SOURCE: Thomas, Lionel. “Bourgeois Attitudes: Gustav Freytag's Novels of Life in Nineteenth-Century Germany.” Proceedings of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, XV, part III (June 1973): 59-74.

In the following essay, Thomas assesses the realism of Freytag's novels Soll und Haben and Die verlorene Handschrift.

In German narrative fiction of the nineteenth century there seems to be a clear distinction between best-sellers and works of lasting value. Such a distinction is not to be found in English literature where, for example, Dickens, a popular best-selling novelist of his time, has maintained his position as a literary giant today. The same cannot be said of Gustav Freytag whose novels of contemporary life Soll und Haben (1855) and Die verlorene Handschrift (1864) were once widely read and are now largely unknown to the rising generation of students. From the dates of first publication both novels sold steadily, so that by 1923 Soll und Haben...