An Ethnopoetic Examination: Franz von Kobell`s Mid-19th-Century Bavarian and High German Poems

An Ethnopoetic Examination: Franz von Kobell`s Mid-19th-Century Bavarian and High German Poems

Alexa C. Maximiliane Ruhfass

This ethnopoetic research examines Franz von Kobell`s utilization of Bavarian languages in his romantic nationalist Bavarian language poems, and his High German prose. It identifies particular, but not separate elements of  Bavarian vernaculars in contrast to High German, and how those elements highlight particular but not separate cultural elements in Bavarian and German societies in the mid 19th century. This analysis stresses the interconnectedness of Catholicism, expansionism, and nationalism, and how Kobell used these power systems in his language interpretations by linking his Bavarian poems, and his High German prose with those dominant, mid-19th century political and religious structures that facilitated the unification of the German Empire. Kobell incorporated metaphors and meta-discursive techniques to contrast liberal-revolutionary and conservative-moralistic social processes to reflect on culture and language, by utilizing particular indexed vernacular territorial and temporal elements, concerning heritage, romanticism, nationalism, conservatism, and Catholicism. In particular, the interconnectedness of politics and Roman Catholicism translates into an interconnectedness yet not interchangeability of Bavarian and German-language communities. Kobell`s poems highlight those particular, but not separate elements of the Bavarian and German culture, and translate them into particular Bavarian, but not separate German societal experiences.