A History of Histories of German Literature, 1835-1914

316 Pages·1993·17.505 MB·English

by  Michael S. Batts

A History of Histories of
German literature, 1835-1914
Histories of German literature were published in the hundreds throughout
the nineteenth century, and all adhered more or less closely to the
paradigm established early in the century by Heinsius, Koberstein, and
others. As the century progressed, however, the "standard" format was
modified as new methods and styles of presentation were adopted in
order to reach an ever wider public or to satisfy the requirements of
special interest groups. While the basic outline remained virtually the
same, the format varied from pure text to mainly illustration, and from a
single sheet to multiple volumes.
Most of those who produced histories of German literature were
schoolteachers rather than professors, and their aim in writing these
works - frequently directed at the general public as much, if not more
than, at schoolchildren - was nothing if not didactic. In the present work
the author surveys the extent of this somewhat amorphous genre, traces
its development in form and function, and points out the general biases
(primarily religious and political) that lie behind such factors as the
choice of writers discussed and their evaluation or the designation of
literary periods.
The work also covers foreign histories of German literature (European
and North American), and in these chapters conclusions are drawn about
the characteristic (i.e., national) features of these works and how they
differ both from German and from other foreign works.
Michael S. Batts is an emeritus professor of German at the University of
British Columbia.
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A HISTORY OF HISTORIES
OF GERMAN LITERATURE,
1835-1914
MICHAEL S. BATTS
McGill-Queen's University Press
Montreal & Kingston • London • Buffalo
© McGill-Queen's University Press 1993
ISBN 0-7735-1140-7
Legal deposit third quarter 1993
Bibliotheque nationale du Quebec
Printed in Canada on acid-free paper
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Batts, Michael S., 1929-
A history of histories of German literature, 1835-1914
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7735-1140-7
1. German literature - History and criticism - theory, etc.
2. German literature - History and criticism. 3. Criticism -
Germany - History. 4. Criticism - History. I Title.
PT47.B38 1993 830.9 C93-090219-X
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction ix
1 From Gervinus to the Middle of the Nineteenth
Century 1
2 From the Middle of the Nineteenth Century to
Scherer (1883) 34
3 The End of the Nineteenth Century and the
Beginning of the Twentieth Century 58
4 Titles, Periodization, and the Literary Canon 82
5 The Most Successful Histories of German
Literature and Translations into Other Languages 95
6 Foreign Histories of German Literature: French 112
7 Foreign Histories of German Literature:
English-language Areas (UK, USA) 129
8 Foreign Histories of German Literature:
Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Italy,
Poland, Sweden, Switzerland 151
9 An Overview 176
10 Conclusion 213
11 Bibliography 217
Index 288
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Acknowledgments
I have received substantial financial assistance towards the costs of
research for this work from the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, the
Killam Foundation, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada. Of the numerous institutions where research was
carried out, the most useful and the most helpful were the British Library,
the State and University Library in Gottingen, and the Austrian National
Library. Of the many colleagues who have assisted me in various ways, I
would like to single out for special thanks Dr Waltraud Fritsch-R6/Jler
and Dr Murray Hall.
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian
Federation for the Humanities, using funds provided by the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
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Introduction
The definition of a history of German literature remains in this work the
same as it was in my earlier work, A History of Histories of German
Literature: Prolegomena (1987), that is, "a work that presents in a
systematic and chronological fashion the entire record of German crea-
tive literature from the earliest times to the present." The form in which
this record is presented, whether in a series of articles or in book form,
whether in discursive prose or in a series of questions and answers, is
immaterial; the only essential is the completeness of the coverage. Partial
histories, for example of medieval or modern literature, have quite
different priorities and although these may be important for the history of
"Literaturgeschichtsschreibung" in general, for example, the works of
Hettner on the eighteenth century or R.M. Meyer on the nineteenth cen-
tury, they are not discussed here, except in very rare instances, that is,
when the broader context of literary history is also described. Complete-
ness of coverage is not only for my purpose the primary defining quality,
it is also something that can be defined. If one were to extend the defini-
tion to include partial histories, it would be impossible both to define
partial and to cope with the vast amount of works under this rubric.
That such varied forms of literary history can exist reflects the uncer-
tain nature of the genre, which is in effect a mixture of genres rather than
a pure genre. On the one hand, the history of literature is a sub-genre of
the wider genre of historical writing and derives at least some of its
authority from that genre, along with the idea that written history is itself
a literary genre. On the other hand, histories of literature record facts;
they record - in varying forms - who wrote what, where, and when. To
some extent, therefore, they are, like dictionaries, sources of reference (in