History of German Literature Georg Lukacs 1947
“We have absolutely no living poetry from older times on which our modern poetry would have grown like rungs on the trunk of the nation, whereas other nations have progressed over the centuries and settled on their own ground, on national products, on the belief and taste of the people, formed from remains of ancient times. This has made their poetry and language national. We poor Germans have always been destined never to remain ours; the German song is a pang cry, an echo of the reeds of the Jordan, the Tiber, the Thames and the Seine, the German spirit a hireling spirit chewing the cud, which other feet trampled on ... And yet it remains forever and ever, that we have no people, we have no audience, no nation, no language and poetry that is ours, that lives and works in us. So we are always writing for parlor scholars, making odes, heroic poems, church and kitchen hymns that nobody understands, nobody wants, nobody feels. Our classic literature is a bird of paradise, so colourful, so good, all flight, all the way up and without a foot on German soil.”
This is how Herder characterized German poetry in 1777. In the beginning, the most important minds recognized the difficult situation of German literature, later this realization faded. Rather, one strives to think out an organic past of the German people, of German culture, of German literature and to make it credible. This frantic striving dominated the Romantic period and grew after 1871 with the reaction and the plans for world domination in Prussian Germany. Of course, clear-sighted and honest writers often resist the construction of the organic connection, but mostly remain without decisive influence. Goethe constantly fought against the aspirations of Romanticism mentioned above. Hebbel, who later followed those paths himself with his dramatic renewal of the Nibelungen, was still in the camp of the level-headed before the defeat of the 1848 revolution. At that time he energetically emphasized that Shakespeare fashioned from the English past “that which still lived in the consciousness of his people, because they still had to bear and draw on it”. From this point of view he passionately opposed the dramatic renewal of the medieval Germanic “imperial glory”, the dramatization of Hohenstaufen: “Is it so difficult to recognize that the German nation has not had a life history to show, but only a disease history, or do you seriously believe that by putting in spiritus the Hohenstaufen tapeworms that have eaten her insides you will be able to cure the disease?”
In other countries the awakening of the bourgeoisie forms a necessary part of the creation and consolidation of national unity, and may therefore (with all necessary caveats) be at times in line with the ascending line of absolute monarchy. One thinks of Shakespeare’s attitude towards the Tudors, of Corneille and Racine, indeed also of Voltaire towards the age of Louis XIV. In Germany, however, a harmony between the ruling powers and German culture can only be feigned and therefore always has something mendacious about it. This lie, which subjectively only too often grows out of self-deception, poisons the entire history of German culture and literature. Only when one sees this clearly will one be saved from dangerous distortions and fallacies.
The greatness and limits of literature in Germany are primarily determined by its contrast to the ruling regime. German literature is great (only too often in a tragic sense, of course) because it recognized the fateful question of the German people and, in its heyday, deepened and expanded precisely this contrast; at the same time, however, this is the reason for its weakness. In particular, the contrast to Germany’s social and state structure causes the idealistic character of German culture and literature.
The German world-view in the heyday of literature was predominantly idealistic, anticipatory, even utopian. Its thoughts were less about being than about ought; their main intention was not to work out hidden tendencies from being, but to anticipate a model, dreamed-up world. This clouded the relationship between ideal and reality in most Germans. This downside of idealism prevented the emergence of a progressive, revolutionary realism in Germany. When economic and political development required real goals, idealism did not hold up. Its great systems crumbled and what remained faded into an academic shadowy existence. On the other hand, a Realpolitik developed that was just as characteristic of Germany, as it was filled with an extravagant and bottomless fantasy. So it is that Germany did have brilliant writers, but never a realistic development, like Russia from Gogol to Gorky, like France from Diderot to Balzac, like England from Defoe to Dickens.
In addition to the lack of genuine tradition and the idealistic heritage, philistinism is the most important barrier to the development of German literature. The best German writers saw their enemy in philistinism, but it was seldom recognized where this enemy drew its strength. Nowhere were there so petty, so unimaginative despots as in Germany, nowhere so little resistance to their abominations. Of course there can be philistines anywhere. But everywhere else there were also the cleansing thunderstorms of the revolutions, there were repeated processes of clarification in public life. In Germany there has never been public life in the true sense of the word. Georg Forster once wrote: “We have seven thousand writers, and there is still no public opinion in Germany.” Since this situation did not change, it was impossible to really overcome philistinism. The philistine poisoned even the highest figures, the great geniuses of the Germans. German literature shows a large number of significant talents, but one rarely finds a German writer who is really free from philistinism.
It is the narrowness of the circumstances at the time of the emergence and flowering of German literature that determines its uniqueness. And the evil ate its way into the German soul; people not only succumbed to their environment, they began to cultivate philistinism, seeing in some of its manifestations a higher, more genuine humanity. And since the economic and political upsurge was not the result of the people educating themselves in real struggles, Germany, which has grown economically and politically, produces only changed types of philistines, but not the overcoming of its world of ideas. On the contrary: philistinism now appears monumental and, through its far-reaching effectiveness, gains a hitherto unknown self-confidence and self-satisfaction; it modernizes itself at the same time, adopts cosmopolitan, urbane, decadent affectations and believes that the refinement of internalization completely excludes philistinism. But Germany under Bismarck, under Wilhelm II and under Hitler is no less philistine than at the time of the idyllic Biedermeier, only since Bismarck the philistinism has been more aggressive and dangerous.
No, philistinism has not died out. The goal of the German democratic revolution, the establishment of national unity, was formally achieved, but without the active participation of the people – one could say: behind their backs. This development already begins with the Zollverein (German Customs Union) of 1834. Economically, the unity of Little Germany had long been complete when Bismarck’s Prussia drew the military-political conclusions from this economic situation. Under these circumstances, to complete this revolution from above, the only task of the Germans was to throw on a uniform, perform vigorous drills, and obey without a word. The “prison of souls” inside the new empire has been taken over unchanged from the old solution, it has just become an extended and more modern prison.
With the defeat of the 1848 revolution, with the victories of 1866 and 1870, the entire classical heyday of German literature became meaningless. It was the soul of a liberation movement; it was the magnificent ideological prelude to a democratic upheaval in Germany. The classical literature of the Germans wanted to kindle a fire that would illuminate the entire political and social reality; in the literature of that time, an attempt is made to jump out of bondage into the open. But the fire never kindled, the leap was never made.
With that, however, the massive run-up to an almost ridiculous jump in the air has become pointless. As short as the glorious past of thinking and poetic Germany was in comparison to other peoples, the need arose in the new Reich to cover up its real nature and make it forgotten. But since the new glorious, boastful, power-hungry Germany was looking for ancestors in a parvenu-like way, a generous falsification of the past began. The Hitler period was the climax, the culmination of a development that began powerfully after the Bismarck victories and whose beginnings go back to the 1850s.
The purpose and task of this study is to demonstrate that German literature is a part, a factor, an expression and a reflection of the destiny of the German people. Our presentation is therefore guided by the idea that the fight against German misery is progressive; We call reactionary any attempt to perpetuate the misery in any form. As clear as this guiding principle is, its application is not at all easy. On the one hand because – precisely due to the economic and political backwardness – the general contradictions in the development of civil society in Germany appear particularly complicated. On the other hand, because the social and political problems in literature are extremely complicated. Often the objective design takes paths that run counter to the subjective intention, and both can be historically important. In addition, within the scope of this work not even the main tendencies can be described in detail; we must content ourselves here with a cursory sketch. Of course, every writer, especially a really great author, is richer and more varied in his output than the literary or social trend he represents. If important or merely well-known names are to illuminate directions here, we must in any case be aware of the certain one-sidedness that is unavoidable in such a procedure. Inevitably, our sketch resembles a map, which is also unable to reproduce the essential aesthetic and other peculiarities of the cities and landscapes.