Karl Immermann (1796-1840), novelist, author of tragedies and director of the Düsseldorf town theatre from 1834 to 1837 tried to innovate the German drama: his goal was to achieve a more dignified  artistic level as well as an original experimentation that was completely unusual for the period in the different theatre performances, also thanks to a far-reaching new repertoire that had become stale and too linked to tradition.  
To reach this goal Immermann was helped by Christian Grabbe, whose The battle of Arminius was staged in 1836. Immerman's most significant works were Cardenius and Celinda (1826), Tragedy in Tirol (1827) which later became Andreas Hofer (1834), that deals with the struggle of the Tirolese people to achieve  freedom, and the dramatic poem Merlin (1832). These works, however, were not much appreciated by the public.  

Christian Grabbe (1801-36) led a short and dissolute life that tragically came to an end because of alcoholism.  
The characters of his tragedies reflect his own personality. His heroes are lonely, they are almost condemned to isolation: Don Juan and Faust (1829), where the two leading characters that oppose each other for the love of a woman, Frederick Barbarossa (1829), Napoleon or one hundred days (1831), Hannibal (1835), The battle of Arminius (staged posthumously in 1838).  
From a stylistic standpoint we can notice, for example,  how Grabbe wrote Napoleon or one hundred days according to a method where single and almost separate frames follow each other: this work was particularly difficult to stage because of the complexity of the characters.  
Furthermore the continuous series of hard-to-set-up scenes gives a lack of homogeneity to the text that, as the work deploys, degenerates in excessively excited and chaotic actions.  
Grabbe's characters clearly show their limits and vulnerability that generally lead them to a final failure. As far as the technique of the action on the stage, we can notice that this author intended to dissolve the usual scenic laws and decided to propose a rhythmic series of far-reaching frames: battles, popular revolts and whatever the plot itself of the tragedy implied.  
The desire to analyse his characters' psychological sphere more in depth, on the other hand, shows Grabbe as Hebbel and Buchner and the so-called psychologism's precursor.  
It was actually in the early nineteenth century that a literary movement called “Young Germany” was created in the Saxon area. It was a society of writers and of men of letters who took their inspiration from the Paris revolution and opposed the Metternich thus trying to promote a social and political renewal through literature. 
Their basic theory was to create a literary text upon the observation of the real world and the problems related to it. They also put forward their political views and took a stand on their contemporary society. Among the leading representatives of the “Young Germany” were Heinrich Heine, Karl Gutzkow and Heinrich Laube.  

Heinrich Heine (Düsseldorf 1797- Paris 1856), born from a Jewish family of modest social status, was economically helped by a banker uncle to study law and later to impose himself as a writer and as a poet. Heine's experiments in the theatre go back to the years of his youth when he was attending university.  
Alongside the publication of his first collection of lyrics entitled Poems (1822), and Lyrical intermezzo (1823), he created Almansor, a tragedy set in an eastern backdrop where Christian Zuleima makes Muslim Almansor desperately fall in love with her; his passion for her is so overwhelming that he would consent to abjure but the woman refuses him.  
The end is inevitably tragic; Almansor kills himself and brings to death his beloved Zuleima as well. Heine, considered to be the greatest German-speaking poet between Romanticism and Realism, became deeply involved in this transitional period to express irony towards the Romantic res and sentimentalism with the highest formal lightness possible, confirming his own progressive ideas in the vitality of his style.  
A less important writer although a highly charismatic political figure was author Karl Gutzkow (1811-1878) who influenced many followers of the liberal and revolutionary movement of the “Young Germany” with his writing. Among his numerous works that he wrote for the theatre are the comedy Wig and sword (1844) and the tragedy Uriel Acosta (1847), that was particularly important for the introspection into the character's personality, the young heretic Jew Uriel Acosta.  

Finally we have Heinrich Laube (1806-1884), 
another activist writer of the “Young Germany”.  
He was forced to leave Saxony because of his liberal views and in 1834 he was arrested and subsequently sentenced to jail, albeit for just a couple of months. He became more moderate with time and was elected deputy in 1848 at the Diet of Frankfurt and, later on, from 1849 to 1867 he directed the Hofburgtheater in Vienna, the capital's imperial theatre.  
Laube firmly opposed precise and detailed historical reconstructions, or “photographic” as we would call them today, in the scenery. He supported the idea of a strict and compact realism which could allow the public to focus its attention on the actor and not to be diverted from sophisticated scenery.  
He wrote historical and political tragedies such as Karlsschule's pupils (1846), Prince Frederick (1848) and The count of Essex (1856), that show a skilful choice of plot and liveliness of linguistic solutions in the narration.