Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s festival piece Des Epimenides Erwachen [The awakening of Epimenides], 1815, and Gerhart Hauptmann’s work entitled Festspiel in deutschen Reimen [Commemoration Masque], can be connected to the First World War only indirectly. While the former was created for the ceremony celebrating the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the latter was made for its centenary. Yet, both are in connection with the First World War, since in Europe before 1914, it was the Napoleonic Wars which meant the experience of a great war. Hauptmann’s play consciously relates to Goethe’s text and it was constitutive of the social discourse prior to the outbreak of the First World War.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s festival piece Des Epimenides Erwachen [The awakening of Epimenides], 1815, and Gerhart Hauptmann’s work entitled Festspiel in deutschen Reimen [Commemoration Masque], can be connected to the First World War only indirectly. While the former was created for the ceremony celebrating the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the latter was made for its centenary. Yet, both are in connection with the First World War, since in Europe before 1914, it was the Napoleonic Wars which meant the experience of a great war. Hauptmann’s play consciously relates to Goethe’s text and it was constitutive of the social discourse prior to the outbreak of the First World War.