In Our Time - Sturm und Drang

Episode Date: October 14, 2010

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the artistic movement known as Sturm und Drang.In the 1770s a small group of German writers started to produce plays, poetry and novels which were radically different from what had gone before. These writers were all young men, and they rejected the values of the Enlightenment, which they felt had robbed art of its spontaneity and feeling. Their work was passionate, ignored existing conventions and privileged the individual's free will above the constraints of society.The most prominent member of the movement was Johann von Goethe, whose novel The Sorrows of Young Werther became its most notable success, translated into more then thirty languages. Despite this and other successes including Schiller's play The Robbers, the Sturm und Drang disappeared almost as quickly as it had emerged; by the mid-1780s it was already a thing of the past.With:Tim BlanningEmeritus Professor of Modern European History at Cambridge UniversitySusanne KordProfessor of German at University College, LondonMaike Oergel Associate Professor of German at the University of NottinghamProducer: Thomas Morris.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio four. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello, reflecting on the literature of his time, the late 18th century satirist, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, wrote,

If another and later species comes to reconstruct the human being from the evidence of our sentimental writings, they'll conclude man to have been a heart with testicles, that is, passionate and male. This criticism was also a less than flattering reference to one of the most significant intellectual movements of the 18th century. In the 1770s, a group of German artists, most of the young men,

wrote a series of daring works which shocked and delighted audiences at home and abroad. Their books and plays favoured emotion, raw emotion, over reason, personal liberty over morality. Their hero and figurehead was Goethe. For the tempestuous nature of their work, this movement became known as the Sturmund Drang, or English Storm and Stress. With me, to discuss Stormund Drang are Tim Blanning,

Emeritus Professor of Modern European History at Cambridge University, Susanna Cord, Professor of German at University College London, and Micah Ergel, Associate Professor of German at the University of Nottingham. Tim Blanning, before we go into more detail, can we just establish what's exactly meant by Storm and Drang, who's involved, how long did it last, why is it called that? Okay, well, a Sturmund Drang is usually translated as storm and stress, as you said in your introduction. That's not actually quite right.

I mean, I think I've got two native German speakers here who can correct me if I'm wrong, but a storm for storm is fine. But Drung really means urge or a strong desire. So there's a more sexual element, I think, in the German than there is in the English. It's not so much stress as an urge. As you quite rightly said in your introduction, it's a movement of the 1770s. It's quite short-lived. We're going to argue, I expect, about when we date it from,

but 1770 is a good starting point. When it ends, depends on how many people you include. If you include the young Schiller, which I will be inclined to do, then that takes us into the 1780s. But it's really running out of steam by the late 1770s, I think it's fair to say. But its influence on contemporaries and on what was to come was colossal, not least because at least two really very important intellectual figures were involved, Goerta and Herder, and as I indicated, if one includes Schiller, then that makes three.

And there are several other really quite important figures as well, like Lentz, the author of the tutor. And what it's about, I think, is prioritising, putting at the centre emotions, violence, self-determination, energy, action, all those concepts come up again and again. What was the dominant school of thought in 18th century Germany before they came along, roughly before the 1770s? As they saw it at least, what they were reacting against. And of course, as with all movements of this kind which are self-consciously revisionist and rebellious, they create something of an Aunt Sally.

But what they're reacting against is the rationalism of the Enlightenment, especially rationalism of the French Enlightenment. There is a strong xenophobic, not francop, nationalist element in storm and stress. I expect we're going to argue about that, but for my money, it's well in there from the start. So they're really reacting against what they see as an excessively rationalist enlightenment. But in Germany itself, we know there's an enlightenment in Scotland, enlightenment in France, enlightenment in London.

Was there an enlightenment in Germany? Were they acting against anything particularly German? They certainly did have an enlightenment in Germany. Indeed, they had a contemporary word for it, which is more than could be said for most other. Enlightenment, the word alf clareng. And so, yes, definitely. There were Germans against whom they were reacting

and to whom they were very, very rude. Number one enemy, I suppose, was a man called Friedrich Nikolai, who was the personification of rationalist Berlin, and they're very rude about him, not least because he writes some rather clumsy satires of Goethe's novel Verte, for example.

So they were storming the establishment? Yeah, they were. Yes, it's not kicking down an open door, there was something there to attack. Suzanne Acord, let's talk a little bit more about the Enlightenment which Tim Blanning has introduced. This Enlightenment had a huge effect across most of the countries in Europe. What effect did it have, say, on German literature and the way it was written? German literature changes massively in the 18th century,

largely because the understanding of the human being changes during the Enlightenment. If we go back again a little bit in the Baroque era, are people, most people tended to believe that suffering is a good thing for humans because the more you suffer, the greater your reward in heaven. And here comes the Enlightenment to say that man is endowed with reason. This is Emmanuel Kant. Man can be educated to use his reason. And the purpose of all of this education is to lead a virtuous life and to lead a happy life. And this is a radical thought leading a happy life here on earth. Literature obviously has to reflect that. And with all of that new role, with the new role of educating human beings

to virtue and happiness, comes the task really of lifting literature from where it is, which is when you look at German literature, pretty much in the dirt. Johann Christoph Götchett, who in my opinion is also an enemy number one of the Sturmer and Dringer, proposes in 1720 that the old style of drama, for example, no longer suffices to educate human beings. The old style of drama is basically we all get together in a barn and watch the joker or the jester, the old Hans Wollst, make some mildly utre jokes and touch unmentionedable body parts. That will no longer suffice. We will now memorize our lines. We will now write plays in the French classical style. Very, very strict formalism has to be observed. And that is...

what will create a great German literature based on either ancient Greek or French classical models. So you've given us, before the Sturmundrangers come along, you've given us the Enlightenment, which itself was a reaction to the Barn Theatre of Germany beforehand, the sort of almost medieval hangover theatre of the travelling place. So what grip did that enlightenment have on German thinkers in German life before the 1770s, just to give that a bit more context?

I would say that in Germany, of course, you have particularism, right? I mean, it's politically divided into 300-some-odd little fiefdoms ruled by dukes and landgraves. There is no national unity. And the idea that you can have a culture, a unified German culture that will eventually lead to a national unity, that is older than the 18th century. But I think the idea of educating humanity to virtue, that is actually an Enlightenment idea. That is actually a new thing. To charge literature with that specifically is a new idea.

Tim gave us some very effective broad brushstrokes at the start. But can we just reiterate and perhaps amplify what particular aspects of the Enlightenment these Sturm and Drangers in the 17th century were reacting against? What were they most worried about? They were worried about the formalism. Their idea, I think they are very much on board. They're not totally anti-enlightenment, actually. They've been called, again, that's a matter of controversy,

but they were very much on board with the project of human emancipation, but they were very opposed to the formalism of literature, the Alexandrine plays that Johann Christoph Goucchette put on stage, for example. And so you have this division, within the Sturmor and Dringer, total opposition to the early enrightenment and Godchad and total acceptance really of the late Enlightenment and Lessing. Lessing is one of the fathers of the movement.

So their idea of writing really is original genius. Gotchette's idea that genius can be learned, that great writing can be learned like virtue, is out the window. And their idea of aesthetics, really, is that you're kissed by the muse, and the original work springs into form full-blown. Michael Ergel, let's turn to individuals now.

One of the intellectual masterminds, perhaps one of the originators, or Johann van Herder, can you tell us something about him and what he, first of all, about him? Yes, I mean, Herder is perhaps best characterized in his early years as the theoretician of Storm and Drang. He is the mastermind. He is the one who provides the theory, if it is a theory. and that really touches on the things that have already been mentioned,

the focus on the emotions. Herda wanted to change literature and art, but also the appreciation of literature and art, by refocusing on emotional language, emotional expression, and also emotional understanding. Because he thought that aspect of human understanding had been neglected by the Enlightenment. He thought the Enlightenment was not necessarily terribly,

bad thing, but it was wrong in its one-sidedness, its focus on reason and rationality. And he wanted to sort of rebalance the scales by reintroducing emotional understanding, a focus on the emotion that expresses itself in language and in how you write literature. Can you tell us something about his position in German intellectual society and therefore his way is in the terms of influencing other people? Initially he was just a sort of radical young man he was well studied and he came from Kunisberg, the younger Kant

was one of the pre-critique Kant was one of his teachers but so was someone called Harmon who was the other side with Kant to some extent represents the Enlightenment in its final glory Harmon was very much focusing on the emotions again on

almost religious sort of inspiration that is semi-divine but also from the genius is inspired and Hada kind of learned from both of them as a young man and I think he initially attracted

attention by simply formulating ideas in quite a sort of fragmentary way but nevertheless publishing them Did you teach you to the university for instance? No, not at the point where Sturmundrang really happens and it's his friendship with Goethe

as well that kind of brings him to the attention of... We'll come to that in a moment if you don't mind, Michael. But in 1773, he edited this book of essays and people say that is in effect

the manifesto for the movement. What did the essays declare? The essays declare very much what we've already said already, but one key aspect, which I think is perhaps the kind of biggest contribution Hada makes to modern thought is

his sense of history, his sense of any art or any idea, in fact, has to be understood in its historical context. You can't take it out of the context. And this is a kind of, to some extent, quite a blow to the Enlightenment idea of universal values.

If you have universal values, you have a general yardstick, you apply this to everything. Obviously, some older literature comes up short. Whereas if you say, no, I need to understand this within the context of when it was created, how it was created, it may be very valuable. And it was also this rebalancing of the Enlightenment sort of general.

It has to be all the same. There are perfect rules. Constancy of human nature. We can apply this across the board. He felt that was kind of missing quite a lot. Tim Lunning, you have to? Yes, I think I would like to come in there because I think it's, I personally,

I would stress that it's more of a break with the Enlightenment than has been indicated. And the introduction of the name of Harmonia, I think is extremely important because it opens up pietism and pietism, which is a long-standing religious movement within the Lutheran Church, but a movement against Lutheran Orthodoxy

and Lutheran hierarchy and Lutheran doctrine in favour of the inner light. And if one's looking for a single metaphor, image which sums up Sturmant, Drung and Romanticism, which comes afterward, then the inner light seems to me to be crucial. And there's a fine remark made by Herder in a private letter to his fiancée,

and in 1771, I think, it was in which he said, all our actions must be self-determined in accordance with our innermost being. We must be true to ourselves. And that, I think, sums up the program very well. So if an act, a thought, something that has been created is to have any value, it has to come from the inside. It has to be lit by the inner light and not created in accordance with some exterior structure of rules. So that seems to have taken us some way from religion, but I don't think it has because the emphasis on the inner light for a true religious conversion is to be found in Sturmundrang in a secularised form. Does the word organic have a place here? Yes, I think it does,

very much so because Herder and Goethe, at this time at least anyway, believe very much that things which grew were to be preferred to artefacts. And Goethe, when he goes to Strasbourg in 1770, which we can take possibly as a starting date for Stormandrang, he has a kind of conversion experience, which in itself is a very Sturm and Drang kind of thing, by looking at the cathedral in Strasbourg. He sees it and he thinks everything I've been taught to despise

about Gothic architecture for its irregularity, its incompleteness, its barbarity and so on, it seems to me to be just wonderful. It's beautiful. It's grown. It's organic. It's not even finished. It's work in progress. And that comes out in this essay, which you've referred to already, which he writes for

the 1773 collection of hairdo. So organic is is right in there, I think, as a very important concept. Because as Micah was saying, Zerner, the idea of the classical idea that human nature was constant, that rules were, the three unities were constant, that even the meter was constant,

that was something that they found completely straightjacketing in. Indeed, yes. Well, they had, they took liberty, it's not even enough to say they took liberties with forms. They threw them out the window. They really tried to, live and write their own genius theory, which meant originality. I mean, the great ideas,

the great idols, really, of the movement are people like, both mythical characters like Prometheus and invented authors like Ossion. And they start writing against formal strictures. They start ignoring the three unities. They start, their plays don't even sometimes have five facts. They don't have connected speech or even complete sentences sometimes. I mean, that is the extreme anti-formulism of the Stomendrang. And the themes, I think, also become quite a bit more controversial in some Stom and Drang literature. They write about seduction, the consequences of seduction, infanticide, which is not really a mentionable theme in literature until then. Suicide, difficult human subjects

I mean extreme interest in the individual and what can happen to the individual Can we just sort of as it were pause and take a bit of a digression here on the book that was the centrepiece book I'd like to know what each of you think of it The Sorrows of Young Verta by Gertr published in 1774

it was a sensation it was translated into if it went through 30 editions in no time at all translated to European so we start with you Micah what was the impact What was the book about and then why I'll go around the table about the impact? Well, it's a huge impact.

The book is about a young man who can't have the woman he wants, and in the end he commits suicide. It's exactly this kind of shocking topic of suicide. One of the key kind of controversial passages in the book really are where Verta argues with his more rationalist kind of enlightenment figure-type friend, Albert, that he has a right to kill himself, that it is his right as a human being to end his life if that is the best for him. And he's not restricted in any way by moral or religious concerns.

And Albert, of course, argues against this. You can't do this. It's against order. It's against everything. And it's really this kind of very consequent sort of following of your own idea, your own intuition, and seeing that through, even if that means death. Yeah, I think I'm sure that's right. and all I'd add to it is that

is that Verta has, he keeps talking about his heart that's the most important part of his body, all right, but both literally and metaphorically and it keeps on coming up the word heart. It recurs again and again.

And there's also, in Verta, a profound introspection. He says somewhere quite early on, it's incidentally the novel is written in the form of letters. I mean, strongly influenced by Rousseau. Rousseau, we have not mentioned yet, but we jolly or should, because Rousseau is really at the heart of all this. And in many ways, it's in imitation of La Nouvelle-Louise,

Rousseau's own bestseller. But Verte says in one of his early letters, I turn inside myself and I find a whole world. That's what really mattered to him, was what was happening inside himself. And that just follows on what Michael was saying, and that was of paramount importance to him, what he did inside himself.

Why do you think it had this massive influence, Susanna? It had a massive influence because it is an epistolary, it is partly, I mean, it is an epistolary novel. And that means there is only one perspective. We only get Vyatta's letters. We never get any answer letters back until right at the very end when he's killed himself. The editor steps in and sort of ties off, ties up the novel. But until then you are in Vietta's head. And it's a difficult place to be because all of his trials and tricks.

and his heart and his love and his angst and his extreme contempt of society and the court are portrayed in, I would say, sympathetic ways. It's outrageous stuff and it's sympathetically portrayed. And the editor who also introduces the novel very briefly at the beginning, he has a two-paragraph introduction in which he says to the reader that Verta is worthy of the reader's love, not just approbation but love and that this book should be your friend if through conditions

outward conditions or your own fault you cannot find a better one there's your invitation to identify and Tim. I think there's something else we might add it just complements what's just been said and that is that I think it made a major impact because it has

a strong socially critical edge to it Verta is a person of respectable family but he's very definitely middle class. And he's mixing with aristocrats and feels on one occasion in particular that he's been humiliated by nobles. And that I think struck a chord in Germany in the sort of society that existed

in the third quarter of the 18th century. One of the writers great in mind by Goethe and taken up by other people in this movement, if you can call it out at this stage, Michael Eagel, was Shakespeare. Yes. He was massively important to them. Can you tell us why?

Well, he seemed to them embody all these kind of virtues and values that they wanted to promote. I mean, a bit of context, perhaps. In the sort of mid-18th century, Shakespeare was not really considered a great writer, certainly not by Enlightenment formalism, because he did not follow the rules. While his tragedies may have five acts, he didn't follow the unities because, well, he didn't. And that somehow made him faulty as a writer. And there were two schools of thought about Shakespeare in the mid-18th century.

One was saying he simply is not very good, and is, just it's too old and isn't up to scratch. And the other school is the apologists who said, ah yes, but there is good stuff in there and he's worthy of reading. And the Storm and Drang admiration, or Herder really does this in his one contribution to the volume that we've been mentioned, that collection of essays, he says, no, he's brilliant because he is natural, he is brilliant because he does exactly what is right in his context.

and he has this kind of strong emotional, metaphorical language that appeals to the heart and to the senses and he includes all of modern existence. He is not just about an aristocratic set of kind of gods or aristocrats, it's all social classes and it's full of subplots. He manages to make sense of the complexity of the modern condition. And that's why he cannot follow the unities, because they belong in a classical Greek context.

That's when they were right, but then no longer. Yeah, and Goethe wrote his own Shakespearean play. 1774 is Werter, a terrific hit right across Europe. The first German novel, certainly, to have made a work, becoming worldwide hit, published in dozens of different versions, but additions. But the previous year in 1773, Goethe had written and had performed a play called Goethe von Berlingen,

which is very much Shakespearean play. It's set in the 16th century. It breaks all the unities. There are at least two main plots and several subplots going, lots and lots of characters. It's very Shakespearean, and I think self-consciously so. And one thing, which, of course, my colleagues, would be better to comment on than I am,

but one of the most striking things about Goetz is its language. The language is rough and ready. It's idiosyncratic, it's colloquial. You can hear a lot of it coming from Luther's Biden, and Luther's Bible, incidentally, through pietism, a very important influence on the kind of language that the strawmen-drung people use.

It's a wonderful play. Probably better to read than to see performed, and that had a big, big impact. Still on Shakespeare for a moment, Susanna. Do you think that there were lines in Shakespeare, they were particularly attractive to Hamlet, but lines such as, you know, there are more things in heaven and earth

than they dreamt of in your philosophy, that particularly attract them. We ask such things as dreams are made of, the idea of the dream being superior to reason. and they could find that as well in Shakespeare, couldn't they? Absolutely, yes. There are a great number of Shakespeare admirers among the Stomondrang authors, partly because, as we've already said, because he doesn't follow the rules.

It comes all within himself. I mean, he is the quintessential original genius. We've dropped a stitch with Rousseau, Tim. I know you wanted to say rather more about Rousseau than you did. So if you can say where Rousseau fits into this, as we're talking about influences, Shakespeare is there, He said a direct influence on the first play, first play by Goethe. Yes.

And so on. So just, if we bring in Rousseau, then I'll go on from there. Right. Well, I think Rousseau must be introduced. He, of course, is he's a generation older than these men. One thing I should have said at the beginning, and we'll pick up it now, is that this is an angry young man movement. These men, and they are all men, everyone we've mentioned so far has been male anyway.

They're in their 20s. Goethe was one of the older of the two. head as a bit older still, Goethe was born in 1749. So in the 1770s, most of these Sturmundrenger are either in their late teens or early or early 20s. And what they liked about Rousseau was that Rousseau himself had had his own conversion experience back in 1749 on his way to Vassend, to see his friend Diderot, when the scales, as he put it later in confessions, had dropped from his eyes and he'd seen that all, where civilization was heading, with its rationalism and its enlightenment

was taking man, kind, human kind down the wrong road to a different kind of slavery. It was an enlightened, rational slavery, but it's slavery all the same. And that what really mattered, and then that Rousseau then works it out in his various discourses and his works, was what was happening inside the creative

individual. So we're moving with Rousseau very emphatically towards an expressive aesthetic. Not all the way, but we're moving in that direction. And that was something which made a very powerful appeal to the Sturm and Drung. And Rousseau, and Rousseau, and Rousseau actually is cited in a number of their works. Mike, another influence, we've talked about Shakespeare,

we've talked about Rousseau. Another influence was a fake, Ossian. The poem is supposed to come out of almost hermeric mists in the north of Scotland. That's right. And it was a fake, but it was very influential. Can you, but they took to it very strongly, didn't they? And there was a folkloric part of this movement too.

Can you? Yes, I mean, it's really this, Herre is looking for models, although models in the Storm and Drang context, are not rigid rules. They are just people who did the right thing in their historical context. Shakespeare was one.

Ossian, he thought was another, and he thought he was a sort of dark age Celtic bard. It's particularly this looking back to older forms of literature where Hedah felt this balance between reason and the emotions was still okay, was still beneficial for humankind, as it were. Because, I mean, it's very much this idea

that humanity is going down the wrong road, and if we go down further, we will end up in this kind of, of rational slavery, as Tim called it. And he felt there was almost a kind of religious zeal about this. He felt it needed to be stopped. And you needed to look

for the complete human being, which included the senses and the emotions. And models can be found in older literature. And Ossian was one of them. It was just, it did the movement some damage in a way when it was found out that Ossian was an 18th century

fake. But of course, he fitted the bill so perfectly because he was made up in the 18th century for exactly these concerns. So to some extent it was ideal. I mean, of course, Werta, the second part of the book is sort of under the EGs of Ossian, whereas the first half, the happier one, is under Homer. So, I mean, these are key figures that they really looked up to and fit it into their new aesthetic.

So, Zana Kod, can you give us an idea of the chief characteristics of a, if there is such a thing as a typical Sturmund Drang play in terms of plot and style? Well, all of these, most of these authors have very different plots and styles, but I'll start with the extreme and the one that I think embodies the Sturmundrang best, and that is Jacob Michael Reinhold Lenz, who wrote a number of plays, but the first one is the tutor in 1774, about a tutor engaged in a household who instruct a 16-year-old maiden, Gustchen, whom he seduces, who then gets pregnant,

and who then runs off to commit suicide, and Leifah, the tutor, who is misinformed that she has succeeded in this design, self-castrates himself on stage. And at the end of this comedy, that is what Lenz calls it, a comedy. Everything ends happily. All is forgiven, Gustin is reunited with her fiancé. So I think what we have here is an author acknowledging that there are severe, once you focus on the individual, you obviously focus on individual problems. So here's an author saying there are severe problems like seduction, like unwanted pregnancy, like infanticide, potentially infanticide, like suicide, like self doing damage to yourself.

but at the same time parodying whatever solutions there might be found. And it is actually the case that the Sturmer and Drang hero very often at the end of the play dies because he cannot adapt to his surroundings. I mean, that's Vietta, that's Goetz, that's Ferdinand and Kabala in Intrigant Love. I mean, most of them actually don't make it through the play. Yes, I agree with that entirely.

And if I can just add a word about the tutor, or the private tutor, I suppose, we should translate. translated as, there is definitely a social, radical, critical edge there. And the fact that the tutor feels obliged to cross straight himself has often been seen, I think rightly, actually is a metaphor for the German intellectual, who has all the intellectual capacity, but no political power at all. And the fact that he turns himself into a eunuch can be seen as a comment on their political impotence within the fragmented

political structure of the Holy Roman Empire. There is a lot of social criticism in the tutor. The major, the nobleman, is almost a caricature, presented as mean, petty-minded, spiteful, a very discreetly character indeed. Michael, he must mention Schiller, but briefly, I'm afraid. He said in his introductory remarks,

Tim said he wanted to bring Schiller in, only he seems rather later than the strict decade here. Can you say why you think the robbers is entitled to be part of Sturmundrang? I think it's absolutely entitled to be part of Sturmundrang. It's the last flowering of Stomodrang, really. The robbers is a Sturm undrang play. It has the prerequisites of that particular emotional language, of the very strong language.

They're swearing. There are different versions of it, toned-down versions and more explicit versions, like the Al Vieter as well. The language, also the plot, though, It's kind of a driven action, very fast. It's all about life and death and hell, mainly hell rather than heaven. And in the end, the two protagonists who represent two different principles,

two brothers, so Sturm and Drang motives, they're rivals, they both die. One is the art rationalist. He's very clever, very ruthless. He doesn't respect anything but his own profit. He commits suicide, that kind of illegal thing. And the other one, the slightly better one, he, good-looking, gifted, but a bit dissolute. When he's rejected by his father,

he becomes this kind of rebel. He joins a band of robbers. But he wants to do good. He wants to change society. It's a bit of a Robin Hood character, really. But he also comes a cropper and that he realizes through his robber life, he's become implicated in guilt and crime.

And he gives himself up to be executed. So while all this kind of violent and emotion and sort of drivenness is there. At the end, there's this question, what order do we follow and what do we do? And I think that's one of the things they try to put something else in the place of what they are against, but they end up with quite a lot of questions.

Susanna, do you want to come with? Yes, I would say the fact that Karl Moore gives himself up at the end, I mean, that is actually one of the reasons why many people say Shiller should not be part of the Stormendrang. I mean, I personally disagree with that, but it is a different ending from what the Sturma and Drenger usually do, this kind of self-understanding and this kind of almost acceptance of one's fate.

That is actually what is not Sturm and Drang about this character at the end, I would say. Because Vieter Goetz rant and rail until the very end, don't they? Tim Plano, you've talked about several times about the social aspect of this. Did it have a political influence at the time? No, I don't think it does really. It's very difficult to extract from the Sturmer and Dranger

any kind of coherent political message. They're against. And I think in a way that's one of the things which they did have in common with the Enlightenment, that they are against. They're against the inherited structures of the church and to a certain extent the structures of the state. But it would be very difficult to winkle out

just from the plots we've been summarizing here any kind of coherent political programme. So, for example, in the play from which the movement took its name, Sturmundrung, which was written by Klinger, wasn't it, 1776, although I have to say from that play, the title, it was then retrospectively imposed on the period. They didn't think of themselves as being part of Sturman Drung, as it were, although they did think of themselves as being a party or a movement or a group.

They had a sense of corporate identity. In that play, Sturmund Drung, the play by Klinger of 1776, it's set in America and yet two of the main protagonists are going off to fight against the rebels for the English. You know, you would have expected to be the other way round, but it isn't at all.

And Goethe, throughout his life I think, if he ever offered an opinion on politics, it was very much of a conservative kind. I mean, he and Schiller later, I think, although the Shiller of the Storm and Drang has certain radical characteristics, they regarded politics as a rather

subsidiary activity. why, Michael Ogole, why did it last only 10 years, almost 10 years, and why did it seem to disappear so quickly? Well, did it disappear? You please, I'm sure. Well, I think... All modifications and qualifications are welcome. It certainly ran out of steam, I think, as Tim said at the beginning.

And the kind of short answer to that is to some extent they grew up or they died. It was such a kind of violent and radical movement emotionally as well, that either they adjusted, as to some extent Herda did, although he did perhaps least, so Goethe certainly did, and Schiller in the end did as well, and they are the great survivors. When you say adjusted, you mean

changed completely in one way? I mean, Goethe went to Beimer, and he became a different Goethe, didn't he? I mean, he resented the success of the young Werter, even when Napoleon took a... He didn't want to meet Napoleon when he came to shake his hand as the author of Werter, yes.

I'm not sure Goethe ever, really fully rejected his Storm and Drang heritage and neither did Schiller, I don't think. I mean, I feel I can hear Schiller's Storm and Drang ideas reverberating through his great theoretical essays. And, I mean, Goethe spent his entire lifetime perfecting one particular play, and that's Faust. And Faust, of course, goes back to a fragment in his Storm and Drang days,

one of the first things he wrote before Werter, before Goetz van Berlichingen. and Faust is a storm und drang character but of course Goethe by that stage is able to put him in context and say I'm not sure is he a total hero and they're watching Faust you can see there are question marks he's still presented as this striving person who follows his own heart at all costs no matter how many deadline the way

but he you don't walk away with this idea that Faust is a complete hero he's questioned. I think he does this throughout much of his work. Susanna Coyd, we've talked so far entirely about male writers. First of all, were there any women involved? And secondly, were there a lot of women readers? Well, it does have that reputation, right, based on the heart with testicles. It does have that reputation as a purely masculine movement, angry young men and everything we've said. I would say there are probably no women who can be counted as part of the Stammer.

but there certainly were a number of what I would call observers, intelligent female observers, who wrote plays in the Sturm and Drang style while attacking its premises, really. One of them that I would count amongst that, there are three or four only, but one of them that I would count in that group is a woman named Christiane Karolene-Schlegel who led probably the least, the most un-Stormand-dran life that one can imagine. she was married to a pastor in some minor village, wrote a play about a menagerie in which the Stomendrang hero,

the play is called Duval in Charmi, 1778, and the Duval, the Stomandrang hero, while keeping all of the opposition against the aristocracy, against society, against the court, all of the Vertarian insistence on the right to his love is really portrayed as a domestic tyrant. who terrorizes his wife, terrorizes his son,

and ends up killing his lover because she will not agree to commit the traditional Sturmundrang suicide with him. So suicide really is turned into murder here and love is turned into terror. Tim Lining, it seems strange that it didn't really, Strum and Drang spread into the other arts in painting or music, or not much anyway. No, not very much, although,

because it has also been adopted as a chronological label, that often happens to labels, doesn't it, there have been attempts to bring in, in music, for example, some of CPE Bach's music, some of Haydn's symphonies from the 1760s and 1770s are described as schumann drunk, indeed have been marketed as such. But I've really never been able to trace any kind of documentary evidence

that the Hayden was influenced by any of the people we've been talking about. It may be that the most, the most, mood out there influenced him. That's possible, but that is so general. This really doesn't work. I think the clearest case, the clearest individual case, I can think of, Schuhrmann Drung, finding its way into another medium,

would be the Swiss German painter Fusli, or Fusley, as he renamed himself. In his wild, wild paintings, particularly of Shakespearean scenes, for example, there are definite parallels. And there there is documentary evidence, because he was very friendly with La Fata, who would, in touch of all the Sturman Dranger. So there there is definitely a crossover. What role did Sturmundrang play in the eventual formation

about German national identity? Mike, do you want to go ahead? Yeah, perhaps, well, a huge one, I think. Because it's around 18, well, in the late 18th century that there is a sort of sense that a modern German identity needs to be created if we go along with us that these identities are constructed. and it was exactly this kind of focus on older literature, on historical context, on your own historical context,

that kind of made this thinking possible. And it is also, of course, and we've mentioned this before, German literature, there isn't as much in the early half of the 18th century. The Enlightenment, there is a German Enlightenment, but it's not as strong with the French or the British Enlightenment. And suddenly, with the Storm and Drang, they burst onto the intellectual scene, and this becomes the platform for Goethe and Schiller to do their thing,

Weimar classicism and in the end it's also the platform from which German Romanticism is launched. And in the 19th century when literary histories were written, Sturmundrang becomes the starting point for German culture. It's course also the basis for it develops in this kind of huge cultural activity, German idealism, the new philosophy. And that really makes it a political item. I think there's almost no way of talking about.

talking about the Stomendrang that isn't political because the pre, you know, in the run-up to the Nazi era and during the Nazi era, right? I mean, he has Heinz Kindermann calling it the explosion of the German soul, the original, the first quintessential German movement. And it's played, it's had a very difficult role to play or a very controversial role to play. And conversely, since the 1960s, there have been all of these scholars who have given it a rather snooty treatment as this short-lived fad of angry young men who had no political goals and therefore sublimated in literature, which is also not quite fair to the movement, I think. Yes, I think it's very important how politicised the reception of the Sturmundrang is. In the 19th century, that was the starting point of German culture when it became implicated in this pithy line from Herda to Hitler, it became

imperative that Sturmundrang was minimized and the German enlightenment was brought to the force simply so one could say, ah, the Germans are reasonable. And so where do you think it stands now, Tim? I think it stands on its own merits. It produced several works of really very high quality. And so Goertz, Werter, the robbers, all those can survive in their own right, as things which we still want to read and are still moved by. Gertr himself referred to this as a sense of Germany emerging or Germaness emerging.

That's how he, looking back on it, he saw it as Germanus emerging, and we can see it especially in the language. Well, thank you very much. Michael Ergel, Susanna Caud and Tim Blanning. Next week we'll be talking about logic and its history from Aristotle to the present day. Thank you very much for listening. If you've enjoyed this Radio 4 podcast, why not try others, such as Thinking Aloud, where Laurie Taylor discusses the latest social science research. To find out more, visit BBC.co.com.uk forward slash Radio 4.