Mediating the past: Gustav Freytag, Progress and German Historical Identity, 1848-1871 by Alyssa A. Lonner

Abstract

888 Reviews which subsumed the literature of the I8I 5-48 period under notions of domesticity, self-restriction, and contentedness. Today's interest in the I820S-I840s has come a long way, acknowledging the period's inherent contradictions and its dynamism as manifestations of an 'open' or 'experimental' stage in the development ofmodernity and hence as a prime object of interdisciplinary enquiry. A Cinderella ofold-fashioned Germanistik has turned into a princess of contemporary Kulturanthropologie. Eke's Einfzihrung in die Literatur des Vormdrz is itself informed by cultural anthropological thought and thus offers a much-needed up-to-date assessment of theperiod, without in the least neglecting the crucial socio-political context or pub lications with a direct political purpose, such as the poetry of the I840s or The Communist Manifesto. No such general works on the period have appeared since Bernd Witte's edited volume (I980) within Horst Albert Glaser's Deutsche Lite ratur:Eine Sozialgeschichte (Reinbek: Rowohlt) and the counterpart edited by Gert Sautermeister and Ulrich Schmid (Munich: Hanser, I998) in Hansers Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur, edited by Rolf Grimminger. Building on and moving be yond the achievements of social history, Eke focuses on aspects such as 'Korper und Geschichte' and 'Kultur-Natur', which isparticularly illuminating inhis comparative discussion ofGrabbe and Biichner as dramatic innovators and in his consideration of thewider cultural significance of female emancipation as a literary subject. The enormous importance of 'Religionskritik'-part and parcel of the 'nature/culture' antagonism which represents a preoccupation of the Vormdrz-is brought out in a detailed interpretation ofKarl Gutzkow's novella Der Sadducder vonAmsterdam (I 834) and itsdramatic version Uriel Acosta (I 846). By giving prominence to lesser known works, including Nikolaus Lenau's epic poem Die Albigenser (i842), as well as to the neglected genre of Vormarz drama apart fromBiichner and Grabbe, Eke certainly contributes to a new appreciation of theperiod in terms of itsmassive shift away from intellectual and aesthetic models of the 'Goethezeit' and towards formsof cognition associated with (industrial) modernity. Yet there are also omissions, due, perhaps, to the concision required by the Ein fiihrungen in die Germanistik series. Hebbel and Grillparzer are barely discussed, Nestroy not at all, which is regrettable in view of Eke's attention to drama and the theatre.Given their culturally significant emergence in the i840s, women writ ers receive very short shrift. Itwould also have been opportune tomention, in the 'Kontexte' section, the particular conditions Austrian writers had to contend with; forexample, Hubert Lengauer's important book on theAustrian Vormdrz, Asthetik und liberaleOpposition (Vienna: Bohlau, I989), is not listed in the bibliography. As an introduction to a difficult period, aimed at students of Germanistik, Eke's book could usefully also have listed the current critical editions, including Internet ones, of key authors (Biichner; Gutzkow; Heine-Portal). The bibliography of secondary literature, including brief comments on each title, iswell balanced and will be very helpful to students. This superbly structured and presented publication fillsa gap in the fieldof critical introductions, but isperhaps notwritten accessibly enough to be recommended toundergraduates studying German in theUK. UNIVERSITY OF EXETER MARTINA LAUSTER Mediating thePast: Gustav Freytag, Progress and German Historical Identity, I848 I87I. By ALYSSA A. LONNER. (North American Studies inNineteenth-Century German Literature, 36) New York: Peter Lang. 2005. 255 pp. $56.70; f3I.50. ISBN 978-3-03910-33I-7. There was a timewhen Gustav Freytag was one of themost widely read authors in Germany; well into the twentieth century,his Soll undHaben (i 855) was the standard MLR, I02.3, 2007 889 gift young Germans received for confirmation. Today, except to reconsider Frey tag's complicated anti-Semitism, it isdifficult to imagine anyone, evenmost literary scholars, cracking that book's nearly goo pages, much less slogging through the six volumes ofDie Ahnen (1873-8I), opening Die verloreneHandschrift (I864), or pe rusing Freytag's multi-volume non-fictional treatments ofGerman history, although theywere all once nearly as popular as his firstnovel. With the possible exception ofTheodor Fontane, hardly any nineteenth-century novelist receivesmuch attention these days, and Fontane's shorter, that is to saymore reader-friendly,works are no longer available in asmany editions as theyonce were, now that the centenary...