(Article, ‘Young Germany’, originally published in The Cambridge Wagner Encyclopedia, ed. Nicholas Vazsonyi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013)
A group
of German writers during the pre-1848 period. Reacted strongly against
perceived apolitical and reactionary tendencies in German Romanticism. Several, including Heinrich
Laube, Karl Gutzkow, Heinrich Heine, and Georg Herwegh, were known personally to Wagner; others include
Ludwig Börne, Theodor Mundt, Ludolf Wienbarg, and Georg Büchner. In 1835, the
German Confederation proscribed many such writings as injurious to the
Christian religion and morality;
Laube’s subsequent imprisonment made a great impression upon Wagner. According
to Heine (Die romantische Schule), Young Germans, unlike Goethe and the Romantics, treated life
and literature as one; as for Wagner, this signaled revival of the Hellenic
spirit following Christian aberration. Wagner published articles in Laube’s Leipzig-based Zeitung für die elegante Welt, including his Autobiographical Sketch
(1842), where Wagner likens Das Liebesverbot to Laube’s Young Europe in their “victory of free
sensualism over puritanical hypocrisy.” Young
German influence may be traced throughout Wagner’s dramatic oeuvre, especially Tannhäuser.
