Scandal CULTURE Reloaded

Project website

Five central examples from the early phase of modern scandal culture, five selected literary scandals between 1774 and 1835, are presented on the platform, whereby each scandal and its own logic of development can be traced and studied using these historical examples.

The focus is on: 

1. the scandal surrounding Goethe's epistolary novel „Die Leiden des jungen Werthers“ (1774‒1787),
2. the scandal surrounding the Jena Early Romantics (1798-1801),
3. the scandal surrounding the anti-Semitic farce „Unser Verkehr“ (1813‒1819),
4. the so-called Heine-Platen affair surrounding the mutual discrimination between Heinrich Heine and August von Platen (1827-1830)
5. the scandal surrounding Karl Gutzkow's novel „Wally, die Zweiflerin“ (1835/36).

The five scandals deal with topics that were explosive and topical not only back then, but also today: new concepts of love, marriage, sexuality and gender, suicide, criticism of religion, anti-Semitism and discrimination against minorities. The historical literary scandals can be explored on the platform with their most important players, events and texts in a modern, social media-oriented design.

The scandal surrounding the young, rebellious early Romantics from the period between 1797 and 1801 is considered one of the first literary scandals of the so-called “modern age” - consisting of numerous individual affairs.

With their new literary program and numerous publications, the early Romantic group around the brothers August Wilhelm (1767-1845) and Friedrich Schlegel (1772-1829) repeatedly provoked the older generation of authors to such an extent that there were numerous violent counter-reactions. A public exchange of blows quickly developed in which the parties did not spare each other. In particular, the generation of Enlightenment authors such as Friedrich Nicolai, who were still publishing themselves around 1800, felt attacked and cornered by the young authors.

All information on the scandal surrounding the Jena early romantics and the parties involved in the scandal can be found here: https://skandalkultur.freies-deutsches-hochstift.de/skandale/21. 

The scandal surrounding Karl Gutzkow's novel „Wally, die Zweiflerin“ (1835–1840) can also be explored in full: https://skandalkultur.freies-deutsches-hochstift.de/skandale/107.

In addition, the digital exhibition already provides a clear, informative and modern scandal history for these two of the five scandals:

Scandalous ensemble around the Jena early Romantics: https://skandalkultur.freies-deutsches-hochstift.de/skandale/21/ereignisse,

Scandal surrounding Karl Gutzkow's novel „Wally, die Zweiflerin“: https://skandalkultur.freies-deutsches-hochstift.de/skandale/107/ereignisse.

The scandal surrounding Goethe's „Die Leiden des jungen Werthers“ and „Der Heine-Platen-Skandal“ are still in progress and have been pre-announced. 

At the same time, students at Goethe University Frankfurt have made short films on the individual topics, in which they have relocated the scandals to the present day: https://skandalkultur.freies-deutsches-hochstift.de/filme 

The Freies Deutsches Hochstift and the Trier Center for Digital Humanities hope you enjoy exploring the website!