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German Realists in the Nineteenth Century German Realists in the Nineteenth Century Georg Lukacs German Realists in the Nineteenth Century Translated by Jeremy Gaines and Paul Keast Edited with an introduction and notes by Rodney Livingstone The MIT Press Cambridge� Massachusetts First MIT Press edition, 1993 English translation © 1993 Libris Introduction and Notes© 1993 Rodney Livingstone This work originally appeared in German under the title Deutsche Rea/isten des 19. Jahrhunderts Copyright© 1951 Ferenc Janossy All rights rest:rved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage or retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. This book was set in Monotype Postscript Plantin by Cinamon and Kitzinger, London and was printed and bound in the United Kingdom Libraryof CongressCataloging-in-Publication Data Lukacs, Gyorgy, r885-1971. [Deutsche Realisten des 19. Jahrhunderts. English] German realists in the nineteenth century I By Georg Lukacs; translated by Jeremy Gaines and Paul Keast; edited with an introduction and notes by Rodney Livingstone. p. em. Translation of: Deutsche Realisten des 19. Jahrhunderts. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBNo-262-I2I7I-<) r. Germanliterature-19th century-Historyand criticism. 2. Realism in literature. I. Livingstone, Rodney. II. Title. PT345.L7913 1993 830.9' I2-dC20 Contents Introduction by Rodney Livingstone VII Translators' Note XXVIII Foreword I The Tragedy of Heinrich von Kleist [1936] 17 Eichendorff [1940] 50 The Real Georg Buchner and his Fascist Misrepresentation [1937] 69 . Heinrich Heine as National Poet [1935] 95 GottfriedKeller [1939] Wilhelm Raabe [1939] The Later Fontane [1950] Notes 335 Index 355 Introduction BY RODNEY LIVINGSTONE Georg Lukacs is one of the most controversial figuresof his own age and of ours. As a Marxist philosopher he has been credited with the most profound development of Marxist theory since Marx. He has been widely regarded as a major influence on writers as diverse as the Frankfurt School, Heidegger, Walter Benjamin and Sartre. In the course of a long life, in which he played an active political role in the Hungarian revolution afterthe First World War and again in the Imre Nagy uprising in that country in I956, he has often been subjected to venomous attacks, both fo r his ideas and his political actions. From inside the communist movements he has been ac­ cused of deviations from thecurrent party line as well as attempts to 'revise', i.e. compromise, Marxistdoctrine. From outside Marxism he has often been identified as one of the chief spokesmen for the dominant communist cultural ideology and criticized for his failure to speak out against Stalin's crimes. Lukacs is also pre-eminent as a Marxistliterary critic. Indeed for many years after 1945 he was the only literary critic who was able to command respect fo r a Marxistview ofliterature. More recently his literary writings have been attacked by other, more modem types of Marxist critic, as well as by structuralist and post-structuralist aca­ demic critics. At the same time, however, the temperature of con­ troversy has been lowered as Lukacs moved from the centre of debate, with the consequence that his views on particular writers have to a certain extent been integrated into the mainstream and have become part of critical orthodoxy - although, inevitably, with the passage of time, many of his particular interpretations and judgements have been superseded. Lukacs turned to literary criti­ cism in the nineteen thirties in a move which he has described as a kind of tactical retreat from politics after he was fo rced to retract views which had been criticized by the Communist International in 1929. It is evident, however, that his withdrawal from politics was involuntary and that he attempted to continue political activity by vii viii Introduction other, in his case, literary means. His literary writings may be taken at face value, that is, as contributions to our underst2nding of par­ ticular authors or genres (the historical novel, the realist novel). But equally, they may be read as coded interventions in the political debates of the time, such as Stalinism, the ideological implications of modernismor Expressionism, the Popular Front, or the 'Thaw' of the years following Stalin's death. Finally, Lukacs enjoys a third reputation, as a pre-Marxist liter­ ary critic. He had turned to Marxism in 1918, in an ethical recoil against what he described as the 'age of total sinfulness' - the effects of capitalism as they became visible in the collapse of Germanyand the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the First World War - and in response to to the Russian Revolution. But even before that time he had built up a reputation for three major literary studies: A History of Modern Drama (1911), a radical attempt to provide a sociological analysis of the drama; Soul andForin (1911), a collection of essays on modern literature which evoked considerable interest at the time, not least on the part of Thomas Mann, who incorporated some of its ideas into Death in Ve nice; and The Theoryof the Novel (1916). All of these works were later taken up and the ideas they contain flowed into the general corpus of his work. It is notable that while Lukacs himself emphasized the discontinuity in his thoughtand the impor­ tance of the ruptureinvolved in the transition to Marxism,as well as the development of his ideas in consequence ofhis 'mistakes', sub­ sequent critics, most importantly perhaps, Theodor Adorno, Ernst Bloch and Lucien Goldmann, have not hesitated to incorporate the pre-MarxistLukacs into a Marxian framework. The present collection contains all the major essays Lukacs wrote on German nineteenth-century literature, apart from those already published on Goethe.' They were all written between 1935 and 1950 and illuminate a side of Lukacs previously hidden from the English reader, namely his enduring love of German literature and his faith in the humanist values which are central to the German tradition. With the growth of National Socialism these values had come under attack in Germany itself, and in the eyes of Germany's neighbours the humanist strand in the Germantradition seemed to have given way to Germanmilitarism and aggression. It was all the I. See Goethe and his Age, translated by Robert Anchor, IA?ndon, 1968. Introduction ix more urgent, therefore, to provide a corrective. In some of these essays, notably those on Buchner and Raabe, Lukacs sets out to rescue writers fr om right-wing distortions. Others, particularly the Keller essay, give him the opportunity to work out his own intellec­ tual position and to state his own credo: his faith in democratic socialism even in dark times when such beliefs appeared to face overwhelmingodds. Students of German literature who chance upon these essays may well wonder how important they are today. After all, over half a century has elapsed since they were written and much research has been done on all these authors since then. It may well be maintained that, however important Lukacs's voice may be, it can hardly per­ suade us to ignore the new information about these writers and the new light that has been cast on their works by more recent critical approaches. In reply it can be urged that, despite these real addi­ tions to our knowledge, Lukacs is still worth reading because he set an agenda which was novel at the time and which endures today. In all of these essays we see him also actively interveningin the debates that were taking place on the left at the time. They concerned the role ofliterature, of the literary tradition in society, and the relation­ ship between literature and politics. Lukacs himself points out in his autobiography that he and Mikhail Lifshitz pioneered discussion of a Marxistaesthetics. 2 Furthermore Lukacs was the first critic to ask searching questions about the ideological status of works of litera­ ture. At present the critical pendulum may have swung too far against Lukacs. Lukacs defends the realist classics of the nineteenth century. Modem critics have become suspicious of realism. They deconstruct it, giving realist works a reading which de-emphasizes their 'realism', i.e. their success in reflectinglif e as it was. To re-read Lukacs now is to be reminded of the powerfulcase that can be made for literary realism and of his continued relevance as a critic. Georg Lukacs was born in 1885 into a wealthy Jewish family in Budapest. His father, J6zsefLukacs, was one of the executive direc­ tors of the Credit Bank, one of the leading banks in Hungary, and a patron of the arts. His mother Adele, nee Wertheimer, was Ger- z. See Georg Lulcics, Record of a Life, edited by Istvan Eorsi, translated by Rod�ey Livingstone, London 1983, p.86. X Introduction man-speaking and so German was spoken 'in the home. She also supponed her husband in his enthusiasm for the ans by main­ taining a salon. It was here that Georg was able to meet some of the future stars in the Hungarian firmament, most notably Bela Ban6k. In 1890 the family Magyarized its name of LOwinger into Lukacs and in 1899 J6zsef was ennobled. Georg Lukacs continued to use the honorific 'von' in his publications up to his conversion to Marxismin 1918. Lukacs always played down the Jewish element in his family. Like many of their generation his parents were almost completely assimilated and their Jewishness appeared only at wed­ dings, funerals and similar occasions. Georg was even baptized a Lutheran. While religion played almost no role in his upbringing, it was a fact that the Hungarian bourgeoisie was largely Jewish and the intelligentsia almost exclusively so. Since anti-Semitism was rife among both the peasantry and th� aristocracy, it seems likely that his insistence on the unimponance of his Jewishness was a not un­ common defensive reaction - and cenainly an understandable one­ to an environment that might turn hostile at any moment.
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