Michael S. Batts Book order

The rich legacy of German Romanticism is the focus of the sixteen essays by North American and European scholars written expressly for this volume. Although most of the essays are concerned with the echoes of Romanticism in literature and especially in the works of individual writers (e.g. Büchner, Mörike, Nietzsche, Thomas Mann, Hesse, Musil, and Christa Wolf), the political and philosophical implications of Romantic thought and ideas as well as their influence on the fine arts are examined. The book is a tribute to Hans Eichner, one of the most outstanding scholars in the field of Romanticism.

The various histories of German literature are not only general presentations of the research carried out, they have an existence of their own. They arose at the same time as literary research, but developed independently, at times in opposition to research.It is the author's endeavour to trace these histories up to the first large, comprehensive work (Gervinus).