books on questions of technique. Attempts
at tracing Dickens' literary forerunners
were also much in vogue.
The climax of this development can be
seen in Wilhelm Dibelius's monograph of
Dickens which was published in 1916. Not
only was 'source-hunting' brought to
perfection here but Dibelius also dealt with
the writer's personality and the cultural
background of his works as well as with
questions of technique with an unpreceden
ted thoroughness. At the same time his
profound erudition enabled him to point
out Dickens' originality and his status
within European literature.
Then World War I stopped all further
publications and when research was resu
med again the number of critical works by
no means equalled that of the decades
before the war. The interest on the English
writer had evidently abated, although
Stefan Zweig in his famous essay on Dic
kens in Drei Meister: Balzac, Dickens,
Dostojewski (Three masters: Balzac, Dic
kens, Dostoevsky) (1920) had tried to
revive it immediately after the war. His
book, it is true, was an unusual commerci
al success and Zweig's psychological
insight into Dickens' personality as well as
the fact that he discovered connections
between the Dickens-cult in Germany in
the first half of the nineteenth century and
the world of Biedermeier make it still
worth reading, but it had hardly an endu
ring effect on the general situation in
Germany.
The decline of Dickens' influence was also
apparent within the realm of creative
writing. Among the members of the school
of 'poetic realism', which owed so much
to the works of the English author, only
Gustav Frenssen was still alive; his last
novel Otto Bahendieck (1926) showed
many similarities with David Copperfield.
But hardly any other outstanding works of
German literature were reminiscent of
Dickens on a larger scale with the one
exception of some of Franz Kafka's stories
and novels, especially Der Prozess (The
Trial) and Amerika which had posthu
mously been published in the 1920's and
in which many parallels with Dickens'
novels as to theme, atmosphere, and sym
bolism could be traced.
The history of Dickens in Germany up to
1937 has been recorded in detail and with
great thoroughness by Ellis N. Gummer in
Dickens' Works in Germany. 1837-1937
(Oxford, 1940), whilst Ada Nisbet and
Philip Collins in their chapters on Charles
Dickens in Victorian fiction. A Guide to
Research have provided an extremely
reliable guide to the critical work publis
hed on Dickens in Germany for the follo
wing years up to 1978.
Although Gummer's scholarly presentation
is on the whole correct as far as facts are
concerned, his book is not always satisfac
tory as to the interpretation of these facts.
Thus Gummer does not seem to realize
that the fundamental changes in literary
taste that took place between the age of
Biedermeier and the era of naturalism are
lastly responsible the final eclipse of Dic
kens' fame in Germany in the twentieth
century. Although he noticed that a reverse
set in toward the turn of the century and
makes short mention of the adverse criti
cism of authors like Heinrich Hart and
Karl Bleibtreu who had been inspired by
naturalistic principles, he does not see the
devastating consequences this movement
had for Dickens' literary fame in Germany
during the following decades. He also fails
to recognize that right from the beginning
of the second half of the nineteenth centu
ry an evergrowing tendency to a more
realistic presentation of life set in which
finally led to naturalism which gradually
began to estrange critics from Dickens'
works. Although, in most cases, this con
cerned only details of Dickens' art, the
addition of the many defects which critics
began to disclose eventually caused them
to despise Dickens' works generally.
One of the severest of these naturalistic
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