Platen münde.1 Born at Ansbach, in the same year as Immermann, A. von Platen occupies a somewhat anomalous position in literature: Hallera bitter antagonist of Romanticism as he found it, he was, münde, at the same time, no partisan of "Young Germany." He 1796-1835. began as an imitator of the Westöstliche Divan in 1821, and three years later published a collection of poems in oriental forms, entitled Ghaselen. These were followed by Sonette. aus Venedig (1825), the finest collection of sonnets in the Sonette aus German tongue. In these poems Platen appears as the least Venedig, subjective of all German poets; statuesque and cold, his sonnets possess a wonderful classic beauty, which was as little in harmony with the poet's time as with his nationality. One of them must here serve as an example of Platen's art : "Venedig liegt nur noch im Land der Träume, Und wirft nur Schatten her aus alten Tagen, In 1826, Italy became his permanent home. The antique. now appeared to him, as to Goethe a generation before, an antidote to the extravagance of the German spirit; and, as Goethe had turned from the "Sturm und Drang" to the literature of Greece, so Platen sought in un-German metres a refuge from the degeneration of Romanticism. But, after all, he was still a Romanticist when he formed his dramatic poem, Der gläserne Pantoffel (1824), out of the fairy-tales of Schneewittchen and Aschenbrödel; he was a Romanticist when he chose stories from the Arabian Nights as the materials of his last epic, Die Abbasiden (1834); he is, above all, Romantic 1 Sammtliche Werke, edited by C. C. Redlich, 3 vols., Berlin, 1883; also by K. Goedeke, 2nd ed., Stuttgart, 1882. 2 C. C. Redlich's edition, 1, 160 f. 1825. Die verhängnissvolle Gabel, 1826. tische Ödipus, 1829. in the meaning which the Schlegels gave to that word, when he expresses his poetic ideas in Romance metres and rhythms. At the same time, Platen realised that Romanticism had fallen upon evil days. The "Schicksalstragödie" awakened his virulent hatred, and, in 1826, he satirised it effectually in Die verhängnissvolle Gabel. A fork here takes the place of the dagger by which, in the typical "fate tragedy," the family ancestress meets her death, and before the close of Platen's drama, a dozen descendants have been stabbed by the "fatal Derroman- fork." Der romantische Ödipus (1829) is a satire on the more general aspects of Romanticism, especially on its formlessness and its love for experimenting with new and uncouth metres; and here the target of Platen's wit was, above all, Immermann ("Nimmermann "), who had kindled his wrath by a word of adverse criticism. Both these plays were inspired by Tieck's satirical dramas; but Platen went to work more seriously than his predecessor; he aspired to be a German Aristophanes, and even strove to imitate the Greek dramatist's metrical variety. He failed, however, to attain his object, just as Tieck and Heine, as every modern German satirist, is bound to fail; he is merely a literary satirist, where Aristophanes attacked political and social abuses. To find the real Aristophanic satirists of German literature, we must go back to the opponents of the Reformation. Platen died at Syracuse, in 1835, at the age of thirty-nine. "Ich war ein Dichter, und empfand die Schläge 1 Edited by G. von Laubmann and L. von Scheffler, 2 vols., Stuttgart, 1896 2 C. C. Redlich's edition, 1, 658 f. 501 CHAPTER VIII. "YOUNG GERMANY." EVERY movement of positive value in literature sets out with the object of sweeping away the conventions and unrealities of the preceding age, and of bringing poetry into closer relation to reality. So the Romantic movement had begun, and, in the same way, began the revolt against Romanticism, which has now to be considered. In its decay, as we have seen, Romanticism lost all touch with life: it became fantastic and insincere. A reaction was inevitable, and, for this reaction, we have to look to the writers who form the Deutsch group known as "das junge Deutschland."1 These "Young "Das Germans" repudiated the Romantic spirit-they laughed to junge scorn the " mondbeglänzte Zaubernacht" and the quixotic land." search for the "blaue Blume"--but they had nothing better, not even a healthy æsthetic realism, to put in its place; they employed literature merely in the service of material and political ends. "Young Germany," in fact, was a political rather than a literary movement; in the history of literature, it marks an era of depression. At the same time, the intellectual development of modern Germany would have been much less rapid had it not come through this phase-a phase which was an indispensable forerunner of unification forty years afterwards. Under "Young Germany," the nation became political, and the newspaper a force; German authors, following in the footsteps of their colleagues in France, turned from metaphysical dreams and medieval poetry to the social questions of the moment. The delicate 1 Cp. J. Proelss, Das junge Deutschland, Stuttgart, 1892; G. Brandes, Det unge Tyskland (in Hovedströmninger i det 19de Aarhundredes Litteratur, vol. 5), Copenhagen, 1890 (also in Samlede Skrifter, 6, Copenhagen, 1900, 365 ff.); German translation, Leipzig, 1891. spirituality of the Romantic age disappeared; "emancipation of the flesh," "liberalism," "esprit," were the watchwords of the new time, and national character was prized less highly than a successful imitation of French models. The superiority of France, in poetry and art, as in politics, was one of the established convictions of "Young Germany." And in the end, literature was not altogether a loser; it emerged from its subservience to French taste less provincial, broader in its sympathies, and more cosmopolitan. But, as literary reformers, apart from their social and political ideas, the Young German writers failed conspicuously to counterbalance the levelling tendency of Hegelianism, to break the spell of mediocrity that was due to Hegel's influence. The hopes of a united Germany cherished by the patriots of the Napoleonic wars had been rudely extinguished in 1814, by the establishment of the "Deutsche Bund." Germany lay at the mercy of Prince Metternich. In vain did Ludwig Jahn (1778-1852) and his athletic enthusiastsgymnastics were by him made to serve patriotic endsendeavour to uphold the nation's pride under the galling tyranny, while the "Burschenschaften " at the universities were regarded by the Government as little better than revolutionary clubs. The Paris Revolution of 1830 to some extent relieved the pressure, but Germany had still eighteen years to wait for a brighter political epoch. In the mean time, as a direct outcome of the July Revolution, a new literary movement had arisen. Phrases like "Young Germany" were in the air; in Switzerland, a political society, a branch of Mazzini's "la giovine Europa," had adopted the title "Das junge Deutschland," and, in 1833, H. Laube began to write a novel, Das junge Europa. A year later, in 1834, Ludolf Wienbarg (1802-72), a Privatdocent in the University of Kiel, published Asthetische Feldzüge, a volume of lectures, the dedication of which opened with the words, "Dir, junges Deutschland, widme ich diese Reden, nicht dem alten." The Ästhetischen Feldzüge, without professing to embody the principles of the school, contained the views of an "advanced" thinker of 1834; and the expression "junges Deutschland" is here used for the first time with reference to literature. In the following year, Laube and Gutzkow planned a review in which they proposed to combine the characteristics of the traditional The literary periodicals with those of the French reviews. Ludwig Börne,1 or Löb Baruch, for the former name was Ludwig Börne, only assumed after his conversion to Christianity (1818), 1786-1837. was born in the Frankfort Ghetto in 1786, and died at Paris in 1837. His father sent him to study medicine at the University of Berlin, and here he fell in love with Henriette Herz, who was more than twenty years his senior. In 1807, he exchanged medicine for more congenial political studies at Heidelberg and Giessen, and, four years later, received an official position in his native town. After Napoleon's fall and the re-establishment of Frankfort as a free city, Börne was obliged, as a Jew, to resign his post. He turned to journalism, but his various periodicals-the best of them was Die Waage (1818-21)—brought him into constant conflict with the police. In 1830, he made Paris his home, and from here wrote, originally as private letters to his friend Jeannette Wohl, the brilliant Briefe aus Paris (1830-33). On Briefe aus their publication, they were suppressed by the Bundestag, a 1830-33. step which helped to make them the most popular book of the day. Börne's Briefe aus Paris are at a disadvantage in so far as they are merely documents of their time; under the guise of reports from Paris, they are glowing pleas for reform at home, determined attempts to make Germany ashamed of the condition of slavery to which her rulers had reduced her. They are, however, strangely unbalanced: 1 The latest edition of Börne's Gesammelte Schriften, 6 vols., Leipzig, 1900. Cp. M. Holzmann, L. Börne, sein Leben und Wirken, Berlin, 1888. Paris, |