Discussions on the social role of political lyrics and "tendentious" poetry in German literary criticism of the Pre-Mart era

The article is devoted to the discussion by the German literary community of the 1830s – 1840s of the artistic and social role of political lyrics. The work seeks to present the diverse opinions of prominent publicists, literary theorists and writers of the era, such as Ludwig Berne, Heinrich Heine, Robert Eduard Prutz. The author shares the well-established idea in German historiography that the literary and critical discussion of the Pre-March era gives a more complete picture of the genesis of the political consciousness of the Germans and the socio-political processes that took place in Germany. The author's attention is focused on the discussion concerning the aesthetic and ideological-political ideas of the literary community about the place of poetry in the space of culture, its functions and the claims of writers to direct participation in political life. The methodological basis of this work is the theoretical achievements of the scientific research areas of the "history of concepts" and intellectual history. The central idea of the article is the assumption that the time of the sharp politicization of German artistic culture in the 1830s and 1840s coincided with the revision of the previous principles of artistic creativity, accelerated it and at the same time complicated it, giving both processes a more conflictual and nonlinear character, fixing and exposing the absence among German authors of liberal democratic views that stood at the forefront of literary theory, general, clearly formulated aesthetic guidelines. In these decades, new principles have been approved in the evaluation of literary works affecting socio-political issues. There is a legitimization of political poetry at the theoretical level, but the contradiction between the spheres of politics and aesthetics is not completely removed. And literary discussions are gradually moving out of the artistic and aesthetic sphere into the sphere of practical politics: moderate liberal views collide with democratic radicalism, national patriotic ideas enter into a polemic with cosmopolitan ones.

Vormärz, political lyric, tendentious poetry, German literary criticism, Robert Eduard Prutz, Heinrich Heine, Ludwig Börne, Georg Herwegh, partisanship, artistic period