Pictures of German Life in the XVIIIth and XIXth Centuries, Vol. II

Freytag, Gustav, 1816-1895Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.8
Word count
548K words
Chapters
55

Tags

English Originals World HistoryHistory and Culture Historical ReappraisalIllustrated GuidePopular NarrativeSocial ObservationFolk CustomsCross-Cultural View

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Pictures of German Life in the XVIIIth and XIXth Centuries, Vol. II. by FreytagAuthor: Freytag, Gustav, 1816-1895,Language: English, Class: DD: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: Germany, Release Date: Sep 29, 2010

Editor's review

This book is the nineteenth-century German writer Gustav Freytag's observations and portrayal of German social life in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a work of cultural-historical essays. Its value lies not in systematic historical argumentation but in its literary rendering of details of German burgher, rural, and urban customs, daily life, and social mentality, allowing readers to sense the atmosphere of the age through concrete scenes. For readers wishing to understand Germany's modern social transformation, changing customs, and everyday life, it can serve as an affective supplement to historical sources. It is best read as cultural essays rather than as a scholarly monograph, with attention to the slices of life the author selects and his narrative perspective. This is a public-domain English e-book, suitable as auxiliary reading for German history or comparative culture and for general readers interested in the social landscape of nineteenth-century Europe.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Read selectively by chapter theme; it need not be read straight through from beginning to end.
  2. Note striking details of daily life as you read for later comparison with historical sources.
  3. Read alongside a general history of modern Germany to help situate the period.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55

FAQ

Is this book a rigorous work of historical scholarship? No. It is closer to cultural essays and observations of life, portraying eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German society in a literary style rather than excelling in systematic argumentation and statistical data. It is suitable as an affective supplement to historical reading, not as a sole source of evidence.
Can I read this book if my English is not good? This is a public-domain English e-book whose language carries nineteenth-century habits of expression, posing some difficulty for non-native readers. Those with weaker English are advised to use a dictionary or choose related Chinese reading matter; those with some English reading ability can begin with chapters that interest them.
Does this book need to be read in order from beginning to end? Not necessarily. The chapters mostly address different aspects of life and are fairly independent of one another. Readers can skip about by theme or interest, reading first the parts they care about and returning to other chapters later, which makes the reading lighter.

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About the author

Freytag, Gustav, 1816-1895 Author

Gustav Freytag (1816–1895) was a German writer, playwright and literary theorist. Ten of his works are held in this collection, spanning dramatic theory, novels and cultural-historical essays. His study Die Technik des Dramas systematically examines dramatic structure, and its discussion of the five-act play is often cited in later scholarship on drama. The novel Soll und Haben (published in English as Debit and Credit) takes commercial life as its subject, portraying the professional ethics and social world of the bourgeois class, while Das Nest der Zaunkönige belongs among his narrative works. He also wrote the Pictures of German Life series, whose volumes sketch scenes of German social life from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. His writing combines realistic description with cultural observation. Public information is limited, and details such as nationality and exact dates are not recorded in the collection, so no inference is made here.