ABSTRACT
Grabbe, Lenau, and Wilhelm Waiblinger, in addition to Platen, are among the more important German authors who mark stages in the ebbing first wave of Byronism in Germany in nineteenth century. Lenau differs from Byron in his outlook on the tender passions; his is a more optimistic view of love. Christian Dietrich Grabbe furnishes a cruder example than Lenau of decadent Byronism. Byron's heroes may indeed destroy their womenfolk, but only by fatal mischance or after the intricate machinery of their minds has become deranged. A link is forged between Byron, Grabbe, and Heine, by the daemonic individualism of The Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. The development of Grabbe's turbid genius seems a simple affair to that of the erratic young Swabian poet, Waiblinger. In Waiblinger's work, as in Grabbe's, Byronism in the larger sense runs a parallel course with direct Byronic influence.
