The German Historical Novel since the Eighteenth Century

Book excerpt: The historical novel is a genre which has enjoyed widespread popularity in Germany from its beginnings in the eighteenth century. At that time, increased literacy among the middle and lower classes had resulted in a greater demand for reading material aimed at a general audience. Because of its educational and entertaining characteristics, the historical novel quickly became a dominant genre among other forms of popular literature. To this day, it constitutes a major sector on the German book market and is, together with popular TV series, documentaries, and museum exhibits, an important part of German Geschichtskultur. This collection of essays looks at aesthetic and thematic continuities, as well as changes in the development of the genre in Germany from the late eighteenth century to the present, and gives insights into the novels’ political and socio-cultural implications. The articles investigate historical novels from writers such as Benedikte Naubert, the ‘mother’ of German historical fiction, nineteenth-century popular writers Georg Ebers and Hermann Sudermann, modern writers such as Alfred Döblin, Hermann Hesse, and Hermann Broch, post-Wende works such as those by Thomas Brussig, Christa Wolf, and Ingo Schulze, and contemporary historical fiction by Sabine Weigand, Eveline Hasler and Petra Durst-Benning.