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Wars and Rumours of Wars: Questions of Authenticity in German Patriotic Poetry 1870–1
Author(s) -
Webster William
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
german life and letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 12
eISSN - 1468-0483
pISSN - 0016-8777
DOI - 10.1111/j.0016-8777.2006.00357.x
Subject(s) - poetry , german , counterpoint , literature , context (archaeology) , philosophy , deception , tone (literature) , false accusation , art , history , law , sociology , linguistics , political science , pedagogy , archaeology
Franz von Ditfurth's Historische Volks‐ und volksthümliche Lieder des Krieges von 1870–1871 presents contemporary ‘popular’ patriotic poetry as a counterpoint to the overwhelming mass of ‘educated’ verse published during the Franco‐Prussian War. The distinctions drawn between ‘Kunstpoesie’ and ‘Volksdichtung’ are called into question by Ditfurth's somewhat problematic choice of material, but the questions he raises were important enough to have been debated by Wilhelm Raabe and Wilhelm Jensen, following the appearance in 1871 of Jensen's Lieder aus Frankreich . (The poems it contained were explicitly ascribed to a serving soldier but had actually been composed by the non‐combatant Jensen.) In response to Raabe's accusation of deception, Jensen insisted on the quality of his work and averred that it would have been received less enthusiastically if his authorship had been known. The organisation, direction, tone and quality of Jensen's collection are discussed and subsequently set against a volume of ‘genuine’ poems from the front: Julius Wolff's Aus dem Felde (also 1871). The conclusion places the controversy over Jensen's volume in the context of the centuries‐old discussion of ‘authenticity’ in literature.