The humour of Germany

INTERNATIONAL HUMOUR.
Edited by W. H. DIRCKS.
THE HUMOUR OF GERMANY.
THE HUMOUR OF GERMANY
SELECTED AND TRANSLATED, WITH INTRODUCTION AND BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX, BY HANS MÜLLER-CASENOV: WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY C. E. BROCK.
LONDON 1892
WALTER SCOTT LTD.
In endeavouring to bring together examples of so significant and at the same time elusive a phase of national character—literary as well as psychological—as a nation’s humour, it were of course vain to seek to make each selection typical in itself—typical, that is, in the sense of referring to the broad basis of a nation’s individuality in respect of its humour as distinguished from other nations.
A general idea can only be obtained by scanning a broad field; here, as elsewhere, details have little meaning unless considered in their relation to the broader outlook. A constant interplay of varied influences has to be taken into account. The purely national aspect is obtruded upon by the individuality of each author, which nowhere expresses with such effect as in the literature of humour. The time of writing, considered historically, with its political tendencies, has also to be considered; its church dependence perhaps, and the peculiar trend of its social interests. It is intruded upon also by the time considered in its relation to literature as a whole, to the tendencies of form and style predominant at given periods.
Furthermore, there are strictly local peculiarities, subdividing Germany itself. It is more especially these that the student of literature, unless he be also a student of ethnological influences, is likely to wrongly estimate, while it is of the utmost importance that they be borne in mind to arrive at a just view of qualities that oversway minor differences, which are often the first to catch the eye. The more the Comic Muse is bound within the narrow limits of place, time, and personality, the more is she in her element. She of all muses is a painter of detail, versed in the art of reproducing punctiliously those petty traits which disengage her subject from all broader problems, and make it effective in proportion to its unimportance to the world’s general affairs.