Through an analysis of Goethe’s essay «Von deutscher Baukunst» this study intends to highlight the programatic value of the same for the first authentically German cultural movement, i.e. the «Storm ...and Stress». The paradigmatic figure of Erwin von Steinbach, the ingenious architect of Strasbourg Cathedral, sympathetically overshadows that of the medieval architect Eudes de Montreuil, whose re-evaluation is due to André Thevet from a patriotic and idealized Renaissance point of view. This is a curious parallelism in the name of creative genius and it represents the starting point of an important process that was to lead to a German aesthetic and literary renewal intended to overcome foreign models, especially French, and also to a re-evaluation of Gothic architecture in a patriotic and nationalist key.
Through an analysis of Goethe’s essay «Von deutscher Baukunst» this study intends to highlight the programatic value of the same for the first authentically German cultural movement, i.e. the «Storm ...and Stress». The paradigmatic figure of Erwin von Steinbach, the ingenious architect of Strasbourg Cathedral, sympathetically overshadows that of the medieval architect Eudes de Montreuil, whose re-evaluation is due to André Thevet from a patriotic and idealized Renaissance point of view. This is a curious parallelism in the name of creative genius and it represents the starting point of an important process that was to lead to a German aesthetic and literary renewal intended to overcome foreign models, especially French, and also to a re-evaluation of Gothic architecture in a patriotic and nationalist key.
This paper problematizes the etymology of the word “Ungeziefer” in Franz Kafka’s Verwandlung, connecting it to the Jewish tradition and Egyptian mythology as well as to the anti-Semitism that ...flourished from the Renaissance to the early twentieth century in the German and Central European area. Gregor Samsa’s desire for freedom and emancipation embodies a monstrous and tragical metamorphosis, which gives the opportunity to free the protagonist, albeit in a humiliating and nihilistic way, from the yoke of philistinism in the family, paradoxically freeing also his relatives from a stagnant existential condition. Kafka’s “Ungeziefer” thus becomes a symbol of growth, transformation and rebirth.
This thematic and stylistic analysis of the poem Marie Antoinette by Heine, one of the Historien taken from the famous Romanzero (1851), seeks to highlight the eeriness of the ancien régime ...personified by the ghosts of the queen and her ladies in the Tuileries palace after the revolutions of 1830 and 1848. The politically disappointed poet blames the aristocracy for being still bound to the Etiquette and for preventing the necessary social reforms proposed by the prince. For Heine, the light of reason should exorcise the wandering ghosts of a disturbing past.
