Karl Gutzkow

Karl Gutzkow

Karl Ferdinand Gutzkow (Template:Birth date in Berlin – Template:Death date in Sachsenhausen) was a German writer and dramatist who promoted political and social reformism. He studied philosophy and theology with Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Friedrich Schleiermacher, and his early works, like the novel Maha-Guru, Geschichte eines Gottes (1833), were satirical. His 1835 novel Wally, die Zweiflerin led to his imprisonment and suppression, marking the start of the Young Germany movement. His plays, especially Uriel Acosta (1847, based on Uriel da Costa), influenced German and Yiddish theater.

Life and work

Upbringing and education

Born to a poor Berlin war-office clerk,<ref name="americana">Template:Cite Americana</ref><ref name="eb"/> Gutzkow may have rebelled against his father's strict pietism in his later agnosticism.<ref name="americana"/>

He began studying philosophy and theology<ref name="eb"/> with Hegel and Schleiermacher at the University of Berlin in 1829.<ref name="Sagarra">Sagarra, Eda (2000). "Karl Gutzkow, 1811-1878." Encyclopedia of German Literature. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn. p. 391-392.</ref> For the Augsburg Confession's tercentenary in June 1830, Hegel delivered an address in Latin as rector, declaring that Protestant Prussia reconciled religion, philosophy, and ethical life (Template:Lang).<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

But news of the July Revolution in Paris stirred radical politics.<ref name="americana"/> After Frederick William III's birthday celebration, Gutzkow wrote:Template:SfnTemplate:Blockquote

Hegel saw "catastrophe" in the Revolutions of 1830 but reaffirmed his dialectic before dying in 1831.Template:Sfn Amid the Template:Lang reaction,Template:Sfn spurred also by the populist Template:Lang (Awakening),Template:Sfn his followers split, and some were radicalized.Template:Sfn Right Hegelians' and centrists' reformism often slid into accommodationism or fundamentalism. The Young Hegelians sought divinity in human life and community, veering into revolutionary, atheistic humanism.Template:Sfn A "theologizing Paul", Gutzkow wrote that his bent for the Hegelian "Damascus experience" faded as he became a "philosophizing Saul".Template:Sfn

Early literary career

Gutzkow began his literary career at university with the 1831 periodical Forum der Journalliteratur, leading Wolfgang Menzel to hire him to co-edit Stuttgart's Literaturblatt.<ref name="eb">{{#if: |

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  }}{{#ifeq:  ||}}</ref> But Menzel, wrote David Friedrich Strauss, tried "to muzzle the spirit of the times".Template:Sfn

Gutzkow continued studies across the Universities of Jena, Heidelberg, and Munich, publishing Briefe eines Narren an eine Närrin (1832, Hamburg) anonymously. He wrote a fantastic, satirical Tibetan romance novel, Maha-Guru, Geschichte eines Gottes (1833, Stuttgart, Cotta),<ref name="eb"/> and founded the Deutsche Revue in Frankfurt, where he was living in 1835.<ref name="eb"/>

Punishment

Influenced by Strauss's Life of Jesus and French ideas like Henri de Saint-Simon's theory of the emancipation of the flesh, Gutzkow's novel Wally, die Zweiflerin (1835) was a critique of revelation and marriage, exalting its heroine's agnostic, emancipated views.<ref name="americana"/><ref name="eb"/> The German Federal Assembly promptly banned his writings and those of Heinrich Heine, Heinrich Laube, Ludolf Wienbarg, and Theodor Mundt by December 1835.Template:Citation needed This arguably marked the start of the Young Germany movement, whose literary reformers anticipated the German revolutions of 1848–1849.<ref name="nie">Template:Cite NIE</ref>

The Assembly sentenced Gutzkow to three months' imprisonment, barred him from editing in the German Confederation, and officially suppressed his work. This only amplified it.<ref name="eb"/> During his Mannheim imprisonment, Gutzkow wrote his treatise Zur Philosophie der Geschichte (1836). He returned to Frankfurt upon release and moved to Hamburg in 1837.<ref name="eb"/>

Theater and further novels

He began a new literary phase with the tragedy Richard Savage (1839), which was staged across Germany. The comedies Zopf und Schwert (1844), Das Urbild des Tartüffe (1847), and Der Königsleutnant (1849) entered the Germany repertory, as did the blank verse tragedy Uriel Acosta (1847). He moved to Dresden in 1847 to succeed Ludwig Tieck as literary adviser to the court theater.<ref name="eb"/>

He continued writing novels with Seraphine (1838), Blasedow und seine Söhne (a satire on the educational theories of the time),Template:When and Die Ritter vom Geiste (1850–1852),<ref>Template:Citation</ref> arguably the first German social novel. Der Zauberer von RomTemplate:When is a social allegory of Roman Catholic life in southern Germany.<ref name="eb"/>

After Die Ritter vom Geiste, Gutzkow founded the journal Unterhaltungen am häuslichen Herd (1852–1865, after Dickens' Household Words).<ref name="eb"/>

About 1860: "Carte de visite" of Gutzkow, No. "1170" probably made by an anonymous copyist

Later life

An 1864 epileptic seizure reduced his theatrical work, but he wrote the historical novels Hohenschwangau (1868) and Fritz Ellrodt (1872), plus Die Söhne Pestalozzis (1870, based on Kaspar Hauser) and the autobiographical sketches Lebensbilder (1870–1872). After another seizure, Gutzkow visited Italy in 1873 and then retired to the countryside near Heidelberg before returning to Frankfurt, where he died on 16 December 1878.<ref name="eb"/>

Legacy

Gutzkow was among the first Germans to try to make a living by writing. He promoted the emancipation of the Jews in works like Uriel Acosta, which was translated to become a Yiddish theater staple. A reformer rather than a revolutionary, he grew more conservative with age<ref name="Sagarra"/> and fell into neglect by 1910.<ref name="eb"/> His polemical work reflected generational struggles and shaped German thought.<ref name="nie"/>

Adaptations

His five-act comedy Zopf und Schwert (1844) was twice adapted: the 1926 film Sword and Shield by Aafa-Film, and Edmund Nick's 1940 operetta Über alles siegt die Liebe (Love Conquers Everything) to Template:Interlanguage link's libretto.

External links

• Template:Gutenberg author
• Template:Internet Archive author
• Template:Librivox author