‘Eyes on Malta’. Fresh Light on Fiction and Reality behind Some Characters in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Die Jesuiterkirche in G.

Abstract

In 1816 one of the most popular authors of the German Romantic movement, Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, published the novella Die Jesuiterkirche in G. Its central figure is a Maltese connoisseur of the arts who is presented as a very strange and rakish character. He shows the principal character of the novella, the painter Berthold, a new track to see and perceive his environment and to express personal sentiments in his works. This very much parallels the then avant-garde concepts of Romantic art. Literary historians have not investigated the figure of this mysterious Maltese. What were Hoffmann’s sources and stimulations to create this character? The investigation of the genesis of Die Jesuiterkirche in G. leads to an intriguing story and to the famous Maltese eye-surgeon and arts connoisseur Dr Joseph Barth.