Goethe’s Reception of Ulrich von Hutten

Toward the end of the seventeenth book of Dichtung und Wahrheit, Goethe recalls his discovery of the works of the humanist Ulrich von Hutten (1488–1523): "Die Werke Ulrichs von Hutten kamen mir in die Hände und es schien wundersam genug daß in unsern neuern Tagen sich das Ähnliche, was dort hervorgetreten, hier sich gleichfalls wieder zu manifestieren schien" (FA 14:773). This remark is followed by a long quotation from Hutten's autobiographical letter to the Nuremberg humanist Willibald Pirckheimer (1470–1530). In the cited part of the letter, Hutten expresses the desire to be ennobled on his own merit and criticizes the aristocratic attitude towards education. The immediate context of the quotation seems to restrict the significance of Hutten's work to the relation between the nobility and the third-estate. However, Hutten's life and work were of importance not only to the Germany of the Sturm und Drang, but also to Goethe's own life and work, particularly Götz von Berlichingen.

This study will historically and culturally situate Goethe's reception of Hutten. The first part outlines what Hans Robert Jauss calls the Erwartungshorizont by describing the historical forces that made Goethe's reading of Hutten's work possible.¹ It seeks to answer the questions: why was Hutten's work relevant to Sturm-und-Drang Germany and what were the events that Goethe thought were repeating themselves? In the second part, I will examine Götz von Berlichingen in the light of some of Hutten's dialogues, pointing out possible influences of the humanist on the young Goethe. The success of Goethe's Götz von Berlichingen, which contributed to the revival of interest in Renaissance Germany and to the creation of Hutten as a German site of memory, will be the theme of the third part. The fourth part will analyze the politics of Goethe's long citation from Hutten's letter to Pirckheimer, while the final part will follow the metamorphosis of Goethe's "horizon of expectation" which made different aspects of Hutten's work and life come to the forefront. Hutten's presence in Goethe's late work demonstrates the lasting impression the humanist left on him.

I. Cultural Confrontation in Renaissance and Sturm-und-Drang Germany

Understanding Goethe's wonderment at how some events of Hutten's time were repeating themselves in the second half of the eighteenth century requires a closer look at certain political and cultural currents that influenced both Hutten's life and Goethe's youth. The reaction of the Sturm-und-Drang generation to French cultural hegemony is common knowledge to scholars of eighteenth-century Germany, just as the response of German humanists to Rome's exploitation of the German states is well known to scholars of the German Renaissance and Reformation. These two conflicts will be revisited here because no scholar to date has pointed out the similarities between them and because it is probably the parallel between these two cultural confrontations that made Goethe's reading of Hutten possible.

The Italian claim to cultural superiority over the "Barbarians" forced Hutten to reflect upon his own identity.² At a time when German humanists still looked to Italy as the model of accomplishment in the liberal arts, this was no easy task. Albrecht Dürer's statement comparing his social position in Venice to that in Nuremberg, "Hier bin ich Herr, daheim ein Schmarotzer,"³ gives an idea of the difficulty a German artist faced in identifying with the Germany of 1500. Before the Reformation, Hutten thought his task as a humanist was "to rid Germany of its barbarity" by spreading learning and culture, as he wrote to Pirckheimer: "Deutschland soll sich mit Kultur bekleiden und die Barbarei über die Garamanten und das Baltische Meer hinaus ausgezischt und verstoßen werden."⁴ This was the aim of his contribution to the Epistolae obscurorum virorum (1515–17).

However, this attitude changed radically with the beginning of the Reformation.⁵ Rome, not ignorant German theologians, became the enemy. Hutten's battle cry became the centuries-old complaint that Rome was exploiting German states...