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In Die Epigonen, one of the long list of representatives of the species of novels which began with Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, Immermann tried to present the development of a young man and a picture of the principal social forces of his period.
He had not sufficient vision to penetrate through the objectionable and tasteless externalities of the liberal movement with which he was unfairly preoccupied even at the time of Die Epigonen, a score of years later to the greater and enduring core of the aspirations of the modern age. The petty things were too near to his eye and obscured the greater things which were further removed.
We have here, consequently, a novel which, though written as a whole, falls naturally into two parts, the one negative and satirical, the other positive and human. And odd indeed is the situation in the negative part. As in Die Epigonen, the scene is laid in Westphalia.
The most important of his works are Das Trauerspiel in Tirol, 1826, treating of the tragic story of Andreas Hofer; Kaiser Friedrich II., 1827, a drama of the Hohenstaufen; the comic heroic epic, Tulifaentchen, 1830, a satiric version of an heroic Tom Thumb; Alexis, 1832, a trilogy setting forth the destruction of the reforms begun by Peter the Great; Merlin, 1832; and his two novels, Die Epigonen, 1836, and Münchhausen, 1838-9.
In 1835 he finished Die Epigonen, a novel portraying the social and political conditions in Germany from 1815 to 1830, and in 1837 he began systematic work on Münchhausen, continuing, from a different point of view and in a different mood, his delineation of the civic and intellectual status of Germany of his own time.
In so far as the just appreciation of a literary production is dependent upon a study of its genesis, the reading of Die Epigonen is necessary to a complete understanding of Münchhausen, for through these two works runs a strong thread of unbroken development.
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