Public demand for comedy has always been high in the German-speaking countries, but the number of comic dramas that have survived is relatively small. Those which are still read or regularly performed all have a serious purpose, and this collection of fourteen essays on the most distinguished of them shows how laughter can be exploited to treat personal, moral, and social problems in a way that would not be possible in tragedy. The texts range from the seventeenth to the late twentieth century, and no fewer than half of them are by Austrian writers. The contributors show how these plays are often subversive, regularly arousing an uncomfortable, self-challenging laughter, and how they treat such widely ranging subjects as language and communication, the complications of the sex drive, the inflexibility of the Prussian mind, and the behaviour of Austrian celebrities during the Third Reich. The essays are all written by specialists in the field and were originally delivered as lectures in the University of Cambridge.

The emancipation of Jews that commenced in Germany in the early 19th century pushed many Jews into urban commerce, industries, and intellectual professions. The ongoing modernization and the Jewish prominence in business brought about an anti-Jewish reaction. Jews were seen as the incarnation of the new materialistic "Zeitgeist", dishonest merchants pursuing non-German business practices, and usurpers of economic power. The Jews represented an alien, unwanted economic system. The backlash against the Jewish businessman was reflected in contemporary literature, from Wilhelm Hauff's "Jud Süß" (1827) to the Nazi novel "Shylock unter Bauern" by Felix Nabor (1934). Examines the representation of the Jewish businessman in German literature, in both antisemitic works and apologetic ones. Two "schools of thought" can be discerned in these writings: that the Jews, including the businessmen, can be corrected and assimilated into the German nation (e.g. in Freytag's "Soll und Haben", 1855); and the racist and eliminationist conception of the Jews as unassimilable and inherently detrimental aliens who have to be removed from the body of the nation (as in Wilhelm von Polenz's "Der Büttnerbauer", 1895), with Heinrich Mann's anti-Jewish writings somewhere in between. Discusses also the ambivalent stance of Theodor Fontane. Dwells on two "cautionary tales" written by Jewish authors and addressed to the Jews: the novel "Jud Süß" by Feuchtwanger (1925) and the play "Jud Süß" by Paul Kornfeld (1929), as well as responses to antisemitism addressed to a general audience: "Der neue Ahasver" by Fritz Mauthner (1881), "René Richter" by Lothar Brieger-Wasservogel (1906), and Hermann Bahr's "Die Rotte Korahs" (1919), a philosemitic non-Jewish response.

The call by German Early Romantic writers for a new mythology is one of the boldest and most unusual demands by any literary theorist. This study asks how an age which variously saw mythology as a historical phenomenon or a collection of artistically useful images came to see the need for its renewal at all. The author traces the evolving role of mythology in the writings of Winckelmann, Herder, Moritz and Schiller and argues that the late eighteenth century saw the emergence of a new conception of mythology which depended less on an established iconography and cultural context and more on the poetic and linguistic functions of mythology. This dehistoricized view of mythology formed the basis of the Romantic project and the author examines the works of Friedrich Schlegel and Schelling as well as the Älteste Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus against that background.

The German Revolution of 1848-49 offered a significant literary opportunity for all those interested in politics in general and the progress of women in society in particular. This book explores the work of a number of women who took up the challenge of breaking into the decidedly male preserve of political writing in this period. The focus is on women with very different concerns: Malwida von Meysenbug, the aristocrat who supported the democratic cause, the assimilated Jew Fanny Lewald; the housewife, musician, composer and teacher Johanna Kinkel; and the radical feminist Louise Aston. The work examines the strategies these women employed to negotiate potentially explosive issues such as the politics of the day, class, religion and gender, as well as the way traditional images like the father-child relationship are exploited to express new thoughts. Using a combination of close textual reading and thematically based analysis the book illuminates the authors' individual works and explores underlying issues that are common to all.

Stefan Heym's very beginnings as a writer were a direct response to the threat of Fascism and the mass veneration of Hitler, and in his American exile he was to encounter the marketing and image machinery of capitalism and democratic politics. After arriving in the GDR in the wake of McCarthyism he was then confronted with the Stalin cult and the stark contradiction between the personality cult and the purported aims of the Communist vision. This book examines Heym's response to a problem that did not die out with the collapse of the Soviet bloc and which he treated as a universal phenomenon, and probes the extent to which he employed various publicity techniques to shape his own reception as a writer. In this analysis of an often controversial figure, the author draws on much uncovered archive material, and places close readings in a broad context; this is one of few studies that deal with Heym's career as a whole, from his beginnings in the Weimar Republic and Czechoslovakia and his overnight success in America through to his eminence as an intellectual public figure in the GDR and the reunified Germany.

Louise von François (1817-1893) was a German realist writer whose work appeared in several editions during her lifetime and was translated abroad. Her most famous novel, Die letzte Reckenburgerin, attracted significant critical attention from her contemporaries and was regarded as one of the most innovative novels of the century. Her other prose fiction, however, is less well known. In the context of the ongoing re-assessment of nineteenth-century women writers, this book evaluates the thematic preoccupations and narrative technique of François's creative work as a whole. Through a study of ten representative texts, most of which have not been subject to detailed literary analysis in the past, the author considers François's powerful portrayals of female self-reliance, and seeks to elucidate aspects of her most cherished convictions, which centred on values of honour and duty, and on a vision of a more equitable and decent society.

Friedrich Schiller had a difficult relationship with the theatre world and wrote plays that, though successful on stage, ran counter to contemporary trends. This study sets Schiller in the context of the theatre history of his period by examining the impact on his dramatic production of the circumstances of the two theatres with which he was closely involved, the Mannheim National Theatre and the Weimar Court Theatre, where Goethe was Director. Born in the same year as Schiller, August Wilhelm Iffland was the most prominent actor of his generation and a prolific playwright, whose early career at the Mannheim theatre made him Schiller's rival. Yet later, as Director of the Berlin National Theatre, Iffland helped create a national repertoire with Schiller's dramas as its cornerstone. By analysing the theatrical careers of Schiller and Iffland in parallel, this study explores the developing belief in theatre as a cultural institution. It also illuminates the relationship between Schiller and Goethe as theatre practitioners.

Renowned as the chief challenger of traditional views of morality, man's freedom, and religion from 1650-1750, Benedict de Spinoza (1632-77) spread alarm and confusion throughout Europe through his writings. Theologians and rulers desperately sought to ban the spread of Spinozist ideas, and, in the post-Spinozist climate, eighteenth- century thinkers, often exasperated and perplexed, attempted to cope with the fallout from this intellectual explosion. The philosophical radicalism of Denis Diderot (1713-84), a French philosophe, and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-81), a German philosopher, well exemplifies the post-Spinozist mentality that permeated eighteenth-century thinking. As they grapple with the loss of intellectual, moral, and theological certainties, Diderot and Lessing re-work post-Spinozist ideas and in many instances elucidate even more radical ideas than Spinoza himself had envisaged.

Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) absorbed the fertile ideas of the German Enlightenment, observed first-hand fresh developments in German Romanticism, and fostered one of Europe's last great Classical movements. His insights into the human condition have endured and are as valuable now as they were when he first wrote. His characterisations of human nature remain compelling and his stylistic achievements in language continue to be admired and studied. His writing spanned many genres - poetry, prose, drama, history, philosophy - and includes a rich correspondence with Goethe. In this volume, an interdisciplinary and international group of scholars examines the many sides that Schiller displays. The contributors illuminate key facets of his ideas by organising his writing around his various vocations: his medical training; work as a poet, young dramatist, and author of literary prose; his tenure as a university professor and historian; the mutually productive partnership with Goethe; his philosophical writings; and his final years as a mature playwright. His afterlife, what Schiller has meant to Germans for two centuries, is also considered.

Permission to Laugh explores the work of three generations of German artists who, beginning in the 1960s, turned to jokes and wit in an effort to confront complex questions regarding German politics and history. Gregory H. Williams highlights six of them—Martin Kippenberger, Isa Genzken, Rosemarie Trockel, Albert Oehlen, Georg Herold, and Werner Büttner—who came of age in the mid-1970s in the art scenes of West Berlin, Cologne, and Hamburg. Williams argues that each employed a distinctive brand of humor that responded to the period of political apathy that followed a decade of intense political ferment in West Germany. Situating these artists between the politically motivated art of 1960s West Germany and the trends that followed German unification in 1990, Williams describes how they no longer heeded calls for a brighter future, turning to jokes, anecdotes, and linguistic play in their work instead of overt political messages. He reveals that behind these practices is a profound loss of faith in the belief that art has the force to promulgate political change, and humor enabled artists to register this changed perspective while still supporting isolated instances of critical social commentary. Providing a much-needed examination of the development of postmodernism in Germany, Permission to Laugh will appeal to scholars, curators, and critics invested in modern and contemporary German art, as well as fans of these internationally renowned artists.