Work has long served as the object of literary, philosophical, and artistic reflection. Its alternatives are also well represented, particularly in German Romanticism. Caspar David Friedrich's Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer (1818) offers a celebrated example of the latter, and features prominently on the cover of Arbeit und Müßiggang in der Romantik. Above the fog and in view of the wanderer, we also see Barge Haulers on the Volga (1870–73) by the Russian realist Ilya Repin. Because explicit depictions of work are largely absent in German Romantic painting, this striking image of manual labor was selected to counter Friedrich's iconic image (11–12). The workers, in tattered clothes and wearing blank expressions, contrast sharply with the well-dressed observer transposed to witness the men (and boy) yoked to a heavy vessel. Barge Haulers on the Volga clearly depicts work, but to what extent does Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer represent idleness, leisure, or perhaps another form of work? The twenty-eight essays in this volume demonstrate that the questions surrounding work and its other depend on circumstance and perspective.

The volume begins with a helpful introduction, which addresses work and idleness in Romantic painting, the contemporaneous understanding of key concepts, and a preview of the contributions. While the essays generally concentrate on works from the period, a few authors venture beyond the era but with due regard to the context. The collection is divided into five main sections. The first addresses various forms of Arbeit in Novalis (Franz-Jozef Deiters), Hölderlin (Sabine Doering), Chamisso (Christiane Weller), Heine (Dale Adams), and Büchner (Elke Brüns). The second shifts the focus to Muße and the related matters of Faulheit and Fleiß in Friedrich Schlegel's Idylle über den Müßiggang (Heide Volkening), Klingemann's Nachtwachen. Von Bonaventura (Mario Bosincu), Hölderlin's Hyperion (Leonhard Fuest), the Journal des Luxus und der Moden (Boris Roman Gibhardt), and Heine's Briefe aus Berlin and Lutezia (Robert Krause). The third section is dedicated to the arts and expands the scope of the volume; yet it remains heavily focused on literary texts with analyses of handcraft in Goethe and Heine (Michael Bies), the role of work and art in Klingemann's Nachtwachen (Tomasz Waszak), reflections on work and writing in Jean Paul (Monika Schmitz-Emans), and the work of poetry in Heinrich von Ofterdingen (James Hodkinson). The final essay here is the exception.