The Romantic Age: 1800–1830

Abstract

In the hindsight of our present-day perspective the closing years of the eighteenth century seem to be dominated by Goethe and Schiller, pictured perhaps as the familiar double statue of Weimar, where they stand with clasped hands and self-consciously noble gaze. But behind their backs all kinds of books, many of which must have earned tluir contempt or disapproval, continued to be written. Freiherr Adolf von Knigge (1752–96) capped the Aufklärung with his book of social psychology and wise advice on man management, Über den Umgang mit Menschen (1788), a bestseller of that generation. The Sterne-like Reise in die mittäglichen Provinzen von Frankreich (1791–1805) of Moritz August von Thümmel (1738–1817) kept up an earlier tradition of the whimsical, humorous, sentimental journey. Though Karl Philipp Moritz¹ (1756–93) later became a friend of Goethe, his autobiographical novel Anton Reiser (1785–90) had a depth of introspection which Goethe had early discarded. And towards the end of the century a new and original practitioner of the novel of mood, irony and spiritual exaltation appeared in Jean Paul, in private life Johann Paul Richter (1763–1825).