The politics of the unpolitical

In The Politics of the Unpolitical: German Writers and the Problem of Power, 1770-1871, historian Gordon Craig demonstrates the essential unreliability of this generalization by focusing on the political activity of ten of Germany's most widely respected writers in the period from the French Revolution to the founding of the Bismarck Reich.

Craig shows how Goethe, Schiller, Heinrich von Kleist, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Holderlin, and Heine were fascinated by the political issues of their day and - by focusing on their political views and activities - urges that they were not representatives of the genre of the "unpolitical German." On the contrary, Craig argues, the writers studied here were all interested in and in various ways engaged in political life.

He also examines the overwhelming effect of the personality of Napoleon Bonaparte upon German politics, awakening intellectuals to the vital importance of power in its many dimensions in the political process. The Politics of the Unpolitical deals with a question that has always been a point of controversy: do writers have political responsibility and are they obliged to show political engagement in their works? Craig answers these questions with an unequivocal yes.