Refugees of the 18th Century: Boundaries and Gender Anxieties in "Hermann und Dorothea" (1797) by Johan Wolfgang von Goethe

Abstract

The writings in which Goethe tackles the disasters of warfare and the suffering of refugees yield a perception of social normativity where crisis is not considered a hindrance impossible to overcome by the subject. This paper focuses first on a reading of Goethe’s remarks about the post-revolutionary field of battle in France and Germany and the experience of social downgrade and cultural racism that it entails. Second I shall concentrate in the idyll Hermann and Dorothea to highlight through the transformation undergone by the role of Dorothea the shortcomings of Goethe’s account of the condition of women in this short writing. Finally, I aim at using the mentioned works of Goethe as a thread helpful to approach his perception of civil order and the destiny that this pattern assigns to women in circumstances of social exclusion and marginalization in XVIIIth Century Germany.