Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature - 6. Young Germany — John Shaqi
Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature - 6. Young GermanyBrandes, Georg
History
Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature - 6. Young Germany
Brandes, Georg
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- History and criticism; Naturalism in literature; Romanticism
The interpretations of Hegel's philosophy that soon appeared were
many and widely different, but the kinship between his doctrines
and Goethe's poetry was felt by all the initiated. Hegel became the
strongest ally of the little circle of Goethe votaries in Berlin, and
the two men, known as the absolute poet and the absolute philosopher,
were the objects of a common veneration. The orthodox Hegelian even
saw a significant coincidence in the circumstance that Hegel was born
on the 27th of August and Goethe on the 28th. In the Twenties, the
faithful gathered round the festive board on the evening of the 27th of
August, drank the toast of the master in the kingdom of thought, and
called to mind the saying in the preface to the _Philosophy of Right_
about the owl of Minerva, which begins its flight only when the shades
of night are gathering. "But as soon as the midnight hour had struck,
an orator rose to proclaim the glad tidings that Apollo, the God of
day and of song, was now in his sun-chariot, ushering in the 28th, the
glorious day."[2]
The patriotism which in 1813 had driven the enemy out of the country,
contained two radically different elements, a historical, retrospective
tendency, which soon developed into Romanticism, and a liberal-minded,
progressive tendency, which developed into the new Liberalism. When
the reaction came, it sought support in many of the theories of
Romanticism, and finally took the whole movement into its pay. Men
like Görres, Friedrich Schlegel, and others, passed from the camp of
Romanticism into that of reaction.
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