Post-Revolutionary German Literature 1848-1888: Tracing Liberalism Through German Literary Realism

Abstract

This thesis aims to use literature to prove the existence of a political culture of liberalism within German-speaking society following the failed revolution of 1848. A political culture conveys the attitudes, beliefs, and feelings that provide the groundwork, underlying assumptions, and rules about a society or individual’s behavior within a political system. In pursuit of this goal, the thesis draws on the method of surface reading author’s works and their historical biographies. Since the authors inhabited reactionary regimes which utilized censorship to expunge the politics of liberalism, expressions of the political culture of liberalism through literature represented both a revolution from these conservative governments and a model for society to escape such a system. The German literary realists employed unique themes in their writings, but they shared the general liberal themes of Bildung, labor, freedom, and class distinctions. This study offers three authors with geographic and biographic diversity, who hailed from all over the German-speaking world: Prussia, Denmark, and Austria. The authors Gustav Freytag, Theodor Storm, and Adalbert Stifter helped establish and preserve a national political culture of liberalism predating political unification while avoiding censorship by their conservative regimes.