Romantic nationalism

Part of a series on
Nationalism
Nation forming Nationalism in the Middle Ages Anthem Church Colours Emblem Father Flag Epic God Identity Language Myth Sport State Symbol Treasure
Core values Allegiance Independence Patriotism Self-determination Solidarity
Types African Anarchist Blind Bourgeois Business Welfare Civic American French Irish Communist Constitutional patriotism Corporate Cyber- Ecological Economic Ethnic Ethnopluralism European Expansionist Homosexual Integral Left-wing (populism) Moderate Musical Mystic Neo- Pan- Racial Arab Black Japanese Shōwa Korean White Zionism Religious Christian Catholic Clerical Hindu Hindutva Muslim Sikh Resource Revolutionary National syndicalist National Bolshevik Fascism Legionarism Nazism Rexism Ethnocacerism Romantic Technological Territorial Trans- Ultra-
Organizations List of nationalist organizations
Related concepts Anationalism Anti-nationalism Anti-globalization movement Anti-imperialism Banal nationalism Civil religion Communitarianism Cosmopolitanism Cultural nationalism Diaspora politics Ethnocentrism Francoism Gender and nationalism Globalism Historiography and nationalism Imagined community Imperialism Internationalism Irredentism Jingoism Localism Militarism National indifference Nationalism studies Nativism Plurinationalism Post- Racism Revanchism Right-wing populism Seasonal or cultural festival Subsidiarity in Catholicism Trumpism Xenophobia
Politics portal
v t e

Romantic nationalism (also national romanticism, organic nationalism, identity nationalism) is the form of

Among the key themes of Romanticism, and its most enduring legacy, the cultural assertions of romantic nationalism have also been central in post-Enlightenment art and political philosophy. From its earliest stirrings, with their focus on the development of national languages and folklore, and the spiritual value of local customs and traditions, to the movements that would redraw the map of Europe and lead to calls for self-determination of nationalities, nationalism was one of the key issues in Romanticism, determining its roles, expressions and meanings. Romantic nationalism, resulting from this interaction between cultural production and political thought, became "the celebration of the nation (defined in its language, history and cultural character) as an inspiring ideal for artistic expression; and the instrumentalization of that expression in political consciousness-raising".^[3]

Historically in Europe, the watershed year for romantic nationalism was 1848, when

Brief history

The ideas of

From its beginnings in the late 18th century, romantic nationalism has relied upon the existence of a historical ethnic culture which meets the romantic ideal; folklore developed as a romantic nationalist concept. The Brothers Grimm, inspired by Herder's writings, put together an idealized collection of tales, which they labeled as authentically German. The concept of an inherited cultural patrimony from a common origin rapidly became central to a divisive question within romantic nationalism: specifically, is a nation unified because it comes from the same genetic source, that is because of race, or is the participation in the organic nature of the "folk" culture self-fulfilling?^{[citation needed]}

Romantic nationalism formed a key strand in the philosophy of

Fichte expressed the unity of language and nation in his thirteenth address "To the German Nation" in 1806:

The first, original, and truly natural boundaries of states are beyond doubt their internal boundaries. Those who speak the same language are joined to each other by a multitude of invisible bonds by nature herself, long before any human art begins; they understand each other and have the power of continuing to make themselves understood more and more clearly; they belong together and are by nature one and an inseparable whole. (Kelly, 1968, pp. 190–91)

Only when each people, left to itself, develops and forms itself in accordance with its own peculiar quality, and only when in every people each individual develops himself in accordance with that common quality, as well as in accordance with his own peculiar quality-then, and then only, does the manifestation of divinity appear in its true mirror as it ought to be; and only a man who either entirely lacks the notion of the rule of law and divine order, or else is an obdurate enemy thereto, could take upon himself to want to interfere with that law, which is the highest law in the spiritual world! (Kelly, 1968, pp. 197–98)

Nationalism and revolution

In the Balkans, Romantic views of a connection with classical Greece, which inspired

Following the ultimate collapse of the

Romantic nationalism inspired the collection of folklore by such people as the Brothers Grimm. The view that fairy tales, unless contaminated from outside literary sources, were preserved in the same form over thousands of years, was not exclusive to Romantic Nationalists, but it fit in well with their views that such tales expressed the primordial nature of a people.^{[citation needed]}

The

The work of the Brothers Grimm influenced other collectors, both inspiring them to collect tales and leading them to similarly believe that the fairy tales of a country were particularly representative of it, to the neglect of cross-cultural influence. Among those influenced were the Russian Alexander Afanasyev, the Norwegians Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe, and the Australian Joseph Jacobs.^[9]

National epics

The concept of a "

Arts

After the 1870s "national romanticism", as it is more usually called, became a familiar movement in the arts. Romantic musical nationalism is exemplified by the work of Bedřich Smetana, especially the symphonic poem "Vltava". In Scandinavia and the Slavic parts of Europe especially, "national romanticism" provided a series of answers to the 19th-century search for styles that would be culturally meaningful and evocative, yet not merely historicist. When a church was built over the spot in St Petersburg where Tsar Alexander II of Russia had been assassinated, the "Church of the Savior on Blood", the natural style to use was one that best evoked traditional Russian features (illustration, left). In Finland, the reassembly of the national epic, the Kalevala, inspired paintings and murals in the National Romantic style that substituted there for the international Art Nouveau styles. The foremost proponent in Finland was Akseli Gallen-Kallela (illustration, below right).

By the turn of the century, ethnic

In the first two decades of the 20th century, Romantic Nationalism as an idea was to have crucial influence on political events. Following the Panic of 1873 that gave rise to a new wave of antisemitism and racism in the German Empire politically ruled by an authoritarian, militaristic conservatism under Otto von Bismarck and in parallel with the Fin de siècle (which was also reflected to a degree in the contemporary art movements of symbolism, the Decadent movement, and Art Nouveau), the racialist völkisch movement which grew out of romantic nationalism in Germany in the late 19th century.^[20]

The rising nationalistic and imperialistic tensions between the European nations throughout the Fin de siècle period eventually erupted in the

• Chosen people / People of God
• Jews as the chosen people
• Conservatism
• Scandinavism
• Norwegian romantic nationalism
• Danish Golden Age
• German question
• Gothicism
• Hindutva
• Pochvennichestvo
• Britishness
• Ethnic nationalism
• Civil religion
• Polytheistic reconstructionism
• National epic
• National treasure
• National anthem
• Nationalism
• Patriotism
• Rise of nationalism in Europe
• Historiography and nationalism
• Musical nationalism

Sources