The Germans had a word for this mood: Weltschmerz. It means literally “worldpain”, and it signifies a mood of weariness or sadness about life arising from the acute awareness of evil and suffering.
Its origins have been traced back to the 1830s, to the late romantic era, to the works of Jean Paul, Heinrich Heine, N. Lenau, G. Buchner, C. D. Grabbe and K. L. Immermann.
By the 1860s the word had an ironic, even derogatory, meaning, implying extreme or affected sensitivity to the evil and suffering in the world. But later in that decade the word also began to acquire a broader more serious meaning: it was no longer just a poet’s personal mood; it was a public state of mind, the spirit of the age, the Zeitgeist.
