Romanticism

Romanticism Music • Start of what is known as Classical era in music

• Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) – German composer and pianist

– moved to Vienna in 1792 to study, though

– dedicated his third symphony to Napoleon • but in 1804 crossed out Napoleon's name on the title page

upon which he had written a dedication to him, as Napoleon's imperial ambitions became clear

– at 28, he began to lose his hearing • it has variously been attributed to syphilis, lead poisoning,

and typhus

• Beethoven's hearing loss did not affect his ability to compose music, but it made concerts -- lucrative sources of income -- increasingly difficult

– last public concert was in 1811

• Richard Wagner (1813-1883) – German composer known for his operas

– supported by Bavaria’s King Ludwig II who was obsessed with his operas

– Wagner frequently accused Jews, particularly Jewish musicians, of being a harmful alien element in German culture

• Characters in his operas like Mime in "Siegfried" and Kundry in "Parsifal,” are evil caricatures of the supposedly inferior Jews

• His most controversial essay on the subject was "Jewry and Music” (1851)

– He argued that Jewish musicians were only capable of producing music that was shallow and artificial, because they had no connection to the genuine spirit of the German people

– "Wagner was more than an anti-Semite. He wanted the extermination of all Jews.”

» Israeli journalist Noah Klieger in 2013

• referred to Jews as worms, rats, warts and trichinae (an intestinal parasitic worm)

Romanticism Music

Wagner and Hitler

• Wagner greatly influenced Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich – Hitler was 12 when he first heard Wagner’s music

live in Austria in 1901

– Hitler was a student and admirer of Wagner's ideology and music, and sought to incorporate it into his heroic mythology of the German nation

– In 1933, Hitler ordered that each Nuremberg Rally open with a performance of The Mastersingers of Nuremberg overture

– "Richard Wagner taught us what the Jew is.” • Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels

• Joachim Köhler’s

2007 book, where

he portrays Hitler

as Wagner's

creation

– According to

Köhler, Wagner

was the forefather

of the Holocaust

Wagner’s daughter-in-law, Winifred, and Hitler

• Even though Wagner

died before Hitler's rise

to power, the Wagner

family had close ties

with Hitler

• Wagner's daughter-in-

law Winifred Wagner

(pictured here) often

invited Hitler to a festival

of the composer's

operas in Bayreuth,

Germany

• When he was in prison

writing "Mein Kampf,"

she even sent him ink,

pencils and erasers

Hitler visiting the Wagners' home in Bayreuth in 1938

(shown here with Winifred)

Romanticism Music • Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

– Austrian composer

– Beethoven: "Truly, the spark of Divine genius resides in this Schubert!"

– died early b/c of typhoid and mercury treatments for his syphilis

• Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849) – Polish pianist and composer of the Romantic era

– Played for Russian tsar Alexander I at the age of 11

– Moved to Paris and became a musical sensation • Performed in the Tuileries at the court of Louis Philippe I

– Had an affair with George Sand (real name: Aurore Dupin), a French novelist

– Fled Paris in 1848 to escape revolution

– died of tuberculosis

– requested that Mozart’s Requiem be sung at his funeral

Romanticism Music • Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840—93)

– Russian composer

– used Western European forms instead of Russian

forms

– composer of Swan Lake

• He composed the music for the ballet, which was

fashioned from Russian folk tales

• tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by

an evil sorcerer's curse

– composer of The Nutcracker

– composer of The 1812 Overture

• Commemorates Russia’s defeat of Napoleon following his

1812 invasion • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BbT0E990IQ

Romanticism

• Revolt against Neo-Classicism and the Enlightenment

• Crystallized in England and Germany in 1790s until the 1840s

• Belief in emotional exuberance, unrestrained imagination, and spontaneity

• Artists led Bohemian lives filled with emotional intensity – Rejected materialism and rationalism

– choose to grow their hair long rather than wear powdered wigs

• Believed development of one’s unique human potential was the purpose in life

Romanticism

• Enchanted by nature as a source of spiritual

inspiration

– Saw the growth of industry as ugly, brutal attack

on their beloved nature

– Rejecting the "truths" of logic and mathematics,

the Romantics praised instead the powers of

imagination and emotion

• championed the individual's subjective right to

discover his/her own "truths"

• An artist’s imagination was God at work in the

mind

Romanticism

• Artists:

–Caspar David Friedrich

–Theodore Gericault

–John Constable

–Eugene Delacroix

Caspar David Friedrich

• 1774-1840

• Germany’s greatest romantic painter

• Showed beauty of northern German hillsides and even expressions of a religious mysticism

• Related several paintings to the search for the meaning of life

Wanderer

above the

Sea of Fog

Morning

The Solitary Tree

Monk by the Sea

The Cross in the Mountains

The Cross in the Mountains

• for the first time in Christian art, an altarpiece

was conceived in terms of a pure landscape

• The cross, viewed obliquely from behind, is

an insignificant element in the composition

• More important are the dominant rays of the

evening sun, which the artist said depicted

the setting of the old, pre-Christian world

• The mountain symbolizes an immovable faith,

while the fir trees are an allegory of hope

Riesengebirge

Theodore Gericault

• 1791-1824

• French romantic painter

• Influenced by Rubens

• wanted to create a profound art based on real scenes of real people

The Raft of the “Medusa” • depicts the aftermath of a contemporary French shipwreck in

which the incompetent captain had left the rest of the crew to die

• July 2, 1816, the Medusa, a French ship bound for Senegal, ran aground off the coast of West Africa

– There weren’t enough lifeboats on board, so 150 people were packed onto a hastily-constructed raft

– After 15 days of cannibalism and mutiny, 15 survivors were picked up

• The incident became a national scandal

• Gericault spoke to the survivors to understand how to paint the horror

– The painting was first shown during the trial of the captain of the Medusa

• The painting's notoriety stemmed from its indictment of a corrupt establishment, but it also dramatized a more eternal theme, that of man's struggle with nature – The freedom of all humanity will only occur when the most

oppressed member of society is emancipated

The Raft of the Medusa

A Mameluke of the

Imperial Guard

Defending a

Wounded Trumpeter

against a Cossack

• a print depicting the

Napoleonic Wars

• Nostalgic look at the

glory of the empire

• Shows the French

interest in Near

Eastern and Northern

African cultures

Series on the Insane • Gericault was commissioned to do a series of

10 portraits of the insane – They were patients of a friend, Dr. Etienne-Jean

Georget, a pioneer in psychiatric medicine, with each subject exhibiting a different affliction

• Dr. Georget wanted them for use as a diagnostic tool

– of which only 5 survive of the insane

• each subject exhibited a different affliction: – Portrait of a Woman Suffering from Obsessive

Envy

– Portrait of a Woman with Gambling Mania

– Portrait of a Kleptomaniac

– Portrait of a Child Kidnapper

– Portrait of a Man Suffering from Delusions of Military Rank

Portrait of a

Woman

Suffering from

Obsessive

Envy

Portrait of

a Woman

with

Gambling

Mania

Portrait of a

Kleptomaniac

Portrait of

a Child

Kidnapper

John Constable

• 1776-1837

• English romantic painter

• Specialized in

landscapes

– Constable once

remarked that “painting

is but another word for

emotion.”

• his poetic approach to

nature paralleled in spirit

that of his contemporary,

the poet Wordsworth

Malvern Hall from the Lake 1809

Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop’s

Grounds

Salisbury Cathedral

• Portrayal of a stable world in which

neither political turmoil or industrial

development challenged the traditional

dominance of the church

• The sky looks as if a storm has just

passed

– The trees have withstood this storm, and

the cathedral, which has stood since the

Middle Ages, has come through intact

Parham Mill at Gillingham

Stonehenge

Eugene Delacroix

• 1798-1863

• French romantic

painter

• Influenced by

Michelangelo and

Rubens

• Picasso was heavily

influenced by him

Liberty Leading the People

Liberty Leading the People

• Shows the Paris Revolution of 1830,

which Delacroix supported

Massacre at

Chios • The Greeks

struggle for freedom and independence won the enthusiastic support of liberals and nationalists – Delacroix saw in the

Greek struggle for independence against the Turks an affirmation of the ideal of liberty

• The Ottoman Turks are portrayed as cruel oppressors holding them back

Greece on the

Ruins of

Missolonghi

• commemorated the defeat of the Greek nationalists

• In the painting, Greece is personified as a young woman – The blood-spattered

ruins on which she stands indicate defeat

– symbolizes the defeat of a noble cause

Romantic Literature

• Believed poetry was enhanced by freely following the creative impulses of the mind

• British authors, playwrights, and poets – William Wordsworth

– Lord George Gordon Byron

– John Keats

– Jane Austen

– Charlotte and Emily Bronte

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

• Loved simplicity of nature

• Called the “poet of nature”

• “. . . poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility...”

• Said childhood was the bright period of creative imagination – Aging and urban living

corrupted and deadened the imagination

Lord George Gordon Byron (1788-1824)

• Was a member of the

House of Lords and

was very liberal in his

writing

• Don Juan, his satiric

masterpiece

– a prevailing focus on

external beauty

illustrating the

shallowness of humans

– Shows humans

fascination with beauty

• Fought in Greece for

their independence in

the 1820s where he

died of cholera

John Keats (1795-1821)

• “The great beauty of Poetry is, that it makes every thing, every place interesting”

• Rivalry with Lord Byron – “You speak of Lord Byron

and me - There is this great difference between us. He describes what he sees - I describe what I imagine - Mine is the hardest task.”

• Harshly criticized in his time that his work was not original

Jane Austen • 1775-1817

• English novelist

• Harsh social commentary

• Wrote a series of comedies of manners of British society

• Sense and Sensibility (1811) – published under the pseudonym "A

Lady“

– About sisters with opposite temperaments

– Elinor is the eldest daughter, and represents "sense" (reason), while Marianne is younger and represents “sensibility" (emotion)

• Pride and Prejudice (1813) – The story addresses courtship and

marriage among the landed gentry in the early 19th century

• Emma (1816) – about social classes and the love life

and matchmaking efforts of a socially and financially wealthy woman

Charlotte Brontë (bron-tay) (1816-1855)

• English novelist

• Published her first

novels under the

pseudonym "Currer

Bell"

– Chose a male name to

prevent readers from

reading it with a

prejudice

– Including her most

well-known novel,

Jane Eyre (air), in 1847

Jane Eyre

• a unique Victorian novel

• Follows the life of Jane Eyre

– Jane's childhood, where she is emotionally abused by

her aunt and cousins

– her education

– Her time as governess (a paid servant of low social

standing) at a manor for a young French girl

• Including her relationship with the master of the estate

• Through Jane, Brontë refutes Victorian

stereotypes about women

• sparked a movement in feminism in literature

• “…[women] suffer from too rigid a

restraint, too absolute a stagnation,

precisely as men would suffer; and it is

narrow-minded in their more privileged

fellow-creatures to say that they ought to

confine themselves to making puddings

and knitting stockings, to playing on the

piano and embroidering bags.”

– Charlotte Brontë

Emily Brontë (1818-1848)

• The younger sister of

Charlotte

• English novelist

• published under the

pen-name “Ellis Bell”

• In 1847, she

published her only

novel, Wurthering

Heights

• Died of tuberculosis

Wurthering Heights

• Story of the passionate,

yet thwarted, love

between two people, and

how this unresolved

passion eventually

destroys them and many

around them

• Wuthering Heights is the

Yorkshire manor that the

novel is centered around

Romantic Literature

• Scottish authors, playwrights, and

poets

– Robert Burns

– Walter Scott

Robert Burns (1759-1796)

• widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland

• wrote passionately on nature, his country, and his country’s culture – Also wrote of social injustice,

egalitarianism, and anti-authority themes\

• Wrote many famous poems, like Tam O'Shanter and Highland Mary

• Also wrote songs, including Auld Lang Syne – about love and friendship in

times past

Robert Burns

• In 1801, some of Burns' friends and admirers decided to honor the departed poet with a dinner, thus starting Burns Night (January 25th)

– Includes the traditional Scottish dish of haggis served with "neeps and tatties" (turnips and potatoes) and a "dram" (a glass of Scotch whisky)

• Haggis is a sheep’s heart, liver, and lungs minced with onion, oatmeal, and spices, and boiled in the sheep’s stomach lining

– haggis was a popular dish for the poor, as it was very cheap, being made from leftover, otherwise thrown away, parts of a sheep (the most common livestock in Scotland)

Walter Scott (1771-1832) • introduced Scottish readers to their

own history, and English readers to Scotland's history – Until then, Scotland had been, in the

English view especially, a wild and lawless place that had to be subdued by force

– Scott made it romantic, and this Scottish culture was spread by Britain around the world

• Rob Roy (1818) – Takes place at the time of the “Fifteenth

Jacobite Uprising,” one of a series of military campaigns by Jacobites attempting to restore the Stuart kings to the thrones of England and Scotland

• Ivanhoe (1820) – a historical romance set in 12th-century

England

Romantic Literature

• German authors, playwrights, and poets

–Friedrich Schlegel

–Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

–Heinrich Heine

–Johann Gottfried Herder

–The Brothers Grimm

Friedrich Schlegel (1772-1829) • married the daughter

of Moses Mendelssohn

• Lucinde (1799) attacked prejudices against women as being little more than lovers and domestics

– described Lucinde as equal to any male hero

• became opposed to the principles of political and religious freedom

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (“gur-tuh”)

(1749-1832)

• Inspired Darwin with his study on evolution

• His play, Gotz von Berlichingen, about a 16th century knight who revolted against centralized authority and championed individual freedom

• Known mostly for his poem Faust

Faust • His literary masterpiece

• best known version of the classic Faust story

• Poem written in 2 parts – The devil makes a bet with

God: he says that he can deflect God's favorite human being (Heinrich Faust), who is striving to learn everything that can be known, away from righteous pursuits

– Faust makes a pact with the devil, exchanging his soul for greater knowledge than other humans possess

– He then dedicates his life to the improvement of humankind

• Considered to be the greatest work of German literature

Goethe

• The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774)

– Written as a collection of letters written by

Werther, a young artist who is highly sensitive

sent to his friend Wilhelm

• Werther commits suicide after not being able to be

with the woman he loves as she is married

– led to some of the first known examples of copycat

suicide; supposedly more than 2,000 readers committed

suicide as Werther did

» “Werther fever”

– Napoleon considered it one of the great works

of European literature

• German Jew

• Loved Germany, but hated vulgar German nationalism – Books later burned

by Hitler in the 1930s

• “Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.” – From his play

Almansor (1821)

Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)

“Where they have burned books, they

will end in burning human beings.”

• Bebelplatz in Berlin

• the site of the book burning ceremony held on May 10, 1933 by members of Hitler’s SA and Nazi youth groups – burned around 20,000 books

• students at Humboldt University hold a book sale in the square every year on that day

Johann Gottfried Herder

(1744-1803) • Resented French

cultural dominance in Germany

• Revived German folk culture by urging the collection and preservation of distinctive German songs and sayings

• Opposed the common language and universal institutions that Napoleon had imposed on Europe – These were forms of

tyranny over a people’s individuality

• Led to emergence of nationalism in Germany

The Brothers Grimm

• Jakob (1785-1863) and Wilhelm (1786-1859) Grimm – Followers of Herder and his

German nationalism

• desire to help create a German identity

– Famous for their collection of fairy tales

• Wrote a German dictionary, the Deutsches Wörterbuch – the first major step in creating a

standardized "modern" German language since Luther’s translation of the Bible into German

• 1857 Children’s and Household Tales – contained 86 German fairy tales

The Brothers Grimm • Children’s and Household Tales

– one of the most frequently read books

in the world

• Aside from the Luther Bible, it is the

considered to be the most widely

distributed literary work of German

origin

– Stories included Red Riding Hood,

Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Hansel

and Gretel, Snow White and the

Seven Dwarfs, and Rapunzel

– Connection to Nazism

• Stressed discipline, obedience,

authoritarianism, glorification of

violence and nationalism, which

became part of the national character

• Led to the Allies banning the book in

schools after WWII

Romantic Literature

• French authors, playwrights, and

poets

– Madame de Staël

– George Sand

– Flora Tristan

– Victor Hugo

– Alexander Dumas

Madame de Staël (1766-1817) • Permanently banished from

France by Napoleon in 1803 for criticizing his dictatorial rule

• Urged France to overthrow their worn-out classical models – Urged experimentation,

emotion, and enthusiasm – the keys to creativity

• Criticized by most men, except Lord Byron, who called her “the most eminent woman author of this, or perhaps any, century.”

• Fought for women’s rights

George Sand (1804-1876)

• George Sand was the

pen-name of a woman by

the name of Aurore Dupin

– French novelist

– Adopted a male pen-name

in hopes of greater success

in the literary world

• Strong advocate for

women’s rights

• Her female characters

were educated, intelligent

individuals, unafraid to

speak their minds and

admired by men

George Sand

• Indiana (1832)

– the heroine Indiana is a young woman married to an

older man

• She doesn’t love him but is bound to him and subservient to

his wishes by custom and law

– Indiana to her husband…

• "I know that I am the slave and you are my lord. The law of

the land has made you my master. You can bind my body, tie

my hands, govern my actions: you are the strongest, and

society adds to your powers; but with my will, sir, you are

powerless."

• “You may impose silence upon me, but you can not prevent

me from thinking.”

• “I have been breathing the air of liberty, to show you that you

are not morally my master, and that I depend upon myself

alone on this earth.”

George Sand on marriage • found marriage as a male

dominant system that enslaved women

• “[Marriage is nothing but] conditions of inequality, inferiority, and of dependence of one sex upon the other.”

• “I cannot advise anyone to enter into a marriage, sanctioned by the civil law which continues to support the dependence, inferiority and social nullity of the woman.”

• “The laws which still govern a woman’s existence in wedlock, in the family, and in society are unjust and barbarous.”

• “Most women…are so desperate not to lose the men they love that they allow these men to rule their lives absolutely.”

Flora Tristan (1803-1844)

• French novelist and activist

• Advocate of women’s rights

• wrote newspaper articles and books to inspire the workers of France to form unions together and fight for their rights – The Workers' Union

(1843)

• “Divided, you are weak and fall, crushed underfoot by all sorts of misery! Union makes power. You have numbers in your favor, and numbers mean a great deal.”

• Through union dues, she insists on plans to provide…

– the workers’ children with safe havens and increased access to education

– to build homes for the ill and wounded workers

• acknowledges the need for the liberation of women in order to complete the emancipation of the working class

– women’s liberation will lead to the greatest good for the greatest amount of people

• Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831)

– His first full-length novel; deals with social injustice

• Les Miserables (1862)

– about social misery and injustice of France

• Hugo urged his fellow artists to free themselves from the restrictions imposed by the French classical style of theatre

– His play, "The Battle of Hernani" sparked near-riots between opposing camps of French society: Classicists vs Romantics and Republicans vs Royalists

• Equated freedom in literature with liberty in politics and society

– Supporter of republicanism

Victor Hugo (1802-1885)

-Portrait of "Cosette" by Emile Bayard, from the original

edition of Les Miserables

Victor Hugo (cont.)

• elected to the Legislative Assembly and the Constitutional Assembly following the 1848 Revolution

• But he declared Napoleon III a complete traitor to France when he took over complete power in 1851 – Fearing for his life, he went into self-imposed exile

outside the country for the next 19 years

– While in exile, Hugo published political pamphlets against Napoleon III, which were subsequently banned in France

• When Napoleon III fell, Hugo returned to France in 1870, where he was promptly elected to the National Assembly and the Senate

Alexander Dumas (1802-1870) • became a captain in the artillery of

the National Guard

• The Three Musketeers (1844) – Set in 1625, dealing with Cardinal

Richelieu and Louis XIII

• The Count of Monte Cristo (1845) – originated his acquaintance with

Napoleon Bonaparte's brother, whose younger son Dumas took occasionally on short educational journeys

• The Man in the Iron Mask – concludes the epic adventures of

the three Musketeers

• Traveled to Naples in 1860 where the political insurgent Giuseppe Garibaldi, who would later lead Italy to unification, had requested his presence – he supported Garibaldi and Italy's

struggle for independence

Romantic Literature

• Russian authors, playwrights, and

poets

– Alexander Pushkin

Alexander Pushkin (1799-

1837) • Considered Russia’s greatest poet

• Rejected attempts to force Russian poetry into a classical mold

• Czar Alexander I exiled Pushkin to the south of Russia because of the political ideas in his 1820 poem "Ode to Liberty"

– When Alexander’s brother, Nicholas I, came to power in 1825, he invited Pushkin back to the capital, and gave him a government post

– However, Nicholas acted as his personal censor, making sure that Pushkin didn't publish anything that would hurt the government

• They opened his mail, had spies follow him, and cut out whole stanzas from Pushkin's manuscripts

Romantic Literature

• Polish authors, playwrights, and

poets

– Adam Mickiewicz

Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855) • Polish poet who wrote passionately

about Poland and its history and greatness

• Born in the Russian Empire – In 1823 he was arrested, investigated

for his political activities, and exiled to central Russia

– After his exile, he vowed to never return to Russia, or to his own native land so long as it remained under Russian rule

• Met and worked with Goethe and Chopin

• 1828’s Konrad Wollenrod poem – Spoke of the burning hatred which

had characterized the long feuds of the Russians and Poles

• Adam Michnik called him “the greatest poet of anti-Russian protest”

• in 1855, he organized a Polish legion against Russia during the Crimean War

• “For the Polish nation did not die: its body

lieth in the grave, but …the soul shall

return to the body, and the nation shall

arise and free all the peoples of Europe

from slavery… And as after the

resurrection of Christ bloody offerings

ceased in all the world, so after the

resurrection of the Polish nation wars shall

cease in all Christendom.” – The Books of the Polish Nation (1832), written in

response to the crushed Polish uprising of 1830-1831

statue of Adam Mickiewicz in

Poznan, Poland

Romantic Philosophy

Romantic Philosophy • Georg Wilhelm Friedrich

Hegel (1770-1831) – German

– Most important philosopher of the Romantic period

– Influenced everyone from Marx and Engels to Lenin and Trotsky

– The clash of values and ideas allows humankind to develop

– Believed there was a World-Spirit, similar to God, influenced human history

• Great people, like Caesar and Napoleon, were instruments of that spirit

Hegel • Ideas develop in an evolutionary fashion

that involves conflict

– Thesis (set of ideas), antithesis (conflicting

ideas that challenge the thesis), and

synthesis (new ideas emerge and

becomes the new thesis)

– a "thesis" (e.g. the French Revolution)

would cause the creation of its "antithesis"

(e.g. the Reign of Terror that followed), and

would eventually result in a "synthesis"

(e.g. the Constitutional state of free

citizens)

Romantic Architecture

• Look back to Middle Ages as a time of

social stability and religious reverence

– Many medieval churches were restored

and many more were built to resemble

their medieval forerunners

British Houses of Parliament

Neuschwanstein

Neuschwanstein

• built in 1886 in German

state of Bavaria by King

Ludwig II

– “the Swan King”

– Reigned from 1864-1886

– Obsessed with the work

of German composer

Richard Wagner

– The building almost

bankrupt the Bavarian

monarchy

• In Fussen, Germany

amidst the Bavarian

Alps