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Updated: June 8, 2025
Erich Schmidt, building on a suggestion of Lichtenstein, found a “Dosis Yorikscher Empfindsamkeit” in Tellheim, and connected the episode of the Chevalier de St. Louis with the passage in “Minna von Barnhelm” (II,
Campe’s farther consideration contains a synopsis of method for distinguishing “Empfindsamkeit” from “Empfindelei:” in the first place through the manner of their incitement, the former is natural, the latter is fantastic, working without sense of the natural properties of things.
Its author says in the preface that his desire was to attack “Empfindsamkeit” on its dangerous and not on its comic side, hence the book avoids in the main the lighthearted and telling burlesque, the Hudibrastic satire of Timme’s novel. He works along lines which lead through increasing trouble to a tragic dénouement.
Campe’s newly coined word was never accepted, and in spite of his own efforts and those of others to honor the word “Empfindsamkeit” and restrict it to the commendable exercise of human sympathy, the opposite process was victorious and “Empfindsamkeit,” maligned and scorned, came to mean almost exclusively, unless distinctly modified, both what Campe designates as “überspannte Empfindsamkeit” and “Empfindelei,” and also the absurd hypocrisy of the emotions which he seeks to cover with his new word.
The second and third volumes are reviewed with a brief word of continued approbation. A novel not dissimilar in general purpose, but less successful in accomplishment, is Wezel’s “Wilhelmine Arend, oder die Gefahren der Empfindsamkeit,” Dessau and Leipzig, 1782, two volumes. The book is more earnest in its conception.
The preface contains a rather elaborate classification of kinds of “Empfindsamkeit,” which reminds one of Sterne’s mock-scientific discrimination. This classification is according to temperament, education, example, custom, reading, strength or weakness of the imagination; there is a happy, a
“Herr Mops, der um das dritte Wort Empfindsamkeit im Munde führet, Und wenn ein Grashalm ihm verdorrt, Gleich einen Thränenstrom verlieret . . . . . . . . Mit meinem Weibchen thut er schier Gleich so bekannt wie ein Franzose; All’ Augenblicke bot er ihr Toback aus eines Bettlers Dose Mit dem, am Zaun in tiefem Schlaf Er einen Tausch wie Yorik traf.
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