“German” Freedom: A Literary and Historical Explanation for the Virality of Nikolaus Becker’s “Rheinlied”

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Why, in the fall of 1840, did a banal poem written by an undistinguished amateur poet in the Rhineland become wildly popular - or in twenty-first century parlance - “go viral”? In answering that question, this article traces how Nikolaus Becker’s “Rheinlied” temporarily gave the illusion of German unity through the anti-French sentiment provoked by the Rhine Crisis of 1840. Historical contextualization through primary archival material in the press of the time, as well as a close formal literary analysis of the poem itself and a collection of its poetic replies, complicates the assumption that 1840 marked “the breakthrough of modern German nationalism.” Becker’s song personified Germany through the notion of a timeless Rhine and suggested, by virtue of an aesthetic withdrawal from politics, a concept of freedom in the German identity. The Becker text clearly shows how a negative formulation of the “false” freedom of the French buttressed a German moral concept consistent with the existing order. Given the deep political divisions in the German lands in 1840 - which were neither technically “free” nor “German” - this was a seductive vision.

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