German literature: Romanticism

At the end of the 18th cent. literary romanticism, initiated in Germany by the brothers Friedrich and H. W. von Schlegel and by Novalis, brought greater emphasis on subjective emotion. A new literary form appeared in the novelle, a prose tale often dealing with supernatural elements. Typical early romantic poets were Ludwig Tieck, Clemens Brentano, and Joachim von Arnim, who were also collectors and editors of folktales and folk songs, sometimes set to music by Robert Schumann and other composers.

Freiherr von Eichendorff, Adelbert von Chamisso, and Ludwig Uhland were other notable German romantics. The movement's historical tendencies were supplemented by the philological and folkloristic researches of the brothers Grimm. The writer E. T. A. Hoffmann was romanticism's greatest psychologist of the unconscious. Hovering between classicism and romanticism, Heinrich von Kleist's stories and plays were masterpieces of dramatic economy, other important playwrights were Franz Grillparzer and C. F. Hebbel.

Sections in this article:

• Introduction
• Postwar Literature
• Symbolism, Impressionism, and Expressionism
• The Nineteenth Century: Realism and Naturalism
• Romanticism
• Sturm und Drang and Classicism
• The Protestant Reformation, High German, and Literary Academies: The Fifteenth to Seventeenth Centuries
• Old and Middle High German: From Early to Medieval Literature
• Bibliography

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