; Fichte's idealistic philosophy helped to mold
Emerson's view of life; Amadeus Hoffmann influenced Poe; Uhland and
Heine reverberate in Longfellow; Sudermann and Hauptmann appear in the
repertory of London and New York theatres--these brief statements
include nearly all the names which to the cultivated Englishman and
American of to-day stand for German literature.

THE GERMAN CLASSICS OF THE NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES has been
planned to correct this narrow and inadequate view. Here for the first
time English readers will find a panorama of the whole of German
literature from Goethe to the present day; here for the first time
they will find the most representative writers of each period brought
together and exhibited by their most representative works; here for
the first time an opportunity will be offered to form a just
conception of the truly remarkable literary achievements of Germany
during the last hundred years.

For it is a grave mistake to assume, as has been assumed only too
often, that, after the great epoch of Classicism and Romanticism in
the early decades of the nineteenth century, Germany produced but
little of universal significance, or that, after Goethe and Heine,
there were but few Germans worthy to be mentioned side by side with
the great writers of other European countries. True, there is no
German Tolstoy, no German Ibsen, no German Zola--but then, is there a
Russian Nietzsche, or a Norwegian Wagner, or a French Bismarck? Men
like these, men of revolutionary genius, men who start new movements
and mark new epochs, are necessarily rare and stand isolated in any
people and at all times. The three names mentioned indicate that
Germany, during the last fifty years, has contributed a goodly share
even of such men. Quite apart, however, from such men of overshadowing
genius and all-controlling power, can it be truly said that Germany,
since Goethe's time, has been lacking in writers of high aim and
notable attainment?

It can be stated without reservation that, taken as a whole, the
German drama of the nineteenth century has maintained a level of
excellence superior to that reached by the drama of almost any other
nation during the same period. Schiller's _Wallenstein_ and _Tell_,
Goethe's _Iphigenie_ and _Faust_, Kleist's _Prinz Friedrich von
Homburg_, Grillparzer's _Medea_, Hebbel's _Maria Magdalene_ and _Die
Nibelungen_, Otto Ludwig's _Der Erbfoerster_, Freytag's _Die
Journalisten_, Anzen