German Literature

Toleration and Tolerance as Human Challenges: The Voice of an Eighteenth-Century Dramatist, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, for the Twenty-First Century

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Albrecht Classen
University of Arizona, Editor-in-Chief, Humanities, MDPI, and Editor-in-Chief, Mediaevistik

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 15, Issue 3, 2023. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v15n3.21
[Article History: Received: 19 August 2023. Revised: 30 August 2023. Accepted: 1 September 2023. Published: 4 September 2023]
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Abstract

In light of countless problems, the modern world faces, especially religious fanaticism, violence, and hatred, it is high time to reflect on some of the older literary statements once again that had already voiced critical concerns about the principles of human interaction determined by good communication, love, and tolerance. Maybe surprisingly, when we turn to Lessing’s Nathan der Weise (1779), we come across a major literary document in which those ideals are formulated convincingly and dramatically. While German scholarship has already discussed this play for a long time, it deserves much wider attention because of its strong advocation of those ideals, which we are in the highest need as of today.

Keywords: Toleration; tolerance; Gotthold Ephraim Lessing; Nathan der Weise; Enlightenment; religions; truth; love
Sustainable Development Goals: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
Citation: Classen, Albrecht. 2023. Toleration and Tolerance as Human Challenges: The Voice of an Eighteenth-Century Dramatist, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, for the Twenty-First Century. Rupkatha Journal 15:3. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v15n3.21

Raw Materials. Half Creatures and Complete Nature in Shelley’s Frankenstein and Homunculus in Goethe’s Faust II

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1.5K views

Siv Frøydis Berg

Associate professor, Ph.D., National Library of Norway. Email: siv.berg@nb.no

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 3, September-October 2022, Pages 1–8. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n3.09

First published: October 7, 2022 | Area: Latin America | License: CC BY-NC 4.0

(This article is published under the General Area)
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Raw Materials. Half Creatures and Complete Nature in Shelley’s Frankenstein and Homunculus in Goethe’s Faust II

Abstract

Why did Mary Shelley’s famous Creature meet its ends in the eternal ice of the Arctic Sea? What made it possible for Goethe’s Homunculus to finally break free in the Classic Walpurgis Night? Both remote places fulfill the destinies of two of the most famous laboratory-made artificial human beings in Western literature, the Creature of Frankenstein, and the “little man”, Homunculus. They are born as half-creatures: Shelley’s Monster as pure body, Homunculus as pure spirit, locked up in a phial. Their lives on earth circle around one purpose: to create themselves as complete human beings, by achieving what they miss: a soul for Shelley’s Creature, a body for Goethe’s Homunculus. This article aims to present a systematic purification and comparison of the creations, lives, and ends of the Monster and Homunculus. My thesis is that each of them literally embodies two opposite and contemporary views of nature, identified in their own time as respectively materialistic and vitalistic positions. By comparing these life spans it is possible to shed light on Shelley’s and Goethe’s literary investment in the debate.

Keywords: Frankenstein, Homunculus, Goethe, Mary Shelley, materialistic and vitalistic, worldview.

Feature image  credit: Andy Mabbett, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

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Laughing with and about Death? Werner Bergengruen’s Philosophical and Literary Approaches

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Albrecht Classen

The University of Arizona. Email: aclassen@arizona.edu

 Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.21

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Abstract

Werner Bergengruen (d. 1964) was one of the most popular German authors from ca. 1930 to at least 1970, but his reputation has faded a lot, and there are only a few scholars who are still engaged with his works. In his collection of novels, Der Tod von Reval, however, Bergengruen developed a fascinating range of literary reflections on death as people in this Baltic city (Reval, today Tallinn) had experienced it throughout their history. Drawing extensively from medieval and early modern legendary accounts, this author translated in a highly meaningful manner the fundamental experience of death into an existentialist process profoundly informed by humanist values.

Keywords: Werner Bergengruen; Der Tod von Reval; life and death; historical narratives; Baltic literature