Comparison of Hofffman’s work, The Sandman, and Mosse’s,...

Hofffman’s work, The Sandman, and Mosse’s, From Romanticism to the Volk, share cohesive concepts, each examine the dramatic cultural shift toward promoting nationalist thought in the minds of the German people. Through the â€Å"rootlessness† of his characters, the cognitive disparity between Nathanael and Klara, and the structure of The Sandman, Hoffman aptly uses the folktale genre to effectively reveal his disdain for the tenets of enlightenment as they challenged the new Volk ideology of Germany. Mosse’s scholarly analysis critically examined this same shift and sought to clarify how the groundwork laid for the return to Germanic roots, exemplified in the Volk neo-romantic movement, came as a direct reaction to the industrial revolution. In The Sandman, we are introduced to the character Coppelius, who quickly becomes the â€Å"root† of all evil in the protagonist, Nathanael’s life (pun intended). From the Volk perspective, it becomes apparent that Coppelius’ malevolent traits are due to his lack of allegiance to Germanic cultural identity. Nathanael suspects that Coppelius is â€Å"not a true German†, which was problematic in the German Volk conceptualization of an idyllic state (47). Mosse explained: need to block quote â€Å"The term ‘rooted’ was frequently invoked by Volkish thinkers as it supported their primary self-definition. Rootedness conveyed the sense of man’s inseparable connection with the landscape through to the soul, which embodied the life spirit and the cosmos. It