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The German Genius

Page 104

by Peter Watson


  21. For Kolbe, see Alan J. Rocke, The Quiet Revolution: Hermann Kolbe and the Science of Organic Chemistry (Los Angeles and Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). See pp. 258ff. for Kolbe’s relations with Kekulé pp. 353ff. for the “collision” between Kolbe and Hofmann. See also Buckingham, Chasing the Molecule, p. 213.

  22. See, for example, Hertha von Dechend, Justus von Liebig: In eigenen Zeugnissen und solchen seiner Zeitgenossen (Weinheim: Verlag Chemie, 1943), pp. 44ff.

  23. New Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 4, pp. 310–313.

  24. Ibid.

  25. Henry Harris, The Birth of the Cell (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999).

  26. Harris, Birth of the Cell, p. 76.

  27. Lorenz Oken, Die Zeugung (Bamburg and Wurzburg: Goebhardt, 1805). Quoted in Harris, Birth of the Cell, p. 61.

  28. Henry J. John, Jan Evangelista Purkyne: Czech Scientist and Patriot, 1787–1869 (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1959). Chapter 6 is on Goethe and Purkyne, and there is an appendix on Purkyne’s contribution to physiology.

  29. Harris, Birth of the Cell, p. 88.

  30. F. Bauer, Illustrations of Orchidaceous Plants (London: Ridgeway, 1830–1838).

  31. Harris, Birth of the Cell, p. 81.

  32. J. E. Purkinje, Bericht über die Versammlung deutscher Naturforscher und Aerzte in Prag in September 1837 (Prague: Opera Selecta, 1948), p. 109.

  33. Harris, Birth of the Cell, p. 94.

  34.New Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 6, pp. 356–360.

  35. Harris, Birth of the Cell, p. 174.

  36. Ibid., p. 175.

  37. Theodor Schwann, Mikroskopische Untersuchungen über die Uebereinstimmung in der Struktur und dem Wachstum der Thiere und Planzen (Berlin: Sanderschen Buchhandlung, 1839). Quoted in Harris, Birth of the Cell, p. 100.

  38. Harris, Birth of the Cell, p. 4.

  39. F. Unger, Flora 45 (1832) p. 713.

  40. Dictionary of Scientific Biography, XIII, pp. 542–543.

  41. Ibid., p. 601.

  42. Vitezslav, Gregor Mendel: The First Geneticist (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).

  43. Harris, Birth of the Cell, p. 119.

  44. Nachrichten über Leben und Schriften des Herrn Geheimraths Dr. Karl Ernst von Baer, mitgetheilt von ihm Selbst (St. Petersburg: H. Schmitzdorff, 1866), pp. 322ff.

  45. Harris, Birth of the Cell, pp. 122–127.

  CHAPTER 14: OUT FROM “THE WRETCHEDNESS OF GERMAN BACKWARDNESS”

  1. Hagen Schulze, The Course of German Nationalism: From Frederick the Great to Bismarck, 1763–1865 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 43–45.

  2. For a discussion of “Staatsnationen” and “Kulturnationen” and the idea of a special path see Hagen Schulze, Staat und Nation in der europäischen Geschichte (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1994), pp. 108–125.

  3. See, for example, Ernst Cassirer, “Holderlin und der deutsche Idealismus,” in Alfred Kelletat, ed., Hölderlin: Beiträge zu zeinem Verständnis in unserm Jahrhundert (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1961), pp. 79–118.

  4. For his relationship to religion, see Wolfgang Schadewelt, “Hölderlins Weg zu den Göttern,” in Kelletat, ed., Hölderlin, pp. 333–341; Mark Ogden, The Problem of Christ in the Work of Friedrich Hölderlin (London: Modern Humanities Research Association. Institute of German Studies, University of London, 1991); and Max Kommerell, Der Dichter als Führer in der deutschen Klassik: Klopstock, Herder, Goethe, Schiller, Jean Paul, Holderlin (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1982).

  5. Heidegger—and others—were attracted to Hölderlin’s approach to “Das Volk.” See Kommerell, Dichter als Führer, pp. 461ff.

  6. For a detailed, moving account of the events leading up to the joint suicides, see Joachim Maass, Kleist: A Biography, trans. Ralph Manheim (London: Secker & Warburg, 1983), pp. 262–282. See also Lukács, German Realists, p. 17.

  7. Gerhard Schutz, Kleist: Eine Biographie (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2007), pp. 391–395. Heinrich von Kleist, Five Plays, trans. with an introduction by Martin Greenberg (New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 1988).

  8. For Grillparzer’s politics, see Bruce Thompson, “Grillparzer’s Political Villains,” in Robert Pichl, et al., eds., Grillparzer und die europäische Tradition (Vienna: Hora, 1987), pp. 101–112.

  9. Raoul Auernheimer, Franz Grillparzer: Der Dichter Österreichs (Vienna: Ullstein, 1948), pp. 48–61.

  10. Franz Grillparzer, Selbstbiographie, ed. Arno Dusini (Salzburg and Vienna: Residenz, 1994). An interesting mix of everyday comment and reflections on art and philosophy.

  11. Hermann Glaser, ed., The German Mind of the Nineteenth Century: A Literary and Historical Anthology (New York: Continuum, 1981), p. 212.

  12. Robert Pichl, “Tendenzen der neueren Grillparzer Forschung,” in Pichl, et al., eds., Grillparzer, pp. 145ff.

  13. Marcel Reich-Ranicki has released in Germany his own canon of works, of which Green Henry is number 4 (Reclam, Ditzingen, 2003).

  14. Even the love element, especially the love element, emerges slowly, gently. See Gerhard Neumann, Archäologie der passion zum Liebenskonzept in Stifters “Der Nachsommer,” in Michael Minden, et al., eds., Stifter and Modernist Symposium (London: Institute of German Studies, 2006), pp. 60–79; and Lily Hohenstein, Adalbert Stifter: Lebensgeschichte eines Überwinders (Bonn: Athenäum, 1952), pp. 226ff.

  15. See in particular Michael Minden, “Der grüne Heinrich and the Legacy of Wilhelm Meister,” in John L. Flood, et al., eds., Gottfried Keller: 1819–1890 (Stuttgart: Hans-Dieter Heinz Akademischer Verlag, 1991), pp. 29–40; but also Wolfgang Matz, Adalbert Stifter, oder, Diese fürchterliche Wendung der Dinge: Biographie (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2005). See also Lukács, German Realists, p. 199.

  16. Todd Kontje, The German Bildungsroman: History of a National Genre (Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 1993), pp. 26–27.

  17. Ritchie Robinson, Heine (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson [Peter Halban], 1988), p. vii. Lukács, German Realists, p. 106.

  18. Robinson, Heine, p. 7. See also Kerstin Decker, Heinrich Heine: Narr des Glücks; eine Biografie (Berlin: Propyläen, 2007).

  19. Robinson, Heine, pp. 10–11.

  20. Edda Ziegler, Heinrich Heine: Leben, Werk, Wirkung (Zurich: Artemis & Winkler, 1993). See also Robinson, Heine, p. 13; and Lukács, German Realists, p. 103.

  21. For his poems of this period, see S. S. Prawer, Heine: The Tragic Satirist (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), pp. 141ff.; Marcel Reich-Ranicki, Der Fall Heine (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1997); and Robinson, Heine, p. 20.

  22. Robinson, Heine, p. 22.

  23. Ibid., p. 27.

  24. Ibid., p. 81.

  25. For a discussion, see Reich-Ranicki, Der Fall Heine, pp. 86ff., quoting from Heine’s letters.

  26. Robinson, Heine, p. 87.

  27. Ibid., p. 93.

  28. For the last poems, see also Prawer, Heine, pp. 222f. Lukács, German Realists, p. 155.

  29. Jan-Christoph Hauschild, Georg Büchner: Studien und neue Quellen zu Leben, Werk und Wirkung (Königstein: Athenäeum, 1985), pp. 35ff. and 47f.

  30. Raymond Erickson, Schubert’s Vienna (New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 1997), pp. 5f.

  31. Ibid., p. 290.

  32. Gerbert Frodl, et al., eds., Wiener Biedermeier: Malerei zwischen Wiener Kongress und Revolution (Munich: Prestel, 1992), pp. 35–43.

  33. Erickson, Schubert’s Vienna, pp. 40ff. Hans Ottomeyer, et al., eds., Biedermeier: The Invention of Simplicity; An Exhibition at the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Albertina in Vienna, Deutsche Historische Museum in Berlin, 2006. Includes a chapter on the rediscovery of Biedermeier and one on the aesthetics of Biedermeier furniture. Probably the definitive work, visually speaking, for the moment. Schonberg, Lives of the Great Composers, p. 101. See also George Marek, Schubert (London: Robert Hale, 1986), pp. 110–111. Marek says these evenings were, as often as not, “drinking orgies.” But
they were well attended and, on one occasion, by a princess, two countesses, three baronesses, and a bishop.

  34. For Carnaval, see Ronald J. Taylor, Robert Schumann: His Life and Work (London: Granada, 1982), pp. 113–116 and 127–128. See also John Daviero, Crossing Paths: Schubert, Schumann, and Brahms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); and Alice M. Hanson, Musical Life in Biedermeier Vienna (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

  35. Taylor, Robert Schumann, pp. 320–321; and Schonberg, Lives of the Great Composers, p. 148.

  36. Clive Brown, A Portrait of Mendelssohn (New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 2003), pp. 74ff.

  37. Ibid., pp. 430–432.

  38. Celia Applegate, Bach in Berlin: Nation and Culture in Mendelssohn’s Revival of the St. Matthew Passion (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005).

  39. Eva Kolinsky and Wilfried van der Will, The Cambridge Companion to Modern German Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 155. See also, for example, Gunter Wiegelmann, et al., Volkskunde (Berlin: E. Schmidt, 1977); and Dieter Harmening, et al., eds., Volkskultur und Geschichte: Festgabe für Josef Düninger zum 65. Geburtstag (Berlin: E. Schmidt, 1970).

  40. Kolinsky and van der Will, ibid.

  41. See, for example, the periodical Germanistik: Internationales Referatenorgan mit bibliographischen Hinweisen (Tübingen: Niemeyer). In 1854, a police handbook was producd that blacklisted 6,300 individuals, including the post-Hegelians Arnold Ruge and David Strauss.

  CHAPTER 15: “GERMAN FEVER” IN FRANCE, BRITAIN, AND THE UNITED STATES

  1. Maria Fairweather, Madame de Staël (London: Constable, 2005), p. 1.

  2. Ibid., p. 4.

  3. Ibid., p. 303.

  4. Ibid., p. 307.

  5. Ibid., p. 375.

  6. Ibid., p. 379.

  7. Rosemary Ashton, The German Idea (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 12. See also Hertha Marquardt, Henry Crabb Robinson und seine deutschen Freunde: Brücke zwischen England und Deutschland im Zeitalter der Romantik. 2 vols. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964–1967). Jürgen Kedenburg, Teleologisches Geschichtsbild und theokratische Staatsauffassung im Werke Thomas Carlyles (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1960).

  8. Elizabeth M. Vida, Romantic Affinities: German Authors and Carlyle; A Study in the History of Ideas (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993). The abridgment of Crabb Robinson’s diary, edited and with an introduction by Derek Hudson, was published by Oxford University Press in 1967.

  9. Ashton, German Idea, p. 4.

  10. Ibid., p. 51. Coleridge was at first unconvinced about the merits of Faust, and he was not entirely wrong to be worried how it would be received. There was in Britain to begin with a violent rejection of the book; people took against its “immorality,” the bargain with God being regarded as especially shocking.

  11. See the chapters on Sartor Resartus and Frederick the Great, “That unutterable horror of a Prussian book,” in K. J. Fielding, et al., eds., Carlyle Past and Present (London: Vision Books, 1976), pp. 51–60 and 177–197.

  12. F. W. Stokoe, in German Influence in the English Romantic Period, 1788–1818 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1926), extends the influence to Scott, Shelley, and Byron. He prints a list of books “translated, adapted or initiated from the German” between 1789 and 1805. It includes 167 titles.

  13. Fairweather, Madame de Staël, p. 176.

  14. Ashton, German Idea, p. 24.

  15. W. H. G. Armytage, The German Influence on English Education (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), p. 6.

  16. Ibid., p. 23.

  17. Ibid., p. 32.

  18. Ibid., p. 42.

  19. Ibid., p. 52.

  20. Ibid., p. 54.

  21. Ibid., pp. 34 and 45.

  22. Hans-Joachim Netzer, Albert von Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha: Ein deutscher Prinz in England (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1988), p. 238. Stanley Weintraub, Albert: Uncrowned King (London: John Murray, 1997), p. 222. E. J. Feuchtwanger, Albert and Victoria: The Rise and Fall of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (London: Continuum, 2006).

  23. Hermione Hobhouse, Prince Albert: His Life and Work (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1983), p. viii. The standard work (though now dated) is Theodore Martin, The Life of HRH the Prince Consort. 5 vols. (London: Smith, Elder, 1880). See vol. 5, pp. 376ff., for Balmoral and political matters.

  24. Hobhouse, Prince Albert, p. 64.

  25. Franz Bosbach and John R. Davis, eds., Windsor-Coburg: Geteilter Nachlass—gemeinsames Erbe; eine Dynastie und ihre Sammlungen (Munich: K. G. Saur, 2007), pp. 49ff., 61ff. and 115ff.

  26. John R. Davis, The Great Exhibition (Stroud: Sutton, 1999), p. 155.

  27. Ibid., p. 114. See also Elisabeth Darby, The Cult of the Prince Consort (New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 1983).

  28. Ulrich von Eyck, The Prince Consort (London: Chatto & Windus, 1959), p. 68.

  29. Ibid., p. 86.

  30. Hobhouse, Prince Albert, p. 256.

  31. Albert Bernhardt Faust, The German Element in the United States (New York: Steuben Society of America, 1927), vol. 1, p. 5.

  32. Ibid., p. 33.

  33. Ibid., p. 477.

  34. Ibid., p. 567.

  35. Faust, German Element, vol. 2, pp. 202–203.

  36. James Morgan Hart, German Universities: A Narrative of Personal Experience (New York: Putnam, 1878).

  37. Faust, German Element, vol. 2, p. 212.

  38. Carl Diehl, Americans and German Scholarship, 1770–1870 (New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 1978), pp. 53 and 61. J. Conrad, Das Universitätsstudium in Deutschland (Jena, 1884), p. 25. Quoted in Diehl, Americans, pp. 63–64.

  39. Diehl, Americans, p. 116.

  40. Ibid., p. 141. And see Jerry Brown, The Rise of Biblical Criticism (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1969).

  41. Hans W. Gatzke, Germany and the United States: A “Special Relationship?” (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980), p. 30.

  42. Faust, German Element, vol.1, p. 438.

  43. Ibid., vol. 2, p. 261.

  44. Ibid., p. 369.

  45. Ibid., p. 401.

  CHAPTER 16: WAGNER’s OTHER RING—FEUERBACH,

  SCHOPENHAUER, NIETZSCHE

  1. Bryan Magee, Wagner and Philosophy (London: Penguin, 2000/2001), p. 1. This chapter is heavily reliant on Mr. Magee’s excellent book.

  2. Ibid., p. 3.

  3. Joachim Köhler, Richard Wagner: The Last of the Titans, trans. Stewart Spencer, (New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 2004), p. 140.

  4. For Wagner’s Hegelianism, see Paul Lawrence Rose, Wagner: Race and Revolution (London: Faber & Faber, 1992), pp. 28–31 and 62. Magee, Wagner and Philosophy, p. 35.

  5. Köhler, Richard Wagner, pp. 270–271.

  6. Magee, Wagner and Philosophy, p. 14.

  7. Köhler, Richard Wagner, p. 261.

  8. Marx W. Wartofsky, Feuerbach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), p. 322.

  9. Magee, Wagner and Philosophy, p. 52.

  10. For the way Feuerbach presaged Freud in certain ways, see S. Rawidowicz, Ludwig Feuerbachs Philosophie: Ursprung und Schicksal (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1964).

  11. Magee, Wagner and Philosophy, pp. 72–73.

  12. Ibid., p. 76.

  13. Ibid., p. 93.

  14. Köhler, Richard Wagner, pp. 418–419.

  15. Magee, Wagner and Philosophy, pp. 145–146.

  16. Rüdiger Safranski, Schopenhauer und die wilden Jahre der Philosophie (Munich: Carl Hanser, 1977), pp. 484ff. For background, I have used Dale Jacquette, ed., Schopenhauer, Philosophy, and the Arts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

  17. Magee, Wagner and Philosophy, p. 162.

  18. Ibid., p. 164.

  19. Lawrence Ferrara, “Schopenhauer on Music as the Embodiment of Will,” in Jacquette, ed. Schopenhauer, pp. 185ff.

  20. Magee, Wagner and Philosophy, pp. 166–167.

  21. Ibid., p. 168.
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  22. Köhler, Richard Wagner, pp. 421–425.

  23. Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena: Short Philosophical Essays, trans. by E. J. F. Payne (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), vol. 2, p. 287. Magee, Wagner and Philosophy, p. 171.

  24. Magee, Wagner and Philosophy, p. 193.

  25. Rudolph Sabor, Richard Wagner: Der Ring des Nibelungen; A Companion Volume (London: Phaidon, 1997).

  26. Ferrara, “Schopenhauer on Music,” p. 186.

  27. Magee, Wagner and Philosophy, p. 209.

  28. Köhler, Richard Wagner, p. 537. Magee, Wagner and Philosophy, p. 209.

  29. Magee, Wagner and Philosophy, p. 231.

  30. Joachim Köhler devotes 35 pp. of his Wagner biography to Parsifal and includes many details about a rival to Cosima, pp. 588–623.

  31. Magee, Wagner and Philosophy, p. 289.

  32. He was also a great stylist in the language. See Heinz Schlaffer, Das entfesselte Wort: Nietzsches Stil und seine Folgen (Munich: Hanser, 2007).

  33. Martin Ruehl, “Politeia 1871: Nietzsche contra Wagner on the Greek State,” in Ingo Gild-enhard, et al., eds., Out of Arcadia: Classics and Politics in Germany in the Age of Burckhardt, Nietzsche, and Wilamowitz (London: Institute of Classical Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, 2003), p. 72.

  34. Joachim Köhler, Nietzsche and Wagner: A Lesson in Subjugation, trans. Ronald Taylor. (New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 1998), p. 55. See also George Liébert, Nietzsche and Music, trans. David Pellauer and Graham Parkes. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). Wagner even asked Nietzsche’s help to buy underclothes.

  35. Rüdiger Safranski, Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography, trans. Shelley Frisch (London: Granta, 2002), p. 63.

  36. Joachim Köhler, Zarathustra’s Secret: The Interior Life of Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. Ronald Taylor (New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 2002), p. 93.

  37. Magee, Wagner and Philosophy, pp. 299–300.

  38. Ibid., p. 306.

  39. Ibid., p. 309.

  40. Ibid., p. 313.

  41. “Schopenhauer as Educator,” quoted in Lydia Goehr, “Schopenhauer and the Musicians: An Inquiry into the Sounds of Silence and the Limits of Philosophising about Music,” in Jacquette, ed., Schopenhauer, p. 216.

 

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