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Images - Elite and Popular Culture
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1.   E.T.A. Hoffmann, "The Strange Child" (1816)
E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776-1822) is perhaps best known to American audiences as the author of the story that inspired Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker (1892) – though this beloved ballet bears only....
E.T.A. Hoffmann,
2.   In a Berlin Living Room c. 1815 (1816)
In early nineteenth-century Germany, the tradition of classical antiquity and humanistic learning had a powerful hold on the collective imagination of the educated bourgeoisie. During the Enlightenment,....
In a Berlin Living Room c. 1815 (1816)
3.   "Little Red Riding Hood" (1825)
Little Red Riding Hood on the way to her grandmother's house. Illustration from the Grimm Brothers'....
"Little Red Riding Hood" (1825)
4.   "Everyone Reads Everything" – A Reading Café in Berlin (1832)
The years between 1815 and 1848 saw the introduction of educational reforms, the spread of mandatory elementary education, and the increasing availability of books and newspapers. As a result, Germany’s....
"Everyone Reads Everything" – A Reading Café in Berlin (1832)
5.   Johann Nepomuk Nestroy (left) in The Evil Spirit of Lumpacivagabundus or: The Slovenly Threesome from 1833 (1834)
In the first half of the nineteenth century, popular theaters in suburban Vienna produced a particular form of comedy called Posse, which drew on burlesque, commedia dell’arte, and fairy tales....
Johann Nepomuk Nestroy (left) in <i>The Evil Spirit of Lumpacivagabundus or: The Slovenly Threesome</i> from 1833 (1834)
6.   Popular Festival at Cannstadt in the Fall of 1835 – The Story of Kaspar Hauser (1835)
First celebrated in 1818, the "Cannstatter Volksfest" (commonly called the “Cannstatter Wasen”) is still one of Germany's largest popular festivals. The annual celebration is held near Cannstadt....
Popular Festival at Cannstadt in the Fall of 1835 – The Story of Kaspar Hauser (1835)
7.   Carl Spitzweg, The Poor Poet (1839)
This is perhaps the most iconic painting of the Biedermeier period. Carl Spitzweg (1808-1885) – a pharmacist by trade – was himself a scion of the bourgeois class, whose stolid, sober values his....
Carl Spitzweg, <I>The Poor Poet</i> (1839)
8.   "Hansel and Gretel" and "Sleeping Beauty" (c. 1840)
First published in 1819, the Grimm brothers’ encyclopedic compendium of fairy and folk tales unites....
9.   Adrian Ludwig Richter, Rübezahl Appears to a Mother in the Form of a Charburner (1842)
Like his friend Moritz von Schwind, Adrian Ludwig Richter (1803-1884) rejected the melancholy contemplation of the early Romantics in favor of a more playful, lyrical, imaginary world. Primarily....
Adrian Ludwig Richter, <i>Rübezahl Appears to a Mother in the Form of a Charburner</i> (1842)
10.   Moritz von Schwind, The Falkenstein Ride (1843-44)
The serious, devoutly religious mysticism of the early Romantic artists (such as Caspar David Friedrich....
Moritz von Schwind, <I>The Falkenstein Ride</i> (1843-44)
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