Gustav Freytag

The German novelist, dramatist, and critic Gustav Freytag (1816-1895) was perhaps Germany's most popular author from 1850 to 1870. He portrayed the struggles and triumphs of the rising middle class with engaging realism.

Born in Kreuzburg, Silesia, on July 13, 1816, Gustav Freytag read voraciously as a boy. At Breslau and Berlin he studied Germanic philology. He abandoned a teaching career after several years to devote his energies to writing and scholarship.

Turning first to drama, Freytag demonstrated outstanding talent for technique and theatrical effect and achieved popular success with Die Valentine (1846) and Graf Waldemar (1847), both of which were vehicles for his views on modern problems. In 1848 he moved to Leipzig, where for many years he was assistant editor of the Grenzboten, an influential liberal weekly devoted to literature and politics. His next play, Die Journalisten (1852; The Journalists), still delights audiences with its witty, animated dialogue and admirable characterizations, despite thematic material that is now irrelevant.

Freytag's reputation today rests on his narrative works. His first and finest novel, Soll und Haben (1855; Debit and Credit), contrasts the solid and energetic mercantile class with effete nobility and sees the mercantile class as destined to become the foundation for the "new state." His skillful portrait of class types, variety of characters, interest in detail, and humor reveal the influence of Charles Dickens. His second novel, Die verlorene Handschrift (1864; The Lost Manuscript), exhibits a similar concern for detail, this time in the realm of academic life, but is flawed by artificiality of plot and characterization.

Freytag's most lasting achievement probably is his cultural history, Bilder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit (5 vols., 1859-1862; Pictures of German Life), a matchless portrayal of Germany's entire past. This masterpiece combines careful historical study with an almost poetic style. Freytag based a cycle of eight historical romances on this material, entitled collectively Die Ahnen (1872-1880; The Ancestors), which depicts the varying fortunes of a single family through many centuries. He had hoped to achieve immortality with this "national epic," but his flagging creative powers become evident in the uneven and diminishing merit of the successive volumes. Also deserving mention are Die Technik des Dramas (1863; The Technique of theDrama), Lebenserinnerungen (1886; Reminiscences of My Life), and a series of political essays (1887).

In 1879 Freytag moved to Wiesbaden, where he lived in comfortable retirement, showered with honors, until his death on April 30, 1895.

Further Reading

Biographical material in English on Freytag is still unavailable. For background see Benjamin W. Wells Modern German Literature (1895), and J. G. Robertson, A History of German Literature (1931; 6th ed. 1970).

Freytag, Gustav (Kreuzburg, Silesia, 1816-95, Wiesbaden), son of a burgomaster, studied German literature at Breslau and Berlin universities (1835-8), and from 1839 to 1844 was a lecturer (Privatdozent) at Breslau. His first literary publication was a comedy, Die Brautfahrt oder Kunz von Rosen (1844); it was followed by the plays (Schauspiele) Die Valentine (1847) and Graf Waldemar (1850). In 1848 he joined Julian Schmidt in Leipzig as joint editor and owner of Der Grenzbote, a periodical of moderate Liberal leanings. With his comedy Die Journalisten (1854) he achieved a spectacular success, and the social novel (see Zeitroman) Soll und Haben (3 vols., 1855), praising the burgher in commerce as the solid kernel of the German state, was reprinted twenty-seven times in twenty-three years. A second novel, Die verlorene Handschrift (1864), was less successful, but his popular survey of German history, Bilder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit (5 vols., 1859-67), attracted much attention.

Freytag gave up his newspaper work in 1861, though he resumed it for three years in 1867. From that year till 1871 he was also a deputy in the Diet (Reichstag) of the North German Confederation (see Norddeutscher Bund). In August 1870, at the personal request of the Prussian Crown Prince (see Friedrich III), he travelled with H.Q. to France, afterwards conceiving the idea of the patriotic, wide-flung, chronicle novel Die Ahnen (6 vols., 1873-81). In 1851 he bought an estate at Siebleben, near Gotha, and in his later years he spent the summers there and, from 1879, the winters in Wiesbaden. Freytag also published an essay on drama (Die Technik des Dramas, 1863, ed. K. Jeziorkowski, 1983) and a volume of reminiscences (Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben, 1887). A robust and vigorous, if at times insensitive, writer, he was the characteristic German literary figure for a whole generation. Gesammelte Werke appeared 1886-8 in 22 vols., in 12 vols., ed. H. M. Elster, in 1926.

Gustav Freytag.

Gustav Freytag (13 July 1816 – 30 April 1895) was a German dramatist and novelist.

Contents 1 Life 2 Works 2.1 Debit and Credit 2.2 Die verlorene Handschrift 2.3 Bilder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit 2.4 Other works by Freytag 2.5 Complete works 3 References 4 External links

Life

Freytag was born in Kreuzburg (Kluczbork) in Silesia. After attending the gymnasium at Oels (Oleśnica), he studied philology at the universities of Breslau (Wrocław) and Berlin, and in 1838 received his degree with a remarkable dissertation, De initiis poeseos scenicae apud Germanos. In 1839, he settled at Breslau, as Privatdozent in German language and literature, but devoted his principal attention to writing for the stage, achieving considerable success with the comedy Die Brautfahrt, oder Kunz von der Rosen (1844). This was followed by a volume of unimportant poems, In Breslau (1845), and the dramas Die Valentine (1846) and Graf Waldemar (1847). He at last attained a prominent position by his comedy, Die Journalisten (1853), one of the best German comedies of the 19th century.

In 1847, Freytag migrated to Berlin, and in the following year took over, in conjunction with Julian Schmidt, the editorship of Die Grenzboten, a weekly journal which, founded in 1841, now became the leading organ of German and Austrian liberalism. Freytag helped to conduct it until 1861, and again from 1867 till 1870, when for a short time he edited a new periodical, Im neuen Reich. In 1863 he developed what is known as Freytag´s pyramid, see dramatic structure.

Freytag died in 1895 in Wiesbaden.

Works

Debit and Credit

Freytag's literary fame was made universal by the publication in 1855 of his novel, Soll und Haben (Debit and Credit), which was translated into almost all the languages of Europe, including English by Georgiana Harcourt in 1857 . It was hailed as one the best German novels of its day, noted for its sturdy but unexaggerated realism, and in many parts highly humorous. Its main purpose is the recommendation of the German middle class as the soundest element in the nation, but it also has a more directly patriotic intention in the contrast it draws between the homely virtues of the German, the shiftlessness of the Pole and the rapacity of the Jew. As a Silesian, Freytag had no great love for his Slavic neighbors, and being a native of a province which in his mind owed everything to the Kingdom of Prussia, he was naturally an earnest champion of Prussian hegemony over Germany. His powerful advocacy of this idea in his Grenzboten gained him the friendship of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, whose neighbor he had become, on acquiring the estate of Siebleben near Gotha.

Die verlorene Handschrift

At the duke's request, Freytag was attached to the staff of the Crown Prince of Prussia in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, and was present at the Battles of Worth and Sedan. Before this, he had published another novel, Die verlorene Handschrift (1864), in which he endeavoured to do for German university life what Soll und Haben had done for commercial life. The hero is a young German professor, who is so wrapped up in his search for a manuscript by Tacitus that he is oblivious to an impending tragedy in his domestic life. The book was, however, less successful than its predecessor.

Bilder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit

Between 1859 and 1867, Freytag published in five volumes Bilder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit, a valuable work on popular lines, illustrating the history and manners of Germany. In 1872, he began a work with a similar patriotic purpose, Die Ahnen, a series of historical romances in which he unfolds the history of a German family from the earliest times to the middle of the 19th century. The series comprises the following novels, none of which, however, reaches the level of Freytag's earlier books:

1. Ingo und Ingraban (1872)
2. Das Nest der Zaunkönige (1874)
3. Die Brüder vom deutschen Hause (1875)
4. Marcus König (1876)
5. Die Geschwister (1878)
6. Aus einer kleinen Stadt (1880).

Other works by Freytag

Freytag's other works include:

• Die Technik des Dramas (1863), in which he explained a system for dramatic structure , later named Freytag's Pyramid.
• a biography of the Baden statesman Karl Mathy (1869)
• an autobiography (Erinnerungen aus meinen Leben, 1887)
• his Gesammelte Aufsätze, chiefly reprinted from the Grenzboten (1888); Der Kronprinz wed die deutsche Kaiserkrone; and Erinnerungsbidtter (1889).

Complete works

Freytag's Gesammelte Werke were published in 22 volumes, at Leipzig (1886-1888); his Vermischte Aufsatze have been edited by E. Elster, autobiography mentioned above, the lives by C. Alberti (Leipzig, 1890) and F. Seiler (Leipzig, 1898).

References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Gustav Freytag

• Works by Gustav Freytag at Zeno.org (German)
• Freytag's page at Projekt Gutenberg DE
• A free online eBook edition of Freytag's 'Ingo' text

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