Six Essays on the Young German Novel COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES ImUNCI Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures From 1949 to 2004, UNC Press and the UNC Department of Germanic & Slavic Languages and Literatures published the UNC Studies in the Germanic Languages and Literatures series. Monographs, anthologies, and critical editions in the series covered an array of topics including medieval and modern literature, theater, linguistics, philology, onomastics, and the history of ideas. Through the generous support of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, books in the series have been reissued in new paperback and open access digital editions. For a complete list of books visit www.uncpress.org. Six Essays on the Young German Novel jeffrey l. sammons UNC Studies in the Germanic Languages and Literatures Number 75 Copyright © 1972 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons cc by-nc-nd license. To view a copy of the license, visit http://creativecommons. org/licenses. Suggested citation: Sammons, Jeffrey L.Six Essays on the Young Ger- man Novel. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972. doi: https://doi.org/10.5149/9781469658308_Sammons Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Sammons, Jeffrey L. Title: Six essays on the young German novel / by Jeffrey L. Sammons. Other titles: University of North Carolina Studies in the Germanic Languages and Literatures ; no. 75. Description: Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, [1972] Series: University of North Carolina Studies in the Germanic Languages and Literatures. | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: lccn 73157927 | isbn 978-1-4696-5829-2 (pbk: alk. paper) | isbn 978-1-4696-5830-8 (ebook) Subjects: Young Germany. | German fiction — 19th century — History and criticism. Classification: lcc pt766 .s33 | dcc 833/ .03 Der Mensch des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts ist mehr als jeder an­ dere das Product der Umstande und seines Bildungsganges. Das All­ gemeine hat die Herrschaft i.iber das Individuum, und wol nur denen, die sich vom Allgemeinen als Dichter oder Ki.instler emancipiren. Karl Gutzkow, Aus der Zeit und dem Leben la marche ordinaire du XIXe siecle est que, quand un etre puissant et noble rencontre un homme de creur, il le tue, !'exile, l'emprisonne ou l'humilie tellement, que l'autre a la sottise d'en mourir de douleur. Stendhal, Le Rouge et le noir PREFACE The following essays have a dual purpose. It has been my hope to make a contribution to the study of Young Germany (Das Junge Deutschland), a topic that is now of increasing interest. But I also hope the essays will be of value to those not directly familiar with the books here discussed. None of them are widely read and several of them are quite rare and difficult of access; therefore, I have tried to keep the reader in mind who has reason to be interested in the Young German problem but is not extensively acquainted with the primary materials. This purpose obliged me to speak in soine detail of the contents of the books under discussion and to quote at length from them, as well as to rehearse some matters that are well known to specialists in the period. I hope that the latter will be indulgent about this and that they will find new perspectives in these discussions. I am obliged to several persons who have been of great assistance to me. I owe a particular debt of gratitude to Professor Jost Hermand, who has been uncommonly generous with his advice, admonitions, and encouragement, and, on one occasion, with the loan of a book rare enough that I would have thought twice before cheerfully handing it over to another book-lover. I am also deeply grateful to Professor Horst Denkler, who was kind enough to read the manuscript and offer extensive criticisms, which I have taken to heart as far as my native stubbornness would allow and which helped me to make significant improvements. To the companion­ ship of my colleague Professor Peter Demetz I owe much in the way of inspiration and understanding. A special acknowledgment is due here to George Vrooman, humanities bibliographer in the Yale University Library. Young German materials, because of the onslaught of repression that befell them upon their publication and the generations of neglect after- 1X wards, are very hard to come by and few libraries are well-stocked in this area. Mr. Vrooman, out of his enthusiasm for the purpose, his enormous knowledge of the antiquarian book market, and his astonishing memory for desiderata mentioned to him in months or years past, materially assisted me by acquiring crucial items for Yale's collection and unfailingly calling my attention to them as they came into view. Such people are the unsung heroes of the scholarly enterprise, and I wish most cordially to thank him here. I am also grateful to Mrs. Joan Hodgson of the Library of the University of California at Santa Cruz for assisting me while I was there in gaining access to materials at Berkeley, which has an unusually good collection of Young German books. A shorter version in German of the essay on Heinrich Laube will have appeared in the Zeitschrift fur deutsche Philologie, 91 (1972), Sonderheft on Heine and Young Germany, 149-163, under the title "Zu Heinrich Laubes Roman Die Krieger." Thanks are due to the editors for permission to republish it in its present form. To my wife, for her support, indulgence, wisdom, and tact, I can think of no reward other than an uncertain promise not to write another book for a while. New Haven, Connecticut July, 1971 X CONTENTS Preface 1x I. Introduction: On the Treatment and Evaluation of Young German Fiction 1 II. Karl Gutzkow: Wally, die ZU!eiflerin 30 III. Theodor Mundt: A Revaluation . 52 IV. Ferdinand Gustav Kiihne: Eine Quarantane im Irrenhause 81 V. Heinrich Laube: Die Krieger 104 VI. Karl Immermann 124 Notes 151 Bibliography 171 Index of Names 180 THE YOUNG GERMAN NOVEL I. INTRODUCTION: ON THE TREATMENT AND EVALUATION OF YOUNG GERMAN FICTION A set of essays about the novels of Young Germany is more in need of a preliminary defense than is usual in critical studies, for queries arise at every initial point of the undertaking. Is there, after all, any such thing as Young Germany? If so, what is it? Are the books the Young Germans wrote novels, and, if so, is there any justification for talking about them, given their doubtful quality and the small place they occupy in the history of literature? In what spirit and on what premises might they be usefully talked about? It is to these questions that I shall address myself by way of introduction. It has many times been doubted that the term "Young Germany" is useful at all; Harold Jantz expressed a not uncommon view when he called it an "empty label."1 As a group, Young Germany was largely imaginary, a fiction put into circulation by the Federal Ger­ man ban on Heine, Gutzkow, Laube, Wienbarg, and Mundt of December 10, 1835. This was an overreaction of insecure govern­ ments, which had made an illegitimate connection between the emphasis that a few writers had put upon their belonging to a young generation and some completely unrelated revolutionary organiza­ tions that called themselves such things as Young Italy, or, in Switzerland, Young Germany. Since most of the putative members of the group promptly and vociferously denied either that they belonged to it or that there was any such thing at all, one may well wonder what justification there may be for retaining a term that had so dubious a birth and, in the mainstream of literary history, was often used for abusive purposes. Even if the term is retained, one seems to perpetuate an accident of politics to refer it only to the five writers named in the decree. In recent years there has been much opposition to the splintering of literary history into ever smaller movements and coteries, and much more inclination to seek 1 a synchronic sense of epoch and relatedness. Thus there has been a tendency to look upon Young Germany as an oppositional and dialectical segment of the Biedermeier or restoration period. Similarly, one can expand the concept, if one likes, very broadly; in his edition of exemplary Young German texts, Jost Hermand has included no fewer than twenty-five writers, ranging from the Hegelian critic Robert Prutz to the local Berlin wit Adolf Glassbrenner, and including the young Friedrich Engels.2 There is reason in all this, and there is no need to deplore varying usages for various purposes; literary categories are instru­ mental, not ontological, and may be used as best suits the enterprise in hand. The term "Young Germany" has held on, despite the opposition, and it is, I believe, still usable. Helmut Koopmann, in his recent and valuable study of the subject, argues that the federal decree itself is evidence that the group has a profile of a sort; while there was an unstable and shifting mass of writers of whom one could say that they belonged to the youth movement in literature at one time or another, andererseits hatte eine so breite, in ihren Konturen vollig un­ fagbare Bewegung gewig nicht die offiziellen und offizii.isen Reak­ tionen ausgeli.ist, die wir kennen. Das Junge Deutschland war weder eine Untergrundbewegung noch eine Subkultur. Gewig gab es Sympathisanten, zeitweilige Mitlaufer, literarische Modefans - 'Bewegungen' kennen dergleichen ja zu allen Zeiten. Aber hier, im Jungen Deutschland, konzentrierte sich alles doch immer wieder auf wenige Namen. 3 I would suggest, furthermore, that there are good impressionistic reasons for maintaining "Young Germany" as a usable term.