The Project Gutenberg EBook of The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX, 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. IX Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig

Author: Various

Release Date: July 26, 2004 [EBook #13030]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GERMAN CLASSICS ***

Produced by Stan Goodman, Jayam Subramanian and PG Distributed Proofreaders

VOLUME IX

FRIEDRICH HEBBEL

OTTO LUDWIG

THE GERMAN CLASSICS

Masterpieces of German Literature

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH

Patrons' Edition IN TWENTY VOLUMES

ILLUSTRATED

1914

CONTENTS OF VOLUME IX

Friedrich Hebbel

The Life of Friedrich Hebbel. By William Guild Howard

Maria Magdalena. Translated by Paul Bernard Thomas

Siegfried's Death. Translated by Katherine Royce

Anna. Translated by Frances H. King

On Theodor Körner and Heinrich von Kleist. Translated by Frances H. King

  Ludolf Wienbarg's The Dramatists of the Present Day. Translated by
  Frances H. King

  Review of Heinrich von Kleist's Play, The Prince of Homburg, or The
  Battle of Fehrbellin. Translated by Frances H. King

  Recollections of My Childhood. Translated by Frances H. King Extracts
  from the Journal of Friedrich Hebbel

Otto Ludwig

The Life of Otto Ludwig. By Alexander R. Hohlfeld

The Hereditary Forester. Translated by Alfred Remy

Between Heaven and Earth. Translated by Muriel Almon

ILLUSTRATIONS—VOLUME IX

Summer Day. By Arnold Bucklin Frontispiece

Friedrich Hebbel 2

Death as Cup-Bearer. By Alfred Rethel 30

Death Playing the Finale at the Masquerade. By Alfred Rethel 60

Death as Friend. By Alfred Rethel 78

Title Page of the Nibelungenlied. By Peter Cornelius 82

Siegfried's Return from the Saxon War. By Schnorr von Carolsfeld 100

The Quarrel of the Queens. By Schnorr von Carolsfeld 122

Kriemhild finds the Slain Siegfried. By Schnorr von Carolsfeld 150

Kriemhild accuses Hagen of the Murder of Siegfried. By Schnorr von
Carolsfeld 170

The Battle between the Huns and the Nibelungs. By Schnorr von
Carolsfeld 190

Gunther and Hagen brought Captive before Kriemhild. By Schnorr von
Carolsfeld 222

The Death of Kriemhild. By Schnorr von Carolsfeld 246

Otto Ludwig 268

The Finding of Moses. By Schnorr von Carolsfeld 300

Moses on Mt. Sinai. By Schnorr von Carolsfeld 330

Jacob and Rachel at the Well. By Schnorr von Carolsfeld 360

Jacob's Journey. By Schnorr von Carolsfeld 390

David being Stoned by Sinei. By Schnorr von Carolsfeld 420

The Death of Eli. By Schnorr von Carolsfeld 450

Josiah hears the Law. By Schnorr von Carolsfeld 480

The Prophet Jeremiah. By Schnorr von Carolsfeld 510

EDITOR'S NOTE

The painters represented here alongside with the two writers to whom this volume is devoted, are Cornelius, Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Rethel, and Kaulbach. These men were not only contemporary with Hebbel and Ludwig, but may indeed be called their artistic counterparts. Though widely differentiated by individual temper and talent, these painters and poets belong to the same phase of mid-century German literature and art: the striving of Romanticism beyond itself, the struggle for a new style uniting depth of feeling and terseness of delineation, the longing for a new view of life harmonizing the worship of the past with the demands of modern society and the problems of the day. Hence the heroic note in the work of these painters and poets, hence their predilection for great historical or mythological or religious subjects, hence their leaning toward tragic conflicts in every day situations, hence their all too conscious striving for pointed effects; hence, also, the inspiring influence emanating from their best productions.

KUNO FRANCKE.

THE LIFE OF FRIEDRICH HEBBEL

By WILLIAM GUILD HOWARD, A.M.,

Assistant Professor of German, Harvard University

The greatest German dramatists of the middle of the nineteenth century were Franz Grillparzer, Friedrich Hebbel, and Otto Ludwig. In a caustic epigram written in 1855, Grillparzer set forth that Dame Poetry, for some years a widow and now ailing, needed a husband, but could find none; and we remember that the heroine of Libussa rejects the wise Lapak, the strong Biwoy, and the rich Domaslaw because she desires in one man, united, the qualities which separately dominate the three. With more charity, Grillparzer might have more fully recognized the poet in Hebbel or Ludwig; but we may be permitted to think of these three dramatists as not unlike the three suitors for the hand of Libussa: Grillparzer was rich, Ludwig was wise, and Hebbel was strong. Each of them was somewhat deficient in the qualities of the other two; each, however, was a personality, and Hebbel one of the most powerful that ever lived.

Hebbel's career is a long battle against all but insuperable obstacles. Born at Wesselburen in the present province of Schleswig-Holstein on March 18, 1813, he was the son of a poor stone mason—so poor that, as Hebbel said, poverty had taken the place of his soul. Though Klaus Hebbel was a well-meaning man, he was a slave to the inexorable non possumus of penury. In winter, especially, lack of work made even the provision of daily bread often difficult and sometimes impossible for him. But Friedrich Hebbel's childhood, full of hardship as it was, was not cheerless. The father did what he could; and the mother, at whatever sacrifice to herself, could nearly always do something for the children. The greatest hardship was caused by the father's hostility to these maternal concessions to childish desires; for to him, whose life was labor, unproductive use of time was a crime. He thought it a matter of course that his son should become a laboring man like himself, and it is little less than a miracle that this did not happen. The mother, to be sure, fostered the boy's more ambitious hopes; the death of the father in Hebbel's fourteenth year was perhaps a blessing in disguise; undoubtedly the happiest chance in Hebbel's boyhood, so far as external events are concerned,