GERM A NY.
It will be conceded on all sides, and withcrat question, that Ger-
many occupied a prominent place at the present Exhibition, in the
contest with other States in art and in industry. The mass as
well as the variety of the productions exhibited made it evident
that the nation has at its command a wealth of talent capable of
reaching the highest aims, and that it possesses all the means
which are necessary to enable it to add the triumph in the arena
of labor to its other triumphs. But, in spite of all exertions, this
triumph has not yet been achieved, and the “ battle of forms” has
again resulted unfavorably to the Germans. This is a fact which
can only be accounted for by the deflciencies of art-education, and
of the cultivation of art in general.
After German art, at the commencement of this Century, had
begun to develop itself in men of great talent, and to bring forth
grand monumental works, more especially under the patronage
of the Bavarian princes, art-industry still continued, for a long
time, to play a subordinate part; since, on the one hand, the royal
road of art did not touch the domain of art-workmanship, while,
on the other, French taste was everywhere so deeply rooted,
that it seemed impossible to oppose it with a view to a re form.
German industry in general appears to possess but little national
character, from the time of the degeneration of taste in the seven-
teenth Century, down to our own day. And yet the Opposition
against the rule of French taste emanated from the elements of
the older national art, which, although crippled and neglected,
have preserved their individuality even up to the present time.
Germany had brilliant epochs in art and in industiy, before the
time ‘of the Baroque style. German Renaissance, in its rieh de
velopment during the sixteenth Century, in which the traditional
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