Mörike and the Higher Criticism

Abstract

As a Protestant clergyman, Mörike was familiar with the historical study of the Bible (the 'Higher Criticism') represented by his friend David Strauss's Das Leben Jesu. He regarded it with ambivalence, agreeing in substance yet regretting its demolition of such attractive stories as the Gospel narratives of the birth of Jesus, and he found it hard to reconcile this historical understanding with his duties as a clergyman. His imaginative attraction to Christian legend was in tension with his liking for traditional tales about elves and ghosts, which he also associated with forbidden and disturbing sexuality. This tension finds expression both in his novel Maler Nolten and in the poem 'Auf eine Christblume', the two texts being linked by the key phrase 'Tochter des Walds'.