The title of Friedrich von Klinger's 1776 play "Sturm und Drang" -- "storm and stress" -- accurately described the swirling hurricane of a movement then demolishing the formal and rational confines of culture, its eye a torrent of bottled-up energy, its... [more]

The title of Friedrich von Klinger's 1776 play "Sturm und Drang" -- "storm and stress" -- accurately described the swirling hurricane of a movement then demolishing the formal and rational confines of culture, its eye a torrent of bottled-up energy, its wake rocking the shores of the century to follow. An impassioned response to the dry reason that straitjacketed Enlightenment logic, Sturm und Drang dramatized the plight of the stifled individual and connected it to the social problems of the disenfranchised, ragged masses. Emphasizing the importance of personality over the mechanistic ideals of the Enlightenment, movement playwrights worshipped Shakespeare for his unique characters, and single-handedly rescued his humanistic genius from obscurity. Sturm poster boys Johann von Goethe and Friedrich von Schiller penned passionate dramas pleading for political reform and a Romantic moral code. The heroes they presented were, typically, powerful visionaries, unwavering in their commitment to fight the good fight whether the adversary was a single potentate or the whole of society and its corrupt institutions. The emotionalism and idealism of Sturm und Drang crashed and burned fairly quickly when its primary architects reassessed their aesthetics, but its influence lingered, adding power and dramatic poetry to the oncoming tidal wave of Romanticism. [show less]