His father brushes away his timid confession, reminding him bluntly that he wants Hermann to choose a wife from a respected local family with a generous dowry.

He goes on to express his deep disappointment with Hermann's perceived lack of ambition to move forward in life, and lectures him about how he should become a respected citizen.

Having been shaken to tears by his father's harsh words, Hermann tells his mother that he intends to marry Dorothea or else to stay bachelor for the rest of his life.

The story of the well-settled burgher's son marrying a poor fugitive was contained in an account of the Salzburg Protestants who, for their religion, in 1731 fled from their old homes into Germany.

The inhabitants and conditions of the little town which is the scene of Hermann and Dorothea are pictured in contrast to the turmoil of the French Revolution, for they stand for the foundations on which civilization will always rest.

Ewald Eiserhardt, a reviewer for Encyclopedia Americana, cites the serene flow of presentation, the masterly descriptions of landscape and home, the plastic vigor of the main figures, the balance of color, all as rendering Hermann and Dorothea a great work of literary art.

Originally Schumann had considered Hermann und Dorothea an apt text for adaptation into a libretto; his fourth symphony had at first been named for his wife Clara, and during work on the revision he was moved to express his devotion to her in a new composition.

Hermann und Dorothea, with its themes of love against the odds, personal struggle, and familial opposition to marriage, was a natural subject; and Schumann saw in its strong-willed hero and idealised heroine neat ciphers for himself and Clara.

There is some structural departure from the model which Beethoven provided in his overture from Egmont, itself incidental music for a play by Goethe, and in his Coriolan, also based upon a celebrated work of literature.

Instead the overture is dominated by thematic writing, and melodies introduced early on reoccur freely in many keys, often transformed by inversion, augmentation, fragmentation, recombination, or other devices.