Russians, with their homogenuous strength
of style, their genuineness, and their we
alth of incident so true to life,' Dickens'
novels lacked artistic value.
Other German critics, though not so extre
me as Bleibtreu, were caught up in the
strong currents of naturalism, and, deter
mined to appear modern and advanced,
they set out to prove themselves true
disciples of Zola. In doing so they found
fault with Dickens' most important and
valuable assets.
Nevertheless, Dickens was not simply put
aside in the Germany of naturalism. In
deed, Bleibtreu's criticism makes it clear
that he was leading a desperate struggle
against an enormous number of Dickens'
admirers whose veneration of the writer
was beyond the critic's comprehension and
whom he angrily called blockheads. This
judgment, though far from correct, did
contain, at least from Bleibtreu's point of
view, a grain of truth. Naturalism in Ger
many first made headway among intel
lectuals who, convinced that their literary
taste was superior to that of anybody else,
were furious that Dickens continued to
hold a substantial portion of the reading
public captive. Some of the most respected
authors in the country still held the name
of Dickens in awe. Numerous translations
and heavy sales of Dickens' books as well
as statistics from lending libraries and a
great number of critical works in German
written on Dickens testified to the English
author's popularity among many German
readers, a popularity that lasted far beyond
World War I.
But at the same time there was in Germa
ny an ever-growing circle of people who
had been strongly affected by the princi
ples of naturalism and who began to belie
ve that the works of Dickens were somet
hing less than art. The masses came gradu
ally limping into line with these ideas of
the leading intellectuals; the middle clas
ses, especially the more cultivated among
them, remained conservative at first, hol
ding on to the ideals of the past and only
with great difficulty breaking away from a
writer who had become a much-loved
institution in German life.
Finally, after a violent struggle which
often assumed unexpected philosophical
dimensions, naturalism emerged the victor.
The nonstop volley of abuse directed at
Dickens' works eventually led to their
holding less sway over the minds of later
generations than they had in earlier peri
ods. Even Dibelius's monumental book on
Dickens was not able to check the decline.
Despite a revival of interest in, and a new
appraisal of Dickens' achievements in
England, as reflected in the foundation of
the Dickens Fellowship and in the appea
rance of G.K. Chesterton's Dickens mono
graph, Germany did not experience a
similar Dickens renaissance. Dibelius's
book had little impact beyond stimulating
members of his own school to write scho
larly treatises. Because it came out during
World War I, and because the approach
was extremely academic, the public was
little affected by it. More indicative of the
general temper was the reaction to Zweig's
analysis of Dickens. It did not suffer the
same disadvantages as Dibelius's book, but
neither did it herald the dawning of a new
and more hopeful epoch for Dickens'
works. Here the intellectual atmosphere
had become so saturated with the doctrines
of naturalism that it was resistant to the
emergence of any new Dickens cult.
There is irony in that fact that one of the
outstanding representatives of German
naturalism, Gerhart Hauptmann, does not
condemn Dickens as most followers of this
movement did. In Das Abenreuer meiner
Jugend (The Adventure of My Youth)
Hauptmann writes that in his youth he had
thoroughly 'imbibed' the works of Dic
kens; he also describes the powerful effect
made on him by Hard Times in 1881. The
entry for 26 February 1938 in Haupt-
mann's diary shows his reaction to David
Copperfield'There was much talk at
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