Poet Heinrich Heine, novelist Karl Gutzkow, and dramatist Georg Büchner were the central figures of Young Germany, a movement that influenced German literature, philosophy, popular culture, and sociopolitical theory in the 1830’s and helped sow the seeds for the radical politics of the 1840’s that led to the revolutions of 1848.
After the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815) established a new European conservative order designed mostly by Metternich, monarchs throughout Europe vigorously persecuted the revolutionary ideals that had found expression under Napoleon I. Nationalism increased dramatically in reaction to Napoleon’s unsuccessful attempt to create a pan-European empire. In Germany,
In 1819, Karl Ludwig Sand, a member of the Burschenschaft at the University of Erlangen, assassinated August von Kotzebue
It was during that time of political repression and censorship that the movement that would come to be known as Young Germany (junges Deutschland) arose. Young Germany developed out of German Romanticism but rejected most Romantic premises. It could be regarded as an uneasy synthesis of Romanticism and nationalism. Romanticism is often interpreted as an apolitical movement, yet its aim of liberating the human spirit from the conventions of society, the tyranny of government, and the pressures of religion was taken over and given a political slant by Young Germany. Like Romanticism, Young Germany emphasized freedom, but while some Romantic writers took freedom to be essentially a state of mind, for Young Germany the concept of freedom was entirely political. Ferdinand Freiligrath
Heinrich Heine was Germany’s first political poet and the founder of the Young Germany movement in literature. In 1826, he began to shift his formerly Romantic inclinations toward a more political emphasis with the first volume of Reisebilder (1826-1831, 4 volumes; Pictures of Travel, 1855), a collection of poems about the political and social alienation of a restless spirit. The movement was only loosely aligned, however, and it was unnamed until 1834, when Ludolf Wienbarg
Heinrich Heine.
Henri de Saint-Simon
The Young Germans advocated the emancipation of the Jews,
In 1834, Georg Büchner, a graduate student in medicine and zoology at the University of Giessen who was involved in underground revolutionary activities, narrowly avoided arrest for writing an anonymous subversive pamphlet, Der Hessische Landbote (1834; with Friedrich Ludwig Weidig; The Hessian Courier, 1963). The next year, he wrote an inflammatory play about the squelched ideals of the French Revolution
The court in Mannheim jailed Gutzkow for ten weeks in 1835 to punish him for his eloquent attack on traditional religion and marriage in Wally: Die Zweiflerin (1835; Wally the Skeptic, 1974). Authorities used Gutzkow’s case as an excuse to crack down on a broader category of literary works that might threaten the political order. On December 10, 1835, the Frankfurt Bundestag banned all writings by the members of Young Germany. Most of the authors attached to the movement experienced time either in prison or in exile. Other major Young German works include Heine’s Buch der Lieder (1827; Book of Songs, 1856), Grabbe’s
Don Juan und Faustus (pr., pb. 1829; Don Juan and Faust), Grabbe’s Napoleon: Oder, Die hundert Tage (pb. 1831, pr. 1869; Napoleon: Or, the hundred days), Börne’s
Briefe aus Paris (1832-1834, 6 vols.; letters from Paris), Heine’s Die romantische Schule (1836; The Romantic School, 1876)—itself an expansion of his Zur Geschichte der neueren schönen Literatur in Deutschland (1833; Letters Auxiliary to the History of Modern Polite Literature in Germany, 1836)—Freiligrath’s
Gedichte (1838; Poems, 1949), as well as Gedichte eines Lebendigen (1841, 1843, 2 vols.; poems of a living man) by Georg Herwegh
The period in Germany between the fall of Napoleon (1815) and the revolutions that began in March, 1848, is called the Vormärz (“Before March”). More specific, the label refers to the intense prerevolutionary spirit that appeared after the ascension in 1840 of Prussian king Frederick William IV
The Young Germans are to be distinguished from the Young Hegelians
Both the Young Germans and the Young Hegelians came under Eichhorn’s particular scrutiny. Their demise was due as much to his persecution of them as to naturally disintegrative factors within each movement. While Young Germany faded away after about 1842 and Young Hegelianism disappeared abruptly in 1846, they each contributed much to the ferment that erupted in 1848. Young Germany also laid the groundwork for psychological realism and social commentary in the literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
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Butler, Eliza Marian. Saint-Simonian Religion in Germany: A Study of the Young German Movement. New York: H. Fertig, 1968. Gives an account of Saint-Simon’s theory and shows how it influenced Heine, Laube, Gutzkow, Mundt, and Wienbarg. -
Clason, Christopher R. “Young Germany.” In A Concise History of German Literature to 1900, edited by Kim Vivian. Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 1992. A clear and concise treatment by the chair of the Department of Modern Languages at Oakland University. -
Hohendahl, Peter Uwe. Building a National Literature: The Case of Germany, 1830-1870. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989. A standard and frequently cited work by a leading scholar in the field. -
Sagarra, Eda. Tradition and Revolution: German Literature and Society, 1830-1890. New York: Basic Books, 1971. Includes a detailed evaluation of Young Germany in the context of the sociopolitical and literary culture of this sixty-year period. -
Sammons, Jeffrey L. Six Essays on the Young German Novel. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975. Includes a noteworthy interpretation of Wally the Skeptic. -
Stern, Joseph Peter. Idylls and Realities: Studies in Nineteenth-Century German Literature. New York: Ungar, 1971. A selective overview of the era, discussing only Büchner and Heine among the Young Germans.
Hegel Publishes The Phenomenology of Spirit
Congress of Vienna
Schopenhauer Publishes The World as Will and Idea
Marx and Engels Publish The Communist Manifesto
Prussian Revolution of 1848
Friedrich Engels; Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel; Heinrich Heine; Karl Marx; Metternich; Napoleon I; Henri de Saint-Simon.