Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

History, Politics, and Poetry: A Gervinus Letter from 1838

1975; University of Toronto Press; Volume: 11; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3138/sem.v11.2.63

1911-026X

Jonathan F. Wagner,

In the deutscher Vormarz, when Germany's professors involved themselves in politics as never before, no academic sought to make his scholarly activities more relevant to practical politics than the literary historian Georg Gottfried Gervinus (1805-71). Aesthetically drawn to literature, yet fascinated by the practicality of history, Gervinus attempted in the mid-1830s to unite these two interests in his Geschichte der poetischen National-Literatur der Deutschen. Singling out for praise those literary figures he considered politically relevant, he created a literary history designed to educate his fellow Germans in liberal politics. Moreover at the same time he sought to politicize his life in other ways. Most dramatically he joined six other Gottingen professors in 1837 in protesting the abrogation of Hanover's constitution by that state's king. This politicizing tendency which Gervinus's literary history and his association with the Gottingen protest indicated is further illustrated by a hitherto unpublished Gervinus letter included at the end of the article. Written to a close friend, the letter describes Gervinus's involvement in the Gottingen affair; it includes some of Gervinus's own political poetry. In short it illustrates concretely the synthesis of politics and Erfahrungswissenschaft which so characterized the German Vormarz.