Works
Scherer's literary activity falls into three categories: in Vienna was the philologist, at Strasbourg the professor of literature and Berlin the author.
His earliest work was a biography of the philologist Jakob Grimm (1865, 2nd ed. 1885); the next, in conjunction with his former teacher Müllenhoff, published Denkmäler deutscher Poesie und Prose aus dem 8. bis 12. Jahrhundert (1864, ed. 1892). His first major work was Zur Geschichte deutschen Sprache (Berlin, 1868; 3rd ed., 1890), a history of the German language with special reference to phonetic laws.
He contributed the section on Alsatian literature to Ottokar Lorenz's Geschichte des Elsasses (1871, 3rd ed. 1886). Other important works are Geschichte Poeten der deutschen Kaiserzeit (Strassburg, 1875); Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung im 11. und 12. Jarhundert (1875); and Vorträge und Aufsätze zur Geschichte des geistlichen Lebens in Deutschland und Österreich (1874).
Scherer's best known work is his history of German literature, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur (Berlin, 1883; 10th ed., 1905; English translation Mrs F. C. Conybeare, 1883; new ed., 1906). This work is distinguished by the clearness with which details are co-ordinated with general and comprehensive survey of German literature from the beginning to the death of Goethe.
Besides many other philological treatises, Scherer wrote largely on Goethe (Aus Goethes Frühzeit, 1879; Aufsätze über Goethe, 1886), and took an active part in the foundation of the Goethe archives at Weimar. A small treatise on Poetik, a biography of Karl Müllenhoff, and two volumes of Kleine Schriften were published after his death.
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Famous quotes containing the word works:
“To receive applause for works which do not demand all our powers hinders our advance towards a perfecting of our spirit. It usually means that thereafter we stand still.”
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)
“Great works constructed there in nature’s spite
For scholars and for poets after us,
Thoughts long knitted into a single thought,
A dance-like glory that those walls begot.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“There is a great deal of self-denial and manliness in poor and middle-class houses, in town and country, that has not got into literature, and never will, but that keeps the earth sweet; that saves on superfluities, and spends on essentials; that goes rusty, and educates the boy; that sells the horse, but builds the school; works early and late, takes two looms in the factory, three looms, six looms, but pays off the mortgage on the paternal farm, and then goes back cheerfully to work again.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)