The Breaking of the Storm: Historical Novel

“The Breaking of the Storm” is one of the best-known works by the German novelist Friedrich Spielhagen. In this novel the author links the storm tide at the Baltic Sea in the autumn of 1872 with the great crisis of the financial industry, widely known as “The Panic of 1873” that triggered an economic depression in Europe and North America during the 1870s. Since there was no causal connection between financial actions and the weather events, Spielhagen succeeded with this construction to build on certain “collective fantasies” of the readers. The metaphor of the “flood” was certainly present even in economic circles.