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Weimar Classicism (German “Weimarer Klassik” and “Weimarer Klassizismus”) is a cultural and literary movement of Europe, and its central ideas were originally propounded by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller during the period 1788–1832.

Although Weimar Classicism's status as a "movement" and "classical" has been questioned by some scholars and historians, notably those outside Germany, its growing, immediate importance has precipitated greater awareness of it within academia and within German scholarship. Since contemporaries seldom adopted Goethe and Schiller's particular views on the “classical” it has been remarked these were possibly "premature" in development;^[1] it is, notwithstanding, plain that their efforts made profound and lasting contributions in such areas as philosophy, science, psychology, art, literature, and aesthetics.

Development

Background

The German Enlightenment, the culture of which is traditionally referred to as “neo-classical”, burgeoned in the synthesis of Empiricism and Rationalism as developed by both Christian Thomasius (1655–1728) and Christian Wolff (1679–1754). This philosophy, which was circulated widely by the Popularphilosophen in many magazines (“moralische Wochenschriften”), journals, and encyclopedia and dictionary entries, profoundly directed—along with its antithesis, Pietism—the subsequent expansion of German-speaking and, more inclusively, European, culture. The inability of this “common-sense” outlook convincingly to bridge “feeling” and “thought”, “body” and “mind”, led to Immanuel Kant's epochal “critical” philosophy. Another, though not as abstract, approach to this problem was a governing concern with the problems of aesthetics. In his Aesthetica of 1750 (vol. II; 1758) Alexander Baumgarten (1714–62) defined “aesthetics”, which he coined earlier in 1735, with its current intension as the “science” of the “lower faculties” (i.e., feeling, sensation, imagination, memory, et al.), which earlier Enlighteners had neglected. (The term, however, gave way to misunderstandings due to Baumgarten’s use of the Latin in accordance with the German renditions, and consequently this has often lead many astray to undervalue his accomplishment.^[2]) It was no inquiry into taste—into positive or negative appeals—nor sensations as such but rather a way of knowledge. Baumgarten's emphasis on the need for such “sensuous” knowledge was a major abetment to the “pre-Romanticism” known as Sturm und Drang (1765), of which Goethe and Schiller were notable participants for a time.

These and other publications set the stage for the “cultural struggle” (“Kulturkampf”) that would later be known as the historical period of Weimar Classicism. Education via art was used to reach a veritable relation between “action” and “insight” that revealed Goethe and Schiller's motion to produce a flourishing cultural milieu and innervate mankind to become “whole” in the process. This was particularly embodied in Schiller's Aesthetic Letters (into which Goethe later casted his fairy tale The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily^[3]).

Cultural and historical context

Characteristically and roughly, the movement Weimar Classicism is described to have occurred between Goethe’s return from his Italian journey (1788) and Schiller’s death (1805), his close friend and collaborator. It, however, could also extend beyond this delimitation to the death of Goethe himself. It was named in light of a handful of authors’ immense significance, and, more particularly, Goethe and Schiller, both of whom resided in the Duchy of Saxe-Weimar at this time, hence the toponymic “Weimar Classicism”. Responding to Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s (1717–1768) Gedanken über die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in der Malerie und Bildhauerkunst (Reflection on the Imitation of the Greeks; 1755) and Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (History of the Art of Antiquity; 1764),^[4] Goethe and Schiller developed a literary pursuit and praxis of the imitation of ancient Greek, classical models, a veritable undertaking of socio-cultural reformation through aesthetic conceptions and values, where organic wholeness and harmony (among other classical values, partly spurred on by the Enlightenment) were of central inspiration and importance.

By contrast the contemporaneous and efflorescing literary movement of German Romanticism was in opposition to Weimar and German Classicism. It is in this way both may be best understood, even to the degree in which Goethe continuously and stringently criticized it through much of his essays, such as “On Dilettantism”,^[5] on art and literature. After Schiller's death, the continuity of these ramifications partly elucidates the nature of Goethe's ideas in art and how they intermingled with his scientific thinking as well,^[6] inasmuch as it gives coherence to Goethe's work. Weimar Classicism may be seen as an attempt to reconcile—in “binary synthesis”—the vivid feeling emphasized by the Sturm und Drang movement with the clear thought emphasized by the Enlightenment, thus implying Weimar Classicism is intrinsically un-Platonic. On this Goethe remarked:

“The idea of the distinction between classical and romantic poetry [Dichtung^[7]], which is now spread over the whole world, and occasions so many quarrels and divisions, came originally from Schiller and myself. I laid down the maxim of objective treatment of poetry, and would allow no other; but Schiller, who worked quite in the subjective way, deemed his own fashion the right one, and to defend himself against me, wrote the treatise upon ‘Naïve and Sentimental Poetry.’ He proved to me that I myself, against my will, was romantic, and that my ‘Iphigenia,’ through the predominance of sentiment, was by no means so classical and so much in the antique spirit as some people supposed.

“The Schlegels took up this idea, and carried it further, so that it has now been diffused over the whole world; and every one talks about classicism and romanticism—of which nobody thought fifty years ago.”

– Eckermann; trans. Wallace Wood, Conversations with Eckermann, Wed., Mar. 17, 1830'''

Centrally, the conception of “harmony” (also “totality” or “wholeness”)—as it was earlier accepted as a fundamental element in Greek culture by German Classicism—profoundly embedded within Weimar Classicism, which developed during a period of social turmoil and upheaval, is neither an aim toward Platonic perfection nor, as promoted by the German Romantics, toward universality, which was systematized later by G. W. F. Hegel; it is the sole expression of a particular’s singular imperfect integrity. In like manner, whereof Goethe enunciated, the two polarities of classicism and romanticism may be employed in a work of art by means of excellence and discretion; and further, the naïve and sentimental forms of poetry, of which the aforesaid polarities bear out respectively, remain within a relation of mutual dependence and according to which they are limited.

Aesthetic and philosophical principles

Similar to the binarity noted above is Schiller's treatment of Formtrieb (“formal drive”) and Stofftrieb (“material drive”) when the two, which were inspired by Kant's various critiques, via reciprocal coordination—in a “proto-Hegelian” dialectical fashion—give birth to Spieltrieb (“ludic drive”), that is to say, the aesthetic par excellence. His elementary attitude toward art is given in “What Difference Can a Good Theatrical Stage Actually Make?” (1784):

[Art] should remain play, but also be poetic play. All art is dedicated to joy, and there is no higher and more serious task than of making people happy. The highest enjoyment, however, is the freedom of the inner life of feeling in the living play of all of its powers.

Concepts

“I cannot help laughing at the aesthetical folks,” said Goethe, “who torment themselves in endeavoring, by some abstract words, to reduce to a conception that inexpressible thing to which we give the name of beauty. Beauty is a primeval phenomenon [Urphänomen], which itself never makes its appearance, but the reflection of which is visible in a thousand different utterances of the creative mind, and is as various as nature itself.”

– Eckermann; trans. Wallace Wood, Conversations with Eckermann, Wed., Apr. 18, 1827'''

These are essentials used by Goethe and Schiller for which it is necessary to understand the course of their project.

Three key-terms:

1. Gehalt: the inexpressible “felt-thought”, or “import”, which is alive in the artist and the percipient that he or she finds means to express within the aesthetic form, hence Gehalt is implicit with form. A work’s Gehalt is not reducible to its Inhalt.
2. Gestalt: the aesthetic form, in which the import of the work is stratified, that emerges from the regulation of forms (these being rhetorical, grammatical, intellectual, and so on) abstracted from the world or created by the artist, with sense relationships prevailing within the employed medium.
3. Stoff: Schiller and Goethe reserve this (almost solely) for the forms taken from the world or that are created. In a work of art, Stoff (designated as “Inhalt”, or “content”, when observed in this context) is to be “indifferent” (“gleichgültig”), that is, it should not arouse undue interest, deflecting attention from the aesthetic form. Indeed, Stoff (i.e., also the medium through which the artist creates) needs to be in such a complete state of unicity with the Gestalt of the art-symbol that it cannot be abstracted except at the cost of destroying the aesthetic relations established by the artist.

In sum, Gehalt and Stoff must coalesce through the creative, aesthetic potential of the artist as a means to manifest Gestalt whereby all faculties converge within the percipient who may thereby participate in apperceptive aesthetic imagination in lieu of the artist's artistic imagination.

Other considerable terms and phrases used:

Ernst Form; Formtrieb Freiheit in der Erscheinung Heiterkeit lebende Gestalt ohne Ziel Schatten

Schein falscher / logischer Schein; wahrer / aufrichtiger Schein schöne Seele schöner Vortrag Spiel; Spieltrieb Steigerung Stoff; Stofftrieb

Notable participants and their works

Primary authors

See also: works by Goethe and works by Schiller.

Although the vociferously unrestricted, even “organic”, works that were produced, such as Wilhelm Meister, Faust, and West-östlicher Divan, where playful and turbulent ironies abound,^[8] may perceivably lend Weimar Classicism the double, ironic title “Weimar Romanticism”,^[9] it must nevertheless be understood that Goethe consistently demanded this distance via irony to be imbued within a work for precipitate aesthetic affect.^[10] This, similar to what Schiller wrote of Bürger's poetry, partly explains the varied nature of the works they both produced in a considerable light and how it is they can sometimes escape the most exacting of categorizations. The vast array of writings themselves, other than being solely literary pursuances or distichs, include scientific, philosophic, and aesthetic disquisitions and periodicals as well.

Goethe: Iphigenie of Tauris (1787) Egmont (1788) Torquato Tasso (1789) Reineke Fox (1794) The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily (1795) Conversations of German Refugees (1794–95) Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (1795–96) Hermann and Dorothea (1798) Faust Part I (1808) Elective Affinities (1809) Theory of Colours (1810) From my Life: Poetry and Truth, Parts 1–3 (1811) West-eastern Divan (1814–19) Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years or The Renunciants (1821) Faust Part II (1832) From my Life: Poetry and Truth, Part 4 (1833)

Schiller: Don Carlos (1787) The Ghost-seer (1789) On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1795) Wallenstein (1798–99) Mary Stuart (1800) The Maid of Orleans (1801) The Bride of Messina (1803) Wilhelm Tell (1804) By both authors in collaboration: Die Horen (1795–96) Musenalmanach (1796–97) Xenien (1797) Almanach (1798–00) Propyläen (1798–01)

Influence

Notes

Selected literature

Primary

Secondary

See also

Ernst Cassirer S. T. Coleridge Sigmund Freud J. G. Fichte Johann Georg Hamann J. G. Herder

Friedrich Hölderlin A. Humboldt W. Humboldt C. G. Jung C. G. Körner Laocoön

Johann Heinrich Meyer Karl Philipp Moritz Morphology Isaac Newton Friedrich Nietzsche Jean-Jacques Rousseau

F. W. J. Schelling Weltliteratur Christoph Wieland

External links

Primary sources

• “On the Sublime” by Schiller
• “Introduction to the Propyläen” by Goethe

Other sources

• Weimar Classicism in Literary Encyclopedia
• Klassik Stiftung Weimar (German)
• Goethes Allianz mit Schiller (German)
• Der späte Goethe (German)
• Centre for Intercultural Studies—Ernst Cassirer and Weimar Classicism
• English Goethe Society
• Goethe Society of North America

Apollonian and Dionysian Classicism Cultural movement

Friedrich Nietzsche Friedrich Schiller Jacob Friedrich von Abel

Johann Gottfried Herder Johann Joachim Winckelmann Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

List of German expressions in English Sapere aude Sturm und Drang

The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily The Sorrows of Young Werther