From “Romantick” To “Romantic”: The Genesis of German Romanticism in Late Eighteenth-Century Europe

Summary

Joseph von Eichendorff's (1788–1857) novel Dichter und ihre Gesellen (Poets and their Companions) appeared in 1834, when Europe was already in the grip of the Industrial Revolution, Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) had settled in Paris, and Georg Büchner (1813–37) was writing the revolutionary pamphlet Der Hessische Landbote (The Hessian Messenger). More placid concerns, however, occupy the characters in Eichendorff's book; in chapter 24, for example, a young lawyer elopes with an equally young lady. A group of friends, among them a poet, hears about these events, and it is the poet to whom everybody turns for an opinion because he is regarded as an expert “in solchen romantischen Fällen” (in such romantic cases), to which Fortunat, the poet, responds: “Ach teurer Freund, […] ich wollte, die Romantik wäre lieber gar nicht erfunden worden!” (Dear friend, […] I wish Romanticism had never been invented). It is a comment which ever since has elicited sympathy from literary historians.

Eichendorff knew what he was talking about. In German literary history he is commonly known as one of the most distinguished, as well as popular, exponents of Romanticism in its most general terms. His poetry conjures up starry moonlit nights, and rustling treetops in the unfathomable depth of forests where Lorelei, the seductive witch, lures the homeless wanderer to death and destruction. A wedding procession moves through a valley, the pretty bride weeps silently and mysteriously, musicians compete with the birds, a roe jumps over rustling brooks, and an aged knight rests fast asleep atop an ancient tower.