SOURCE: Kontje, Todd. “Bildung and the German Novel (1774-1848).” In The German Bildungsroman: History of a National Genre, pp. 1-22. Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 1993.

[In the following essay, Kontje traces the origins of Bildungsroman theory, and the impact and critical reception of Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.]

The belated introduction of the term Bildungsroman into the general critical vocabulary requires us to trace two separate strands of thought in writing the history of the genre, namely the concept of Bildung and the theory of the novel (der Roman). During the last decades of the eighteenth century several prominent German writers began to redefine Bildung: the formerly religious term now became a secular humanistic concept. This transformation occurred at a time when the Germans witnessed an astonishing increase in the number of novels published each year. As novel production soared and suspicion of the reading habit grew among church and state authorities, a few critics began to take tentative steps toward granting aesthetic dignity to at least certain types of the modern genre. They did so by singling out two novels that seemed to portray the Bildung of the protagonist, Christoph Martin Wieland's Geschichte des Agathon [The Story of Agathon] (1766-67) and Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. Thus the German theory of the novel begins with the appropriation of the concept of Bildung. Indeed, much subsequent dissatisfaction with Bildungsroman criticism stems from the fatal first step of substituting a concept of Bildung for a close reading of a particular Roman.

THEORIES OF BILDUNG

The German word Bildung originally referred to both the external form or appearance of an individual (Gestalt, Latin forma) and to the process of giving form (Gestaltung, formatio). Medieval mystics and eighteenth-century Pietists conceived of Bildung as God's active transformation of the passive Christian. Through Original Sin humans have fallen out of their unity with God; they have become deformed, entbildet. The penitent believer must therefore prepare to receive God's grace. The Catholic believes in the ability to work toward this state of receptivity, whereas the Protestant must rely on faith alone. In the final analysis, however, the believer remains passive in both cases: God impresses His image onto the fallen individual, effecting a redemptive transformation of the disfigured sinner back into the image of God. As the Pietist Gottfried Arnold puts it, “wir müssen zerstöret und entbildet werden, auf daß Christus in uns möge formieret, gebildet werden und allein in uns sein” [we must be destroyed and entbildet so that Christ may be formed, gebildet within us and be in sole possession of us] (in Vierhaus 1972, 510. On Bildung see also Stahl 1934, Lichtenstein 1971, and Cocalis 1978).

This concept of Bildung changes significantly in the course of the eighteenth century. Instead of being passive recipients of a preexistent form, individuals now gradually develop their own innate potential through interaction with their environment. Organic imagery of natural growth replaces a model of divine intervention. Transformation into the perfect unity of God turns into the development of one's unique self. In this view, no fall from grace has occurred; humans, like the rest of God's creation, are essentially good. God no longer stands apart from the world but becomes a force of nature—indeed, a part of nature's pantheistic unity. Thus the concept of Bildung takes part in the general transformation of Western thought that occurred during the last decades of the eighteenth century. Christian faith in a Second Coming that would mark the end of history yielded to the struggle for human progress in an open-ended process of historical change (see Blumenberg 1966 on the imprecise notion of “secularization”).

Johann Gottfried Herder was the most influential disseminator of this new concept of Bildung, particularly in his lengthy essay Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit [Also a Philosophy of History on the Bildung of Humanity] (1774), followed by the monumental Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit [Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Humanity] (1784-91). Herder begins with the primacy of genetics: “Die genetische Kraft ist die Mutter aller Bildungen auf der Erde” [The genetic force is the mother of all life forms on earth] (1784-91, 1: 266). Each individual is unique and born with the genetic material in place. All creatures strive, therefore, to mature into that which they are destined to become. At the same time, external forces affect the development of a given individual or people. Herder refers to these forces with the broad concept of climate (Klima), which includes not only the weather and geographical setting in a particular area but also cultural factors such as food and drink, occupation, clothing, habitual posture, and the arts. In describing the effects of climate on indigenous cultures Herder varies the familiar Pietist adage that our lives are merely “clay in the hand of the potter [God]” to argue that we are all “ein bildsamer Ton in der Hand des Klima” [malleable clay in the hand of climate] (1784-91, 1: 261).

For Herder, then, Bildung involves the development of innate genetic potential under the influence of a particular geographical and cultural setting. In the Ideen he sets out to write nothing less than the history of the world in general and of human civilization in particular. He insists that all human beings are part of the same species, but that different “climates” produce cultural differences between peoples. There is a strong sense of environmental determinism in Herder's work, which leads to a seemingly broad-minded cultural relativism. Thus, he cautions his readers not to condemn past figures on the basis of current standards. Whether we like it or not, they are the inevitable products of a particular time and place (1774, 41). By the same token, Herder claims that he cannot answer the question as to which people in history was the happiest, other than to state that each civilization has its own pinnacle of development. This view of the past also leads to a certain generosity involving present cultural differences, a view that emerges most strikingly in Herder's bitter critique of eighteenth-century colonialism. Europeans have abolished slavery at home only to enslave the world in a misguided attempt to annihilate cultural differences, a practice that contains the seeds of future disaster for Europe (1774, 89, 93, 128-29).

Nevertheless, Herder does not consider all stages of a given culture equal. Like plants and individuals, cultures too have their natural phases of growth, flowering, and decline. Left undisturbed, a culture will eventually attain full maturity. More often than not, however, migration uproots a people from its native soil before it can ripen fully. Just as individual cultures move through an organic cycle, so too humankind as a whole progresses. Already at the pinnacle of creation, it is our duty to move on to an even higher stage. Herder ridicules the notion that humans should devolve into minerals, vegetables, or animals: “soll er [der Mensch] rückwärts gehen und wieder Stein, Pflanze, Elefant werden?” (1784-91, 1: 177-78). Thus Herder overlays his historical determinism and cultural relativism with a teleological narrative that enables him to condemn both past and present cultures, including his own. An improved understanding of the way things necessarily were and are yields to exhortation to his own people to become what they ought to be. This same pedagogical impulse will recur in nineteenth-century discussions of the Bildungsroman, as critics grow impatient with existing literary production and encourage writers to further the progress of the German novel.

The concept of Bildung also played a central role in the work of the Weimar Classicists Goethe, Schiller, and Wilhelm von Humboldt. In the first instance, Bildung referred to organic growth, the development of the seed to fruit according to innate genetic principles. Goethe took an active interest in the natural sciences and gave his theory of organic development poetic form in “Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen” [“The Metamorphosis of Plants”] (1799) and “Metamorphose der Tiere” [“Metamorphosis of Animals”] (1820). Humans also must develop in accordance with their destiny, as he writes in the late poem “Urworte: Orphisch” [“Primal Words: Orphic”]:

So mußt du sein, dir kannst du nicht entfliehen
So sagten schon Sibyllen, so Propheten;
Und keine Zeit und keine Macht zerstückelt
Geprägte Form, die lebend sich entwickelt.

(1817, 1: 359)

[As the sibyls and prophets said long ago, that is the way you must be; you cannot escape yourself. And no time and no power can tear apart imprinted form that develops in the course of life.]

In his autobiography Goethe stresses the freedom necessary for human development and views personal cultivation as a continuing project of the highest ethical significance: “Auf eigene moralische Bildung loszuarbeiten, ist das Einfachste und Tulichste, was der Mensch vornehmen kann” [To go to work on one's own moral Bildung is the simplest and most advisable thing that a person can do] (1811-14, 10: 88; on the concept of Bildung among the Weimar Classicists see Müller-Seidel 1983).

Humboldt also identifies Bildung as the primary goal of humanity in his Ideen zu einem Versuch die Grenzen der Wirksamkeit des Staats zu bestimmen [Ideas toward an Attempt to Determine the Limits of State Authority] (1792). Our true purpose in life is to cultivate our diverse talents into a balanced whole (1: 106). Humboldt shares Herder's belief in the primacy of genetics and employs organic metaphors to describe human development. Yet passive ripening is not good enough for human beings. Nature provides the “seed,” but it is up to humans to develop to their full potential through active engagement with the world around them. Thus, freedom becomes the first and essential prerequisite for personal Bildung: “Zu dieser Bildung ist Freiheit die erste, und unerlassliche Bedingung” (1: 106).

Schiller shares Humboldt's belief in the human ability to shape destiny. In one of his earliest theoretical writings he argues against Johann Kaspar Lavater's concept of physiognomy, which was based on the belief that one's physical features determine one's moral character. Schiller insists that the free intellect impresses its stamp on an individual's outer form, and not vice versa: “In diesem Verstande also kann man sagen, die Seele bildet den Körper” [In this sense we can say that the soul shapes the body] (1780, 5: 318). For the animal, Bildung is simply what nature makes it, whereas human freedom turns Bildung into an achievement of the will (5: 454). In his major theoretical works Schiller maintains his belief in the importance of freedom but seeks an equilibrium between ethical demands and physical needs as the goal of human Bildung. In his view, the ancient Greeks came closest to attaining this ideal; their achievement stands as an inspiration to the current age, in which we live in a state of alienation and fragmentation.

The notion of Bildung has strong political implications for all three Weimar Classicists. Each opposes the violence of the French Revolution with the concept of steady, organic growth.

Was das Luthertum war, ist jetzt das Franztum in diesen
Letzten Tagen, es drängt ruhige Bildung zurück.

(Goethe, “Revolutionen” [“Revolutions”] 1796, 1: 211)

[In recent days France has become what Lutheranism was; it stifles tranquil Bildung.]

Humboldt begins his Ideen by condemning political revolution as unnatural and goes on to argue that the public interest is best served by a monarchy that allows individuals to develop freely with a minimum of state intervention (1792, 1: 129). Finally, Schiller maintains in his Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen [On the Aesthetic Education of Humanity] (1795) that Bildung through art renders political revolution unnecessary. In the ideal work of art, form and content stand in perfect harmony; contemplation of such a work reconciles conflicting drives in human beings and thereby completes the Bildung of the individual and helps to establish the utopian community of the aesthetic state.

Certain shortcomings in the classical notion of Bildung become evident early on. Schiller formulates his ethical ideal as a true liberation of the individual from rational constraint as body and mind, physical desire and moral restrictions coexist without conflict. Yet viewed from a more critical perspective, his program of aesthetic education serves as a means to discipline desire so that one's wishes no longer exceed social limitations. Humboldt also urges his readers to restrict their endeavors to the narrow sphere in which they are most competent to act (1796-97, 2: 12). The theme of willful limitation is already central to Goethe's concept of Bildung during the classical period. “So ist's mit aller Bildung auch beschaffen,” writes Goethe in the programmatic sonnet “Natur und Kunst” [“Nature and Art”],

Wer Großes will, muß sich zusammenraffen
In der Beschränkung zeigt sich erst der Meister,
Und das Gesetz nur kann uns Freiheit geben.

(1800, 245)

[That's the way it is with all Bildung. … He who seeks greatness must pull himself together. The master reveals himself first through limitation, and only the law can give us freedom.]

This theme becomes extreme in Goethe's late novel, Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre [Wilhelm Meister's Travels] (1821-29). In an encounter with the character Montan (Jarno in the Lehrjahre), Wilhelm Meister makes a feeble appeal to eighteenth-century optimism, recalling that a many-sided Bildung had once been considered advantageous and necessary. Montan abruptly corrects Meister's outdated views, insisting that now is the time for one-sidedness. In his view, one ought to restrict oneself to the practice of a single trade (37). Slightly later Meister reads a maxim about education that underscores Montan's advice: “‘Eines recht wissen und ausüben gibt höhere Bildung als Halbheit im Hundertfältigen’” [To know and practice one thing well yields higher Bildung than imperfection in hundreds of things] (148).

Even this compromised ideal was only available to a small percentage of the German population. Schiller published the opening letters of the Ästhetische Erziehung as the first contribution to his new literary journal Die Horen. In this highly ambitious project Schiller hoped to unite Germany's best writers in working toward the realization of the cultural and political ideals articulated in his theory. The journal did not have the expected success, and Schiller abandoned the project two years later. In the last of his letters on aesthetic education he had already conceded that for the time being, at least, his “aesthetic state” was restricted to a narrow elite (“einigen wenigen auserlesenen Zirkeln” 1795, 669). Precisely this group is of interest for the history of Bildung in a social context. Weimar Classicism sought an alliance between progressive members of the nobility and cultivated members of the middle class that cut across traditional social class distinctions determined by birth. In doing so, however, they unintentionally began to split German society along new lines, namely between those who had access to Bildung and those who did not. In the course of the nineteenth century Bildung would become the exclusive possession of the educated members of the middle class, the Bildungsbürgertum, rather than the collective achievement of a unified people (Engelhardt 1986).

A final point worth mentioning in this context concerns the role of gender in classical theories of Bildung. Thomas Laqueur has argued that the concept of radical biological differences between men and women emerged for the first time during the late eighteenth century (1990). Not coincidentally, this period witnessed the proliferation of pedagogical treatises concerning the proper way to raise children of different sexes. Rousseau's Emile (1762) spawned numerous German tracts on the subject, including a popular work by Wilhelm von Humboldt's childhood tutor Johann Heinrich Campe entitled Väterliche Rath für meine Tochter [Fatherly Advice for my Daughter] (1782). Humboldt, in turn, produced two philosophical treatises on the “natural” differences between the sexes: “Über den Geschlechtsunterschied und dessen Einfluß auf die organische Natur” [“On Sexual Difference and its Influence on Organic Nature”] (1794) and “Über die männliche und weibliche Form” [“On Masculine and Feminine Form”] (1795). From today's perspective Humboldt's arguments sound like an attempt to place a pseudoscientific veneer on his contemporary cultural prejudices. Thus, he concludes that women are naturally passive, men active; men are rational, women imaginative. He associates the masculine with freedom, while identifying women with nature. In his slightly earlier essay Über Anmut und Würde [On Grace and Dignity] (1793), Schiller had written the same cultural stereotypes into his aesthetic theory, ascribing beauty and grace to women while reserving dignity and the sublime for men. Neither Humboldt nor Schiller means to degrade women. Both are delighted by the seemingly natural symmetry between the sexes, and both conceive of a human ideal that would unite the two opposites in one. Yet the way in which they formulate sexual difference effectively precludes the possibility of female development. As both Humboldt and Schiller stress, human freedom is absolutely necessary for personal growth; by equating women with nature, they deny women any chance of participating in the process of Bildung (see Bovenschen 1979, 244-56).

Taken together, these eighteenth-century theories of Bildung provide much raw material for future studies of the novel. On the surface, the authors profess an optimistic belief in progress for both the individual and society that will carry over to early discussions of the Bildungsroman. Yet the same theories also hint at a less appealing state of affairs in which Bildung is a form of social discipline that requires personal resignation, is restricted to a cultural elite, and for men only. The critical backlash against the affirmative interpretation of the Bildungsroman will locate in the novels themselves aspects of the negativity that are already incorporated in the concept of Bildung.

THE BEGINNINGS OF BILDUNGSROMAN THEORY

Christoph Martin Wieland published the first version of his novel Die Geschichte des Agathon in 1766-67. Set in the Mediterranean lands of classical antiquity, it tells of the eponymous hero's eventful life. Throughout the novel Wieland makes ironic use of the sort of escapades the reader might expect to find in a sensational adventure story: within the first five chapters Agathon is abducted by pirates, sold into slavery, and seduced by a famous courtesan. Wieland's primary concern, however, lies in the depiction of his protagonist's psychological growth. We follow Agathon from childhood to maturity as he experiences love, war, and politics. By the end of the novel the youthful enthusiast (Schwärmer) has been sobered by life's vicissitudes and goes into retirement.

Within a few years Christian Friedrich von Blanckenburg published his Versuch über den Roman [Essay on the Novel] (1774), which is recognized as the first significant German theory of the novel. To be sure, the Prussian officer's five-hundred-page treatise is long-winded and repetitious, and he takes many of his examples from drama rather than from the novel. Nevertheless, Blanckenburg recognizes that Wieland's Geschichte des Agathon is a new type of novel that deserves to be taken seriously. Blanckenburg goes further, countering the commonly assumed supremacy of Greek culture and the notion of historical decline. While the Greeks had their epic, he argues, the novel is the appropriate genre of the modern age. Thus, Blanckenburg defends the integrity of his indigenous culture and encourages young writers to produce a German national classic (xvii-xviii; also 72. On Blanckenburg's significance, see Lämmert 1965, 575).

Blanckenburg's understanding of his theory as a set of instructions to young writers, as a sort of literary cookbook, reveals his indebtedness to an older Enlightenment poetics that stressed craft over innovation, as does his repeated assertion that all artists should seek to instruct through delight. His most original comments come in connection with Agathon. He claims that Wieland unifies his novel by portraying Agathon's inner development in strict accordance with the laws of causality. The ancient epic portrayed “Thaten des Bürgers,” public events, whereas the modern novel focuses on the inner life, “das Seyn des Menschen, sein innrer Zustand” (17-18). By emphasizing Wieland's concentration on the psychological development of one central protagonist, Blanckenburg identifies the beginning of a German novel tradition that will come to be called the Bildungsroman.

Several aspects of Blanckenburg's discussion deserve particular notice. Blanckenburg is in search of authors who cultivate good taste and better morals. Thus, he will condemn picaresque novels because they corrupt society by preventing the spread of “the true, the good, and the beautiful” (307-8). In holding up Wieland's novel as a salutary counterpart to these salacious works, however, Blanckenburg remains insensitive to Wieland's irony in the depiction of his hero. As we shall see, willful blindness to irony will characterize the reception of Goethe's work as well, and indeed, it becomes a standard feature of much Bildungsroman criticism up to the present day (on Blanckenburg's lack of irony, see Lämmert 1965, 558).

Blanckenburg's theory of the novel also marks an early stage in what has been termed the “dichotomization” of German literature, the split between elite and popular culture (Bürger 1982). Blanckenburg begins by recognizing the widespread prejudice against the novel as a form of entertainment written only for the masses. He goes on to claim, however, that two or three novels—or maybe only one—stand out among the crowd. These exceptional works deserve to be read differently: whereas the novel of adventure offers entertainment for one fast reading, the superior novel invites repeated study (378). In making this distinction Blanckenburg is responding to the changing reading habits of the German public. Rolf Engelsing has argued that former “intensive” rereaders of the Bible became “extensive” consumers of secular fiction during the last decades of the eighteenth century (1974, 182-215). Whereas earlier readers concentrated on repeated study of a single text, the new readers devoured vast quantities of disposable fiction. In his Versuch über den Roman, however, Blanckenburg maintains that certain works of fiction should be studied with the care formerly reserved for religious texts. His work thereby marks the beginning of a consistent pattern in histories of the German novel: the Bildungsroman will become the only form of the novel granted canonical status as the secular scripture of German literature.

The nascent split between the popular novel and a select number of demanding works becomes particularly evident in the reception of Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. Novel production in Germany had increased dramatically in the thirty years that separate the Lehrjahre from Agathon, and the reading habit had taken hold in the emerging bourgeois public. Yet most critics continued to consider the novel a minor genre, and voices of authority in the government and the pulpit railed against the moral corruption spawned by the “reading obsession” (Lesesucht) or “reading madness” (Lesewut). While younger readers contributed to the sensational success of Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werther [The Sufferings of Young Werther] (1774), members of an older generation soberly condemned its apparent justification of suicide. Some twenty years later Goethe disappointed the expectations of many members of the public again, this time because his new novel lacked the immediate appeal of Werther. Yet the disapproval was not universal, as some of Germany's foremost writers celebrated the Lehrjahre as the most significant German novel to date. Comments by Friedrich Schiller, Christian Gottfried Körner, Friedrich Schlegel, and Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis) are of particular importance in the history of the Bildungsroman. Although they do not yet use the term, their contrasting assessments of Goethe's novel anticipate much of the subsequent discussion of the genre (on the unfavorable reception of the Lehrjahre see Gille 1971, 81-82 and Mandelkow 1980, 45).

Goethe had begun his novel in the late 1770s as “Wilhelm Meisters theatralische Sendung” [“Wilhelm Meister's Theatrical Mission”], and had made halting progress on it in the years before his first trip to Italy in 1786. A copy of this early draft was found in 1910. It depicts a young, middle-class man drawn to the stage both for personal excitement and in the vague hope of establishing a German national theater. In the substantially revised version published a decade later, Goethe reduced Wilhelm Meister's involvement with the theater to a long episode in a larger project of self-cultivation. A group of enlightened aristocrats who comprise the secret Turmgesellschaft (Tower Society) watch over Meister without his knowledge. They arrange for his marriage to the noble Natalie just as Meister has begun to despair in his efforts to gain control of his life. The sudden turn of events leaves Meister stunned by his unexpected good fortune as the novel concludes.

The Lehrjahre holds a unique place among Goethe's major works in that his correspondence with Schiller grants us a glimpse into the process of composition. From December 1794 until the summer of 1796 Goethe sent Schiller successive stages of the expanding project: first the already typeset opening books, and later the manuscript for the novel's conclusion. Schiller responds with astonished delight to each new delivery, initially offering only cautious suggestions for minor revisions. Increasingly, however, he displays impatience with what he feels is Goethe's unwillingness to express more clearly “die Idee des Ganzen,” the single concept that unifies the whole (1794-96, 526). The process culminates in a long letter of July 8, 1796, in which Schiller expresses what he feels is the significance of Wilhelm's development: “Er tritt von einem leeren und unbestimmten Ideal in ein bestimmtes tätiges Leben, aber ohne die idealisierende Kraft dabei einzubüßen” [He steps from an empty and unspecified ideal into a specific active life, but without losing the idealizing energy in the process] (541). Schiller echoes his own aesthetic theory in this assessment of Goethe's hero: Meister moves from what Schiller terms the “leere Unendlichkeit” [empty infinity] of youth in his twenty-first letter on the concept of aesthetic education to the “erfüllte Unendlichkeit” [fulfilled infinity] of his aesthetic and anthropological ideal (1795, 635). Thus, Schiller views Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre through the lens of his own theory of Bilduing; the novel's only shortcoming stems from Goethe's reluctance to state its (Schillerian) message more clearly. At this point Goethe politely signals that he is no longer willing to collaborate with Schiller on the project. After responding with a self-deprecating description of the peculiar personality trait (Tick) that leads him to ironic understatement (1796a, 543), Goethe sent the manuscript to press without showing it to Schiller again.

While Schiller acknowledged that his own convictions were not expressly formulated in Goethe's text, Körner ignored the discrepancy altogether. Körner developed his interpretation in a lengthy letter to Schiller, who published it with minor revisions in his journal, Die Horen. In this letter Körner simply borrows the classical ideal of Kalokagathie to characterize Wilhelm Meister's development:

Die Einheit des Ganzen denke ich mir als die Darstellung einer schönen menschlichen Natur, die sich durch die Zusammenwirkung ihrer inneren Anlagen und äußern Verhältnisse allmählich ausbildet. Das Ziel dieser Ausbildung ist ein vollendetes Gleichgewicht, Harmonie mit Freiheit.

(1796, 552)

[In my opinion the unity of the whole lies in the representation of a beautiful human nature that gradually takes form through the interaction of inner predispositions and external circumstances. The goal of this formation ｛Ausbildung｝ is a perfect equilibrium, harmony with freedom.]

Like Blanckenburg before him, Körner remains blind to the irony in the text he analyzes. Yet his interpretation was to prove enormously influential throughout the nineteenth and well into the twentieth century both for the interpretation of Goethe's novel and for the definition of the Bildungsroman as genre (see Gille 1971, 5, 37, 41-43).

While Schiller's publication of Körner's letter might suggest approval, he expressed reservations about Körner's approach to the novel in a letter to Goethe of November 28, 1796. In Schiller's view, Körner had exaggerated the importance of Goethe's protagonist while paying insufficient attention to the overall structure of the work. It was just this structure that Friedrich Schlegel highlighted in his lengthy review of Goethe's novel. As he writes, this is not the sort of work whose primary purpose is to portray characters and events. As readers, we may enjoy the individual parts at first, but eventually we learn to appreciate the entire work. In accordance with his own theory of romantic poetry, Schlegel viewed the novel as an example of metafiction, “Poesie der Poesie,” an organic whole unified through its self-reflexive structure. Thus, Schlegel was able to view the theoretical discussions about poetry within the novel, in particular the extended interpretation of Shakespeare's Hamlet, as an integral part of the whole. In Schlegel's opinion, the very self-critical awareness of Goethe's novel threatens to render further commentary superfluous, since it is one of those books that interpret themselves (133-34; on Schlegel's essay see Eichner 1967 and Gille 1971).

Schlegel's concentration on the novel's structure has an important effect on his understanding of the Bildung the work portrays. Unlike Körner, Schlegel argues that Goethe does not depict the Bildung of any given individual. In his opinion, it is the natural process of Bildung itself compressed into simple, fundamental principles that Goethe illustrates with numerous examples (143). As a result, Schlegel has a keen eye for the irony with which the narrator views Wilhelm's development. “Es sind doch auch Lehrjahre, in denen nichts gelernt wird, als zu existieren” [But they are after all also years of apprenticeship in which nothing is learned other than to exist] (141). As Schlegel views it, the novel ends not with the triumphant maturation of Wilhelm Meister but with his passive acquiescence to the will of the Tower Society: “Er resigniert förmlich darauf, einen eignen Willen zu haben; und nun sind seine Lehrjahre wirklich vollendet, und Nathalie wird Supplement des Romans” [He formally abdicates his own desires, and now his apprenticeship is really over, and Natalie becomes the novel's supplement] (144).

Whether or not Schlegel intended his characterization of Wilhelm Meister as an indirect attack on the novel and its author is a matter of some dispute. From today's perspective, at least, Schlegel's essay clearly anticipates the work of more recent critics who have emphasized the irony in the Lehrjahre and in the genre of the Bildungsroman as a whole. More immediately influential were Novalis's biting comments on the novel, published posthumously in edited form by his friend Ludwig Tieck. Actually, the hostility evident in some of Novalis's most frequently cited comments on the Lehrjahre obscures the immense significance of the work for his own development as a poet. Novalis treasured Goethe's novel as he did no other literary text. After the death of his beloved Sophie von Kühn he sought comfort and distraction through daily study of Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, and his friends report that he knew long passages of the novel by heart. It was only in 1800 that his criticism took a sharp turn to the negative; at this time Novalis was composing his own Heinrich von Ofterdingen (1802), which he conceived as both a response to and a rejection of Goethe's work. In our post-Freudian age it is easy enough to ascribe the vehemence of his critique to his need to overcome a powerful influence.

Novalis attacks the novel primarily because it affirms the mundane and seems hostile toward anything mystical, poetic, or romantic: “Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre sind gewissermaßen durchaus prosaisch und modern. Das Romantische geht darin zugrunde, auch die Naturpoesie, das Wunderbare” (1798-1800, 571). Like Schiller and Schlegel, Novalis measures Goethe's novel against his own conception of poetry and finds it sorely lacking. He laments Goethe's extirpation of the irrational, and places a high value on Mignon and the Harpist in an interpretation that soon proved influential among German romantic novelists (Gille 1971, 173). Novalis also prepared the ground for future political interpretations of the novel with his sharp critique of Wilhelm Meister's entry into the group of nobles who comprise the Tower Society: “Das Ganze ist ein nobilitierter Roman. Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre oder die Wallfahrt nach dem Adelsdiplom” [The whole thing is an ennobled novel. Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship or the Pilgrimage to the Patent of Nobility] (1798-1800, 571). One might feel that there is an element of bad faith in this last remark, for not only did Novalis himself come from an old noble family but he also wrote paeans to the Prussian monarch in his collection of fragments entitled Glaube und Liebe [Faith and Love] (1798) and created a idealized view of medieval feudalism in the essay “Die Christenheit oder Europa” [“Christianity or Europe”] (1799). Nevertheless, Novalis staked out an alternative to Körner's position in his uncompromising critique of Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre; together these two early readers of Goethe's novel established the boundaries for its subsequent discussion and for the theory of the Bildungsroman.

Meanwhile, Novalis and his contemporary Romantics were busy contributing to the practice of the Bildungsroman as well. Even before Novalis completed Heinrich von Ofterdingen, Tieck had published Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen (1798), the story of a young painter who starts out as Albrecht Dürer's apprentice. In deliberate opposition to Goethe, Tieck sets his novel in an idealized version of Germany at the time of the Reformation. In this decidedly more “romantic” atmosphere his protagonist aspires to artistic greatness throughout the novel—unlike Meister, who turns away from the theater to join the nobility. Novalis goes still further back in time to the Middle Ages for the setting of his novel, which tells of a young man's discovery of his innate talent as a poet. Novalis heightens the poetic effect of his text by incorporating several fairy tales into the narrative, including one of his own invention.

The attempt of these early Romantics to rewrite Goethe's novel in accordance with their own artistic beliefs marks the beginning of a continuing development in the history of the Bildungsroman and its criticism. To a certain extent, the history of the genre coincides with the reception of Goethe's Lehrjahre, as successive generations of critics revise their understanding of what soon came to be considered the prototypical Bildungsroman in the light of their own cultural and historical situations. At the same time, however, German writers for the last two hundred years have created works that both extend and revise the literary tradition. These works, in turn, become the subject of critical attempts to reconceive the history of the Bildungsroman. Thus, at least three factors combine to produce the history of the Bildungsroman over time: the changing reception of the old literature, the production of the new, and the effort to situate the new literature in the context of the growing literary tradition.

LIBERAL CRITICS AND WILHELM MEISTER'S LEGACY

The defeat of Napoleon in 1815 marked the beginning of a sharp turn to the right in German politics. The conservative postwar governments of Prussia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire sought to turn back the clock to the prerevolutionary era. During this same period a rising tide of opposing liberal thought gained momentum and culminated in the short-lived triumph of democracy in the March revolution of 1848. The governments reacted consistently with attempts to suppress dissidence, beginning with the Draconian Carlsbad Decrees of 1819 and continuing with the official ban on the publications of the radical Young Germans in 1835, until the quick collapse of the disorganized Frankfurt Parliament brought the restoration of conservative rule.

The period between 1815 and 1848 was also crucial in shaping the understanding of the novel. Novel production had slumped during the French occupation of Germany and the Wars of Liberation, but the book market quickly resumed the explosive rate of growth that had begun in the last decades of the eighteenth century. Illiteracy decreased, and the novel-reading habit spread into a broader percentage of the population. Yet widespread distrust of the genre as being both aesthetically careless and morally dangerous persisted. Only in the course of the next decades do we witness a gradual shift in the assessment of the novel, until by mid-century it is acknowledged as the representative genre of modernity (Steinecke 1975, ix, 4-7).

Hartmut Steinecke has played a central role in the reevaluation of early nineteenth-century German novel theory. He concedes that the academic aesthetics and poetics after 1815 seem shallow and derivative when compared with the work of the early Romantics. We must look elsewhere when seeking significant contributions to the study of the novel during the period, namely, to publications that are not conceived as aesthetic theory in the narrower sense of the term. These publications include prefaces, newspaper articles, contributions to reference works, and book reviews (1987, 13). Conservative academic critics grew increasingly silent on the subject of the novel in the decades leading up to 1848, for the genre that was already suspect on aesthetic and moral grounds was now perceived as a democratic, hence politically subversive, art form. By the 1840s significant contributions to the understanding of the novel came almost exclusively from critics who were considered politically progressive (1975, 112, 132).

The liberal political agenda of many literary critics during these decades helps explain why they chose to publish their views in newspapers and other publications aimed at a popular audience. One of the major goals of the Young Germans was to bring literature back into contact with life praxis. As Peter Uwe Hohendahl has argued, their strategy entailed a democratization of the public sphere. In the liberal model of the late eighteenth century, literature was part of a public sphere that was theoretically open to all but that was in fact limited to members of the educated middle class. Such critics as Georg Herwegh and Ludwig Börne sought to extend literary discussion to the entire population, thereby making it an agent of political reform. “Accordingly, the locus of literary criticism was not erudite professional conversation or the small circle of the literary coterie but newspapers and journals” (Hohendahl 1989, 119).

The German novel itself underwent significant changes during this period. As early as Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff's Ahnung und Gegenwart [Presentiment and Presence] (1815) we see evidence of a shift away from the early romantic Bildungsroman. In the opening section of this novel Eichendorff rehearses what had become clichés of romantic fiction: his handsome, aristocratic hero Friedrich moves in a springtime world of wine, women, and song. Yet Eichendorff sets his work in the historical present, and the bucolic world soon fades into a bitterly satirical portrait of his contemporary urban salon culture. Friedrich rejects this decadent society to become a heroic soldier in the struggle against Napoleon. In the end he renounces the world entirely and becomes a monk. History has interrupted the idyll: Ahnung und Gegenwart evidences a pan-German nationalism and a strict Catholic moralism foreign to the spirit of both the early romantic novel and the Lehrjahre.

Social and political satire also play a large role in E. T. A. Hoffmann's considerably less reverent Lebens-Ansichten des Katers Murr [The Life and Opinions of Tomcat Murr] (1819-21). The ostensible hero of this Bildungsroman is a genial cat. His autobiography parodies the pretensions of the new social type of the Bildungsphilister, who acquires culture as a status symbol. Interspersed by “accident” in Murr's autobiography is the biography of the tormented musician Johannes Kreisler. He is entangled in the intrigues of a ludicrously corrupt provincial court that serves as a metaphor for Metternich's Europe. Meanwhile, Murr suffers persecution for his association with a fraternal feline order in an episode that makes transparent reference to the Prussian government's brutal repression of the Burschenschaft [liberal student fraternity] movement. For the liberal Hoffmann the Bildungsroman has become a vehicle for critique of both reactionary politics and social climbing.

European developments in the novel had a particularly strong influence on German writers in the next decades. Walter Scott's historical novels inspired a wealth of German imitations during the 1820s, while the social novels of Honoré Balzac, Georges Sand, and Eugène Sue played an increasingly significant role in German literary discussions of the 1830s and 1840s. Throughout this period, however, German writers and critics remained acutely aware of their own national tradition, and debate centered on the relation between indigenous literary production and foreign influence. The Lehrjahre featured prominently in these debates, for whether it was accepted or rejected, its status as the quintessentially German novel made it impossible to ignore (Steinecke 1984).

It was common in the literary criticism of the early twentieth century to credit Wilhelm Dilthey with coining the word Bildungsroman in his 1870 biography of the theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher until Fritz Martini revealed in 1961 that Karl Morgenstern, an obscure professor of rhetoric at the Prussian university in Dorpat—today Tartu in Estonia—had used the term as early as 1803 and had published three essays on the Bildungsroman between 1817 and 1824. One might, therefore, expect to find in Morgenstern a bold but forgotten precursor of later nineteenth-century thought; but in fact his ideas are thoroughly typical of his own age. At first glance Morgenstern's positions actually appear more anachronistic than innovative. He openly admits his indebtedness to Blanckenburg, and many of his main ideas fall in line with Blanckenburg's Enlightenment optimism. Morgenstern contends that the Bildungsroman focuses primarily on the inner development of the hero and secondarily on the education of the reader:

Bildungsroman, sagten wir, wird er heißen dürfen, 1. und vorzüglich, wegen des Stoffs, weil er des Helden Bildung in ihrem Anfang und Fortgang bis zu einer gewissen Stufe der Vollendung darstellt; 2. aber auch, weil er gerade durch diese Darstellung des Lesers Bildung in weiterm Umfang als jede andere Art des Romans fördert.

(1824, 74)

[We said that we may call it the Bildungsroman, first, and primarily, on account of its content, because it represents the Bildung of the hero in its beginning and progress to a certain stage of completion; but also second, because just this depiction promotes the Bildung of the reader more than any other sort of novel.]

It might seem surprising to find Blanckenburg's ideas of the 1770s recurring nearly verbatim some fifty years later. Yet the seemingly decisive turn from Enlightenment didacticism to aesthetic autonomy in the work of Moritz, Kant, and Schiller in the closing decades of the eighteenth century did not affect all spheres of literary production and reception. As Christa Bürger has shown, the Enlightenment tradition continued well into the nineteenth century on a popular level (1982), and Morgenstern's essays bear witness to this continuity.

Yet Morgenstern's work also reveals the influence of his own position in literary history, particularly in the status he confers on Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. Although he mentions Wieland's “unforgettable” Agathon in passing, he singles out Goethe's novel for special praise. Particularly significant for later definitions of the Bildungsroman is that Morgenstern ignores the irony noted by several of the novel's early critics. Instead, he reiterates Körner's insistence that Meister completes his Bildung successfully. That this understanding of the novel had begun to take hold in broad circles becomes evident if we compare Morgenstern's position with the viewpoint represented in Brockhaus's Conversations-Lexicon of 1817. The anonymous author of an article on the novel describes the Lehrjahre in terms that are identical to Morgenstern's description of the Bildungsroman in everything but name. In this view, the novel depicts the life experiences of a young man from birth to his completed Bildung, identified as the point when the apprentice becomes a master (5).

In equating Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre with the novel, the author of the Brockhaus article deliberately excludes from discussion the vast majority of novels published at the time. Here the holdings of the Castle Corvey Library prove instructive, for the collection offers the most complete survey of German novels published between 1815 and 1830 (Steinecke 1991). The catalogue reveals that historical, comic, Gothic, and adventure novels were by far the most common genres. Wolfgang Menzel confirms this impression in an 1830 survey of the German novel in which he mentions love stories, family histories, and historical novels, but not works written under the immediate influence of the Lehrjahre. In short, both Morgenstern and the author of the Brockhaus article encourage an idealized novel form while ignoring or repudiating the bulk of actual literary production. Morgenstern cautions his readers against disreputable novels dashed off by literary hacks and encourages the study of noble works by great writers (1824, 99). In doing so, he widens the gap between serious literature and popular fiction opened by Blanckenburg in his Versuch über den Roman. Once again, discussion of the Bildungsroman serves the purpose of legitimating a particular type of German novel at the expense of what most writers wrote and most readers read.

One consequence of the identification of the novelist's subject with the “Lehrjahre des Jüngers” [apprenticeship of the young man] was to relegate fiction by or about women to second-rate status. Morgenstern, for instance, is aware of women writers and even mentions several prominent female authors and their titles in his last essay; but he considers their works examples of the aesthetically inferior Familienroman (1824, 93-94). Some years later Karl Menzel will argue that all novels by women are Entsagungsromane [novels of resignation] (1830, 77). In an earlier talk, however, delivered—perhaps not coincidentally—soon after the defeat of Napoleon, Morgenstern implies that there is something effeminate about the heroes of the Bildungsroman that limits their effectiveness in inspiring a “männlich-moralische Denkart” [manly-moral way of thinking] among their readers. Such milquetoasts hardly set a proper example for the current age: “Wahrlich; wir leben in einer Zeit, wo Europa der Männer bedarf” [Truly; we live at a time when Europe needs men] (1817, 53-54).

Finally, Morgenstern's moralizing approach to fiction threatens to turn the reading of “good” German novels into a form of self-imposed penance. “Res severa est verum gaudium,” cautions Morgenstern sternly, with a reference to Seneca (1824, 99). This theme will recur frequently in twentieth-century Bildungsroman criticism, particularly in works by non-native Germans. In the arts, mere pleasure is suspect; the acquisition of culture requires hard work. Small wonder that the Bildungsroman has attained the double reputation of being Germany's most significant contribution to the history of the novel and the one that is least entertaining to read.

The translation of Walter Scott's Ivanhoe into German in 1820 sparked widespread interest in the historical novel throughout the decade. With its focus on a broad panorama of a particular period rather than on the development of a single protagonist, this type of novel stood in direct opposition to the German tradition of the Bildungsroman. Willibald Alexis's 1823 study “The Romances of Walter Scott” offers a good example of the German reception of the historical novel. Alexis views the Lehrjahre as the source of a type of German Kunstroman [art novel] in which ideas about art or intellectual concerns take precedence over events. Although “the philosophic German” has gotten used to abstract thought in works of art, too many novels have become mere vehicles for sententious aphorisms, producing more boredom than enlightenment. Moreover, such works will never appeal to a broad audience. In effect, Alexis reverses Morgenstern's position: he finds excessive interiority on the part of the protagonist suspect and declares the work's popularity a virtue. (On the incompatibility of the historical novel with the Bildungsroman, see Steinecke 1975, 35.)

Yet Alexis's argument in favor of the historical novel takes a circuitous path through the Bildungsroman, rather than setting off in a completely different direction. He begins by asserting that the novel descends from the heroic epic and that the German Kunstromane represent a degenerate species of the genre, “nur eine Abart” (22). We cannot, however, simply re-create an ancient epic in modern times. Heroic actions occur rarely today, and the novel records events that are significant in the development of quieter lives. To this extent Alexis remains in agreement with a critical tradition that stretches back to Blanckenburg. At the same time, the depiction of the protagonist's mind is not enough for Alexis; he argues that the highest and most popular work of art will be one that reveals the imprint of the inner life on external reality (“wo das innere Leben ausgeprägt im äußern,” 26). The good novelist, in his view, begins with the description of an individual life and proceeds to bring this individual into contact with the surrounding world until the character of the “so-called hero” recedes entirely, leaving us with the objective depiction of external reality: “Dieß scheint uns der Sieg der Objektivität über die Subjektivität und vielleicht die Bestimmung aller Romane” [This appears to us as the victory of objectivity over subjectivity, and perhaps the destiny of all novels] (33). The subjective Bildungsroman becomes an intermediate stage on the way to the production of the modern, objective epic in the form of the historical novel.

As Steinecke points out, the German liberals' embrace of the historical novel reflected a general turning away from idealistic systems and theoretical speculation and toward contemporary reality (1975, 50). The Napoleonic Wars and the Wars of Liberation had brought the Germans into direct contact with events of world-historical significance. As Wolfgang Menzel observed, the Germans had witnessed revolutions, mass emigrations, and great suffering with their own eyes. After such experiences, poets could no longer retreat to the private sphere of the family. In Menzel's view, writers should pay tribute to the spirit of the age by producing historical novels: “Der historische Roman ist mithin das ächte Kind seiner Zeit” [The historical novel is therefore the genuine child of the age] (1827, 59). Menzel adds a political element to his interpretation of Scott's novels when he maintains that they represent the people and are therefore democratic, whereas older tales of heroism reflect the values of the monarchy or aristocracy.

Having declared their allegiance to the historical novel, critics soon began to see Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre in a different light. The author of the Brockhaus article had declared the Lehrjahre the best novel of all time, while noting that there was something peculiarly German in its idealistic concentration on purely personal development. In contrast, liberal critics of the 1820s began to view German inwardness, as reflected in its literature, with more regret than pride. Germany's spiritual triumphs seemed only to mask its political malaise. Contrasting the isolated German writer with the well-traveled Englishman or the socially sophisticated Frenchman, Heinrich Heine concludes that the German has no option but to retreat into an imaginary world: the Germans write novels populated by splendid, exquisitely poetic creatures that unfortunately have no counterpart in reality (1822, 19). In 1825 Ludwig Börne sarcastically suggests that the Germans cannot produce significant novels because they are too much like Wilhelm Meister: passive, complacent, and submissive. “Wir haben keine Geschichte … keine Freyheit zu sagen, was wir noch mehr nicht haben. Woher Romane?” [We have no history … no freedom to say all those other things we lack. Whence novels?] (36).

The Young Germans continue the bitter commentary on German social conditions in their essays of the early 1830s. As it had been for earlier critics, Goethe's Lehrjahre is the focal point of their attempts to understand and redefine the German novel. Theodor Mundt designates the Lehrjahre as the German “Normal-Roman,” and the “normal” subject matter of the novel the depiction of a journey through the world for the sake of Bildung (1833, 95-96). Although the Young German writers regret the stress on the private individual in Goethe's novel, they place the blame on the unfortunate state of eighteenth-century German political reality. Ferdinand Gustav Kühne, for example, attributes Wilhelm Meister's immaturity at the end of the novel to the nonexistence of the German state in Goethe's time: “Um aber Mann zu werden, dazu gehört ein Staat, den Staat kannte aber Goethe gar nicht” [But to become a man you need a state, but Goethe knew no state] (1835, 119). With the exception of Ludwig Börne, the Young Germans do not reject Goethe directly; but they consign his work to the historical past. “Um alles in der Welt keinen Wilhelm wieder,” writes Ludolf Wienbarg, “Der ist abgethan, der ist Göthe's und seiner Zeit” [Never again Wilhelm at any price … he is passé, he belongs to Goethe and his time] (1835, 115; see Steinecke 1984, 105).

The relegation of Goethe and his work to the past went hand in hand with attempts to redefine the role of literature in the present. The Young Germans sought an inspiring form of contemporary art to counteract what they felt was Goethe's crippling influence. Heinrich Laube brands existing German novels a distraction from necessary political changes, and he claims that there will be no revolution in Germany until such novels are banned (1833, 91). Contemporary authors, he says, have followed Goethe's example in that they merely copy existing reality. Laube admires the artistic talent that enabled Goethe to illuminate contemporary conditions but laments his failure to direct future reform (93). Now is the time for novels that invent reality, Laube continues, for works that inspire change. The results of this appeal were not altogether favorable, however. This literary program encouraged the production of Tendenzromane [tendentious novels] that preached virtue rather than works that developed a critical portrait of existing reality. Moreover, the novels of the Young Germans did not reach the broad-based public their democratic agenda sought to attract. As we read in a secret report to Metternich on the subversive writers, the Young Germans had in fact never attempted to appeal to the masses. They found their support among the educated members of society (Steinecke 1975, 116).

Ironically, the novel that came closest to fulfilling the aesthetic program of the Young Germans was written by a man who maintained a critical distance from the radical movement. Karl Leberecht Immermann's Die Epigonen [The Epigons, i.e., “Those Born After”] (1836) depicts the life of a young man in Germany after the Napoleonic era. Immermann's concentration on the development of a single protagonist reflects the influence of Goethe's Lehrjahre, but at the same time he offers a panoramic view of German society during the Restoration. Immermann uses the novel to address such contemporary issues as political radicalism, the fate of the aristocracy, and the rise of industrialism. In an enthusiastic review, Heinrich Laube praises Immermann for having updated the Goethean Bildungsroman into the portrait of an entire age (1836; on the Young German reception of Die Epigonen see Steinecke 1975, 101-04).

Unfortunately for the Young Germans, Immermann's novel appeared after their publications were officially banned in 1835 and therefore had little immediate effect on literary production. By the 1840s the dominant influence of the historical novel on German literature had yielded to that of the French and English social novel. The German writers again seemed behind the times, and they again explained their inability to contribute significantly to this European development by invoking the peculiarities of German history. German literature will not develop freely until the state is reformed, argues Adolf Stahr. In his view, the young Goethe had already realized that the deficiencies in Germany's political life hindered the development of its literature (1842, 164). More optimistic critics sought to effect change through literature that extended the possibility of Bildung to a broader segment of society. “Es soll nicht ewig eine Aristokratie der Bildung geben” [There should not always be an aristocracy of Bildung], writes Berthold Auerbach (1843, 171).

Robert Prutz's essay “Über die Unterhaltungsliteratur, insbesondere der Deutschen” [“On Popular Literature, Particularly That of the Germans”] (1845) offers a good example of an attempt to pull German literature back into the European mainstream by reaching out to a broader public. Prutz situates his argument in a philosophy of history that sees the current impoverished age as the inevitable first stage in a process that will lead to a higher level of German culture and—implicitly—to greater political freedom. While conservative critics extolled the virtues of a few canonical writers, Prutz decided to take seriously the sort of popular literature most people actually read. In his view, it is only natural that the overworked, politically disenfranchised masses turn to popular literature for distraction. More heretically still, Prutz claims that the German classics are boring: “was gut ist in der deutschen Literatur, das ist langweilig, und das Kurzweilige ist schlecht” [what is good in German literature is boring, and what is entertaining is bad] (215). Earlier critics had defended the Bildungsroman despite its belonging to the popular genre of the novel; Prutz takes German literature to task because its best products fail to have mass appeal.

In light of the sorry state of affairs in Germany, Prutz praises French and English social novelists for their ability to be both good and entertaining. Prutz concludes his essay by proposing Berthold Auerbach's Dorfgeschichten [village tales] as the solution to the dilemma facing German writers. This new genre promised to provide a healthy German social realism based on the strength of the peasantry rather than the decadent city dwellers of French and English urban realism. Like the Young Germans before him, Prutz encountered both practical problems and theoretical contradictions in his attempts to enlist the masses in a literary revolution. The realism of the Dorfgeschichte was by definition partial at best, as it excluded any depiction of the rapidly expanding German cities. Although Prutz begins by defending what people actually read, he gradually drifts toward prescribing what they ought to be reading. In the end Prutz's efforts were not rewarded: members of the lower classes who read at all continued to read popular fiction and not the Dorfgeschichte. Meanwhile, the Bildungsroman remained in the hands of a politically conservative cultural elite that was to assume power soon after Germany's first attempt to establish a democratic government failed (on Prutz, see Steinecke 1975, 180-200, and Hohendahl 1988, 1989).

Works Discussed

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Emile. 1762.

Wieland, Christoph Martin. Geschichte des Agathon. 1766-67.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. Die Leiden des jungen Werther. 1774.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. 1795-96.

Tieck, Ludwig. Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen. 1798.

Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg). Heinrich von Ofterdingen. 1802.

Eichendorff, Joseph Freiherr von. Ahnung und Gegenwart. 1815.

Hoffmann, Ernst Theodor Amadeus. Lebens-Ansichten des Katers Murr. 1819-21.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre. 1821-29.

Immermann, Karl Leberecht. Die Epigonen. 1836.

Works Cited

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Herder, Johann Gottfried (1774). Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1967.

Schiller, Friedrich (1780). Versuch über den Zusammenhang der tierischen Natur des Menschen mit seiner Geistigen. In Sämtliche Werke. Munich: Hanser, 1980, 5: 287-324.

Campe, Joachim Heinrich (1782). Väterlicher Rath für meine Tochter: Ein Gegenstück zum Theophron. Rpt. Paderborn: Hüttenmann, 1988.

Herder, Johann Gottfried (1784-91). Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit. 2 vols. Weimar & Berlin: Aufbau, 1965.

Humboldt, Wilhelm von (1792). Ideen zu einem Versuch die Grenzen der Wirksamkeit des Staats zu bestimmen. In Gesammelte Schriften. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1968, 1: 97-254.

Schiller, Friedrich (1793). Über Anmut und Würde. In Sämtliche Werke. Munich: Hanser, 1980, 5: 433-88.

Humboldt, Wilhelm von (1794). “Über den Geschlechtsunterschied und dessen Einfluß auf die organische Natur.” In Gesammelte Schriften. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1968, 1: 311-34.

Schiller, Friedrich (1794-96). Correspondence with Goethe concerning Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. Cited from Goethes Werke. Hamburg: Wegner, 1950, 8: 521-51.

Humboldt, Wilhelm von (1795). “Über die männliche und weibliche Form.” In Gesammelte Schriften. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1968, 1: 335-369.

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Anonymous (1817). “Artikel ‘Roman’ aus dem Conversations-Lexicon von Brockhaus.” In Steinecke 1976, 1-14.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang (1817). “Urworte. Orphisch.” In Goethes Werke. Hamburg: Wegner, 1950, 1: 359-60.

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Goethe, Johann Wolfgang (1820). “Metamorphose der Tiere.” In Goethes Werke. Hamburg: Wegner, 1950, 1: 201-03.

Morgenstern, Karl (1820). “Ueber das Wesen des Bildungsromans.” In Selbmann 1988, 55-72.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang (1821-29). Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre. In Goethes Werke. Hamburg: Wegner, 1950, 8.

Heine, Heinrich (1822). “Briefe aus Berlin.” In Steinecke 1976, 18-19.

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Morgenstern, Karl (1824). “Zur Geschichte des Bildungsromans.” In Selbmann 1988, 73-99.

Börne, Ludwig (1825). “Cooper's Romane.” In Steinecke 1976, 35-38.

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Kühne, Ferdinand Gustav (1835). “Wie die Kunst bei den Deutschen nach Brot geht!” In Steinecke 1976, 119-20.

Wienbarg, Ludolf (1835). “Wanderungen durch den Thierkreis.” In Steinecke 1976, 109-116.

Laube, Heinrich (1836). “Immermann's Epigonen.” In Steinecke 1976, 121-25.

Stahr, Adolf (1842). “Der politische Roman.” In Steinecke 1976, 162-67.

Auerbach, Berthold (1843). “An J. E. Braun, vom Verfasser der Schwarzwälder Dorfgeschichten.” In Steinecke 1976, 170-73.

Prutz, Robert (1845). “Über die Unterhaltungsliteratur, insbesondere der Deutschen.” In Steinecke 1976, 205-21.

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