The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 07: Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English. in Twenty Volumes
Philosophy
The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 07: Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English. in Twenty Volumes
German literature -- 19th century -- Translations into English; German literature -- 20th century -- Translations into English
Americans owe to this "success" some of the most admirable types of our
citizenship--expatriated Germans like Karl Follen, Karl Beck, Franz
Lieber, the brothers Wesselhoeft, and many others.
Wienbarg dedicated in 1834 his _Esthetic Campaigns_ to Young Germany.
This term has since then served friend and foe to designate the group of
writers of whom we speak. Their slogan was freedom. Freedom from
cramping police surveillance; freedom from the arbitrary control of
government, unchecked by responsibility to the people; freedom from the
narrowing prescriptions of ecclesiastical authority, backed by the power
of the state; freedom from the literary restraint of medievalism in
modern letters--these and various other brands of freedom were demanded
by different members of the school. Just because the birth-throes of
modern Germany, which extend over the first seventy years of the
nineteenth century, were especially violent during the period under
consideration, the program of the school had from the outset a strong
political bias. The broad masses of the people were unacquainted with
political forms and principles. They were by time-hallowed tradition
virtually the wards of their patriarchal princes, sharing with these
protectors a high degree of jealous regard for state sovereignty and of
instinctive opposition towards any and all attempts to secure popular
restraint of the sovereign's will and national unification, that should
demand subordination of the single state to the central government. All
early attempts to awaken popular interest in social and political reform
had fallen flat, because of this helpless ignorance and indifference of
public opinion. But the drastic official measures against early
agitators proved to be a challenge to further activity in the direction
of progress.
[Illustration: KARL FERDINAND GUTZKOW]
The July revolution of 1830 in Paris added fuel to the flame of this
agitation in Germany and intensified the interest of still wider masses
in the question of large nationality and popular control. Then came, on
the twenty-seventh of May, 1832, the German revolutionary speeches of
the Hambach celebration, and, on April third, 1833, the Frankfurt riot,
with its attempt to take the Confederate Council by surprise and to
proclaim the unification of Germany. The resulting persecution of Fritz
Reuter, the tragedy of Friedrich Ludwig Weidig, the simultaneous
withdrawal or curtailment of the freedom of the press and the right of
holding public meetings were most eloquent advocates with the public
mind for a sturdy opposition to the conservatism of princes and
officials.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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