ABSTRACT
In the chapter on the nineteenth century in his recent Cambridge Introduction to Travel Writing, Tim Youngs rightly recalls that “[t]he importance of Romanticism to the representation of modern travel cannot be overstated”.1 In Germany the Romantic Movement had not only deeply modied the aesthetic perception of reality – and credited German artists with international recognition and a leading role within Europe – but had also brought about extensive changes to society and culture. In particular the impact of the Napoleonic Wars and the resistance against the French “oppressor” had given rise to a national impetus and even a nationalist climate among broad categories of German intellectuals and scholars who then discovered their own identity in the demarcation between the French and German nations and people. From a political point of view, the Romantic Movement typically overlaps with emerging nationalism in the rst decades of the century and in some cases constituted the “dark side” of German Spätromantik [Late Romanticism]. In the context of this “new German nation”, which still lacked the homogeneity of the later German state, many scholars thus feel committed to the idea of a collective German identity. This cultural patriotism also affects all international activities and productions “occasioned by exploration, scientic inquiry, tourism, emigration, trade and colonialism […]”, and travel writing, which gained political importance, especially when it dealt with neighbouring countries that, like Belgium, consequently embodied particular identity problems.2
