History of German Literature Georg Lukacs 1947
It is generally accepted that around 1890 German literature entered a new period. The contrast to the deep decline since the founding of the empire is far too strong for this fact to be concealed. It was palpable even to immediate contemporaries, and since then almost every literary history has treated this period as a distinct period. The fact that this new epoch of German literature coincided with the beginning of the imperialist age was too obvious to remain completely hidden even from those observers who only started from a narrow aesthetic point of view. The following considerations differ from earlier ones in that they see here not only a coincidence in time, not an intellectual-historical parallel (e.g. between literature and general mentality of imperialism). They see the social basis in the economy and politics of German imperialism, the ultimately (admittedly only recently, with the involvement of many intermediate links) effective cause of literary tendencies and phenomena.
Only such a mode of presentation is, in my opinion, truly scientific, only with its help can the driving forces of the literary movement, not the trends worked out in studios and cafes, come to light and be understood in their essence. Today, however, the urgent necessity emerges to survey the German literature of the imperialist age from this point of view.
The future responsibility of German literature is great: it is about awakening the soul of the German people to new life. The task is even greater than after the Thirty Years’ War: the German people were then a victim, even if not without complicity; now it is subject to ruin entirely through its own fault. It goes into its collapse with a terribly distorted inner face. When this distortion goes away, literature will play a significant role in this.
From this task follows a relentless reckoning with the past, a strictly critical sighting of the living forces in it. The turning point of this war throws a new light on the entire German past, but above all on the period on the border of the present, the imperialist age.
From the determination of the basis and method of research, the yardstick of judgment arises automatically. The greater part of previous descriptions and evaluations of German literature in general and of the imperialist period in particular suffers from a dualism of social and aesthetic points of view, if they go into the analysis of social conditions at all. On the one hand, certain, often very superficially grasped, social elements are emphasized, on the other hand, however, the artistic assessment is carried out with a bias towards almost any social analysis on the basis of subjective judgments of taste. A way of looking at things emerges that pretends to be extremely receptive, but ignores the deepest sense of the artistic principles. Tolstoy, who fought all his life against such a conception of art, of artistic talent, derides it in his Anna Karenina as the specifically characteristic attitude of dilettantes. There he says about the court officer Vronsky and his ilk: “The word talent, under which they innate, almost physical talent, completely independent of mind and heart, and what they wanted to use to describe everything that the artist experiences inwardly, came up particularly often in their conversation, because they needed it to describe something they had no idea of, what they wanted to talk about.”
So if Vronsky’s standard is rejected in our consideration, if we fall back on that social and historical mission that great literature (admittedly only great literature) has fulfilled in all times, then we come closer to the real standards for genuine poetry, than any aestheticism, any artistic connoisseurship could do.
This standard is closely linked at all times with the relationship with the people, with their aspirations, desires and sufferings. Especially in the age of imperialism, in which the course of social development, on the one hand, produces new forms of oppression and misleading of the people, their mobilization as cannon fodder for wars of aggression, and, on the other hand, the people are looking for new ways of life in various new ways that can correspond to their true interests. Here, above all in the question of social and human orientation, in the shaping of future-oriented human types, great literature has a powerful historical mission: it is the pioneer of true popular culture, of genuine democracy. From Walt Whitman to Anatole France, from Ibsen to Shaw, from Tolstoy to Gorky, the leading writers of the freedom-loving peoples undertook their mission even in the imperialist age.
But what about Germany? One should not mechanically exaggerate the undoubtedly existing contrast, which is extremely unfavorable for German literature. But one must not blur it either, for in doing so one blocks the way for a future upswing of German literature, the way of its coming greatness, the possibility that it will fulfill its national mission, the real fulfillment of a renewal of the soul of the German people after more than a decade of Hitlerite distortion.
So it is only fair if German literature is measured by the standard that we take from the deeds that the literature of the free peoples has achieved. The deep inner connection between real freedom, true folklore, political and social democracy and great art will clearly come to the fore.
The theory and practice of German literature in the age of imperialism provide innumerable examples of how it blocked its own access to the highest aesthetic values. I cite only one characteristic case. Shakespeare’s artistic creed in the actor’s scene in Hamlet is well known. He is talking here about the task of drama (meaning, of course, all major literature), own traits, to show disgrace its own image and the imprint of its form to the century and body of time. It is instructive to see that the narrator Wilhelm Schaefer, who is by no means untalented as a poet, has written a long essay to refute the “duplicity of the Danish prince, which is in its intention anti-artistic and anti-life”. Schaefer’s refutation follows the already unspeakably banal line of identifying the artistic reflection of reality (the practice of great literature from Homer to our day) with a naturalistic photocopy of everyday life. More significant and symptomatic is his conclusion, in which he expresses his concern that what is happening in Hamlet’s theory is that “transference of democratic maxims to intellectual life, to which transference all culture, and certainly poetry, must perish.” Here an opponent articulates the connection between great, Shakespearean realism and democracy as clearly as its most staunch defenders seldom did.
This convergence of the artistic practice of genuine and great realism with the deepest human and moral demands, with problems of the democratic spirit is of particular importance for illuminating the development of German literature. We underline the words artistic practice, because this alone is decisive for the emergence and the effect of such realism. Whether Walter Scott was a rigid Tory, Balzac an equally blunt legitimist, or Thomas Mann for a time an admirer of Frederick the Great, is of secondary importance to that social criticism which we find in The Heart of Midlothian, in the Cabinet des antiques, in Death in Venice.
Therefore the works serve us here as a key to the personalities of the writers and not occasional statements and confessions of the writers as a key to their works; even if these may, under certain circumstances, attain great importance as symptoms of intellectual-political or aesthetic tendencies.
It goes without saying that the fact that German imperialism culminated in Hitler’s hell is a decisive factor in our analysis. Without a ruthlessly harsh confrontation with this fact, without an inexorable judgment on it, there can be no renewal of Germany, no possibility of German literature booming. Just as Hitlerism was the end point of real German development to date, so criticism of it must be the starting point of any evaluation of German literature in the age of imperialism.
It would be wrong to see in the main line of German literature of the imperialist period only a forerunner of fascism. Nevertheless, precisely because of the brevity of this outline, we are faced with the task of identifying those tendencies in the past that point to the fascist era, be it through an unconscious disclosure of instincts and views from the sadistic “underworld” that later founded Hitlerism, be it through a forward-looking critique of the “German misery”, which is also often not conscious, should be emphasized in a particularly accentuated way. There is also an apparently negative or neutral component. The defenselessness of even the intellectually and morally best Germans against the poison of Hitlerite fascism is partly to blame. And literature has not only been a reflection of this defenselessness, but in part an instrument of defenselessness. These connections must be ruthlessly uncovered so that German literature can solve its future tasks with a clear consciousness.
A brief methodological comment on the train of thought in this outline may be permitted. We want to present developmental tendencies here and we are fully aware that such a presentation must be problematic as far as the great poets and their work are concerned. This set of problems can only be clarified by uncovering all the interrelationships between time and writer. Where these necessary details have to be missing because of the length, such a problem inevitably remains, for the proof of the central connection between developmental tendencies and individual artists can only be provided by showing the individual and social prerequisites in detail. Only then do the leading writers appear convincing as representatives of developmental tendencies.
We shall only speak here of historically decisive literary tendencies and also only of those personalities from whom these literary tendencies can be researched in a particularly concise manner. In our overview, the names of some important writers must be omitted, not to speak of writers who have only become generally known through broad external success. We also wanted to accentuate the specifically German features of literary development in the imperialist age. Thus in all imperialist countries there is a vulgar, reactionary, chauvinistically inflammatory literature. That is why the Wildenbruch-Lauff-Beumelburg line is not a German specialty. A specifically German problem, on the other hand, is how the struggle between progress and reaction plays out in really valuable, often even progressive-minded writers.