'Hörst du die Käfer summen nicht?
Hörst du das Glas nicht klirren,

Wenn sie, betäubt von Duft und Licht,
Hart an die Scheiben schwirren?'"1

The first collection of Müller's songs, Gedichte aus den hinterlassenen Papieren eines reisenden Waldhornisten, was published in 1821, a second volume appearing in 1824. After the Schöne Müllerin, the lyrics most characteristic of the poet's genius are the Reiselieder for Müller, like all the poets of the time, loved a "Wanderleben":

"In die grüne Welt hinein Zieh' ich mit dem Morgenschein, Abendlust und Abendleid

Hinter mir so weit, so weit!"2

But Müller wrote too easily, and his poetry belongs, in its range of ideas, to an age of naïve feeling and thinking. Yet, of all his contemporaries, none has a better claim than he to be regarded as Heine's forerunner; from him, Heine learned the beauty that lay in the simplest metres, and the fine cycles of poems, Muscheln von der Insel Rügen (1825) and Lieder aus dem Meerbusen von Salerno (1827), are not unworthy of comparison with Heine's lyrics of the North Sea.

3

1800-40.

Among the other "Greek" poets at this time, Chamisso's friend, Franz von Gaudy (1800 - 40), 3 deserves mention. F. von Gaudy was a voluminous writer, who, in his frequently trivial Gaudy, and frivolous verse, imitated Béranger and Heine. His prose sketches and "Novellen" have, however, a more lasting value than his verse. Chamisso himself was also carried away by sympathy for Greece, and poems like Lord Byron's letze letzte Liebe (1827), and the cycle Chios (1829), entitle him to a place among the members of this group. Julius Mosen J. Mosen, (1803-67) was another poet who combined the idealism of 1803-67. the " Romantik" with a passionate enthusiasm for Greece and Poland; the Greek revolt is the subject of his novel, Der Kongress zu Verona (1842), while his famous ballad, Die letzten Zehn vom vierten Regiment (1832), describes an episode in Poland's struggle for freedom. Mosen's epics (Ahasver, 1838) and "Novellen" (Bilder im Moose, 1846) appealed to 2 Gedichte, 46.

1 Morgenlied (Gedichte, 180).

3 A selection of Gaudy's works, edited by K. Siegen, 3 vols., Leipzig, 1896. Sämmtliche Werke, 6 vols., Leipzig, 1880.

the taste of the time, his many romantic dramas (Heinrich der Finkler, 1836; Cola Rienzi, 1837; Otto III., 1839) had a temporary success, while his work, as director of the Ducal Theatre in Oldenburg, was of real importance for the history of the German stage. The most eminent German poet who sang of Poland was August von Platen, whose noble Polenlieder (1830-31) were published after his death, but almost all the younger lyric poets of the time gave voice to the national sympathy with the Polish cause.

491

CHAPTER VII.

HISTORICAL FICTION AND DRAMA.

IMMERMANN AND PLATEN.

historical

novel.

ALTHOUGH since the days of "Sturm und Drang" historical The
novels had formed a large group of German fiction, their
quality had, on the whole, been indifferent; the isolated ex-
periments of the Romanticists, such as Arnim's Kronen-
wächter, stood so far above the "Ritterromane," and had
such entirely different aims, that there could be little ques-
tion of mutual influence. In point of fact, historical fiction
first asserted itself in Germany, under the vigorous stimulus
of the Waverley Novels, the two most eminent novelists who
looked up to Scott as their master being the Swabian, Wilhelm
Hauff (1802-27), and the North German, Wilhelm H. Häring,
best known by his pseudonym, "Willibald Alexis" (1798-1871).

Although Hauff1 died in 1827, at the age of twenty-five, W. Hauff, he left a large number of admirable stories; his instinctive 1802-27. genius for fiction and his attractive style concealed the want of originality and independence, natural in a beginner. Lichtenstein (1826), a story of Würtemberg at the beginning of the sixteenth century, is, although closely modelled on Scott, a successful imitation. Mittheilungen aus den Memoiren Satans (1826-27) shows unmistakably the influence of Hoffmann, while in Der Mann im Monde (1826), Hauff began by intending to write in the style of H. Clauren (an anagram for Carl Heun, 1771-1854), the author of some forty volumes of worthless sentimental fiction: before, however, he had proceeded very far, he changed his mind, and ingeniously converted Der Mann im Monde into a satire on his model. Of Hauff's shorter stories, Das Bild des Kaisers (1828) is the most

1 Sämmtliche Werke, ed. H. Fischer, 6 vols., Stuttgart, 1885, and F. Bober. tag, 5 vols. (D.N.L., 156-158 [1891-92]).

W. H. Häring, ("W. Alexis"), 1798-1871.

H. Zschokke, 17711848.

characteristic, in spite of its frequent concessions to the taste of the time; but his masterpiece is undoubtedly the Phantasien im Bremer Rathskeller (1827), in which his own genius is once more reinforced by what he had learned from Hoffmann.

on

The ablest German writer who graduated in the school of Scott was Willibald Alexis, who began by passing off imitations of Scott as translations (Walladmor, 1823-24; Schloss Avalon, 1827). In 1832, Alexis published Cabanis, an original novel, with his native country, the Mark of Brandenburg, as background, and Frederick the Great as central figure; and, during the next twenty-five years, he wrote many volumes of historical fiction, besides being busily engaged in other literary work. Alexis did not, however, live through the journalistic epoch of German literature-an epoch to be discussed in the next chapter-without himself taking some of its colour, without being influenced by the anti-Romantic philosophy of "Jungdeutschland"; and two of his novels, Das Haus Düsterweg (1835) and Zwölf Nächte (1838), have all the features of “Young German" fiction. Even the six historical novels, upon which his reputation now rests, are not altogether free from the spirit of that epoch. Der Roland von Berlin (1840), the first of the six, depicts the struggle between the Hohenzollerns and the burgher classes of Brandenburg in the fifteenth century; the scene of Der falsche Waldemar (1842) is laid a century earlier; while Die Hosen des Herrn von Bredow (1846-48)—most successful of all Alexis' novels is a romance of the Reformation period. His next book, Ruhe ist die erste Bürgerpflicht (1852), is an admirable story of the Napoleonic invasion in the gloomy days. before the battle of Jena, and was followed by Isegrimm (1852) and Dorothe (1856), neither of which, however, was as popular as the stories that preceded them. Of all the continental novelists who imitated Scott, Alexis attained the greatest independence of his master.

While even the name of another fertile writer of this school, Karl Spindler (1796-1855), the author of Der Jude (1827), a historical novel of the fifteenth century, is long since forgotten, the novels of Heinrich Zschokke (1771-1848)2 are still

1 Vaterländische Romane, 8 vols., Berlin, 1884.

2 Ausgewählte Novellen und Dichtungen, 10 vols., 11th ed., Aarau, 1874. Cp. F. Bobertag, Erzählende Prosa der klassischen Periode, 2 (D.N.L., 137 [1886]), 231 ff.

popular. A native of Magdeburg, Zschokke, at the age of twenty-five, chose Switzerland as his home, and, for the rest of his life, worked untiringly, both as a writer and as a social and political reformer, in the service of his adopted country. He was a prolific author, his works ranging from history to forestry, from prose fiction to lyric and religious poetry. Before settling in Switzerland, he published a widely-read banditnovel, Abällino, der grosse Bandit (1794), in which the ideas and tendencies of the "Sturm und Drang" are given full rein. But his best stories were written on the model of the Waverley Novels and are to be found in Bilder aus der Schweiz (1824-26); in this series appeared the novels, Addrich im Moos and Der Freihof von Aarau. Another widely-read book by Zschokke is Das Goldmacherdorf (1817), an imitation of Pestalozzi's educational novel, Lienhard und Gertrud; but popular as was the Goldmacherdorf, it never became such a household book in Switzerland as the Stunden der Andacht (1809-16), a collection of devotional poems with marked rationalistic tendencies.

The drama, or at least the North German drama,—for it was The otherwise, as we shall see, in Austria,-had, with Kleist's death, drama. received a blow from which it did not soon recover. The Romanticists tried again and again to gain a footing on the stage, but they were, for the most part, outrivalled by worthless competitors. Thus it is little wonder that the critics and theorists of this period-Tieck in his Dramaturgische Blätter (1825-26) and Immermann in the Düsseldörfer Anfänge (1840) -did not view the future of the theatre with very sanguine eyes. Indeed, between Kleist and Friedrich Hebbel, North Germany produced only one dramatist of genius, Christian C. D. Dietrich Grabbe (1801-36),1 and he was too romantically un- Grabbe, balanced easily to adapt himself to the requirements of the stage. An unruly genius, Grabbe recalls the age of "Sturmund Drang" rather than that of Romantic decay. His first play, Herzog Theodor von Gothland (1822), begun while the author was still at school, outdoes, in its horrors, the most extravagant productions of the "Geniezeit," but Tieck, whose opinion Grabbe sought, was not blind to its poetic promise.

1 Sämmtliche Werke, ed. O. Blumenthal, 4 vols., Detmold, 1874; a new edition by E. Grisebach, 4 vols., Berlin, 1902. Cp. F. Bobertag, C. D. Grabbe, M. Beer und E. von Schenk (D.N.L., 161 [1889]), 1 ff.

1801-36.