THE CLASSICAL AND ROMANTIC PERIOD From the Swiss Controversy to the "Sturm and Drang." —As in France, the next advance in German literature was achieved in a battle between the "ancients" and the "moderns," the German "ancients" being represented by Gottsched, the "moderns" by the Swiss literary reformers, J. J. Bodmer (1698 1783) and J. J. Breitinger (1701-76). The latter in his Kritische Dichtkunst (1739) maintained doctrines which were in opposition to Gottsched's in his treatise of the same name, and Bodmer sup ported his friend's initiative. Basing their arguments on Milton's Paradise Lost, which Bodmer had translated into prose (1732), the Swiss demanded room for the play of genius and inspiration; they insisted that the imagination should not be dominated by the reason. Their victory was due less to any skill with which they presented their arguments than to the fact that literature itself was in need of greater freedom. The effects of the con troversy appear in a group of Leipzig writers of Gottsched's own school, the Bremer Beitrager as they usually are called after their literary organ. These men—C. F. Gellert (1715-69), author of graceful fables and tales in verse, G. W. Rabener (1714-71), mild satirist of Saxon provinciality, the dramatist J. Elias Schlegel , and a number of minor writers—did not set them selves up in active opposition to their master, but they were in sympathy with many of the views which the Swiss had advocated. And in the Bremer Beitrage there appeared in 1748 the first in stalment of an epic by F. G. Klopstock (1724-1803), Der Messias. These first cantos of Klopstock's epic, and in a still higher degree, his Odes, inaugurate the great age of German literature iri the 18th century. His rhapsodic dramas have less value, but with Macpherson's Ossian, which in the '6os awakened a widespread enthusiasm throughout Germany, they were responsible for the so-called "bardic" movement. The leaders of this movement were H. W. von Gerstenberg (1737-1823), K. F. Kretschmann (1738 1809) and Michael Denis (1729-1800).
Under Frederick the Great, who, as the docile pupil of French culture, had little sympathy for unregulated displays of feeling, neither Klopstock nor his imitators were in favour in Berlin, but at the University of Halle considerable interest was taken in the new movement. Here, before Klopstock's name was known at all, two young poets, J. I. Pyra (1715-44) and S. G. Lange ( I 7 I 1-81), wrote Freundschaftliche Lieder (1737) in rhymeless metres such as Klopstock advocated. The later Prussian poets, J. W. L. Gleim (I 719-1803 ), J. P. Uz (172o-96) and J. N. Glitz (I 7 2 I-81), who were associated with Halle, and K. W. Ramler (1725-98) in Berlin, cultivated mainly the Anacreontic and the Horatian ode; and Friedrich von Hagedorn in Hamburg showed to what perfection the lighter vers de societe could be brought. The Swiss physiologist Albrecht von Haller (1708-77) was the first German poet to give expression to the beauty and sublimity of Alpine scenery (Die Alpen, 1734), and a Prussian officer, Ewald Christian von Kleist (1715-59), author of Der Friuhling (1749), wrote admirable nature-poetry.
As Klopstock had been the first of modern Germany's inspired poets, so Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (I 729-81) was the first critic who brought credit to the German name throughout Europe. Like his predecessor Gottsched, whom he vanquished more effectually than Bodmer, he had unwavering faith in classicism, but "classic" meant for him, as for his contemporary, J. J. Winckelmann (1717 68), Greek art and literature, not French pseudoclassicism. He went, indeed, still further, and asserted in his Hamburgische Dra maturgie (1767-68) that Shakespeare, with all his irregularities, was a more faithful observer of the spirit of Aristotle's laws, than were the French dramatists. He looked to England and not to France for the regeneration of the German theatre, and his own dramas were pioneer-work in this direction. Miss Sara Sampson is a biirgerliches Trauerspiel on the English model, Minna von Barnhelm (1767), a comedy in the spirit of Farquhar; in Emilia Galotti (1772), again, he remoulded the "tragedy of com mon life" in a form acceptable to the Sturm and Drang; and finally in Nathan der Weise (1779) he won acceptance for iambic blank verse as the medium of the higher drama. His two most promising disciples-J. F. von Cronegk (1731-58) and J. W. von Brawe (I 738-58)-unfortunately died young; but another of his friends, C. F. Weisse (1726-1804) was the most successful playwright of his day. Lessing's name is associated with Winckel mann's in Laokoon (1766), a treatise which defines the boundaries between plastic art and poetry, and with those of the Jewish philosopher, Moses Mendelssohn (1729-86) and the Berlin book seller C. F. Nicolai (1733-1811) in the famous Literaturbrie f e. The last years of Lessing's life were embittered by conflict with Lutheran orthodoxy and intolerance.
To the widening of the German imagination C. M. Wieland contributed by introducing the Germans to the lighter poetry of the south of Europe. With the exception of his verse-romance Oberon (1780), his work has fallen into neglect; he did, however, excellent service to the development of German prose fiction with his psychological novel, Agathon (1766-67), and with his humorous satire, Die Abderiten Wieland had a considerable following, particularly in Austria, where Aloys Blumauer (1755-89) and J. B. von Alxinger (1755-97) wrote travesties and epics under his influence. In Saxony, M. A. von Thummel (1738-1817), author of a comic epic in prose, Wil helmine (1764), belonged to Wieland's school. It was K. A. Kortum (1745-1824), however, who wrote the most popular comic epic of the time, the Jobsiade (1784). The German novel owed much to the example of Agathon, but the groundwork and form were borrowed from English models ; Gellert had begun by imitating Richardson in his Schwedische Griffin and he was followed by J. T. Hermes (1738-1821), Sophie von La roche (173o-18o7), A. von Knigge (1752-96) and J. K. A. Musaus ), the last mentioned being, however, better known as the author of a collection of Volksmarchen (1782-86). Meanwhile rationalism was spreading rapidly. Men like Knigge, Mendelssohn, J. G. Zimmermann (1728-95), T. G. von Hippel (1741-96), Christian Garve (1742-98), J. J. Engel (1741-1802), as well as the educational theorists J. B. Basedow (1723-90) and J. H. Pestalozzi (1746-1827), wrote books and essays on "pop ular philosophy" which were as eagerly read as had been the Moralische Wochenschriften; and with this group of writers must also be associated the most brilliant of German i8th-century satirists, G. C. Lichtenberg (1742-99)• Such was the milieu from which sprang the most stimulating pioneer of the great epoch of modern German literature, J. G. Herder (1744-1803). The transition from the popular philos ophers to Herder is represented by men like Thomas Abbt (1738 66) and J. G. Hamann (173o-88). The revolutionary nature of Herder's thought lay in the fact that he grasped, as no thinker before him, the idea of historical evolution, and awakened an interest-for which, of course, Rousseau had prepared the way in the primitive conditions of mankind. He collected and pub lished the Volkslieder of all nations (1778-79), and drew atten tion to those elements in German life and art which were, in the best and most precious sense, national. Herder is thus the real founder of the literary movement known as Sturm and Drang. New ground was also broken by a group of poets, who, under Klopstock's influence, founded in 1772 the Gottingen "Bund" or "Hain," and published their poetry in the Gottinger Musenal manach. With the exception of the two brothers, Chr. zu .Stol berg (1748-1821) and F. L. zu Stolberg (1750-1819), the mem bers of this coterie belonged to the peasant class or the lower bourgeoisie; J. H. Voss (1751-1826), the leader of the "Bund," and author of the famous idyll, Luise (1784), was a typical North German peasant. L. H. C. Holty (1748-76) and J. M. Miller (1750-1814), again, excelled in simple lyrics in the tone of the V olkslied. Closely associated with the Gottingen group were M. Claudius (174o-1815), an even more unassuming representative of the German peasant in literature than Voss, and G. A. Burger (I who contributed to the Gottinger Musenalmanach the famous ballad of Lenore But the Gottingen "Bund" was only a minor phase of Sturm and Drang; the main movement was intimately associated with Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-183 2) . As a student in Leipzig (1765-68), Goethe had written lyrics in the Anacreontic vein and dramas in alexandrines; but in Strasbourg, where he continued his studies in 1770-71, he made the personal acquaintance of Herder, who interested him in Gothic architecture, the Volkslied and Shakespeare. The pamphlet Von deutscher Art and Kunst (1773), to which, besides Goethe and Herder, the historian Justus Moser (172o-94) contributed, was a kind of manifesto of Sturm and Drang. The new ideas seemed at once to set Goethe's genius free, and from 1772 to 1775 he was extraordina rily fertile in poetic ideas. His Gotz von Berlichingen (1773), the first important drama of the Sturm and Drang, was followed within a year by the first novel of the movement, Werthers Leiden (1774); he dashed off Clavigo and Stella in a few weeks in 1774 and 1775, and wrote a large number of Singspiele, dra matic satires and fragments-including Faust in its earliest form (the so-called Ur f aust )-not to mention matchless lyrics which more than fulfilled the promise of Klopstock's Odes. In all forms of literature he set the fashion to his time ; the Shakespearian restlessness of Gotz von Berlichingen found imitators in J. M. R. Lenz (1751-92), F. M. von Klinger J. A. Leisewitz (1752-1806), H. L. Wagner (1747-79) and Friedrich Muller, bet ter known as Maler Muller (17 49-182 5 ). The dramatic literature of the Sturm and Drang was its most characteristic product indeed, the very name of the movement was borrowed from a play by Klinger; it was inspired by the desire to present upon the stage figures of Shakespearian grandeur impelled by gigantic passions, all considerations of plot, construction and form being subordinated to character. The fiction of the Sturm and Drang, again, was in its earlier stages dominated by Werthers Leiden, as may be seen in the novels of F. H. Jacobi (1743-1819) and J. M. Miller, who has been already mentioned. Later, it was developed in a broader and less turbulent spirit by J. J. W. Heine 1803), author of Ardinghello (1787), Klinger and K. Ph. Moritz whose Anton Reiser (1785) foreshadows Wilkelm Meister.
Before Wilhelm Meister appeared, however, German thought and literature had arrived at that stability in form and ideas essential to a great literary period. In the year of Lessing's death, 1781, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), the great philosopher, had published his Kritik der reinen Vernunft, and this, together with the two later treatises, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (1788) and Kritik der Urteilskra f t (1790), placed the Germans in the front rank of thinking nations. Under the influence of Kant, Schil ler turned to the study of aesthetics, the first fruits of which were his wonderful philosophic lyrics, and his treatises Anmut and Wiirde, Asthetische Erziehung des Menschen (1795), and fiber naive and sentimentalische Dichtung (1795). In the same way, German historical writing had in these years, led by men like Justus Moser, Thomas Abbt, I. Iselin, F. C. Schlosser, Schiller himself and, greatest historian of all, Johannes von Muller (1752-1809), advanced from unsystematic chronicling to scien tific method. G. A. Forster (1754-94), who had accompanied Cook round the world, and Alexander von Humboldt (1769 1859), gave Germany models of lucid descriptive writing. In prac tical politics and economics, once the unbalanced doctrines of Rousseauism had fallen into discredit, Germany produced much wise and temperate thinking which provided a basis for the re construction of her social and intellectual life. Prominent amongst such builders was Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835).
Meanwhile the years 1794-1805, when in Jena and Weimar Goethe and Schiller were united by a close friendship, mark the culmination of literary classicism. Schiller's treatises provided a theoretical basis; his new journal, Die Horen, and his Musenal manach—in which the two poets published their magnificent ballad poetry—were its literary organs. Goethe, as director of the ducal theatre, influenced the whole dramatic production of Ger many. Under his encouragement, Schiller turned from philosophy to poetry and wrote the splendid series of classic dramas, the trilogy of Wallenstein, Maria Stuart, Die Jung f rau von Orleans, Die Braut von Messina, Wilhelm Tell, closing with the fragment of Demetrius; while to Goethe we owe the idyllic epic of Her mann and Dorothea; his severely classical plays Die naturliche Tochter and Pandora are less important ; but it was chiefly owing to Schiller's stimulus that in those years Goethe brought the first part of Faust (18o8) to a conclusion.
Although acknowledged leaders of German letters, Goethe and Schiller met with considerable opposition, representatives of the once dominant rationalistic movement being particularly obnox ious. But, apart from the two great poets, literature was in no very healthy condition ; the stage was dominated by the extraor dinarily popular plays of A. von Kotzebue (1761-1819) ; and there is a wide gap between Moritz's Anton Reiser or the phil osophic novels which Klinger wrote in his later years, and Goethe's Meister; nor can the once so warmly admired novels of Jean Paul Friedrich Richter (1763-1825) stand very high. In lyric and epic poetry, it is impossible to regard poets like the gentle F. von Matthisson (1761-1831), or the less inspired G. L. Kosegarten (1758-1818) and C. A. Tiedge (1752-1841), as worthy of an age that produced Goethe and Schiller. Thus when we speak of the greatness of Germany's classical period, we think mainly of the work of her two chief poets. Moreover, at the very close of the 18th century a new unclassical movement set in, and to this movement, which took definite form in the Romantic school, the sympathies of the younger generation turned.
The first Romantic school was of short duration; Wacken roder and Novalis died young, and by the year 1804 the other members were widely separated. Two years later, however, an other phase of Romanticism was initiated in the town of Heidel berg. The leaders of this second Romantic school were Klemens Brentano (1778-1842), L. A. von Arnim (1781-1831) and J. J. von Gorres (1776-1848) ; their organ, corresponding to the Athendum of the first school, was the Zeitung fur Einsiedler, or Trost-Einsamkeit, and their most characteristic production the collection of Volkslieder, published under the title Des Knaben Wunderhorn in 1805–o8. Compared with the earlier school, the Heidelberg writers were more practical; they, too, were interested in the German past, but they put aside the idealizing glasses of their predecessors and kept to historic fact ; they wrote historical novels, not stories of an imaginary mediaeval world as Novalis had done, and they collected Volkslieder and Volksbiicher. Their immediate influence on German intellectual life was consequently greater; they stimulated the interest of the German people in their history; and we owe to them the foundations of the study of German philology and mediaeval literature, both the brothers Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm (1785-1863 and 1786-1859) having been in touch with this circle in their early days. Again, the Heidelberg poets strengthened the national and patriotic spirit of their people; they prepared the way for the rising against Napoleon in 1813, which produced an outburst of patriotic song, the chief voices being those of E. M. Arndt (1769-1860), K. Th. Korner (1791-1813) and M. von Schenkendorf (1783-1817) . The subsequent history of Romanticism stands in close relation to the Heidelberg school, and when, about 5809, the latter broke up, and Arnim and Brentano settled in Berlin, the Romantic movement followed two clearly marked lines of development, one North German, the other associated with Wurttemberg. In the north Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811), Prussia's greatest dra matic poet, created a Romantic drama of high poetic achievement; while Zacharias Werner (1768-1823), an undisciplined and un balanced dramatic genius, sounded depths of mysticism and fatal ism. But Berlin was no favourable soil for the development of Romantic ideas, and the circle of poets there were not free from elements of decadence. Friedrich de la Motte Fouque (1777 1843 ), for instance, shows how easy it was for the mediaeval tastes of the Romanticists to be satisfied with mediocre novels and plays; and E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776-1822), novelist of indubit able genius though he was, cultivated with preference in his stories a morbid supernaturalism. The lyric was less sensitive to this decadence; and the North German Romantic circle could point to one lyric poet of the very first rank, the Silesian, J. von Eichen dorff (1788-1857) ; while A. von Chamisso (1781-1838), French born although he was, developed into a German poet of the purest water. Others again, like Friedrich Ruckert (1788-1866), sought new inspiration in the poetry of the East ; and Wilhelm Muller (1794-1827) following Byron's example, stirred German sympathy for the oppressed Greeks and Poles.
The last phase of Romanticism is represented by the Swabian school. Its chief representative, Ludwig Uhland (1787-1862), himself a disciple of the Heidelberg school, grafted the lyricism of the Romantic school on to the older traditions of German poetry, and as a ballad-poet is second only to Schiller in popular esteem. One might say that the mission of the Swabian circle, the chief members of which were J. Kerner (1786-1862), G. Schwab (1792 1850), W. Waiblinger (1804-30), W. Hauff (1802-27) and, most gifted of all, E. Morike (1804-75) was to preserve the Romantic traditions from the disintegrating influences to which their North German contemporaries were exposed in the next generation.
Meanwhile, in the background of these phases of Romantic evolution stands the majestic figure of Goethe. Personally he had in the early stages of the movement been opposed to that re version to subjectivity and lawlessness which the first Romantic school seemed to him to represent ; to the end of his life he re garded himself as a "classic," not a "romantic" poet. But, on the other hand, he was too liberal-minded a thinker and critic to be oblivious to the fruitful influence of the new movement. His own works, above all, the first part of Faust (18o8), Die Wahlver wandtschaften (1809), Dichtung and Wahrheit (1811-14, a final volume in 1833), Westostlicher Divan (1819), Wilhelm Mersters Wanderjahre (1821-29) and the second part of Faust (published in 1832 after his death), stood in no real antagonism to the Ro mantic ideas of their time. One might rather say that Goethe was the link between the two great literary groups; and that his work represented reconciliation between "classic" and "romantic" ideas.