Germany from the Earliest Period, vol 4 | Page 3

first composer who introduced
the depth and pathos of more solemn music into the opera. He gained a
complete triumph at Paris over Piccini, the celebrated Italian musician,
in his contest respecting the comparative excellencies of the German
and Italian schools. Haydn introduced the variety and melody of the
opera into the oratorio, of which his "Creation" is a standing proof. In
the latter half of the foregoing century, sacred music has gradually
yielded to the opera. Mozart brought the operatic style to perfection in
the wonderful compositions that eternalize his fame.
The German theatre was, owing to the Gallomania of the period,
merely a bad imitation of the French stage. Gottsched,[4] who greatly
contributed toward the reformation of German literature, still retained
the stilted Alexandrine and the pseudo-Gallic imitation of the ancient
dramatists to which Lessing put an end. Lessing wrote his
"Dramaturgy" at Hamburg, recommended Shakespeare and other
English authors as models, but more particularly nature. The celebrated
Eckhof, the father of the German stage, who at first travelled about
with a company of actors and finally settled at Gotha, was the first who
followed this innovation. He was succeeded by Schroeder in Hamburg,
who was equally industrious as a poet, an actor, and a Freemason. In
Berlin, where Fleck had already paved the way, Iffland, who, like
Schroeder, was both a poet and an actor, founded a school, which in
every respect took nature as a guide, and which raised the German
stage to its well-merited celebrity.
At the close of the eighteenth century, men of education were seized
with an enthusiasm for art, which showed itself principally in a love for

the stage and in visits for the promotion of art to Italy. The poet and the
painter, alike dissatisfied with reality, sought to still their secret
longings for the beautiful amid the unreal creations of fancy and the
records of classical antiquity.
Fashion, that masker of nature, that creator of deformity, had, in truth,
arrived at an unparalleled pitch of ugliness. The German costume,
although sometimes extravagantly curious during the Middle Ages, had
nevertheless always retained a certain degree of picturesque beauty, nor
was it until the reign of Louis XIV. of France that dress assumed an
unnatural, inconvenient, and monstrous form. Enormous allonge
perukes and ruffles, the fontange (high headdress), hoops, and high
heels, rendered the human race a caricature of itself. In the eighteenth
century, powdered wigs of extraordinary shape, hairbags and queues,
frocks and frills, came into fashion for the men; powdered headdresses
an ell in height, diminutive waists, and patches for the women. The
deformity, unhealthiness, and absurdity of this mode of attire were
vainly pointed out by Salzmann, in a piece entitled, "Charles von
Carlsberg, or Human Misery."
[Footnote 1: Also his brother John, who painted with equal talent in the
same style.--Trans.]
[Footnote 2: Called also Gerardo dalle Notti from his subjects,
principally night-scenes and pieces illuminated by torch or candle-light.
His most celebrated picture is that of Jesus Christ before the Tribunal
of Pilate.--Ibid.]
[Footnote 3: Gothic architecture has been likened to petrified music.]
[Footnote 4: He was assisted in his dramatic writings by his wife, a
woman of splendid talents.--Trans.]

CCXLV. Influence of the Belles-Lettres
The German, excluded from all participation in public affairs and
confined to the narrow limits of his family circle and profession,
followed his natural bent for speculative philosophy and poetical
reverie; but while his thoughts became more elevated and the loss of
his activity was, in a certain degree, compensated by the gentle
dominion of the muses, the mitigation thus afforded merely aggravated
the evil by rendering him content with his state of inaction. Ere long, as
in the most degenerate age of ancient Rome, the citizen, amused by

sophists and singers, actors and jugglers, lost the remembrance of his
former power and rights and became insensible to his state of moral
degradation, to which the foreign notions, the vain and frivolous
character of most of the poets of the day, had not a little contributed.
After the thirty years' war, the Silesian poets became remarkable for
Gallomania or the slavish imitation of those of France. Unbounded
adulation of the sovereign, bombastical carmina on occasion of the
birth, wedding, accession, victories, fêtes, treaties of peace, and burial
of potentates, love-couplets equally strained, twisted compliments to
female beauty, with pedantic, often indecent, citations from ancient
mythology, chiefly characterized this school of poetry. Martin Opitz,
A.D. 1639, the founder of the first Silesian school,[1] notwithstanding
the insipidity of the taste of the day, preserved the harmony of the
German ballad. His most distinguished followers were Logau,
celebrated for his Epigrams;[2] Paul Gerhard, who, in his fine hymns,
revived the force and simplicity of Luther; Flemming, a genial and
thoroughly German poet, the companion of Olearius[3]