ABSTRACT
The temperament of the German Naturalists was as the poles apart from that of their French masters. Though many of the Naturalists were quixotically Byronic, the majority knew little of Byron. Byron had been a potent influence in German letters for forty years, when Schopenhauer dimmed his reputation. There is a simplicity and a directness in Liliencron's elegiac mood, far surpassing that of the other German Byronic warblers. Liliencron was an admirer of that more knowledgeable German Byron-fan, Karl Bleibtreu. If "knowledge is sorrow", as Byron maintained, then schools and universities are fit nurseries for Byronism. The earlier German Byronic writers produced few representatives with the strong academic bent of a Faust. In the early 'nineties, the German Emperor inaugurated a conference to improve conditions in the schools. The popularity of the Kunstlerroman at the turn of the century—using Kunstler in its widest sense—was a symptom of the dangerous narcissism which had descended upon German authorship.
