Young Germany

Young Germany, a social reform and literary movement in 19th-century Germany (about 1830–50), influenced by French revolutionary ideas, which was opposed to the extreme forms of Romanticism and nationalism then current. The name was first used in Ludolf Wienbarg’s Ästhetische Feldzüge (“Aesthetic Campaigns,” 1834). Members of Young Germany, in spite of their intellectual and literary gifts and penetrating political awareness, failed to command the enthusiasm of their countrymen but, rather, excited widespread animosity. This was partly due to their lack of social standing and higher education. The Jewish origins of some of the members was also a hindrance. The movement leaders were Ludolf Wienbarg, Karl Gutzkow, and Theodor Mundt. Heinrich Laube, Georg Herwegh, Ludwig Börne, and Heinrich Heine were also associated with the movement. They were identified collectively as Young Germany in a resolution of the Diet of the German Confederation passed on Dec. 10, 1835, which demanded the suppression of their writings by strict censorship in all the German states. Although several members of the group were gifted poets, they tended in general towards sober prose discourses, in which they tried to scour the dreamier aspects of Romanticism from the public consciousness and to arouse a drive for social and political justice. Young Germany also aimed for a vital democratic and national theatre and, in what was their most direct influence on literature, prepared the way for dramatic realism in Germany. The revolutionary movements of 1848–49 led to its decline.