15.4: Romanticism

The seeds of nationalism were planted in the hearts and minds of many Europeans as an aspect of the Romantic Movement (circa 1798 to 1837). Romanticism was a movement of the arts, not of politics. Its central idea: there were great, sometimes terrible, and literally “awesome” forces in the universe that exceeded humankind’s rational ability to understand. Instead, all that a human being could do was attempt to pay tribute to those forces – nature, the spirit or soul, the spirit of a people or culture, or even death – through art.

To romantics, nature was a vast, overwhelming presence, against which humankind's activities were ultimately insignificant. At the same time, romantics celebrated the organic connection between humanity and nature. They often identified peasants as being the people who were "closest" to nature. In turn, it was the job of the artist (whether a writer, painter, or musician) to somehow gesture at the profound truths of nature and the human spirit. A "true" artist was someone who possessed the real spark of creative genius, something that could not be predicted or duplicated through training or education. The point of art was to let that genius emanate from the work of art, and the result should be a profound emotional experience for the viewer or listener.

Thanks to its ties to the folk movement, Romanticism helped plant the seeds of nationalism. The folk movement believed that the essential truths of national character had survived among the common people despite the harmful influence of so-called civilization. Traditions, from folk songs to fairytales to the remnants of pre-Christian pagan practices, were the “true” expression of a national spirit that had, supposedly, laid dormant for centuries. By the early eighteenth century, educated elites attracted to Romanticism set out to gather those traditions and preserve them in service to an imagined national identity.

The iconic examples of this phenomenon were the Brothers Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm, who were both expert philologists and avid collectors of German folk tales. The Brothers Grimm collected dozens of folk (“fairy”) tales and published the first definitive collection in German. Many of those tales, from Sleeping Beauty to Cinderella, are best known in U.S. culture due to their adaptation as animated films by Walt Disney in the 20th Century. The Brothers Grimm also undertook an enormous project to compile a comprehensive German dictionary, containing every German word and detailed etymologies. Unfortunately, they did not live to see its completion. The third volume E – Forsche - was published shortly before Jacob’s death.

Many Romantics believed that nations had spirits, which were invested with the core identity of their “people.” The Grimm brothers' work reached back into the remote past to grasp the "essence" of what it meant to be "German." At the time, there was no country called Germany. Yet, romantic nationalists like the Grimms believed that a kind of German soul lived in old folk songs, the German language, and German traditions. They worked to preserve those things before they were further "corrupted" by the modern world. Thus, they are an example of quintessential Romanic nationalists.

In many cases, romantic nationalists did something called "inventing traditions." One iconic example is the Scottish kilt. Since the 16th Century, Scots had worn kilts, but there was no such thing as a specific color and pattern of plaid (a "tartan") for each family or clan. The British government ultimately assigned tartans to a new class of soldiers recruited from Scotland: the Highland Regiments. The wider identification of tartan and clan only emerged in the first few decades of the nineteenth century. The point was to install nationalist pride in a specific group of military recruits, not celebrate an “authentic” Scottish tradition.

Likewise, in some cases, folk tales and stories were simply made up in the name of nationalism. The great epic Kalevala was written by a Finnish intellectual in 1827. It was based on actual Finnish legends, but it had never existed as one long story before.

Figure 15.4.1: British soldiers of the Highland Regiments in government-issued kilts in 1744.

Instead of emphasizing the falseness of the folk movement or invented traditions, historians try to consider why people were so intent on discovering (and, if necessary, inventing) them. Romanticism was, among other things, the search for stable points of identity in a changing world. Likewise, folk traditions - even those that were at least in part invented or adapted - became a way for early nationalists to identify with the culture connotated with the nation.