thumb|right|Gervinus in a lithograph by Joseph Anton Bauer

Georg Gottfried Gervinus (20 May 1805 – 18 March 1871) was a German literary and political historian.

Biography

Gervinus was born in Darmstadt. He was educated at the gymnasium of the town, and intended for a commercial career, but in 1825 he became a student of the university of Giessen. In 1826 he went to Heidelberg, where he attended the lectures of the historian Schlosser, who became henceforth his guide and his model. In 1828 he was appointed teacher at a private school at Frankfurt am Main, and in 1830 Privatdozent at Heidelberg. After several years in Heidelberg, Darmstadt and Rome, he settled permanently in Heidelberg, where, in 1844, he was appointed honorary professor. He zealously took up in the following year the cause of the German Catholics, hoping it would lead to a union of all the Christian confessions, and to the establishment of a national church. He also came forward in 1846 as a patriotic champion of the Schleswig-Holsteiners, and when, in 1847, King Frederick William IV promulgated the royal decree for summoning the so-called United Diet (), Gervinus hoped that this event would form the basis of the constitutional development of the largest German state. He founded, together with some other patriotic scholars, the Deutsche Zeitung, which certainly was one of the best-written political journals ever published in Germany. His appearance in the political arena secured his election as deputy for the Prussian province of Saxony to the National Assembly sitting in 1848 at Frankfurt. Disgusted with the failure of that body, he retired from all active political life. The nine-volume edition appeared in 1843 and remained the prevailing edition of Georg Forster's works for more than a century.

Gervinus now devoted himself to literary and historical studies, and between 1849 and 1852 published his work on Shakespeare (4 vols., 4th ed. 2 vols., 1872; Eng. trans. by F. E. Bunnett, 1863, new ed. 1877). He also revised his History of German Literature, for a fourth edition (1853), and began at the same time to plan his Geschichte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (8 vols., 1854–1860), which was preceded by an Einleitung in die Geschichte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (1853). The aim of the society was to publish the collected works of Georg Frideric Handel.

In 1868 appeared Händel und Shakespeare, zur Asthetik der Tonkunst, in which he drew an ingenious parallel between his favorite poet and his favorite composer, showing that their intellectual affinity was based on the Teutonic origin common to both, on their analogous intellectual development and character. The ill-success of this publication, and the indifference with which the latter volumes of his History of the 19th Century were received by his countrymen, together with the feeling of disappointment that the unity of Germany had been brought about in another fashion and by other means than he wished to see employed, embittered his later years,

He was a critic of Otto van Bismarck and of the manner in which German unification happened.

Works

Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung was the first comprehensive history of German poetry in a connected form. The author represented the literary activity of Germany in its successive stages as it grew out of her political life, thus making political history the foil and basis of literary history. His judgment was sincere and independent, although his criticism often assumed a censorious and pedantic tone against the most prominent poets of Germany, for example Goethe, Schiller and Jean Paul. Notwithstanding this criticism, the German people, without allowing themselves to be misguided in their judgment regarding the merits of these poets, gratefully accepted his work as a national homage to the subject.

Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung introduced the German composer Richard Wagner to the 16th century poet and musician Hans Sachs and the musical guilds of Nuremberg. It was an important influence on Wagner's opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (The Mastersingers of Nuremberg).

The object of Gervinus in writing this literary history was also a patriotic one. He endeavoured to show that Germany, having already attained great eminence in literature, should henceforth exclusively devote herself to political activity, and surpass other nations also in this respect.

Notes

References

  • Gervinus, Georg Gottfried. (1868). Händel und Shakespeare: Zur Ästhetik der Tonkunst. Wilhelm Engelmann (reissued by Cambridge University Press, 2009; )