Everyone has their own goals in life, but not many people can say they had a hand in changing and shaping the future of others. For the following article we dive into the world of three German artists who influenced the world with their work.
German artists who influenced the world with their work!
MUSIC
If we talk about German music, three names quickly pop up in the mind of many. Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig von Beethoven and Richard Wagner. All three were classical musicians and german artists who made a great contribution towards the baroque music.
Today, we take a closer look at Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach was a German composer and musician, who came from a family of composers. However, he differentiated himself from them, in the way he changed and improved the already established German styles. He used his mastery of counterpoint, harmonic and motivic organisation to do this and also used influences from abroad to add adaptations of rhythms, forms and textures.
Bach’s most well-known works include the Art of Fugue, the Brandenburg Concertos, Goldberg Variations and the vocal piece St. Matthew’s Passion.
FILM
Also in the world of film, there are many influential German artists. However, we think that Rainer Werner Fassbinder was one of them that left a lasting impression. R. W. Fassbinder was a West-German filmmaker, actor, playwright, theatre director, composer, cinematographer, editor and essayist. In short, he was a jack of all trades, who became a prominent figure and catalyst for the New German Cinema movement.
What made him so different from other filmmakers of his time was his avant-garde style. He showed parts of German culture and his own fears on films. He even made films with themes that are still relevant today like “Fox and His Friends”, “Satan’s brew” and “Querelle”. All of them were focussed on important themes in the LGBTQ community. His openness about himself and the way he poured his soul in his films still inspires many German artists, but also other artists worldwide.
WRITING
Our last one of the famous German artists is writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. However, Goethe was, besides a writer, also a statesman. His real résumé states he was a novelist, poet, playwright, natural philosopher, diplomat and civil servant. But by age 25 he was already a famous writer because of his first book “The Sorrows of Young Werther”, which is seen as the world’s first bestseller and is still relevant today.
Goethe mostly wrote coming of age stories and was one of the pioneers of the Sturm und Drang literary movement. Which was about self-expression and showing lots of emotions in your work. It was also the spark that ignited the Romanticism movement later on.
Sie sieht nicht, sie fühlt nicht, dass sie ein gift bereitet, das mich und sie zugrunde richten wird; und ich mit voller Wollust schlürfe den Becher aus, den sie mir zu meinem Verderben reicht.
(She doesn’t see, she doesn’t feel, that she’s preparing a poison that will ruin me and her; and I, lustfully slurp from the cup, she has handed me to my downfall. )
An excerpt out of “The Sorrows of Young Werther”.
He also wrote the famous play Faust, which is considered the best work in German literature. All in all, we can say that without his work German literature wouldn’t be what it is today.
