Abstract
The article suggests reasons for believing George Eliot had read Georg Büchner's Lenz (1850) using some of it for Chapter 7 of Adam Bede, advocating truthfulness, or realism, not idealism. Eliot's contacts with Justus von Liebig, while writing this chapter, acquainted her with contemporary German writing. Liebig knew Büchner as his student at Gießen, and was interested in 'everything modern'. He was probably sympathetically aware of Büchner's reputation (political and literary scandals), being known for unconventionality himself. Pastor J. F. Oberlin's report of J. M. R. Lenz's stay with him in 1778 forms Büchner's main source for his story. Oberlin is named in Adam Bede: there are detailed textual coincidences between these reflections and Büchner's account of Lenz's thinking. The article concludes with speculation as to Eliot's judgement of Lenz.
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