“K"unstlerdrama” in German literature between the 1830s and the 1870s

The article explores the genre elements specificity of “drama of the artist” (Künstlerdrama) on the basis of the works of German literature from the 19th century. It is noted that the specificity of the conflict, plot and images is formed according to historical and political events of the studied period. The paper emphasizes the co-relation between “Künstlerdrama” and historical drama in regard to the reconstruction of a “private” historical event, e. g., a fragment of life of a real historical person. The author addresses the works of the following German and Austrian writers of the period between the 1830s and the 1870s: Georg Büchner, Christian Dietrich Grabbe, Friedrich Hebbel, Karl Gutzkow, Richard Wagner, Heinrich Laube, Franz Grillparzer, Karl Immermann, Friedrich Halm and Karl von Holtei. The author makes the following conclusions: 1) German “Künstlerdrama” between the 1830s and the 1870s reflects political, ideological and aesthetical aspects at multiple levels of stylistic harmony; 2) the selection of the historical material is not restricted by a particular epoch, which emphasizes the archetypical nature of the genius, but with more intense interest to the images of the German pioneers of literature; 3) the “punctum saliens” of drama is the key moment of the artist’s development or some catastrophe in his/her life (for Immermann’s Petrarca it is his meeting with Laura, while for Laube’s Schiller it is the escape from Stuttgart and staging of Die Räuber); 4) the correlation between the terms “art” and “world” is represented in three aspects: political (the artist and the power), social (the artist and the society or the artist and daily routine) and amatorial. Finally, “Künstlerdrama” always stands on aesthetic basis that includes the author’s vision of creativity or literary polemics.