ABSTRACT

Mörike is a transition figure. Half romantic, half realist, he seeks to capture that life which is unattainable to the bourgeoisie of the 1840s and ultimately becomes the victim of neurosis, the bourgeois disease described by Gutzkow. His writing, which still contains romantic elements in the sullen and dark realism of folkish culture, is progressive in its search for coherence, and especially in its efforts to establish an explanatory psychology. But the overall mood of Freytag’s writing is colored by the theme of death—the social symbol of bourgeois existence in the time of Biedermeier.