German Knowledge, German Nation, and German Paths to Selfhood in Freytag and May

That curious close bond of German and Gypsy, so prominent in both Romantic and immediately post-Romantic epochs, is if anything strengthened in the increasingly nationalist writers of high realism. But the scepticism and cultural pessimism of Keller and Raabe are now forgotten. Differing as they do in many respects, both Gustav Freytag’s Die verlorene Handschrift (1864) and Karl May’s Scepter und Hammer (1879–80) nonetheless portray the Romany at a crucial juncture in German history as playing a positive, indeed central, part in an historical process which, as they see it, will bring the German nation into full possession of its birthright. In both cases it is a political birthright. In Freytag’s case it is an intellectual one as well.