5 - Germany

Summary

During most of the nineteenth century, German political and cultural life was shaped by the absence of a unified nation state with clearly defined borders. More successfully than any other poet and critic, Heinrich Heine staged the struggle over the legacy of Classicism and Romanticism in a literary-critical approach whose paradigmatic significance resonated throughout the century. The most eminent figure of the new form of journalism that forged literary criticism into a carefully directed critique of politics and conviction was Ludwig Börne. The publication of Wolfgang Menzel's Die deutsche Literatur caused a controversy with a lasting impact on the literary criticism of the period. One of the poetic high points of Heine's literary criticism is his eloquent description of Goethe's lyrics. The emergence of Young Germany in the mid-1830s marks a key moment in the history of modern German literary criticism.