Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature - 2. The Romantic School in GermanyBrandes, Georg
History
Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature - 2. The Romantic School in Germany
Brandes, Georg
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- History and criticism; Naturalism in literature; Romanticism
The patriotic and the religious party soon made common cause. French
immorality had been confronted with a peculiarly German morality;
now French free-thought was confronted with a peculiarly German
Christianity. Because the religion of Germany's enemies paid homage to
the human mind, with its lucidity and freedom, the religion of Germany
was to be ecclesiastical Christianity, with its obscurity and tyranny.
Believing that they were becoming more religious, they in reality
became less so. For it is an indisputable truth, one that holds good in
all ages and all countries, that, true religion being enthusiasm for
the living spirit and idea of the times, as yet unrealised by the many,
he who is filled with that living spirit will seem irreligious, but
really be religious, whilst he who is filled with the spirit or faith
of a bygone, a defunct age, will be most irreligious, but seem and be
called religious.
The immature intellects of the War of Liberation were caught in the
snares of Romanticism. It is significant that men who, like Arndt
and Görres, were regarded as the champions of liberty, soon began to
express most anti-liberal opinions. Arndt made a bitter attack upon
what he called industrialism, i.e., modern industrial conditions, as
opposed to the old guild system, and was loud in his condemnation of
machinery and steam, which robbed human feet of their right (to walk),
the labourer of his work, and mountain and valley of their meaning. He
was anxious that any future additions to the ranks of the aristocracy
should be prevented by the inscription of all noble names in a final
roll, a "golden book;" and he advocated entail and primogeniture as
the one sure defence against the general break-up of society by an
inundation of the proletariat. Görres, who for a time retained some
remembrance of the days when he edited _Das rothe Blatt_, ultimately
became the author of _Christian Mysticism_, and such a fierce
reactionary that he attacked the pietistic policy of Prussia as not
sufficiently thorough-going, and brought on himself a reproof from Leo
XII.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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