Ge 207 German Culture in the Age of Revolution 1789-1848 2013/14

Teaching times: Lecture: Tuesday 4.00-5.00pm in R0.12 (Ramphal Building)

Seminar: Wednesday 09.30-11.00 or 11.00-12.30pm (H202)

Module aims

1. 
   to provide you with an overview of political, social, and cultural developments in Germany from the period immediately preceding the French Revolution of 1789, via the Napoleonic wars, the French occupation, the restoration of Germany after 1815, to the rise of socialism in the period leading up to the failed German revolution of March 1848;
   
2. 
   to locate within this historical framework key movements and currents in the history of ideas in Germany;
   
3. 
   to study in detail a selection of key literary texts from the German national cultural tradition as mediators of the central ideas and debates of the period;
   
4. 
   to further skills in literary critical analysis learned in the first year of your course.
   

Learning outcomes

• 
  have gained knowledge and critical understanding of a key period in the culture and history of Germany and insight into the range and variety of its cultural practices;
  
• 
  be able to demonstrate skills in independent critical analysis of a range of set texts from the period in German culture 1780-1848;
  
• 
  be able to contextualise set texts in terms of their relation to the social and political history of the period and/or the history of ideas.
  

In addition, the module will provide you with the opportunity to develop further the following skills:

• 
  the ability to abstract and synthesize key information from written and spoken sources in German and English;
  
• 
  the ability to organize, present, and defend ideas within the framework of a structured and reasoned argument;
  
• 
  the ability to formulate your opinions with reference to established interpretations;
  
• 
  the ability to analyse critically a range of materials in German and English (primary texts, secondary sources, contextualizing historical material);
  
• 
  the ability to apply critical methodologies to the analysis of literary texts;
  
• 
  the ability to conduct independent research using library and bibliographic resources and ICT skills.
  

Teaching and assessment

Lecture/seminar programme

Term 1

Week 1: Overview. Contexts and developments

Week 6: Reading week; no class

Week 7: The individual and authority – the individual and the national community: two dramas of conflict

Lecture: Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell (1803-4): tyranny, revolt, revenge – exploring the revolutionary character

Seminar: Tell – assassin or revolutionary hero?
Week 8: Lecture: Ideas of the nation

Seminar: “Wir sind ein Volk, und einig wollen wir handeln” – the construction of the ‘Swiss people’ in Wilhelm Tell
Week 9: Lecture: Kleist’s Prinz Friedrich von Homburg (1810): exploring the tensions within ‘benevolent despotism’

Seminar: Homburg – romantic hero vs. Prussian officer?

Week 10: Lecture: Kleist’s Prinz Friedrich von Homburg: conflicting readings

Week 1: The Romantic rebellion.

The political background to Georg Büchner Dantons Tod

Week 2: Lecture: Heine and the emergence of the modern

Primary texts

Term 1

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Die Juden (Reclam)

Friedrich Schiller, Maria Stuart (Reclam)

Friedrich Schiller, Wilhelm Tell (Reclam)

Heinrich von Kleist, Prinz Friedrich von Homburg (Reclam)
Term 2

Ludwig Tieck, Der blonde Eckbert (Reclam)

Joseph Eichendorff, Das Marmorbild (Reclam)

E.T.A. Hoffmann, Der Sandmann (Reclam)

Heinrich von Kleist, Das Erdbeben in Chili (Reclam)

Heinrich von Kleist, Die Verlobung in St. Domingo (Reclam)

Georg Büchner, Lenz / Der hessische Landbote (Reclam)

Georg Büchner, Dantons Tod (Reclam)

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Das kommunistische Manifest (Reclam)
Term 3

Heinrich Heine, Die Harzreise (Reclam)

Secondary reading

David Blackbourn, History of Germany 1780-1918 (London, 2003)

Mary Fulbrook (ed.), German History since 1800 (London, 1997)

Eda Sagarra, A Social History of Germany 1648-1914 (London, 1977)

Eda Sagarra, An Introduction to Nineteenth Century Germany (London, 1980)

Cultural and literary background:

Beutin, Wolfgang et al., A History of German Literature from the Beginnings to the Present Day (London, 1993),

Eda Sagarra and Peter Skrine, A Companion to German Literature (Oxford, 1997)

Brunschwig, Henri, Enlightenment and Romanticism in Eighteenth-century Prussia (Chicago, 1974)

Norman Hampson, The Enlightenment (London, 1968)

Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1983)

Dorinda Outram, The Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1995)

Hugh Honour, Neo-Classicism (London, 1968)

Hugh Honour, Romanticism (London, 1979)

S. S. Prawer (ed.), The Romantic Period in Germany (Oxford, 1970)

Isaiah Berlin, The Roots of Romanticism (London, 1999)

William Vaughan, German Romantic Painting (New Haven & London, 1980)

Hans Reiss, The Political Thought of the German Romantics (Oxford, 1955)
Individual authors:

Robertson, Ritchie. “Dies Hohe Lied der Duldung‘? The Ambiguities of Toleration in Lessing’s Die Juden and Nathan der Weise.” The Modern Language Review 93, no. 1 (January 1, 1998): 105–120.

T.J. Reed, Schiller (Oxford, 1991)

Lesley Sharpe, Friedrich Schiller (Cambridge, 1991)

Max Frisch, Wilhelm Tell für die Schule (Frankfurt/M., 1971)

Seán Allan, The Plays of Heinrich von Kleist. Ideals and Illusions (Cambridge, 1996)

Hilda M. Brown, Heinrich von Kleist. The Ambiguity of Art and the Necessity of Form (Oxford, 1998)

Jeffrey L. Sammons, Heinrich Heine. A Modern Biography (Princeton, 1979)