The time of severe hardship

Berlin after the defeat by Napoleon. Prussia was economically and politically devastated. At the same time, however, the defeat opened the way to important reforms, and despite all the material hardship, Berlin continued to experience an astonishing cultural flowering. In the course of the so-called wars of liberation, victory over Napoleon was finally achieved, bringing renewed power but not the hoped-for unity and freedom.

As in 'Als Poesie gut', his great essay on the Berlin cultural epoch between 1786 and 1807, de Bruyn does justice to the diversity and contradictoriness of Prussia's most important epoch by reflecting it in the mirror of numerous individual portraits and stories. Günter de Bruyn tells of the famous statesmen and reformers of the time such as Hardenberg, Humboldt and Gneisenau. With sovereignty and sensitivity, he portrays the fates of great Romantic authors such as Kleist, Rahel Varnhagen, Eichendorff and E. T. A. Hoffmann. But he also follows the adventures and political aberrations of contemporaries such as Karl von François or Turnvater Jahn.

One of the authors of the era with whom de Bruyn has the greatest sympathy is Adelbert von Chamisso, from whom the title of the book comes. "The time of severe hardship," however - therein lies the bitter irony of this verse from 1813 - does not mean hunger and misery after the defeat by Napoleon, but the hardship of a Frenchman who has become a German and who becomes an outsider in the midst of the incipient Restoration and war enthusiasm of his time.