ABSTRACT
WITH Hoffmann’s death in 1822 German romanticism entered its last phase : after the last romantic vintage years of 1826 1 ‘and 1827, 2 no important romantic works appeared in Germany— though romantic (or neo-romantic) traits occur of course in the work of a number of writers : most significantly in the nature-symbolism of the poet Lenau ; and Rückert’s Orientalism might be called romantic too, in its exoticism—he continued to write and translate in the ’thirties and later. The year 1830 might in fact fairly be taken to mark the end of the romantic age in Germany, or perhaps 1832—because Goethe’s death in that year finally marks with symbolical finality the close of the whole period of triumphant idealism in which, since the seventeen-nineties, Weimar classicism and romanticism had overlapped in many respects.
