Robert Ignatius Letellier, PhD – Institute of Continuing Education, Madingley Hall, Cambridge

Series: Focus on Civilizations and Cultures; Lives and Times of Distinguished Artists
BISAC: HIS014000; BIO007000; ART000000
DOI: https://doi.org/10.52305/NIQN0238

“The Romantic Movement in Germany is an encyclopaedic book for those seeking to know more about this fascinating topic and its indelible contribution to European culture, art, philosophy and politics.  Letellier skillfully embraces and blends a fully referenced work that incorporates biography, opera, poetry, writing, painting, sculpture, architecture, women romantics, nature and the forest.  In contrast to the Enlightenment, it brings out the importance to German Romanticism of the mythical past and the supernatural. Thus, it highlights idealism, providence and transcendence.  Notably philosophy is covered such as Kant, Goethe and Hegel, and Fichte’s 14 addresses to the German nation.  This gives insights to the emergent nationalism. Letellier usefully notes the contribution of Scottish writers such MacPherson’s Ossian and the poems and novels of Sir Walter Scott to German Romantics. It is lavishly illustrated with 187 figures and also included are 29 readings. This should be essential reading and source of reference for those seeking to explore German Romanticism.” – Robert Gibson, Department of Civil Engineering, The University of the West of Scotland

The history, both political and intellectual, of Europe, but especially in the German-speaking lands, will be fundamental to consideration of the pre-Romantic and Romantic impulses that dominated the period 1770-1830. The Romantic Period in Germany is investigated in terms of the historical and social background (its context, centres and legacy), aspects of the Romantic imagination (concepts of truth, creativity, transcendence, liberty and redemption), dominating personalities of immense influence (Goethe, Schiller, Beethoven), the great literary collections of folktale and folksong (the Grimm Brothers, Arnim and Brentano), the novel (Novalis, Tieck, Hoffmann, Eichendorff, Fouqué), the lyric (Uhland, Heine), the drama ( Werner), the visual arts (Runge, Overbeck, Friedrich, Wackenroder, F. Schlegel), the music (esp. song and opera, Schubert, Weber). The wider legacy is also explored in the enduring influence of literary ideas on music throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries (Wagner, Humperdinck, Mahler, Richard Strauss). The centrepiece of the whole exercise is the Romantic opera Der Freischütz (1821). Using a folk tale from a popular collection of ghost stories, the poet Friedrich Kind produced a libretto that touched the very heart of the age, and inspired the composer Carl Maria von Weber to produce his masterly score that seemed to distil the every essence of Romanticism, and serves as an appropriate icon for the whole movement.