Sturm und Drang

Sturm und Drang (German pronunciation: [ˈʃtʊɐ̯m ʊnt ˈdʁaŋ], literally 'storm and drive', 'storm and urge', though conventionally translated as 'storm and stress') is a proto-Romantic movement in German literature and music that took place from the late 1760s to the early 1780s, in which individual subjectivity and, in particular, extremes of emotion were given free expression in reaction to the perceived constraints of rationalism imposed by the Enlightenment and associated aesthetic movements. The period is named for Friedrich Maximilian Klinger's play Sturm und Drang, which was first performed by Abel Seyler's famed theatrical company in 1777.

The philosopher Johann Georg Hamann is considered to be the ideologue of Sturm und Drang, with Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz, H. L. Wagner and Friedrich Maximilian Klinger also significant figures. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was also a notable proponent of the movement, though he and Friedrich Schiller ended their period of association with it by initiating what would become Weimar Classicism.

French neoclassicism (including French neoclassical theatre), a movement beginning in the early Baroque, with its emphasis on the rational, was the principal target of rebellion for adherents of the Sturm und Drang movement. For them, sentimentality and an objective view of life gave way to emotional turbulence and individuality, and enlightenment ideals such as rationalism, empiricism, and universalism no longer captured the human condition; emotional extremes and subjectivity became the vogue during the late 18th century.

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