The Romantic mind was torn constantly between system, fragment, and chaos, spirituality and reality, nature and industry, and knowledge and scepticism. This juxtaposition of dualisms is an important Romantic paradigm in itself, and harmony and reconciliation could be found in myth, tale, or an imagined dream. Responding to the fast-paced socio-political reality, the Romantics turned to spiritual means in order to nourish a sense of identity and intensity of emotion among the Germans. Their themes focused on such sources as rivers, the Germanic past or buildings of historical significance. This aversion to modernity is also reflected in the popularity of Exoticist settings, as was outlined in the previous chapter, and in the idea of a regeneration of Europe by Asia, as voiced by Schlegel and Novalis. Mythology, even though it may seem like the promotion of religious chaos at first glance, was propagated by Schlegel in order to provide guidance in forming a unified whole and achieve greater social cohesion. The Romantics’ spiritual tendency within the context of nineteenth-century industrialisation and the rise of modern values posed ideological problems, which resulted in a strong sense of loneliness and a fear of isolation. The Romantic ideal of integration sought a sense of community by placing the Bürger (citizen) within a larger conglomeration of individualities, a view which reflects the German Romantic concept of nationalism. However, the gap between Romantic ideal and reality was often too large. Thus another overarching theme of German Romanticism is the longing for release, to be achieved by way of contemplation and dreaming, by escaping to nature, by turning to mythology, by remembrance of the past, or through death. It is therefore not surprising that art took up such themes as the Germanic – or indeed other peoples’ – heroic past, myth, loneliness, wanderlust, and longing.

Dreamy images of foreign countries

While the Greek and Spanish songs discussed in Chapter 4 deal with heroic imaginings of foreign pasts, the two Lieder ‘Sehnsucht nach Griechenland’ and ‘Die Zigeuner’ focus on the lyrical protagonists’ dreamy images of Southern natural beauty. Kinkel’s setting of Geibel’s ‘Sehnsucht nach Griechenland’ (Longing for Greece, op. 6, no. 1) alludes to Romantic longing for the less industrialised South, along with a sense of transience, a strongly romanticised image of nature, and a desperate perspective on the self.