Hermanns Schlachten: Gender, Culture and the German Nation in the Long Eighteenth Century

This article investigates treatments of the ‘Hermannsschlacht’ motif in the long eighteenth century, focusing particularly on works by Johann Elias Schlegel, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock and Heinrich von Kleist. In particular, it considers how these authors represent the relationships between gender, culture and the German nation in their plays. It is argued that the development of the ‘Hermannsschlacht’ motif is not driven primarily by a search for models of masculinity (Hans Peter Herrmann), but rather that the gender roles portrayed in these works are shaped by a rapidly changing socio-political and intellectual climate which saw profound shifts in the understanding of nationhood as a cultural and political construct and in the relationship between gender and nationhood. The article proposes a broader framework of investigation, which on the one hand takes account of the changing relationships between intellectuals and power in Germany and on the other considers intertextual relationships between Kleist's play and the earlier versions of the ‘Hermannsschlacht’ in order to examine the dialogue between different generations of writers.