. A. Sully-Prudhomme and Charles Leconte de Lisle particularly cultivated this style. Anatole France also belongs to it with his lyric poetry, which strives for a classical style of representation. In contrast, Charles Baudelaire is a genuinely Romantic poet who prefers to be in a state of intoxication of the soul and loves to depict the uncanny, demonic forces of the human interior. He wants to expose all dark instincts. He literally revels in feelings of fear and lust. A healthier sense can be found in Gustav Flaubert and especially in the brothers Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, who strive to restrain the artistic imagination through the objective spirit of science. Under their influence, a naturalism emerged that did not want to shape reality according to subjective arbitrariness, but rather to make use of the objective laws of knowledge for the poetic depiction of things. It does not want aesthetic laws, but only those based on the mere observation of facts. This direction found its perfect expression in Emile Zola. He no longer wants to shape things and processes artistically. Just as the scientific experimenter brings substances and forces together in the laboratory and then waits to see what develops as a result of their mutual influence, Zola experimentally juxtaposes things and people and seeks to continue the development as it would have to result if the same things and people stood opposite each other in the same way in objective reality. In this way he develops the experimental novel. In doing so, he leans on the achievements of modern science. Alongside this Zolashian naturalism, another of the Balzacian type continues, which has its main representative in Alphonse Daudet. Guy de Manpassant is a storyteller with a brilliant power of perception that penetrates the depths of the soul. Important cultural phenomena of our time are recorded in his novels and in stylistically masterful novellas. As a draughtsman of character, he portrays people with sharp contours, and his depiction of actions is as much characterized by natural truth as by artful composition. In France, Victor Cherbuliez, Hector Malot and Georges Ohnet satisfied that part of the public which in Germany found its satisfaction in Lindau, Blumenthal and others. A subtle artist with a refined technique is Pierre Loti, who, however, cultivates a style of art that is more suited to the artist's developed taste than to a wider circle.

In the Dutch language, under the name " Muliatuli", Eduard Douwes Dekker created narrative poems and philosophical works of ideas, which from a bold, out of a bold, free spirit, they make powerful accusations against everything in contemporary culture which, seen from the vantage point of true humanity, is ripe for destruction, but which is preserved by brute force and robs the valuable and noble of the space for free development. Multatuli does not shy away from any sharpness, even one-sidedness of expression, when he wants to hit what he considers necessary for persecution. A kind of leading spirit of Dutch folklore in Belgium is Hendrik Conscience, who made a great impression with his intimate depictions of modest living conditions and has also found imitators in his homeland. The Belgian M. Maeterlinck takes a mystical view of nature and the human soul. He is less interested in clear thoughts and perceptible processes than in the dark forces that we sense in the events of the outside world and in the depths of our unconscious soul. He depicts them in his dramas and seeks to approach them philosophically in his subtle essays.

The English poetry of this period is characterized by the works of Algernon Charles Swinburne. He is of a romantic nature, a fiery depictor of sensuality, a draughtsman of great passions, but also of the tender vibrations of the soul and atmospheric images of nature. The sea with its manifold beauties is a favorite area for him. His lullabies are characteristic of his sensuous mind. In the dramatic field ("Atalanta in Calydon") he strove for Greek perfection of form. In addition to him, Matthew Arnold and Dante Gabriel Rosetti also come into consideration. The former is reminiscent of Byron in his world view and expression, while the latter seeks to achieve a simple style through ancient artistic means. William Morris is an original nature with a powerful gift for depiction. From close observation, Rudyard Kipling depicts Indian-English life in captivating novellas, novels and popular-sounding poems.

In America, a literature independent of the English mother country has developed since the middle of the century. A universal spirit and strong artist is Henry Wordsworth Longfellow. As a lyric poet he has achieved recognition throughout the educated world. His poems speak of a noble, great character. Those of his creations in which he movingly sings of the fate of slaves are characteristic of his humane view of the world. He is also an excellent storyteller with a soft, heartfelt and humorous tone. In "Hiawatha" Longfellow has described the ancient cultural conditions of the Indian people, in "The Golden Legend" he deals with the eternal poetic problem, the striving and wandering man as a symbol of the whole human species. Contemporary English prose has found an outstanding master in Washington Irving. His humor has a sentimental streak. Francis Bret Harte, the author of the world-famous Californian tales, and the thoughtful humorist Mark Twain differ most in style from the mother country. In Walt Whitman, the American imagination and sensibility found a particularly characteristic expression. From the thoughts he expresses to his treatment of language, everything is modern in the most genuine sense.

In recent decades, the change from old to new views has been most rapid in northern Europe. It developed under the influence of a merciless, unsparing criticism of tradition. Georg Brandes, the intellectual Dane, led the way. A bold, enthusiastic free spirit gave him the broadest impact. His intellectual horizon is of rare greatness. He was able to familiarize himself with the various cultures of Europe with a keen sense and thus acquired a breadth of vision that enabled him to follow the intellectual currents of all countries in their essential characteristics. By seeking out fruitful ideas everywhere and instilling them into the education of Denmark, he became the reformer of the entire world view of his fatherland. In the field of poetry, the lyric poet Holger Drachmann and the great stylistic artist J. P. Jacobsen, who is both a thorough and profound connoisseur of the human soul, and who is able to depict inner processes and abysses of the mind in an atmospheric way, were active in Denmark.

In Norway, Björnstjerne Björnson, Henrik Ibsen and Arne Garborg are the creators of a type of poetry whose influence can be felt everywhere in Europe today. They were preceded like prophets by Jonas Lie and Alexander Kjelland, the former as an important psychologist and depictor of popular life, the latter as a sharp satirist in the field of moral views and social grievances. Björnson is a poet who serves the liberal ideals of his fatherland with his art. He is a political spirit who always has the progress of culture in mind in all his work and who is able to give his characters clear, clear outlines from his firm convictions. A revolutionary spirit is Henrik Ibsen. He has incorporated everything that is revolutionary in modern culture into his personality. He is a rich, versatile nature. His works therefore show great differences in style and in the means with which he presents his world view. He traces the germs of decomposition that lie in the views, customs and social orders of the present ("Stützen der Gesellschaft" 1877), the lies of life ("Volksfeind" 1882), the position of the sexes ("Nora" 1879, "Ghosts" 1881), the position of the sexes ("Nora" 1879, "Ghosts" 1881), he depicts demonic forces in the human soul as a deep psychologist ("Frau vom Meere" 1888, "Hedda Gabler" 1890, "Baumeister Solneß" 1892), he characterizes the mystical in the soul ("Klein Eyolf" 1894). Ibsen's basic theme is the tragedy of human life in "Brand" (1866) and "Peer Gynt" (1867). Pastor Brand is intended to portray the Faustian struggle of man living in the imaginative and emotional mode of the present. The hero knows only one love, that of his rational ideals, and does not allow the language of feeling to come into its own. Instead of taking possession of human hearts in order to achieve the fulfillment of his demands through them in a benevolent manner, he pursues them with ruthless harshness. He becomes intolerant out of idealism. Therein lies the tragedy of his personality. In contrast to him is Peer Gynt, the man of fantasy, whose ideas are not rooted enough in reality to inspire their bearer with the kind of energy that enables people to assert themselves in life. The versatility of Ibsen's art is revealed particularly clearly when we consider the "Comedy of Love" (1862), which shows us the poet as a doubter of life's goals, alongside the "Crown Pretenders", written just one year later, in which certainty and confidence are expressed in the creator's world view. The dependence of man on the external environment, on views within which he lives and which he receives as tradition, is depicted in "Bund der Jugend" (1869), while "Kaiser und Galiläer" (1873) illustrates the determination of the will through the unalterable, natural necessity of all things. "The Wild Duck" (1884) and "Rosmersholm" (1886) are paintings of the soul from which the deeply penetrating psychological connoisseur speaks.

In place of Greek fate and the divine order of the world, he sets natural law as the driving force of the drama, which does not punish the guilty and reward the good, but governs people's actions as it rolls a stone down a slippery slope ("Ghosts"). Arne Garbor does not, like Ibsen, have the art of depicting broad lines, but he paints the life of the soul faithfully and is a sharp accuser of social institutions. Sexual life is at the center of his approach. The two Swedes August Strindberg and Ola Hansson are also powerful painters of the soul, but they like to take their material from unhealthy nature. Strindberg's pessimism, which, however, stems from deeply painful life experiences, presents itself almost like the distorted image of a healthy world view.

Russian intellectual life also underwent great spiritual upheavals during this period. While the older Russian literature proved to be an imitator of Western European culture in its ideas and conceptions as well as in its means of expression, the national spirit now deepened and sought to build its views from the depths of its own national essence. Here, too, criticism leads the way. In W. Belinskij Russia has an aesthete and philosopher of great spiritual vision and high aims. From a purely logical point of view, his critical activity lacks consistency; Belinsky is a constant seeker who wants to bring clarity to the confused ideas and dark impulses of his people. In doing so, he is guided more by his sure feelings than by any abstract ideas. The creations of Nicolai Gogol, who hurls the most terrible accusations against his fatherland, but accusations that speak of a deep, heartfelt love, prove how unfathomably deep and at the same time how dreamy and confused the spirit of the people is. A mystical sense underlies his imagination, which drives him restlessly forward without him seeing any clear goal before him. In N. Nekrasov, Ivan Turgenev, Ivan Goncharov and in F. M. Dostoyevsky, this dark urge gradually works its way into clarity. Turgenev is, however, still strongly influenced by Western European ideas. In delicate images, he mainly depicts suffering people who somehow cannot come to terms with life. Goncharov and Pissemsky are depictions of Russian social life, without any further outlook on a world view. Dostoyevsky is an ingenious psychologist who descends into the depths of the soul and reveals the innermost depths of man in brilliant, albeit sometimes gruesome, images. His "Raskolnikov" was regarded throughout Europe as a model of psychological representation. Count Leo Tolstoy is a representative of Russian intellectual life as a whole. He developed from a powerful storyteller ("War and Peace" 1872, "Anna Karenina" 1877) to a prophet of a new form of religion that sought its roots in a somewhat violent interpretation of primitive Christianity and elevated complete selflessness to the ideal of life. Tolstoy also sees all art that is not aimed at human compassion and the improvement of coexistence as a superfluous luxury that a selfless person does not indulge in. In Hungary, we encounter the imaginative storyteller Maurus Jókai and the playwright Ludwig Doczi, as well as Emerich Madách, who provided the Hungarian Faust in his "Tragedy of Man".

The most successful of the more recent Italian poets is Giosuè Carducci, who strives for classical and beautiful expression. A singer of fiery sensuality is Lorenzo Stecchetti, and the playwright Pietro Cossa is an important characterizer. Giovanni Verga deals with Sicilian peasant life in lively stories. Italy has its social poets in Guido Mazzoni and Ada Negri. In the field of drama, the idealist Felice Cavallotti and the naturalist Emilio Praga stand opposite each other. - From Spain, José Echegaray briefly captured the attention of European audiences, to whom he delivered a much-discussed drama in his "Galeotto", whose structure is reminiscent of the abstract consistency of a calculus.