Young Germany (literature)

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The Young Germany is the name of a literary movement of young, liberal-minded poet in the time of Vormärzes that starting around 1830, inspired by the July Revolution in France, were journalistically active and whose writings in 1835 by a decision of the then German Parliament banned the prince .

The name Junge Deutschland first appeared in Heinrich Laube , but became popular thanks to Ludolf Wienbarg , who introduced his Aesthetic Campaigns in 1834 with the programmatic words: "You, young Germany, I dedicate these speeches to you, not the old one".

Representative

In the resolution of the German Bundestag of December 10, 1835, “young Germany or 'young literature'” is called a “literary school” to which Heinrich Heine , Karl Gutzkow , Heinrich Laube , Ludolf Wienbarg and Theodor Mundt were officially counted. Such a school or group never existed. Rather, the authors mentioned were only loosely connected to one another through their liberal commitment. Ludwig Börne had, according to a later remark by Theodor Mundt, in the hurry forgotten to perform. However, later literary historiography regarded these six authors as the core of the Young German movement. Authors such as Adolf Glassbrenner , Gustav Kühne and Max Waldau also belong to the wider area .

Even Georg Buchner is repeatedly mentioned in connection with the boy Germany. He himself distances himself from Junge Deutschland in a letter to his family, which he wrote on January 1, 1836 from his exile in Strasbourg :

“By the way, for myself I do not belong to the so-called Junge Deutschland , the literary party of Gutzkows and Heine. Only a complete misunderstanding of our social conditions could lead people to believe that a complete transformation of our religious and social ideas was possible through daily literature. "

Nevertheless, Büchner and the authors of the so-called “Junge Deutschland” have similarities in terms of content, mainly in the rebellion against the political restoration. In addition, Büchner represents a literature that, like that of the authors of “Junge Deutschland”, rejects the idealism of Classical / Schiller and the literature of Romanticism. Büchner formulated this poetology in his story Lenz in the art talk between Kaufmann and Lenz.

aims

What the poets of Junge Deutschland had in common was that they turned against the restorative and reactionary policies of Metternich and the Princes of the German Confederation . They stood up for democratic freedoms , social justice and for overcoming traditional religious and moral ideas. They rejected the idealism of the Classic and Romantic periods as apolitical and backward. Both literary directions were too far removed from reality and life. For the Young Germans, literature was not allowed to be elitist, rather it should draw attention to social and political grievances. They saw themselves as heirs and followers of the Enlightenment and became literary pioneers of the bourgeois-liberal March Revolution of 1848/49.

Philosophically, the representatives of Junge Deutschland were influenced by Hegel's theory of development and by Saint-Simon's utopian socialism . In national politics, most of them hoped for the unity of Germany in the form of a republic and thus the overcoming of feudalism .

In contrast to contemporaries such as Georg Büchner or the later generation of poets from Vormärz around Georg Herwegh , Ferdinand Freiligrath , Heinrich Heine and August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben , the young Germans were not primarily concerned with a political overthrow. Rather, they were striving for a completely new, liberal society in which no more authority should be readily accepted. For them, politics was just one area among many, alongside morality , religion and aesthetics .

Prohibition

By resolution of the Frankfurt Bundestag in December 1835, the group's writings, to which “H. Heine ”was banned in all states of the German Confederation. The reasoning stated that the Young Germans tried "in fictional writings accessible to all classes of readers to attack the Christian religion in the most impudent way, to degrade the existing social conditions and to destroy all discipline and morality".

The reason for the ban was probably provided by the influential literary critic Wolfgang Menzel with a scathing review of Karl Gutzkow's novel Wally, the Doubter . Menzel wanted to recognize pornography and blasphemy that were harmful to society . Heinrich Heine, who never felt the boy Germany they belong, then reached into his book About the informer Menzel most violently.

Another reason for the ban was probably the suspicion that the group had connections to the political-revolutionary secret society Junge Deutschland, which was founded in the same year . Such connections could never be proven, although both groups partly pursued similar goals.

Youngest Germany

Based on the “Young Germany” movement from Vormärz, which some consider to be a pioneer for the naturalism that followed later , the brothers Heinrich and Julius Hart coined the expression “ Youngest Germany ” in 1878 , although this sometimes also meant anti-naturalistic Currents was used.

See also

literature

  • Johann Jakob Honegger: cornerstone of a general cultural history of the Latest Time Band IV / V . JJ Weber, Leipzig 1871, p. 178–282 ( online at books.google.de ).
  • Feodor Wehl : Young Germany. A small contribution to the literary history of our time. With an attachment of letters from Th. Mundt, H. Laube and K. Gutzkow that have not been published since then . Hamburg: JF Richter, 1886.
  • Johannes Proelß : Young Germany. A book of German intellectual history. Stuttgart: Cotta, 1892.
  • Ludwig Geiger : Young Germany. Studies and communications. Berlin: Schottlaender, [1907].
  • H [einrich] H [ubert] Houben : Young German Sturm und Drang. Results and studies. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1911.
  • Jost Hermand (ed.): Young Germany. Texts and documents. Reclam, Stuttgart 1966 and others (= RUB 8795), ISBN 3-15-008703-1 .
  • Alfred Estermann (ed.): Political Avant-garde 1830–1840. A documentary on "Young Germany". 2 vols. Frankfurt a. M .: Athenaeum, 1972.
  • Walter Hömberg: Zeitgeist and idea smuggling. The communication strategy of Junge Deutschland. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1975. ISBN 3-476-00302-7 .
  • Wulf Wülfing: Young Germany. Texts - contexts, images, comments . Carl Hanser, Munich 1978 (series Hanser 244), ISBN 3-446-12490-X .
  • Manfred Schneider: The sick beautiful soul of the revolution. Heine, Börne, Young Germany, Marx and Engels . Athenaeum, Bodenheim 1980, ISBN 3-8108-0139-9 .
  • Hartmut Steinecke: literary criticism of the young Germany. Developments - tendencies - texts . Erich Schmidt, Berlin 1982, ISBN 3-503-01682-1 .
  • Wulf Wülfing: Buzzwords of the young Germany. With an introduction to keyword research . Erich Schmidt, Berlin 1982 (Philological Studies and Sources 106), ISBN 3-503-01661-9 .
  • Helmut Koopmann : Young Germany. An introduction . Knowledge Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1993, ISBN 3-534-08043-2 .
  • Takanori Teraoka: Style and Style Discourse in Young Germany. Hamburg: Hoffmann u. Campe, 1993. (Heine Studies.) ISBN 3-455-09920-3 .
  • Lothar Ehrlich, Hartmut Steinecke, Michael Vogt (eds.): Vormärz and Classic . Aisthesis, Bielefeld 1999 (Vormärz Studies I), ISBN 3-89528-184-0 .
  • Wolfgang Bunzel, Peter Stein, Florian Vaßen (eds.): Romanticism and Vormärz. On the archeology of literary communication in the first half of the 19th century . Aisthesis, Bielefeld 2003 (Vormärz-Studien X), ISBN 3-89528-391-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ludolf Wienbarg: Aesthetic campaigns. Dedicated to young Germany. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1834. ( Digitized and full text in the German text archive )
  2. ^ Georg Büchner: Works and Letters. Based on the historical-critical edition by Werner R. Lehmann . Hanser, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-446-12883-2 , p. 279
  3. ^ Extract from the prohibition text of December 10, 1835