jay_walk

I'd much rather be looking Into magic right now, but here's the essence of a ten to fifteen minute talk I am to give my german class tomorrow about society 1790 to 1815, during which time romanticism was happening in Germany. Which is the exact same stuff we're doing in history, so it's rather pointless, but anyway.

because even though I will not like talking about this for four school hours in a row with elaborate literature analysis, I do actually enjoy having written down a short list of what happened when, just for the information. (I am so sick of school and how long everyone takes to say anything right now).

1790 Germany (or rather german Länder) were not modernising much due to the fragmentedness of the different jurisdictions limiting the economy and due to the old feudal social hierarchy.
then the French Revolution happened and Napoleon invaded, making various monarchs realise they needed to reform to prevent revolution. they centralised and reorganised administrations (and took land from the clergy).
prussian Reforms, In 1807, in response to Jena and Auerstedt, which I ought also be writing history homework about right now too.
Abolished serfdom, guilds, instituted education, military conscription, which all leads to less importance of class.
And industrialisation because of farmers being freed up.
after 1815- population growth which the economy could not keep up with. And it ought to be mentioned a German Confederation was established at the Congress of Vienna. (the Holy Roman Empire ended 06).
by 1835 it started industrialising though, especially in mining, metal, and machinery.

there, now I just need to elaborate for 10 minutes.

This morning I read Hoffman's Der Sandmann. How do I feel about this, besides awfully nerdy for having done my schoolwork first thing in the morning and way ahead of schedule?
It is a nice (and rather short) story. And it makes sense to me, although my teachers will impose some much less interesting and more didactic interpretation on it, and then ruin my liking for the story by making us write long boring tedious essays about their interpretation. So I had better write down what I think of it now:
Yes it is clearly all in his head,but that doesn't make it less real. The sandman stole his eyes = his father dying made him deluded and permanently dreaming. I think eyes and sleep are a theme in this because his mind sees things differently, and that's the problem. And then he just gets so frustrated nobody believes him, Olimpia never seems to think anything herself and Clara also doesn't say anything which is meaningful to him either, that he thinks they are automatons, which is the logical thing for him to suspect, given his fear of alchemy and experiments he'll blame that for everyone else seeming a bit off.
There, done. I can't write an essay about that and I really don't want to, what's fun about this is that it's so simple and logical in it's own way that that's all the interpreting I want to do. I am going to be so bored and annoyed at german class.
I like stories with automatons, robots, artificial humans, homunculi, alchemy, etc. in them, and this one also agrees with me that people are mostly just machines and pretty much indistinguishable anyway. This reminds me that the whole artificial life thing didn't begin with Frankenstein (this story was published two years earlier) and that the whole robot thing didn't begin with Metropolis. There are probably earlier stories for me to read involving people that run on clockwork (which is fascinating and creepy and is bound to be a theme in literature as a response to when society suddenly started running on clockwork) and alchemically created people.