SOURCE: Purdie, Edna. “Hebbel: Some Aspects of Research and Criticism in the Decade, 1953-1963.” Euphorion (1966): 110-24.

In the following essay, Purdie surveys the major trends in the critical analysis of Hebbel's work from 1953-1963.

In any survey, however incomplete, of scholarly work concerning Hebbel during the decade preceding the centenary of 1963, at least two trends can be discerned. On the one hand, a new impulse to investigation of his relations with predecessors and contemporaries, greatly stimulated by Wolfgang Liepe's researches into further sources of Hebbel's thought and imagery, and powerfully supported by publications sponsored by the Hebbel-Gesellschaft and the University of Kiel; on the other, a healthy revival of activity in the critical editing of Hebbel's writings, whether in collected form or as individual works. These trends, as will at once be seen, are not mutually exclusive; Liepe has suggested enlargement of the corpus of Hebbel's work, and...