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II.—The Social Aspect of Early German Romanticism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Kuno Francke*
Affiliation:
Early German Romanticism

Extract

In the history of the human mind, there have been few more striking proofs of the organic unity in which the varied manifestations of national life are bound together than that afforded by the social causes and effects of German Romanticism. Few literary movements have demonstrated more impressively the futility of individual culture if it lacks a large sense of common responsibility. The predominance, in modern German society, of fact over theory, of common sense over genius, of practical tasks over ideal aspirations, may, to a large extent at least, be explained as a wholesome reaction against the excesses of Romantic wilfulness.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1895

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References

page 84 note 1 Ludwig Tieck'a Schriften, VI, pp. 3-5.

page 86 note 1 Schriften, VI, p. 50.

page 86 note 2 Ib., pp. 95, 96.

page 87 note 1 Ib., pp. 177-79.

page 87 note 2 Ib., p. 212 f.

page 88 note 1 Ib., p. 344 ff., VII, p. 18.

page 89 note 1 De l'Allemagne, p. 465.

page 89 note 2 Lucinde, éd. of 1799, p. 77, ff.

page 91 note 1 Novalis’Schriften, ed. Tieck, II, p. 156.

page 92 note 1 It belonged to the collection of the brothers Boisserée, before it was acquired by the Munich Pinakothek. Cf. Sulpiz Boisserée, Briefwechsel mit Goethe, p. 29.

page 92 note 2 Novalis's Schriften, I, p. 180, ff.

page 94 note 1 Ib., p. 213.

page 95 note 1 Ib., p. 252.

page 96 note 1 It is hardly necessary to add that this paper deals only with one side of the Romantic movement. The reconstructive work of Fichte and Schleiermacher, the later development of Tieck and the Schlegels, the rediscovery of the true Middle Ages through the brothers Grimm and their co-workers, the growth of the new historical method, the revival of the national spirit—in short, the positive achievements of Romanticism belong in another chapter.