Abstract
Büchner’s concern for the individual’s position in the state is central to all his work: but whereas in the Courier he deals with the immediate problems of Hessian politics in the 1830s, he uses the plays to explore the question in a more general and long-term manner. When he died his views were, however, still forming: much of his extant work is fragmentary or obscure. While I cannot pretend to illuminate all these obscurities a good many can be understood by reference to what Büchner had read and the tradition in which he stood as a dramatist. This tradition was one of dissent.
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References
A useful introduction to Lessing is by Wolfgang Drews, Lessing (1962).
Briefe die neuste Literatur betreffend, VII, den 16 Februar 1759. ‘Siebzehnter Brief’ printed in Gotthold Ephraim Lessings Sämtliche Schriften (23 vols), 2nd ed., ed. Franz Muncker (Stuttgart, 1886) vol. VIII, p. 42.
Ibid.
Hamburgische Dramaturgie, ‘Vierzenhntes Stück’, den 16 Junius 1767 Muncker, vol. IX, p. 239.
J. W. Goethe, Dichtung und Wahrheit, VII Buch, in Goethes Werke (Hamburger Ausgabe) 14 vols, vol. IX, pp. 279–281.
J. M. Lenz, Anmerkungen übers Theater (1774); (Stuttgart, 1979), p. 9 (Reclam UB 9815). Hereafter referred to as Anmerkungen.
A useful introduction to Schiller’s life and works is by Friedrich Burschell, Schiller (1958). See also Thomas Carlyle’s Life of Schiller, 2nd edn (1845).
Quoted Burschell, Schiller, p. 31.
Friedrich Schiller, Werke (Hanser Ausgabe) 3 vols (München, 1966), I, p. 65. Just this question is picked up by Hegel in Philosophie der Geschichte in reference to Schiller. See esp. ‘Introduction’, p. 70.
J. M. R. Lenz, ‘Über die Veränderung des Theaters im Shakespear’ in Anmerkungen, p. 108.
C. D. Grabbe, Napoleon oder die Hundert Tage (Stuttgart, 1977), (Reclam UB 258), pp. 72–3. Hereafter referred to as Napoleon.
Lehmann II, p. 413.
Napoleon, p. 91.
Ibid, p. 91.
C. D. Grabbe, Scherz, Satire, Ironie und tiefere Bedeutung (Stuttgart 1974, Reclam UB 397), p. 4.
Ibid, p. 65.
Ibid, p. 18.
Ibid, p. 31.
Ibid, p. 32.
Ibid, p. 54.
I am indebted to Gerhard Fricke and Volker Klotz, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur (15th edn) (Hamburg, 1971), p. 144.
See the essay on ‘Shakespeare’ in Von Deutscher Art und Kunst (1773).
The most rewarding English version of Meister is by Thomas Carlyle.
Goethe, Wilhelm Meister: Die Lehrjahre, Book IV, ch. xiii, Werke, VII, p. 246.
Lehrjahre, Book V, ch. vii. Ibid, p. 307.
I am indebted here to Norbert Oellers, ‘Geschichte der Literatur in den Rheinlanden seit 1815’, in Rheinische Geschichte (1979), vol. II, pp. 582ff.
For Statistical information on this subject see Eda Sagarra, Tradition and Revolution: German Literature and Society 1830–90, p. 96, and the tables at the end of Ernst Leopold Stahl, Das Mannheimer National Theater (Mannheim, 1929) pp. 383–423.
Franz Grillparzer, Diaries 1839–40, printed in Sämtliche Werke (Darmstadt, 1964) vol. III, p. 860.
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© 1982 Julian Hilton
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Hilton, J. (1982). A Tradition of Dissent. In: Georg Büchner. Macmillan Modern Dramatists. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-16737-1_3
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