Julie K. Allen

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Brandes as a German Journalist: Shaping Cultural Identity through the Mass Media

Although modern Germanists rarely mention the name of Georg Brandes in connection with the modernization of German literature at the end of the 19 th century, it would be difficult to identify any other person, German or not, who had a more profound or wide-ranging influence on the literary scene in German-speaking countries during that period. Despite leaving Copenhagen under a cloud of controversy in 1877 and creating even more scandal in Germany by becoming involved with (and eventually marrying) his translater Adolf Strodtmann's wife, Brandes became a highly influential voice in literary criticism in Germany during the 1870s and 80s. Alongside his prodigious correspondence with dozens of German and Austrian writers, ranging from Arthur Schnitzler to Rainer Maria Rilke, the primarily means by which Brandes exercised his influence was his contributions to the thriving network of German newspapers and magazines, in particular the Berlin journals Deutsche Rundschau and Nord und Süd, both of which pioneered the genre of the popular literary review, appealed to an educated middle-class audience, and positioned themselves as authorities on cultural matters ranging from art to literature to academia. In this paper, I demonstrate how Brandes capitalized on the rising power of the mass media in Germany in order to both influence the development of a modernist German literary culture and to help shape popular perceptions of Scandinavia as progressive as a means of compensating for the relative political diminishment of the Nordic countries during the 19 th century.

As a prominent, prolific, and eloquent mediator of the cutting-edge aesthetic paradigms of French and Russian Naturalism and Realism to Germany, Brandes helped to direct the literary culture of the newly united German Empire in the final decades of the 19 th century into modernist paths. At the same time, he also contributed to a popular European perception of Scandinavian culture as highly progressive by promoting Scandinavian literary figures, such as Ibsen, Bjørnson, and Jacobsen, as representative of Naturalist aesthetics. He used the mass media to transmit not only literary ideals, but also specific conceptions about the national and cultural identities of the Germany's Nordic neighbors. Though subordinate to his concern with achieving professional success and financial stability, Brandes's skillful and deliberate use of the mass media to shape the cultural identities of both Germany and Scandinavia into a modernist mold had a profound impact on the self-perception of both regions, as well as on their cultural and political relationships to each other.