Sturm und Drang

5 Key excerpts on "Sturm und Drang"

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  Herder and the Foundations of German Nationalism

  • Robert Reinhold Ergang(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Columbia University Press

    (Publisher)

  1 Because of the lack of a definite and deliberate plan, the Sturm und Drang movement which Korff has styled the German form of the French Revolution , 2 was but of short duration. But its contributions to the rise of a national spirit, though mostly indirect, are not unimportant. In stressing nature and the émotions as the sole source of the poet it contributed to turning the German writers away from the ideals of neo-classicism to native forms and subjects. Goethe's Götz von Berlichingen and Schiller's Räuber might serve as outstanding examples of the new trend. They in-troduced a national type of tragedy and gave a powerful impetus to the development of a national theatre. In gen-eral, the movement was of the nature of a spiritual revival which, as Klüpfel says, spread over the whole nationality and violently opposed everything that was antiquated, pedantic or unnatural in school, home and society . 3 4. In his exaltation of the native and the national Herder 1 See Hillebrand, Die deutsche Nationallitteratur, vol. i, p. 300 et seq. ; Korff, op. cit., pp. 49, 70 et seq. ; Bruntsch, M., Der Geist von Sturm und Drang in der Pädagogik des jungen Herder, in Pädagogische Studien, vol. x x v (1904), pp. 190-212, 241-246. 2 Korff, op. cit., p. 201. J Die deutschen Einheitsbestrebungen (Leipzig, 1853), p. 285. NATIONALITY AND LITERATURE was also the prophet and forerunner of the Romantic move-ment. 1 Moreover, Herder's spirit was one of the motive powers of Romanticism.

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  Counterparts

  The Dynamics of Franco-German Literary Relationships 1770-1895

  • Lilian R. Furst(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  It is a bewildering assortment that defies comprehension unless the fundamental dualism of the Sturm und Drang is clearly posited. In this context the ambiguity of the German word Drang is of paramount importance. For there is something schizophrenic in the Sturm und Drang, in the movement as a whole and in its individual manifestations. The aggressive momentum, the forward thrust implicit in Sturm and in one sense of Drang seems to be in contradiction to the withdrawal under outer and inner pressures that is strongly inferred in the second half of the German phrase. Or, to translate the problem into concrete terms, the dynamic energy of Götz von Berlichingen, Karl Moor and all the supermen in the plays of Klinger, Wagner and Leisewitz is the diametric opposite to the yielding melancholy of Werther and of Lenz’s ‘Waldbruder’ (‘sylvan brother’). On the one side stand the strident, extrovert heroes and on the other the passive, introvert anti-heroes. And both faces are equally typical of the Sturm und Drang. Nowhere are these conflicting elements more plainly apparent or more closely interrelated than in the Urfaust fragment which dates from the early 1770s. Faust’s later self-diagnosis of the two souls within himself (‘Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust)’ 1 is already amply substantiated in the opening monologue of the play. In an emotional revulsion against the hollow sham of the life he has been leading, his dominant drive is towards rebellion. He thirsts for mysterious knowledge, instinctive insight into the innermost workings of the universe in place of the dry, sterile academic learning, in the value of which he no longer believes. Yet even as he expresses this craving, he sinks back into a mood of despair in which death seems the only solution. In its tempo and language too the elegaic apostrophe to the moon acts as a foil to the vehement outbursts with which the play’s opening monologue begins

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  From Baroque to Storm and Stress 1720-1775

  • Friedhelm Radandt(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Die Deutsche Chronik (1774–1777). In that role he resembles Claudius. The impact of his writing was heightened by the fact that he spent ten years (1777–1787) imprisoned, without trial and without verdict, in the famous Hohenasperg fortress. Duke Karl Eugen of Württemberg whose monstrous tyranny was to cause Schiller to flee his realm in later years, had ordered the imprisonment as a move to quiet the discomforting voice of Schubart. Earlier the poet had been expelled from Württemberg because of his openly immoral ways at court. He wrote much of his poetry on the Hohenasperg, which in the poem ‘Die Aussicht’ he calls the ‘mount of tears’. His poetry speaks of his deep faith in God, which enables him to endure his sufferings patiently. His most famous poem, written during the imprisonment, he entitled ‘Die Fürstengruft’. In it he attacks tyrannical lords. He imagines looking at the decaying bodies of dead princes in their burial vault, and he remembers the inhumanity of many a proud ruler. Seemingly, he is speaking of his own fate when he claims that outspokenness has often led to incarceration:

  Nun ist die Hand herabgefault zum Knochen, Die oft mit kaltem Federzug Den Weisen, der am Thron zu laut gesprochen, In harte Fesseln schlug.

  Schubart’s work made a definite impression on the youthful Schiller, who was inspired to his first drama, Die Räuber (1781), by a story from Schubart’s pen.

  V A Critical Look at the Period: Lichtenberg

  Sturm und Drang as a movement in German literary history was as effective as it was short-lived. Like most intellectual movements it had its formidable critics, mostly among the older generation, understandably so because Sturm und Drang was a youthful movement. One critic, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799), was of the same age as the majority of the Sturm und Drang authors. Since he lived and taught in Göttingen, the members of the ‘Göttinger Hain’ proved to be convenient objects for his attacks. Nor did he spare Lavater’s physiognomic writings. In many ways Lichtenberg continued the tradition of the German Enlightenment with its rationalistic and deistic assumptions. Yet he did not subscribe to the optimism that characterized the 1730s and 1740s. Essentially, he saw his mission as that of branding all kinds of foolishness and subjectivism in literature. His sharp wit, his humorous style, his devotion to the ideals of intellectual enlightenment have earned him a place of considerable respect. His ideas summarize, as it were, the major achievements and developments of the eighteenth century. They do not anticipate the age of classicism in German literature, undoubtedly because he was not concerned whether literary movements or trends were forward-looking, but rather whether the individual work of literature exemplified the standards of clarity and objectivity which he demanded. Thus, this contemporary of the Sturm und Drang

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  Theatre, Drama and Audience in Goethe's Germany

  • W. H. Bruford(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  E. Schlegel, Lessing, Goethe and Leisewitz. Schlegel had been dead for nearly thirty years, and Lessing was of the older generation. The only representatives of Storm and Stress here are Goethe and Leisewitz. The other dramatists generally regarded now as the leaders of the movement are Lenz, Klinger and Wagner, all of whom, as we have seen, had already had a work performed by Schröder. In the early ‘eighties Schiller’s first plays were to continue in much the same strain, and already at the end of the ‘sixties there had been sufficient talk about the rights of genius to make Lessing nervous. The critic whom he had principally in mind, Gerstenberg (1737-1823), had produced an unactable play Ugolino (1768) which, though quite conventional in construction, exploited an atmosphere of horror and madness with complete absence of restraint and decorum, and showed what strange but powerful effects the enthusiasm for Shakespeare might have on a German imagination. From Gerstenberg to Schiller the ‘Genie-Bewegung’ covers a span of twenty years, but the term ‘Sturm und Drang’ is better reserved for the few years when the literary revolution was at its height in the ‘seventies. Our remarks will be concerned only with the relations of this movement with the theatre, and with the social and political background of both drama and theatre, though it will be necessary to consider the more important writers individually, because they were genuinely individual talents. The plays of these Pre-Romantics, as French and English critics tend to call them, possess together with obvious immatureties a freshness and spontaneity which are attractive even to-day, if we read the texts themselves, before losing ourselves in the web of theory which has been spun around them by generations of literary historians. They are clearly the work of young men, not unlike many young Germans we have known ourselves in those recurrent youth movements which are a German speciality

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  Left-Wing Nietzscheans

  The Politics of German Expressionism 1910-1920

  • Seth Taylor(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter

    (Publisher)

  22 Der Sturm was founded in 1910 as the first journal in which the forces in opposition to Wilhelminian culture finally emerged in what later became known as Expressionism. The first generation of writers included Else Lasker-Schüler, Walden's wife until 1911, as well as William Wauer, Salomo Friedlaender, Alfred Döblin, Paul Scheerbart, Gottfried Benn, and Peter Baum. The war and consequent conscription brought changes to the membership but not to Der Sturm ideology. An ideological change came about only after the Revolution of 1919, when Waiden became a communist. In these early years, however, Der Sturm had little to say about politics. It had much, however, to say about culture. The programmatic statement of the first issue, written by Rudolf Kurtz, a writer with ties to Der Neue Club, highlights the importance of Nietzsche's cultural criticisms for Der Sturm's aesthetic theory. We don't want to entertain them, Kurtz wrote, referring to the general public. We want artfully to demolish their comfortable, eminently serious [ernst-erhabenes ] worldview. For we hold their seriousness to be a weariness of life [Lebensträgheit], a provincial dullness [Hinterwäldler-Dumpfheit], whose psychology Nietzsche had long ago described. 23 21 See the letters from Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche to Waiden of January 19, April 19 and September 5, 1905 in Der Sturm archive, Staatsbibliothek, West Berlin. See Roy Allen, Literary Life in Expressionism and the Berlin Circles, p. 314, note 85. 23 Rudolf Kurtz, Programmatisches, Der Sturm 1 (1910), p.2 Der Sturm and Die Aktion 45 According to Kurtz, Nietzsche had preached the gay message of dance which allowed for the ironic approach necessary to deal with a complex and paradoxical world. The German intelligentsia, though, had rejected that as dilettantism and instead built a culture based on empirical deception which lent the world a completeness it actually does not possess.

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