Anamaria Roman

Anul II, LMA, EN-GE

Proiect Redactri Lucrri Academice

The 18th century: a gateway to Germany's brilliant classical literature

Abstract. While bringing forth some historical facts, the following essay
attempts to observe the main events of the 17th and 18th century that triggered
the evolution of the German literature and to provide examples of pieces of
literature that define the German classicism. The first part of the essay conveys
an image of the German society and life in the timespan after the Thirty Years'
War as a scattered empire of many independent states, whose sole common
factor was the language. In addition, this essay emphasizes on the changes that
occurred in Germany during Frederick the Great's reign and on his
contribution to the evolution of the German society, revealing his reforms and
their impact. In the end, some works of various German classical writers such
as Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Christoph
Friedrich von Schiller are discussed summing up their influence on the
German literature and society.

Key words: German ascension, Frederick the Great, German Enlightenment,

German classic literature, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe, Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, Sturm und Drang, German
theatre.

1.

Introduction

A powerful king has always played an undeniable role in shaping the society and
Germany's case is no exception. Although the 17th century shows a less powerful and
organised Germany than the one we are accustomed to, the 18 th century portrays a time of
prosperity and safety, a time in which the creative minds of the young talented German
writers could finally be put to work. This happened especially because of Frederick the
Great's great contributions to the German society. Through his reforms and his passion for the
French language and philosophers, the German people were shown a different way of life and
the German Enlightenment began, and with it the gateway to what is called the Wiemar
Classicism opened. The result was extraordinary, as the German literature found its way to
other European countries. There are many opinions on what this Wiemar Classicism means,
but I find the following most accurate:
1

Anamaria Roman
Anul II, LMA, EN-GE
Proiect Redactri Lucrri Academice
Weimar Classicism is best understood as a project that involved the ambitious attempt not
only to imagine but also to achieve a new quality of wholeness in human life and culture at a
time when fragmentation, division, and alienation appeared to be the norm.(...)In Germany,
Weimar Classicism (roughly the period from Goethe's return to Germany from Italy in 1788
to the death of his friend and collaborator Schiller in 1805) is widely regarded as an apogee
of literary art. But outside of Germany, Goethe is considered a Romantic, and the notion of
Weimar Classicism as a distinct period is viewed with skepticism. (Richter, 2005:10)

Despite the fact that the Weimar Classicism was not accepted as a separate period in
Europe, in Germany it gained a more powerful meaning. Still, the importance of the events
preceding the blossoming of the German literature cannot be denied, in fact, they are more
crucial to the German literature's development than any other factor.

2.

Germany's ascension to a great European power

In contrast to the centralised France, whose culture and military strategies have
reached to the rest of Europe, the torn up Germany that barely made it through the Thirty
Years' War was no longer a great power and with its over 300 states and no feeling of unity
whatsoever, it was an easy prey for France. As a result of France's successful attacks, ElsaLothringen and Strasbourg were not a part of Germany anymore.
Until the time of Frederick William, who inherited the throne during the Thirty Years
War, Brandenburg-Prussia was ravaged by friend and foe alike. As a result, Frederick William
decided to build up an adequate army to protect his territories. By the end of his reign, the
army reached a number of 83.000 soldiers and Brandenburg-Prussia was after Austria the
second strongest state in Europe.
Frederick William I was both eccentric and coarse but he worked with great energy
and continued to centralize the Prussian state and encouraged trading and industry. He kept
strict control over the economy and increased the army's strength, which made it the fourth
largest in Europe, although it was in fact not used during his lifetime.

3.

Frederick

the

Great

and

his

contribution

to

Germany's

Enlightenment
It was the dawning of a new era, as the rebellious son of the king took over the throne
of Prussia. However, this era was not covered in a silken, but in an iron cloth, as Prussia's
king donned his armour and presented himself to the world as Mars, the Roman war god.
He hasn't changed much in his father's policies, yet he was the one who brought
2

Anamaria Roman
Anul II, LMA, EN-GE
Proiect Redactri Lucrri Academice
Voltaire and other French philosophers to Berlin, thus bringing the Enlightenment to
Germany. The young king proved to be a free thinker, an enlightened soul and a protector and
promoter of the Enlightenment, still he mounted his horse to prove that he was also a warlord.
In addition, the king himself carried out activities in the historical and philosophical
domain. These activities were one of the main concerns of the king during peacetimes. As a
result to his encouraging the cultural activities, the German society evolved, therefore
planting the seed of what proved to be a blossoming period in the German literature. Despite
his enormous contributions to the evolution of the German literature, he despised the German
language and refused to speak it he only spoke French and adored the French philosophers.

4.

The end of the old kingdom and emergence of the German spirit

In the 18th century Germany was not a nation, it was a mixture of almost independent
states that shared the same language and literature, but different customs, traditional costumes
and religious beliefs. The philosophy of the Enlightenment and the concept of a state in the
18th century was introduced by the regents of the time who saw the German kingdom as a
state with a cumbersome structure or as the remains of the Middle Ages, that was to be fought
against with the power of rationalism.
The dawning of the German literature was one of the most significant events in the
18th century. At the end of the Enlightenment period, Germany was able to compete with
France on literary creativity or even to surpass it. The fact that Frederick the Great hardly
spoke German and that he accused this language of being too crude, rough and filled with
consonants awakened a passionate national pride in the German writers and their
determination to use their own language in their works.
The concept of Enlightenment in Germany was a result of the English Deism paired
with the French freethinking and adjusted by the rationalism of the German philosopher
Christian Wolf. The deistic works were soon translated into German. The German elite of
freethinkers shared their great ideas with the world and following the French pattern, they
disrupted any case of divine revelation. For them, only what was happening naturally was
recognised as true.
Even the clergy has been a target of the Enlightenment. Some theology professors
became sharp critics of the Bible and their criticism went even to the denial of the divinity of
Christ. Despite this attitude of the clergy the religious attitude in Germany remained strong,
mainly because it was the support of the government and it preserved the customs.
That is why the German Enlightenment grew from a compromise between religion
3

Anamaria Roman
Anul II, LMA, EN-GE
Proiect Redactri Lucrri Academice
and Christian Wolf's rationalism and could not take such extreme forms as the ones in France.
The German Enlightenment sought not to dispose of religion, but to free it from any myths,
absurdities and from the domination of the priesthood. Goethe had in his work "Gtz von
Berlichingen" perhaps most concisely described this era of the crystallisation of the
Enlightenment.
He wrote about the worshipping of the emperor, about the peace and friendship
between the neighbours, and the love of the king's subjects. In his work he writes: "wollte
Gott es gbe keine unruhigen Kpfe mehr in ganz Deutschland"(Goethe, 1958:104)1. This
suggests that the German Enlightenment functioned in a more spiritual and less revolutionary
way. In the end, Gtz dies with the word "freedom" on his lips, that meant particularly the
fight in Germany against France, their main enemy.
Apart from the thoughts on patriotism, new ideals have ignited in the young Germans,
namely the construction of the characters in the style of the Kraftgenie around the struggle
against the tyranny of princes and the legal and social inequality. This was expressed clearly
in the writings of German authors through private life experiences such as the love between a
man and a woman, as seen in Lessing's "Emilia Galloti" and in Schiller's "Kabale und Liebe"
("Intrigue and Love").
Lessing's "Nathan the Wise" was seen in the 19th century as a manifesto of tolerance
and in the 18th century it meant a commitment to religious indifference. Lessing believed that
"The true value of a man is not determined by his possession, supposed or real, of Truth, but
rather by his sincere exertion to get to the Truth." (Lessing, 2003:58). As a consequence, his
main belief didn't lie in the faith that one already holds the truth, but that one should "steady
and diligent drive for Truth" (Lessing, 2003:58). As for Herder, he proposed a reform of the
empire in his major work "Geschichte der Philosophie der Menschheit" ("History of
Humanity's Philosophy"), but his ideas were never came to fruition in a political program.

5.

The blossoming of the German literature

The passion for the classical antiquity since the mid 18th century had indeed given
birth to the German classicism by the end of the century, thus letting the people enjoy the
ideal of a republic. The French classical theatre, especially Corneille and Racine conveyed a
picture of the ancient world through their writings. The art of Shakespeare and Marlowe were
also brought to Germany and enjoyed great popularity among the bourgeois audience of the
1

"If it were God's will, there wouldn't be any restless head in Germany".

Anamaria Roman
Anul II, LMA, EN-GE
Proiect Redactri Lucrri Academice
German cities.
Hamburg and Hanover were the gateways for the English culture. The newly created
linguistic societies accounted for the neat German language, used by the German playwrights
who would put their talents into works that followed the English and French patterns. As a
result to this evolution of the German culture, a society of educated people appeared during
the second half of the 18th century. It was the time of the scholars' and artists' republic, the
"literary Germany", that remained a common and sole form in which the nation represented
itself as a unit.
As the first chants of Klopstock's "Messiah" appeared in the "Bremer Beitrge"
magazine, the educated people in Germany discovered a new poet. With his "Messiah"
Klopstock wanted to show the German people the redemption of mankind through the birth
and death of Christ, exactly like the English poet Milton did in his work "Paradise Lost". It
was no longer some pagan muse, but the human soul that was called in the prologue of a new
era. "Messiah" was the last achievement of the German Baroque, it was written in a language
that broke all conventions and it spoke of a new age that was longing for Heaven, that was
carrying the salvation within itself and that had joy for martyrdom. Furthermore, Klopstock
was among the first German poets to gain recognition in the European literature.
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was another German philosopher of the Enlightenment. He
was a bright student at the University of Leipzig, who was familiar with the literature of the
ancient world and with the Latin and Greek classical languages. While attending languages,
philosophy and mathematics courses at the University of Leipzig a passion for the theatre
grew in him. It was at the same time as Lessing was studying in Leipzig that the famous
German actress Caroline Neuber created the first German theatre group. Lessing would
translate French comedies for Neuber, thus getting to know an important woman in the
theatre domain. Consequently, he started to write plays. He took into consideration the
English theatre model when writing his tragedy "Miss Sara Sampson".
The evolution of the German theatre brought forth a new literary movement, the
Sturm and Drang1. The main topics of the Sturm und Drang were incest, brother hatred,
fratricide and the hostility between fathers and sons. Some pairs of opposites, such as: the
thirst for blood and the virtue, the love for each other and the terror, freedom and
enchainment, found in the Sturm und Drang dramas have filled the Europe of that time with
horror, following the recipe of the Kraftgenie.
1

Literary movement in Germany that has neither a translation, nor an equivalent in English. It literally
meaning "storm and stress".

Anamaria Roman
Anul II, LMA, EN-GE
Proiect Redactri Lucrri Academice
As his works reflected the events in the late French Revolution, Schiller was made an
honorary citizen of the Republic by the French revolutionaries. With the genius works of
Schiller the decade of Sturm und Drang has reached its worthy and meaningful end. Along
with the Sturm und Drang, the period of the Weimar Classicism also ended, as it may be
said to begin with Goethes voyage to Italy in 1786 and end with Schillers death(Andr,
2010:7). With his tragedy "Die Ruber" ("The Robbers") Schiller opened the National
Theatre in Mannheim. Although with roughness and violence, at that time he inspired most of
the German people. Both "Die Ruber" by Schiller and Goethe's later "Werther" became
popular, this resulting in a flood of robbers and knights dramas that appeared at that time.
Goethe's poems had more of a sensitive touch to them. As a young lawyer, he joined
the Imperial Court in Wetzlar. It was here that the life of a new generation's genius linked to
the remains of the old German Empire. Goethe met Charlotte Buff, the fiance of a friend at a
ball and he immediately fell in love with her. This situation triggered an interior conflict
between friendship and duty on the one hand and love and passion on the other hand. The 23year-old Goethe chose to shed this conflict and returned to his home-town Frankfurt.
The news of the suicide of his friend Jerusalem, who chose death in an interior
conflict of feelings that was similar to that of Goethe, had sparked in the writer the decision
to write a novel about this harrowing experience. The novel "Die Leiden des jungen
Werthers" ("The Sorrows of Young Werther") was a great work that enjoyed great success. It
was a novel that marked a new era and made its readers burst into tears in a century of
sensitivity. The Werther trend found its followers that would wear blue tailcoats, yellow
waistcoats, yellow pants, brown boots, round hats and loose and unpowdered hair.
In these troubled times, before the outbreak of the French Revolution, when the
reforms of Joseph II would change the political fate of Germany, Goethe became even more
obsessed with the idea that he needed to see Italy. He saw the trip to Italy as a redeeming
journey. The poet already became acquainted with the image of classical antiquity in his
childhood, but it was at this time that he could visualise it clearly. During his experience
there, the Roman elegies have been linguistically compressed in his mind.
When he came back to Weimar in 1788 he brought his work "Iphigenie auf Tauris",
thus the German Classicism was born. He aimed to reflect the ancient times and he succeeded
through the description of the environment: "A wood surrounding the Temple of Diana; a
distant glimpse of the sea." (Goethe, 1975:3). Goethe himself said the following: "Of all
peoples, the Greeks have dreamed the dream of life at its best"(Goethe, 1975:153).
Nevertheless, a paradox remains: Goethe experienced ancient Greece in Rome, Italy. He
6

Anamaria Roman
Anul II, LMA, EN-GE
Proiect Redactri Lucrri Academice
regarded his trip to Italy as a pilgrimage to Greek antiquity. Goethe found the Greek history
in their Latin translation on the ruins of Rome.
In his novel, Goethe has seen the internal law of the ancient "noble simplicity, quiet
grandeur", the harmony of beauty with harmony, the unification of passions as an educational
task, that could only be fulfilled through art. In Goethe's play Iphigenia's honesty and
capacity of dialogue give the book its greatness, thus tragedy being averted. Just as Helga
Gallas states in one of her article: Iphigeneies Diskurs ist ein didaktischer, er nhrt die
Illusion von der Autonomie des menschlichen Subjekts.(Gallas, 1990:128)1
To sum up, one may say that in the 18th century Germany experienced one of its most
thriving periods of all time, as this was the time when its literature dawned, thus
distinguishing the German mode of writing from the other countries'. It was only with the
help of two extremely different, yet equally significant rulers: Frederick the Great and his
father, Frederick William I, that the German nation overcame the difficulties encountered in
the 17th century, started to feel united again, began to develop its unique nature and spirit and
managed to express them later through numerous successful literary works.

1 Iphigenia's discourse is a didactic one, it emphasizes the illusion of the autonomy of the human subject.

Anamaria Roman
Anul II, LMA, EN-GE
Proiect Redactri Lucrri Academice

Works cited
Andr, Michael G. Weimar Classicism and the Image of Historical Time. The University of
Michigan (2010). 1 Jul. 2015.
<http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/78746/mgandre_1.pdf?
sequence=1>
Gallas, Helga. Antikenrezeption bei Goethe und Kleist: Penthesilea eine AntiIphigenie?. Warerloo. University of Waterloo Press. 1990.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Gtz von Berlichingen mit der eisernen Hand: ein
Schauspiel. Berlin. Akademie Verlag. 1958.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Iphigenia in Tauris. Stuttgart. Philipp Reclam Jun. 1975.
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim. Emilia Galotti. Mailand. Spiga Languages. 2003.
Richter, Simon J. The Literature of Weimar Classicism. New York. Camden House. 2005.

Anamaria Roman
Anul II, LMA, EN-GE
Proiect Redactri Lucrri Academice

Bibliography
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