What does the term Sturm und Drang mean?
Sturm und Drang translates as storm and stress. It describes a proto-Romanticist movement in German literature and music that ran between the late 1760s and the early 1780s.
Questions about Sturm und Drang
Short answers, pulled from the story.
Who named the Sturm und Drang movement?
The movement takes its name from a play by Friedrich Maximilian Klinger, published in 1776 and first staged by Abel Seyler's theatre company in 1777. Klinger set the play during the American Revolution.
Which writers were central to the Sturm und Drang movement?
Six playwrights are usually credited with defining and spreading the movement: Johann Anton Leisewitz, Heinrich Leopold Wagner, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz, Friedrich Maximilian Klinger, and Friedrich Schiller. Johann Georg Hamann and Johann Gottfried Herder supplied much of its philosophical grounding.
Why did the Sturm und Drang movement reject the Enlightenment?
Its writers saw French neoclassicism and Enlightenment ideals such as rationalism, empiricism, and universalism as too rigid to capture real human experience. They favored emotional turbulence, individuality, and subjectivity instead.
Which works of literature best represent Sturm und Drang?
Goethe's 1774 novel Die Leiden des jungen Werthers and Friedrich Schiller's 1781 drama Die Räuber are both considered seminal examples. Johann Anton Leisewitz's 1776 play Julius of Taranto is regarded as an early, quintessential work of the movement.
How did Sturm und Drang influence classical music?
Composers such as Joseph Haydn wrote minor-key works with agitated, angular themes during a Sturm und Drang period in the late 1760s and early 1770s. Mozart's Symphony No. 25 in G minor, from 1773, is often linked to the same style, though he never claimed the connection himself.