The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII

⎌The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII

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Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII, by Various This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English. In Twenty Volumes
Author: Various
Release Date: June 10, 2004 [EBook #12573]
Language: English
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VOLUME VIII
BERTHOLD AUERBACH
JEREMIAS GOTTHELF
FRITZ REUTER
ADALBERT STIFTER
WILHELM HEINRICH RIEHL

#THE GERMAN CLASSICS#
Masterpieces of German Literature

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH
1914
CONTRIBUTORS AND TRANSLATORS

VOLUME VIII

CONTENTS OF VOLUME VIII
The Novel of Provincial Life. By Edwin C. Roedder
BERTHOLD AUERBACH
Little Barefoot. Translated by H.W. Dulcken; revised and abridged by Paul Bernard Thomas
JEREMIAS GOTTHELF
Uli, The Farmhand. Translations and Synopses by Bayard Quincy Morgan
FRITZ REUTER
The Br?sig Episodes from Ut mine Stromtid. Translated by M.W. Macdowall; edited and abridged by Edmund von Mach
ADALBERT STIFTER
Rock Crystal. Translated by Lee M. Hollander
WILHELM HEINRICH RIEHL
Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl. By Otto Heller
Field and Forest. Translated by Frances H. King
The Eye for Natural Scenery. Translated by Frances H. King
The Musical Ear. Translated by Frances H. King
The Struggle of the Rococo with the Pigtail. Translated by Frances H. King
* * * *

ILLUSTRATIONS--VOLUME VIII
The Abduction of Prometheus. By Max Klinger
Berthold Auerbach. By Hans Meyer
Two Coffins were carried away from the little House. By Benjamin Vautier
Amrei briskly brought her Pitcher filled with Water. By Benjamin Vautier
Tears fell upon the Paternal Coat. By Benjamin Vautier
He gave her his Hand for the Last Time. By Benjamin Vautier
While she was milking John asked her all kinds of Questions. By Benjamin Vautier
Jeremias Gotthelf
A New Citizen. By Benjamin Vautier
The Bath. By Benjamin Vautier
In Ambush. By Benjamin Vautier
First Dancing Lessons. By Benjamin Vautier
Fritz Reuter. By Wulff
Bible Lesson. By Benjamin Vautier
Between Dances. By Benjamin Vautier
The Bridal Pair at the Civil Marriage Office. By Benjamin Vautier
Adalbert Stifter. By Daffinger
A Mountain Scene. By H. Reifferscheid
Leavetaking of the Bridal Pair. By Benjamin Vautier
The Barber Shop. By Benjamin Vautier
Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl
An Official Dinner in the Country. By Benjamin Vautier
At the Sick Bed. By Benjamin Vautier
A Village Funeral. By Benjamin Vautier
* * * *

EDITOR'S NOTE
This volume, containing chiefly masterpieces of the Novel of Provincial Life, is illustrated by the principal works of one of the foremost painters of German peasant life, Benjamin Vautier. These picture's have been so arranged as to bring out in natural succession typical situations in the career of an individual from the cradle to the grave. In order not to interrupt this succession, Auerbach's _Little Barefoot_, likewise illustrated by Vautier, has been placed before Gotthelf's _Uli, The Farmhand_, although Gotthelf, and not Auerbach, is to be considered as the real founder of the German village story.
The frontispiece, Karl Spitzweg's _Garret Window_, introduces a master of German genre painting who in a later volume will be more fully represented.
KUNO FRANCKE.
* * * *

THE NOVEL OF PROVINCIAL LIFE
By EDWIN C. ROEDDER, PH.D.
Associate Professor of German Philology, University of Wisconsin
To Rousseau belongs the credit of having given, in his passionate cry "Back to Nature!" the classic expression to the consciousness that all the refinements of civilization do not constitute life in its truest sense. The sentiment itself is thousands of years old. It had inspired the idyls of Theocritus in the midst of the magnificence and luxury of the courts of Alexandria and Syracuse. It re?choed through the pages of Virgil's bucolic poetry. It made itself heard, howsoever faintly, in the artificiality and sham of the pastoral plays from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. And it was but logical that this sentiment should seek its most adequate and definitive expression in a portrayal of all phases of the life and fate of those who, as the tillers of the soil, had ever remained nearer to Mother Earth than the rest of humankind.
Not suddenly, then, did rural poetry rise into being; but while its origin harks back to remote antiquity it has found its final form only during the last century. In this its last, as well as its most vigorous, offshoot, it presents itself as the village story--as we shall term it for brevity's sake--which has won a permanent place in literature by the side of its older brothers and sisters, and has even entirely driven out the fanciful pastoral or village idyl of old.
The village story was bound to come in the nineteenth century, even if there had been no beginnings of it in earlier times, and even if it did not correspond to a deep-rooted general sentiment. The eighteenth century had allowed the Third Estate to gain a