The lyric poetry in German culture since the 1870s is caught between polarities of aesthetic and political allegiance perhaps more extreme than in any other genre. Between an ethically responsible poetry engaged with the real and a poetry of privileged inwardness, there can, it seems, be little common ground. The conflict between these impulses is demonstrated with unique clarity in reactions to the Holocaust. Yet, reviewing the period as a whole, it is striking how this central opposition is reformulated time and again in shifting constellations. What links these different impulses is a knowing reflection on the self and the character of poetic creativity. That, it might be argued, defines the crucial signature of the modern.

A new poetry: paths out of the 'Gründerzeit'

The period from 1870 to 1890 saw a definitive change in German poetry. Wide-scale literacy programmes, technical innovations in printing and paper-production and the popularity of lending libraries and masscirculation family magazines created a new appetite for culture among the middle classes. The great names of the dominant Erlebnislyrik (poetry of experience), Theodor Storm and Gottfried Keller, published their final collections; the moral poetry of popular anthologies remained decorative but trivial; nationalist poets like Emanuel Geibel produced hymns of patriotic fervour and heroic cliche. Torn between inflated idealism and salon culture, the central problem for poetry as a genre was how to negotiate between public and private demands in a rapidly changing world.