Abstract
It is easily understandable that Emilia Galotti should be the one German work which perhaps more than any other was to exert the greatest influence on the Sturm and Drang dramatists, whose interest in the relation of the individual to society and of feeling to reason made them particularly susceptible to Lessing’s play.1 The reason for the popularity of Emilia Galotti among these authors is, of course, due to the fact that it was more or less a wellspring for some of the main themes of Storm and Stress drama.2 Of these themes, mention may be made here of the struggle for political freedom and for individual freedom within society. Especially important are the moral problems of marriage between members of different social classes, of the woman “caught” between two men, of seduction, of freethinking in matters of love and marriage, and of such closely associated ramifications as abduction, bigamy, suicide, and infanticide.3
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References
For a detailed survey of this subject, see Joseph Zorn, Die Motive der Sturm-und Drangdramatiker,eine Untersuchung ihrer Herkunft und Entwicklung (Diss. Bonn, 1909). Cf. also p. 66, footnote 2 below.
Walther Hilpert, J. G. Hamann als Kritiker der deutschen Literatur ( Diss. Königsberg, 1933 ), p. 109.
Letter of April 3, 1772, to Heyne. See Robert T. Clark, Jr., Herder — His Life and Thought (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1955), p. 186. Concerning the “newness” of the play, see Chapter VI, p. 83, footnote 3 below.
From Herders Sämmtliche Werke,hg. Bernhard Suphan (Berlin, 1881), XVII, 283. Cf.: “Es ist sein Stand nur, der ihn zum Verbrecher macht” in Elise Dosenheimer, Das deutsche soziale Drama von Lessing bis Sternheim (Konstanz: Südverlag, 1949), P. 24. Cf. also Milliner’s comments, Chaqter V below.
Cf. Lessing’s letter of April 22, 1772, to Nicolai (LM, XVIII, 35 f.), in which he says that an actress can perform “too excellently.”
Cf. a similar comment in Anton Matthias Sprickmann’s Eulalia (Leipzig, 1777), II, 6, a tragedy labeled a copy of Emilia Galotti by the Berlinisches Litterarisches Wochenblatt; it was published anonymously.
Between Karoline’s last letter and Herder’s reply, Goethe had written his famous letter of ca. July 10, 1772, to Herder. See Chapter IV below for a more detailed discussion of this letter.
Aus Herders Nachlaß,III, 301 f., letter of mid-July, 1772. No exact date given. It is interesting to note that in the same letter, Herder refers to Goethe’s Götz as “gedacht” in places, once again possibly quoting from Goethe’s letter. However, Barker Fairley states that “evidently Herder had already expressed himself in similar terms, perhaps more sweepingly, to Goethe” and that “the comparison of Götz with Emilia Galotti in point of intellectuality is Herder’s; Goethe is presumably echoing it” in Goethe-Selected Letters (1770–86) (Oxford,1949), p. ‘53. The fact that Herder’s letter to Goethe is lacking prevents anything more than speculation in this matter.
In the case of Leisewitz, for example, see Walther Kühlhorn, Julius von Tarent,Erläuterungen und literarhistorische Würdigung (Diss. Halle-Wittenberg, 1911), esp. pp. 63 ff. Although there are some interesting remarks about Emilia Galotti in Lenz’ collected works, they were actually written by J. Georg Schlosser, Goethe’s brother-in-law, in an attempt to hearten Lenz after the discouraging reception of his comedy, Der neue Menoza. These comments, found in the work entitled Prinz Tandi an den Verfasser des neuen Menoza,treat Emilia’s “improbable” death. As he indicates, it is not particularly rare for a father to kill his daughter; the improbability of the matter rests on the fact that the weak and inactive Prince, wavering between virtue and vice, never presented a real danger to the girl. See Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz, Gesammelte Schriften,hg. Franz Blei (München und Leipzig, 1909), II, 474 and 481 f.
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© 1963 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Dvoretzky, E. (1963). Storm and Stress. In: The Enigma of Emilia Galotti. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-0949-7_4
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