It was Wilhelm who gave Grimms' _Fairy
Tales_ their artistic form. He remolded, joined, separated--in
fact, wrought the crude materials into such shape that this work has
penetrated into every land and has become a household word for young
and old. The various early editions show the progress in the method
of Wilhelm. The first edition (1812) reproduces more exactly what the
brothers heard; the later ones show that Wilhelm consciously attempted
to give artistic form to the tales. That his method was justified
the history of the stories proves; they are not only material for
ethnological study, but are dear to all hearts. The stories have the
genuine folk-tone; they are true products of the folk-imagination,
with all the logic of that imagination. All phases of life are touched
and the interest never flags. The spirit of nature has been kept.
The Romanticists were not successful in the drama. Kleist, the
greatest dramatist of the period, was not primarily a Romantic
poet. The Schlegels wrote frosty plays and Tieck attempted dramatic
production. It was left for the most bizarre of the Romantic group to
write the play of greatest power in it and to set a dramatic fashion
which for more than a decade carried all before it.
Zacharias Werner (1768-1823), after a life of wild sensual excesses,
finally found refuge in the Roman Church and as a popular and
sensational preacher aroused Vienna with drastic sermons and clownish
antics.
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