Private lives and collective destinies : Class, nation and the folk in the works of Gustav Freytag (1816-1895)

This thesis examines the works of Gustav Freytag against the changing socio-political
backdrop of the Vormarz, Nachmarz and Griinderzeit. It analyses the concepts of
class, nation and folk in his writings, and provides an account of their shifting literary
representation between 1840 and 1890. For the first time in recent criticism, it
analyses all of Freytag's published work - his poetry, dramas, novels, theatrical
theory, journalism, and historical and biographical studies.
The thesis reveals a coherent anti-aristocratic position III Freytag's fiction,
expressed through a thematic preoccupation with inter-class relationships. It argues
that Freytag's love stories encode in the domestic a political polemic which presents
German society as undergoing a process of radical bourgeoisification. It traces how
Freytag's class concerns are increasingly nationalised after the revolutions of 1848,
and explores how his Nachmarz writing constructs a concept of German national
identity based on a sense of common German values. It argues that Freytag's later
preoccupation with German history allowed him to synthesise his twin concerns of
class and nation into a pseudo-philosophical concept termed the Volkskraft - a myth
of German folk identity which is shown to be central to Freytag's final historical and
literary works.
It is a central contention of this project that Freytag's texts not only reflect issues of
class, nation and the folk, but that these concepts were key to the coherent political
agenda he wished to disseminate through his writing. It is argued that Freytag's works
present a systematic attempt to re-imagine the social and political structures of
Germany, positioning the bourgeoisie at the heart of the German nation state.
Ultimately, Freytag is shown to promote a significantly more radical concept of sociopolitical
relations in German society than research into his work has hitherto
acknowledged.