HEBBEL, CHRISTIAN FRIEDRICH
(1813–1863)

Christian Friedrich Hebbel, the German poet and playwright, was born in Wesselburen in the duchy of Holstein and died in Vienna. His father, an impoverished bricklayer who became destitute as a result of having guaranteed a loan that was defaulted, hated this son who showed no aptitude for earning a living. The boy's mother was more indulgent and protected him from the brutality of the father. It was thus possible for young Hebbel to keep alive his consuming passion for learning. At the age of fourteen he was employed as a clerk by a parish official named Mohr, who allowed him to use his library. Mohr treated Hebbel as a common servant, however, and for this Hebbel never forgave him.

Through the good offices of Amalie Schoppe, the editor of a popular magazine, Hebbel received enough money to go to Hamburg in order to try to complete his fragmentary education. There he met Elise Lensing, a seamstress ten years his senior who cherished an abiding love for him; over the years she gave him clothes, lodging, money, and two sons, both of whom died young. Hebbel, who was ridden by his demon to acquire learning and develop himself as a writer, refused to marry Elise. Instead, he went on to study at the universities of Heidelberg and Munich. In the late winter of 1839, he made the arduous trip from Munich back to Hamburg on foot. In the same year he completed his first play, Judith, which he cited as his chief accomplishment when he applied for a travel stipend to King Christian VIII of Denmark. The king granted the stipend, and Hebbel went to Paris and from there to Rome. Because his resources were dwindling, he struck out for Germany by way of Vienna, where he met the talented actress Christine Enghaus, to whom he became engaged after three months. Whether or not Hebbel was largely influenced in this decision by the prospect of financial and social security, the marriage was a happy one and enabled Hebbel to take a place of honor in artistic and intellectual circles. His early death must be attributed in large measure to the hardships he had endured in order to realize his genius.

With the desperate seriousness of the self-educated man, Hebbel dedicated himself to presenting in artistic form his solution, sometimes characterized as "pantragic," of what he considered the ultimate philosophical problem, the incomprehensible escape of the individual from the Absolute or Idea, man's freedom in relation to God.

In Hebbel's dualism individual forms exist only by virtue of having differentiated themselves from the Absolute. Their struggle to maintain themselves as separate entities is a rebellion, the primeval sin of individuation. The sinfulness of the individual consists merely in the fact that he exists, and it is in no way dependent upon the nature or direction of his individual will. For his sinfulness the individual must be punished; he will have to submerge his particular being in the undifferentiated whole. The more splendid, vigorous, and powerful he is, the greater is the threat he poses to the Absolute and the more tragic is the struggle, which can end in only one way. There is only one necessity—that the Absolute maintain itself. However, although the existence of individual forms threatens the Whole, it is precisely the process of individuation that gives life to this closed system. If it were not for the mysterious freedom of the individual forms, the Absolute would become rigid and lifeless. The total life process is dependent on the metabolic flow of individual forms, which may appear at one point; may be submerged forever; or may, whether they retain their identities or their elements enter into new combinations, reappear at another point only to lose individuality again in the never-ending compact flux of history, compact because nothing new enters the universe and nothing leaves it.

It is the common task of philosophy and art, particularly drama and more specifically Hebbel's drama, to describe and make understandable this supreme philosophical problem. Philosophy must fail in its part of the common task, to determine the original cause of individuation, because this ultimate cause is unfathomable. But the drama is not concerned with this question. It accepts individuation as the prime condition of life and presents the tragic struggle of the All and the one in a way that makes it comprehensible to aesthetic intuition. In the drama the metaphysical breach is closed; the defeat of the tragic hero mirrors the cosmic process.

In order to achieve his aim, Hebbel sets the action of his plays at critical times in history, for at such times the relation of the individual to the Whole is most poignantly manifested. In some plays—for example, Judith, Maria Magdalene, Herodes und Mariamne —the prevailing form of the Idea is shown to be on the verge of breaking up. In others—Genoveva, Agnes Bernauer, Gyges und sein Ring —the prevailing form of the Idea, although threatened, affirms itself and persists. In both instances, whether the individual is opposed to the Idea or is an instrument of it, the end is tragic, and all individuals meet the same fate—they are crushed and absorbed by the Whole.

Hebbel always insisted that despite obvious parallels he had evolved his metaphysical truths independently of the romantic nature philosophy of German idealism. For a long time, in the absence of specific evidence to the contrary, many literary historians accepted this assertion. Recent research, however, has shown that Hebbel had early steeped himself in certain writings of Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert, the natural scientist and philosopher, and Ludwig Feuerbach. The ideas he found there he experienced with such intensity that he incorporated them into his own psychic structure although his pride as a self-taught man did not allow him to acknowledge his debt.

See also Absolute, The; Feuerbach, Ludwig Andreas; Idealism.

Bibliography

works by hebbel

Sämtliche Werke, historisch-kritische Ausgabe. Edited by R. M. Werner. Berlin, 1904–1907. The major sources for Hebbel's theories are Mein Wort über das Drama and Vorwort zu Maria Magdalene, both in Part I of this edition. Equally important are various passages in the diaries (Part II) and letters (Part II).

works on hebbel

Campbell, T. M. The Life and Works of Friedrich Hebbel. Boston: R.G. Badger, 1919.

Flygt, Sten G. Friedrich Hebbel's Conception of Movement in the Absolute and in History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1952.

Kreuzer, Helmut, ed. Hebbel in neuer Sicht. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1963.

Kuh, Emil. Biographie Friedrich Hebbels. Vienna and Leipzig, 1907.

Liepe, Wolfgang. Beiträge zur Literatur und Geistesgeschichte. Neumünster, Germany: K. Wachholtz, 1963. Contains several essays illuminating the relationships between Hebbel's thought and the thought of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, Ludwig Feuerbach, and Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert.

Meetz, Anni. Friedrich Hebbel. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1962.

Purdie, Edna. Friedrich Hebbel: A Study of His Life and Work. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1932.

Scheunert, Arno. Der Pantragismus als System der Weltanschauung und Aesthetik Hebbels. Leipzig, 1930.

Sten G. Flygt (1967)