Time, Place, and Religion: Rethinking the Contexts of the Village Tales of Berthold Auerbach, Alban Stolz, and Johann Peter Hebel

Abstract This essay tries to contextualize a very popular nineteenth-century literary genre – Dorfgeschichten, village tales – from the standpoint of a historian.1 It considers two of the most widely read exemplars of the genre – Berthold Auerbach’s Schwarzwälder Dorfgeschichten and Alban Stolz’s Kalender für Zeit und Ewigkeit, and places them in relation to a third: Johann Peter Hebel’s Rheinisches Schatzkästlein. The essay argues that it makes sense to approach this genre from the early nineteenth-century context – temporal, spatial, and religious – that formed it rather than from problems, such as industrialization, encountered in a later time. It also argues for due consideration of historical concreteness over strict considerations of genre.