Weimar Classicism
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Weimar Classicism (in German: “Weimarer Klassik” and “Weimarer Klassizismus”) was a cultural and literary movement begun within Germany by both Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, which spread throughout Europe. Despite the fact that interest in, and emulation of, what they viewed as “classical” was never widely adopted by others (perhaps due to their premature arrivalWilkinson and Willoughby, Introduction to On the Aesthetic Education of Man, op. cit., p. ci.), their joint efforts to educate and to enhance their society during the period of 1788–1832 instilled profound and lasting contributions to such areas as philosophy, science, psychology, art, 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 an amassment of 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.Cf. Nivelle, Les Théories esthétiques en Allemagne de Baumgarten à Kant. Bibliothèque de la Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres de l’Université de Liège (Paris, 1955), pp. 21 ff.) That is to say, it was no inquiry into taste—into positive or negative appeals—nor sensations as such but it was rather to be a way of knowledge. Baumgarten's emphasis on the need for such “sensuous” knowledge was a major eduction to the “pre-Romanticism” known as Sturm und Drang (1765), of which Goethe and Schiller were notable participants for a time.These preliminaries thus set the stage for the “cultural struggle” (“Kulturkampf”) that would later be known as the historical period of Weimar Classicism. More particularly, it was through the modes of education via art, as embodied by, for example, Schiller's Aesthetic Letters, in order to reach a confirmable relation between “action” and “insight”, between theory and praxis, that guided Goethe and Schiller's characteristic aim to produce a flourishing cultural milieu and to innervate mankind to become “whole” in the process.
Cultural and historical context
Characteristically and roughly, the movement Weimar Classicism is described to have occurred between Goethe’s rearrival from his Italian journey (1788) and Schiller’s death (1805), who was his close friend and collaborator. It, however, conceivably extends beyond this delimitation to the death of Goethe himself. It was named in light of a handful of authors’ immense significance, and, more particularly, these, as already indicated, are Goethe and Schiller, for both of whom the Duchy of Saxe-Weimar was residence during this period, hence the toponymic “Weimar Classicism”. In the main, 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),Morrison, ed., Winckelmann and the Notion of Aesthetic Education (Oxford, England: Oxford University, 1996), pp. 206 ff. 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 literary movement of German Romanticism, which effloresced during this time, set itself in opposition to Weimar Classicism (and German Classicism more generally). 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”,Borchmeyer, op. cit., p. 58. 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,Vaget, Dilettantismus und Meisterschaft: Zum Problem des Dilettantismus bei Goethe: Praxis, Theorie, Zeitkritik (Munich: Winkler, 1971). 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:
Wholeness
Centrally, the conception of harmoniousness (also “totality” or “wholeness”) 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):
Concepts
These are essentials used by Goethe and Schiller for which it is necessary to understand the course of their project.
Three key-terms:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Other considerable terms and phrases used:
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Notable participants and their works
Primary authors
- See also: works by Goethe and works by Schiller.
Goethe:
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Influence
Notes
Selected literature
Primary
- Schiller, J. C. Friedrich, On the Aesthetic Education of Man: In a Series of Letters, ed. and trans. by Wilkinson, Elizabeth M. and L.A. Willoughby, Clarendon Press, 1967.
Secondary
- Bishop, Paul & R.H. Stephenson, Friedrich Nietzsche and Weimar Classicism, Camden House, 2004, ISBN 1571132805.
- —, ‘Goethe’s Late Verse’, in The Literature of German Romanticism, ed. by Dennis F. Mahoney, Vol 8 of The Camden House History of German Literature, Rochester, N. Y., 2004.
- Borchmeyer, Dieter, Weimarer Klassik: Portrait einer Epoche, Weinheim, 1994, ISBN 3895471127.
- Cassirer, Ernst, Goethe und die geschichtliche Welt, Berlin, 1932.
- Ellis, John, Schiller’s Kalliasbriefe and the Study of his Aesthetic Theory, The Hague, 1970.
- Kerry, S., Schiller’s Writings on Aesthetics, Manchester, 1961.
- Nisbet, H.B., Goethe and the Scientific Tradition, Leeds, 1972, ISBN 0854570500.
- Martin, Nicholas, Nietzsche and Schiller: Untimely Aesthetics, Clarendon Press, 1996, ISBN 0198159137.
- Stephenson, R.H., ‘The Cultural Theory of Weimar Classicism in the light of Coleridge’s Doctrine of Aesthetic Knowledge’, in Goethe 2000, ed. by Paul Bishop and R.H. Stephenson, Leeds, 2000.
- —, ‘Die ästhetische Gegenwärtigkeit des Vergangenen: Goethes “Maximen und Reflexionen” über Geschichte und Gesellschaft, Erkenntnis und Erziehung’, Goethe-Jahrbuch, 114, 1997, 101-12; 382-84.
- —, ‘Goethe’s Prose Style: Making Sense of Sense’, Publications of the English Goethe Society, 66, 1996, 31-41.
- —, Goethe’s Conception of Knowledge and Science, Edinburgh, 1995, ISBN 074860538X.
- Wilkinson, Elizabeth M. and L.A. Willoughby, ‘“The Whole Man” in Schiller’s theory of Culture and Society’, in Essays in German Language, Culture and Society, ed. Prawer et al., London, 1969, 177-210.
- —, Goethe, Poet and Thinker, London, 1972.
- Willoughby, L.A., The Classical Age of German Literature 1748-1805, New York, 1966.
See also
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External links
Primary sources
Other sources
- [Weimar Classicism in Literary Encyclopedia]
- [Klassik Stiftung Weimar] ()
- [Goethes Allianz mit Schiller] ()
- [Der späte Goethe] ()
- [Centre for Intercultural Studies—Ernst Cassirer and Weimar Classicism]
- [English Goethe Society]
- [Goethe Society of North America]
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