Anglo-German Cultural Relations and the Thirty Years' War

ANGLO-GERMAN CULTURAL RELATIONS AND THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR Garold N. Davis Garold N. Davis (B.A., M.A., Brigham Young University; Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University) is Acting Chairman of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Colorado where he has been an assistant professor since 1966. He has been an instructor at the University of Pennsylvania, and an assistant and associate professor at Southern Oregon College. A book, German Thought and Culture in England 1700-1770, which includes a chronological bibliography of German literature in English translation 1700-1770, has been accepted for publication this summer by the University of North Carolina Studies in Comparative Literature. Scholars concerned with comparative literature are generally well aware of the important work of Lawrence Price, and especially his significant contributions to Anglo-German scholarship: The Reception of English Literature in Germany (Berkeley, 1932) and English Literature in Germany (Berkeley, 1953) . Few of these scholars, however, are aware of the publication and reception of German literature in England in the eighteenth century—not because there has been nothing written on German culture in England but because, ironically, this cultural phenomenon has never really been investigated. Although the fact that much can be written with little investigation is not unknown to our profession , the history of the studies treating German culture in England does provide an interesting case study of how this is accomplished, and also provides some insight into the methodological failure of past AngloGerman studies in general. In 1914 Gilbert Waterhouse called a kangaroo court into session for the purpose of trying Germany on the charge of being a transmitter of foreign literature into England.1 The defendant was acquitted. Since Germany was only a weak imitator of foreign models herself, he argued, and since she had been made incapable of literary activity by the Thirty Years' War, she would hardly be guilty of literary transmission or influence , and therefore the tedious task of further investigation was adjudged unnecessary. As the irony of life often orders such matters, other scholars such as Rufus M. Jones, Margaret L. Bailey, and Caroline Gilbert Waterhouse, Literary Relations of England and Germany in the 17th Century (Cambridge, 1914). Anglo-German Cultural Relations2.1 Spurgeon were making independent research in this same area at the same time,2 and yet their verdict was the opposite of that of Gilbert Waterhouse. This, of course, raises the question: With this important work in his own area of specialization going on around him, how is it possible that Waterhouse could reach the conclusion, to him quite logical, that a serious investigation of German cultural influences in England was unnecessary and that, in fact, the results that might be derived from any such investigation could be determined a priori? To answer this question is to explain much of the failure of Anglo-German studies of the past. Joseph Walter, whom Waterhouse recommends as an authority on the German literature of the seventeenth century, approached the literature of this period by investigating the political and social conditions in Germany as they existed during the Thirty Years' War.3 Now some modern critics might consider this a somewhat questionable method of literary scholarship, but Waterhouse is able to conclude from Joseph Walter's work: "That these years of war were unfavorable to the interests of literature is obvious" (Waterhouse, xviii). Another writer recommended by Waterhouse is Georg Herzfeld who, in 1900, had written: It is well known diat the works of Jacob Boehme were translated and disseminated in England in die seventeenth century, but die interest in Boehme was, after all, theological, not literary.* Waterhouse echoes this attitude in his short chapter on Martin Luther and Jacob Boehme when he says: "The study of Luther's influence in England belongs more properly to the realm of Theology than literature . . . ." (95) These attitudes of Waterhouse and his precursors suggest an answer to our question. First, it was assumed as logical that because of the Thirty Years' War the quality of German literature would not merit international attention. And, second, the restrictive clause was attached to this assumption that anything drifting accidentally or incidentally into England from Germany that was...