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Among the external facts of Gutzkow's life, worth remembering in this connection, are the following: His birth on the seventeenth of March, 1811, as the son of humble parents; his precocious development in school and at the University of Berlin; his deep interest in the revolution of 1830 in Paris; his student experiments in journalism and the resulting association with the narrow-minded patriot, Wolfgang Menzel; his doctorate in Jena and subsequent study of books and men in Heidelberg, Munich, Leipzig, Berlin, and Hamburg; his association with Heine, Laube, Mundt, and Wienbarg and his journey with Laube through Austria and Italy in 1533; his breach with Menzel at the instance of Laube in the same year; his publication in 1835 of the crude sketch of an emancipation novel, Wally the Skeptic, compounded of suggestions from Lessing's Dr.
A group of men, including, among others, Ludwig Börne, Heinrich Heine, Heinrich Laube, Theodor Mundt, Ludolf Wienbarg, and Karl Gutzkow, dominate the literary activity of Germany from the beginning of the fourth decade to about the middle of the nineteenth century.
'The influence of the moon had caused the night wanderer to undergo this adventure." To be sure Mundt attributes all sorts of mystical-romantic rubbish to the action of the heavenly body. "DER PRINZ VON HOMBURG," by Heinrich von Kleist. Heinrich von Kleist also like Ludwig carried night wandering and moon walking into material at hand.
I will reproduce the contents of this story, as far as it touches our problems, as closely as possible in the words of Mundt, although this story, which is contained in the collection mentioned under the separate title of "Lebensmagie, Wirklichkeit und Traum," hardly possesses an artistic value.
"Thugut wants those papers, and he has forgiven us in advance if they should be a little blood-stained," said Victoria, looking up smilingly to old Colonel Barbaczy, who, with his hands folded on his back, his large shaggy eyebrows gloomily contracted, was slowly pacing the room. "Barbaczy! Vide "Uteransoher Lodiacus." Edited by Theod. Mundt, 1835.
Who was the author of it is not known with certainty; but it is possible that the writer of it was John Heywood, the epigrammatist and court-jester. See Dramaturgic oder Theorie und Geschichte der dramatischen Kunst, von Theodore Mundt, vol i, p. 809. All was quiet in the palace of Whitehall.
It is a fictitious tale of the "young German" Theodor Mundt, which appeared in his collection "Charaktere und Situationen" in 1837, five years before the "Maria," and shows in fact some external similarities with this. Still Otto Ludwig expressly acknowledges a tale told by a friend as the source, but gives no syllable of mention to Mundt.
Reimarus, from Saint Simonism, and from the sentimental tragedy of Charlotte Stieglitz in real life; Menzel's revengeful denunciation of this colorless and tedious novel, as an "outrageous attack upon ethics and the Christian religion"; the resulting verdict of the Mannheim municipal court, punishing Gutzkow by one month's imprisonment, with no allowance for a still longer detention during his trial; the official proscription of all "present and future writings" by Gutzkow, Wienbarg, Laube, Mundt, and Heine; Gutzkow's continued energetic championship of the new literary movement and editorial direction of the Frankfurt Telegraph, from 1835 to 1837, under the very eyes of the Confederate Council; his removal in 1837 to Hamburg and his gradual transformation there from a short story writer and journalist into a successful dramatist; his series of eleven plays, produced within the space of fifteen years, from 1839 to 1854; the success of his tragedy, Uriel Acosta, in 1846, and the resulting appointment of the author in the same year as playwright and critic at the Royal Theatre in Dresden; his temperate participation in the popular movement of 1848 and consequent loss of the Dresden position; the death of his wife, Amalia, in the same-year after an estrangement of seven years, due to his own infatuation for Therese von Bacharacht; his happy marriage in 1849 with Bertha Meidinger, a cousin of his first wife; the publication in 1850-51 of his first great novel of contemporary German life, entitled, Spiritual Knighthood; his continuous editorial work upon the journal, Fireside Conversations, from 1849 until the appearance of his other great contemporary novel, The Magician of Rome, 1858-61; his attack of insanity under the strain of ill health in 1865 and unsuccessful attempt at suicide; and, finally, his rapidly declining health and frequent change of residence from Berlin to Italy, thence to Heidelberg, and from there to Sachsenhausen, near Frankfurt-on-the-Main, and his tragic death there, either intentional or accidental, in the night of December fifteenth, 1878, when under the influence of chloral he upset the candle, by the light of which he had been reading, and perished in the stifling fumes of the burning room.
We find here also as the nucleus of moon walking, when we strip from the foregoing all its mystical setting, the longing to approach the love object and there to be able to indulge oneself without punishment because it is done unconsciously. The literary historian Richard M. Meyer regards it quite correctly: "Theodor Mundt believed that he had emphasized something new in his way of presenting it.
Critics have ascribed the negative, disintegrating, and cosmopolitan spirit of the group as a whole to the fact that Börne and Heine were Jews. Moreover, while Börne and Heine belong through sympathy and deliberate choice to Young Germany, the real spokesmen of the group, Wienbarg, Laube, Mundt, and Gutzkow, were non-Jewish Germans.
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