THE FUTURE OF GERMAN LITERATURE PROPHECY is a dangerous and on the whole an unprofitable occupation. If I nevertheless venture to supplement these fragmentary sketches of German letters of to-day and of the past by casting a brief glance into the future of German literature, I do so because the present condition of literary production in Germany is such that the question of its probable outcome in permanent achievement forces itself upon us with more than ordinary emphasis and intensity. It is the principal features of the present situation and their promise for the future which I wish briefly to analyze. Among the symptoms betokening the approach of a new era of true literary greatness, I would name in the first place the extraordinary receptivity of the German public for serious art. Foreign observers of contemporary Germany often make the mistake of assuming that our national vitality is absorbed by industrial enterprise and commercial expansion. As a matter of fact, there is no country where literary and artistic questions are so eagerly discussed and evoke such serious consideration among the broad mass of average people as in the Germany of to-day. Wherever you go, you find the same proofs of this intense interest in higher things. In the lecture-rooms of the universities you see, week in, week out, hundreds of hearers, often comprising besides the regular students a large contingent of officers, artists, littérateurs, and men of affairs, listening with unflagging attention to learned discourses on the modern drama, on Wagner, on Nietzsche, and similar subjects. In going over the weekly répertoire of the principal theatres in any of the larger German cities, you will find that the serious drama - Shakspere, Goethe, Schiller, Ibsen, Hauptmann - altogether predominates, and night after night you will find the playhouses crowded by the same thoughtful, discriminating, and responsive audiences. In the fine arts, a new work by Rodin, by Klinger, by Sinding is an event stirring the imagination and the critical faculty of large masses of Germans, to an extent quite unknown in America or England; and such questions as the restoration of Heidelberg Castle or the |