Writers' Lives for the Nation: Karl Gutzkow's Author Biographies and the German Book Market

Abstract

The rise of the professional author in the mid-nineteenth century was accompanied by serious concerns about the future of national literature. As market pressures and censorship increasingly shaped the landscape of literary production, post-patronage writing thematized the plight of the author. This article focuses on the work of Karl Gutzkow (1811–78), who as a professional writer campaigned for authors’ rights and insisted on the need to support new talent instead of fixating on memorialization. Through a consideration of Gutzkow's writings on prominent as well as marginalized German authors, the article traces his development of a theory for writing Künstlerromane and -novellen focusing specifically on historic authors. Finally, a reading of Gutzkow's fictionalized Rousseau biography Wie kam es, daß Rousseau seine Kinder aussetzte? reveals that Gutzkow put this theory into practice with a view to exposing the material hardships that could compromise an author's ability to produce serious literature worthy of the national canon. Rather than celebrating literary heroes of the past, the Künstlernovelle becomes a political statement: a literary genre with the potential to effect change by shining a light on the material obstacles to authorial success.