The Project Gutenberg EBook of Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry, by
Wilhelm Alfred Braun

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Title: Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry

Author: Wilhelm Alfred Braun

Release Date: December 21, 2005 [EBook #17364]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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TYPES OF WELTSCHMERZ IN GERMAN POETRY

BY

WILHELM ALFRED BRAUN, Ph.D.

SOMETIME FELLOW IN GERMANIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES, COLUMBIA
UNIVERSITY

AMS PRESS, INC. NEW YORK 1966

Copyright 1905, Columbia University Press, New York

Reprinted with the permission of the Original Publisher, 1966

AMS PRESS, INC. New York, N.Y. 10003 1966

Manufactured in the United States of America

NOTE

The author of this essay has attempted to make, as he himself phrases
it, "a modest contribution to the natural history of Weltschmerz." What
goes by that name is no doubt somewhat elusive; one can not easily
delimit and characterize it with scientific accuracy. Nevertheless the
word corresponds to a fairly definite range of psychical reactions which
are of great interest in modern poetry, especially German poetry. The
phenomenon is worth studying in detail. In undertaking a study of it Mr.
Braun thought, and I readily concurred in the opinion, that he would do
best not to essay an exhaustive history, but to select certain
conspicuously interesting types and proceed by the method of close
analysis, characterization and comparison. I consider his work a
valuable contribution to literary scholarship.

CALVIN THOMAS.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, June, 1905

PREFACE

The work which is presented in the following pages is intended to be a
modest contribution to the natural history of Weltschmerz.

The writer has endeavored first of all to define carefully the
distinction between pessimism and Weltschmerz; then to classify the
latter, both as to its origin and its forms of expression, and to
indicate briefly its relation to mental pathology and to contemporary
social and political conditions. The three poet