Jena Romanticism and Its Appropriation of Jakob Böhme: Theosophy, Hagiography, Literature

Jay Newman is a professor of philosophy at the University of Guelph. He
is the author of Competition in Religious Life, Religion vs. Television:
Competitors in Cultural Context, and Inauthentic Culture and Its
Philosophical Critics.

This academic monograph, based on the author’s doctoral dissertation,
examines diverse ways in which the Lutheran mystic Jakob Bцhme
(1575–1624) influenced early German romanticism and philosophical
idealism in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. While acknowledging
the importance of Bцhme’s influence, Paola Mayer questions the view
of scholars who may have overestimated the direct impact of Bцhme’s
theosophical ideas. In Mayer’s appraisal, it was mainly the image of
Bцhme rather than the substance of his thought that was utilized by
romantic writers in accordance with their own purposes and programs.

The first part of Mayer’s study offers a brief, seductively clear
précis of Bцhme’s thought and a discussion of his early reception.
The middle part examines Bцhme’s influence on Tieck and Novalis and
his more limited influence on Schleiermacher and others. The final part
focuses on the influence of Bцhme’s theosophy on the idealists
Schlegel and Schelling. Though Mayer raises some general issues about
ways in which authors and their works are appropriated by later writers
(and, more indirectly, about the relations of religious mysticism,
poetic literature, and philosophy), this work is essentially a study in
the history of German literature.

Mayer’s conscientious scholarship is evident throughout; and it is
not hard to believe that the influence of the enigmatic Bцhme must have
been more inspirational than intellectual. Yet those who have
encountered Bцhme’s provocative conceptions of the Ungrund,
contradictions in nature, the dark dimension of God, and the primacy of
the will as well as his recondite symbolism may wonder whether Mayer is
closely enough attuned to the distinctive spiritual sensibility of the
inspired shoemaker of Gцrlitz—or, indeed, the sensibility of romantic
writers and philosophers to be able to gauge Bцhme’s precise
influence on his romantic devotees. The reader may regret in this regard
that Mayer has not consulted approaches taken to aspects of Bцhme’s
vision by such powerful thinkers of the last century as Berdyaev, Buber,
and Jung. Still, this book by Mayer, who teaches European studies at the
University of Guelph, belongs in the library of every university with a
graduate program in German literature.