In the transition from the armed revolutionary outbreak of 1848 to the evolutionary processes of the present day, the novel of purpose and living issues (Tendenz-und Zeitroman) has played an important part in teaching the German people to think for themselves and to seek the highest good of the nation as whole. In front rank, if not the foremost of the novelist of living issues in this period of social and economic reform was Friedrich Spielhagen, whose novels were almost without exception novels of purpose. FRIEDRICH SPIELHAGEN (Pages 1-213) “The Life of Friedrich Spielhagen.” “Storm Flood.” The Rider of the White Horse is Strom’s last complete work and also, as we believe the one that best reflects the whole man, as far as that is possible with a poet of such varied development. The scene is laid in his home, which is characterized with vividness and grandeur in its setting of March and sea. Like the stories of his youth it glorifies love, the love of two beings who are faithful to each other unto death, and at the same time it touches themes which deeply occupied Strom in his age, such as the problem of heredity in Karsten Kurator, or the relation between father and son in Hans and Heine Kirch or in Basch the Cooper. The charm of youth, to which our poet was always most susceptible, invests the chief characters, and they have that chaste reserve that holds all Internal life sacred. Happiness is won, but it ends in tragedy, the tragedy which has taken the place of the resignation of his youthful works and which, after all, was more deeply rooted in Storm than the joyfulness that is sounded in Psyche. It is a man of sober intellect who tells the whole story and yet, like human life itself, it stands out against a mystic background. Remembrance of long ago has clarified everything, loving, was granted to Storm to stand on a pinnacle of art at the end of his life, a pinnacle which he had to leave, but from which he did not need to descend. THEODO STORM (Pages 214-344) “The Life of Theodor Storm.” “The Rider of the White Horse.” “To a Deceased.” “The City.” “The Heath.” Consolation.” WILHELM RAABE (Pages 346-540) “Wilhelm Raabe.” “The Hunger Pastor.” Keywords: Storm, Theodo, White Horse, Death, Raabe, Wilhelm, Psyche, Friedrich Spielhagen, Storm Flood, Karsten Kurator, German, Plays, pinnacle, The German Classics Vol. 11,

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