The Battle of Hermann Braun: Transvaluing German Nationalism in Heinrich von Kleist’s Die Hermannsschlacht and Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Die Ehe der Maria Braun Robert Blankenship and Kevin P. Eubanks California State University, Long Beach / United States Naval War College Abstract: Although there have been impressive scholarly attempts to explain the brief reference to Kleist in Fassbinder’s Die Ehe der Maria Braun , none have noted the significant transtextual relationship between Fassbinder’s film and Kleist’s Die Hermannsschlacht and the manner in which this relationship sheds light on each work’s gendered critique of German nationalism. The parallels run much deeper than the name of the film’s antagonist, Hermann Braun, would suggest, although that name likewise locates both works at the intersections of gender and national identity. A closer examination of those parallels clarifies many of the well-established ambiguities in the film, particularly those surrounding the tension between liberation and nationalism, and challenges traditional assessments of Kleist’s nationalist drama. Keywords: Fassbinder, Die Ehe der Maria Braun , Kleist, Die Hermannsschlacht , nationalism It is no secret that Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945—1982) was influenced by Heinrich von Kleist (1777—1811). In 1980, when asked by pupils at a German school who his role model was and why, Fassbinder responded, “Heinrich von Kleist, weil er es geschafft hat, jemanden zu finden, der mit ihm sterben wollte” (221). According to his wife, actress Ingrid Caven (1938—), Fassbinder adored the plays of Kleist (42). That makes sense when one considers that Fassbinder’s films frequently feature strained relationships, failed love stories, catastrophic events, epistemological crises, mental illness, and marginalized characters-all of which are idiosyncratic mainstays in the works of Kleist as well. As Thomas 30 Robert Blankenship and Kevin P. Eubanks Elsaesser suggests, Kleist is the “patron saint of New German Cinema” ( New German Cinema 87). If Werner Herzog’s films are the Romanticism of the New German Cinema ( Johnson 3) and Wim Wenders’ films are Goethean tales of self-discovery (Frisch 208-214), then Fassbinder’s films may be called the most Kleistian of the period. In fact, Fassbinder’s film, Die Ehe der Maria Braun (1979), may be read as a revision (or, more precisely, what Gérard Genette calls a proximation ) of Kleist’s historical drama, Die Hermannsschlacht (1808), during another pivotal time in German history. 1 While the intertextual correspondences between drama and film are alone worthy of note, reading Die Ehe der Maria Braun through the lens of Kleist’s play also sheds light on the film’s many tragic ambivalences, chief among them being the nature of Maria’s relationship with her husband, German soldier and Soviet prisoner of war, Hermann Braun, and the nature of the film’s commentary on German national identity and German nationalism after 1945. Likewise, reading Die Hermannsschlacht through the lens of Fassbinder’s film places Kleist’s Napoleonic-era liberation drama at the dawn of the modern German nation-state into dialogue with German history on the other side of National Socialism and the establishment of the new Federal Republic. Early in Fassbinder’s film, Die Ehe der Maria Braun , the viewer is confronted with an explicit allusion to Kleist. In the immediate wake of the Second World War, the title character meets with a black-market dealer because she is interested in acquiring, among other things, a dress she can wear as a hostess at a bar favored by U.S. occupation troops in Berlin. The dealer also offers her a 1907 edition of Kleist’s complete works, which, as a pragmatic survivor in a postwar blight, she declines, saying that books burn too easily and will not keep her warm. Fassbinder himself plays the role of the dealer in the scene, personally aligning himself with the figure of Kleist. Although the scene is brief, it is of immense symbolic importance for advancing any interpretation of the relationship between Fassbinder’s film and the German historical and literary past. Scholars such as Anton Kaes, Thomas Elsaesser, Matthias Uecker, and Carrie Collenberg-Gonzalez have acknowledged the importance of this relatively minor and otherwise unremarkable scene. Kaes offers the scene as an example of “directorial intervention,” which is to say that Fassbinder is actively taking part in the discourse of which the film is a part (Kaes 279). Elsaesser mentions in passing that the appearance of Kleist here points toward Kleist’s novella, Das Erdbeben in Chili (1807/ 1810), which, like Fassbinder’s film, features two lovers hoping to rebuild their lives together after catastrophe, but who instead suffer only more misfortune. Both of these works thereby problematize fantasies of a historical tabula rasa and, in the case of Fassbinder’s film, the so-called Stunde Null of 1945 ( Fassbinder’s Germany 107). Collenberg-Gonzalez links the scene to The Battle of Hermann Braun 31 the reception of Kleist in works that deal with the resistance of the Red Army Faction. She positions Kleist as a theorist of terrorism, using Michael Kohlhaas (1810) and Penthesilea (1808) as examples. By pointing out that an accordion player in the same scene is playing the melody associated with the recently banned national anthem, “Das Lied der Deutschen” (1841), while Maria is haggling with the black market dealer-an important simultaneity registered by the other scholars as well-Collenberg-Gonzalez illustrates that terrorisms past and present are deeply intertwined and that the “national anthem was and still is a particularly loaded, if complicated, reference” (159). Finally, Uecker not only recognizes the “patriotic, possibly nationalistic” (51) symbolism of the dealer’s offer, but also the significance of its taking place amidst the Allied occupation of a now fractured and defeated post-WWII Germany. Despite how close Uecker’s analysis brings him to acknowledging a more substantial debt to Kleist, he nevertheless appears to view Kleist as a peripheral rather than an essential intertextual presence in the film. Although scholarship has productively unpacked the scene in which Maria Braun is offered the works of Kleist and what such a continuity may mean for the film’s representations of post-war German identity, the full scope of Kleist’s influence on the film, including the possibility that Die Ehe der Maria Braun bears an intertextual relationship to Kleist’s Die Hermannsschlacht , has never been explored. The most obvious, but least convincing, evidence to support this claim is that the husband in both pieces is named Hermann, and Hermann is not just any German name. Among other things, this name, along with the specific tropes attached to it, quickly invokes the intersectionality of gender and German national identity (see Potter). Much more convincing, though, is the sheer number of thematic and narrative preoccupations which suggest that Fassbinder not only imagined his cinematic drama as a creative retelling, like Kleist’s, of the Arminius legend but, further, that Kleist’s adaptation likely influenced Fassbinder’s film. Perhaps most importantly, and although the historical differences cannot be overlooked, Kleist’s Die Hermannsschlacht and Fassbinder’s Die Ehe der Maria Braun revolve around similar thematic and historically significant settings. Both, for instance, engage with the question of German national identity in the context of war and the struggle for national autonomy and survival, and both works take place in a “Germany” occupied by a wealthy foreign superpower and begin with the Germans under siege. Hermann’s statement early on in Kleist’s play that “Ganz Deutschland ist verloren schon” ( SW 1, 544: 281) 2 eerily parallels the opening scenes of Maria Braun , in which Maria and Hermann exchange wedding vows during an air raid in the last days of WWII in Berlin. In addition, the presence and symbolism of the occupying forces in the postwar Berlin 32 Robert Blankenship and Kevin P. Eubanks setting of Fassbinder’s film recall both the era of Napoleonic rule in Germany during which Kleist composed his play and the invasion of Germania by Roman forces in the year 9 C.E. around which Kleist’s dramatic plot is organized. As such, Kleist’s drama and Fassbinder’s film place the complicated negotiation between occupier and occupied at the center of their narratives about German nationalism. Moreover, both works take up the theme of German rearmament and the preparation for war during a state of public crisis that extends across the timeline of German history to Fassbinder’s present. The Romans of the Arminius legend, like the French of Napoleon Bonaparte’s (1769—1821) era and the Allied powers in an occupied post-WWII Germany, sought to crush German ‘barbarism’ once and for all and to oversee its integration into the prevailing world order, whether the one established by Rome, Bonaparte, or the Allied Powers. While Hermann in Kleist’s play rallies Germanic troops against the Roman occupiers, in Fassbinder’s film the viewer hears West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer (1876—1967) on the radio making the case for German rearmament amidst the backdrop of international sanctions on German militarism. In Kleist’s play, Hermann tells his comrades to sacrifice their valuables for the war effort: “Und auf der Weser rechtes Ufer bringen, Geschirre, goldn’ und silberne, die ihr besitzet, schmelzen, Perlen und Juwelen, verkaufen oder sie verpfänden” ( SW 1, 546: 376—379). In a parallel scene in Fassbinder’s film, Maria Braun sacrifices her family’s valuables during the early period of the Allied occupation. In preparation for her reunion with Hermann, and on his behalf, she trades whatever valuables she and her mother have for food, cigarettes, alcohol, clothing, and firewood. Certainly, one should not disregard key differences, namely that in Kleist’s play Hermann urges his fellow ‘Germans’ to subordinate their individual needs and desires to the common war effort, while Maria and others in Fassbinder’s film sell their valuables, not to support German liberation, but rather to ensure their own post-war survival and prosperity. On the other hand, it is well known that Maria’s sacrifice signifies across both time and space and the private and public sphere since, as most film scholars agree, Maria “ is Germany” (Uecker 58), a symbolism that directly aligns the collective sacrifices with which both works begin. Indeed, Maria’s bartering for survival early on in the film is what leads her to the black-market scene in which a street merchant, played by Fassbinder, attempts to sell her a volume of Kleist’s works. In the end, both works reward the German(-ic) investment and sacrifice with patriotic victories, however ironic or tentative they may be. Kleist’s Hermann opines near the end of the first act that it would be the most foolish thing “to be distracted by vain dreams of victory” (MagShamhráin 17): “Welch ein wahnsinnger Tor müßt ich doch sein, wollt ich mir und der Heeresschar, die The Battle of Hermann Braun 33 ich ins Feld des Todes führ, erlauben, das Aug, von dieser finstern Wahrheit ab, buntfarbgen Siegesbildern zuzuwenden” ( SW 1, 545: 342—346). Hermann, however, is caught at the beginning of the decisive battle literally dreaming of the liberation prophesied in the bards’ song, and is left by Winfried to “collect himself ” (MagShamhráin 103) while Winfried leads the initial phase of the attack: “Laβt ihn.-Er wird sich fassen. Kommt her, daß ich den Schlachtplan euch entdecke! / Er versammelt die Anführer um sich ” ( SW 1, 614: 2250—2251). Perhaps even more significantly, the joyful celebration of Germania’s eventual liberation-“Triumph! Triumph! Germaniens Todfeind stürzt! ” ( SW 1, 624: 2524)-is dramatically darkened by Hermann’s order in the final scene to execute the Germanic prince, Aristan, for treason ( SW 1, 627: 2611—2618; MagShamhráin 121). Similarly, Fassbinder’s film ends with Herbert Zimmermann (1917—1966), the commentator for the 1954 World Cup, exclaiming, “Aus! Aus! Aus! Aus! Deutschland ist Weltmeister! ,” despite the fact that Germany remained thoroughly occupied by Allied forces in 1954 and was not yet permitted its full political or economic independence in the still nascent postwar international order, as Judt, for example, explains. Fassbinder further undermines the celebration of Germany’s World Cup victory with a series of photographic negatives criticizing German national leadership since 1945 and a gas explosion that kills the protagonists at the end of the film. In order to animate this treacherous setting, both Die Hermannsschlacht and Die Ehe der Maria Braun rely upon remarkably similar plots involving a complex web of alliances, lies, double agents, politicking, backstabbing, and calculated deceits to map the love triangle at the center of their dramatic action. Hermann and Thusnelda and Hermann and Maria Braun operate, respectively, as co-conspirators in a protoand post-nationalist anti-occupation resistance. In large part because of their relatively disadvantageous position over and against the political, economic, and military strength of their adversaries (Rome, Napoleonic France, Allied Powers), both couples employ independent and coordinated acts of deception and other so-called asymmetrical or guerilla tactics (see Kittler, Hanenberg 142—3) to achieve their strategic objectives in the respective conflicts driving the central action in both works. In addition to reinforcing the parallel between Hermann (Arminius) and Hermann Braun, such a confluence also invites spectators to view Kleist’s Thusnelda alongside Fassbinder’s Maria. On the one hand, both women are dramatically and strategically exploited by the men around them. Thusnelda is exploited by both Hermann and the Roman occupational governor, Ventidius, while Maria is manipulated throughout the film as she is first torn between her husband, Hermann Braun, and Bill, an African American soldier, and then between Hermann and Oswald, a French entrepreneur. On the other hand, both women also 34 Robert Blankenship and Kevin P. Eubanks freely desire and use the men with whom they are involved to their own ends, other men routinely fall for both women, and the sexual and cerebral agency assigned to Thusnelda and Maria, though different in kind and degree, nevertheless squares with scholars’ well-established emphasis on the way in which Kleist’s and Fassbinder’s female characters consistently challenge traditional representations of gender. Not coincidentally, however, both works also and simultaneously reinforce the status quo when it comes to such representations. Thusnelda and Maria ultimately remain faithful and, in the end, return to and reunite with Hermann. Near the end of the play, Thusnelda longs to regain Hermann’s favor as he assumes the leadership of a united Germania: “Arminius’ will ich wieder würdig werden” ( SW 1, 616: 2322). Likewise, Maria works hard throughout the film to take advantage of the new economy in order, she makes clear, to establish a social status and quality of life worthy of Hermann Braun, though she does, according to much of the scholarship on the question (see Kaes, Uecker, et al.), deliberately destroy it all in the final scene upon learning of Hermann’s deceitful arrangement with Oswald. Kleist’s and Fassbinder’s complicated engagements with gender also resonate in each work’s critique of nationalism. Uecker, for instance, sees Fassbinder’s allusion to Kleist both in terms of a decisively “male […] strategy” and, as described above, as a “patriotic” and “possibly nationalistic” signifier (Uecker 51), but Fassbinder’s adaptation offers a more nuanced approach to understanding Kleist’s drama that can just as easily be interpreted as a critique of normative views of gender and sexual orientation, rather than an example of them. Although Kleist served seven years in the Prussian military, although war is a theme in several of his works, although gruesome violence is ubiquitous in his writings, and although he was a fervent and outspoken critic of Bonaparte and of the invasion and occupation of German lands, Kleist’s works in no way promote a straightforward jingoism or hypermasculine embrace of nationalism. Recent scholarship illustrates how Kleist resists and overturns many of the norms of his era, including those organized around a conventionally masculine, heterosexual German militarism. Barbara Nagel, in reviewing Katrin Pahl’s Sex Changes with Kleist (2019), observes that “Kleist’s work can teach us […] how to resist heteronormativity, how to imagine gender fluidity and a less restrictive masculinity” (Nagel). Indeed, Pahl explains that Kleist “dared to generate a logic of confusion and to experiment with alternative symbolic structures, all the while developing a distinct humor” (3). Pahl sets Kleist in contradistinction to the establishment and enforcement of norms surrounding gender and sexual orientation around 1800, norms that were instrumentalized alongside rising German anti-occupation and nationalist pride after the defeat of Kleist’s home state of Prussia in 1806 (4). She concludes that “Kleist puts an end to modern The Battle of Hermann Braun 35 gender norms before they take hold and refuses the oppositional organization of sexual desire into homosexual and heterosexual that sprouts from these norms” (4). The disruption of gender norms and expectations that Pahl notes in Kleist’s work, including Die Hermannsschlacht , find expression in Fassbinder’s films as well. 3 As actor, Armin Müller-Stahl (1930—), who played in the other two films from Fassbinder’s BRD Trilogie , 4 explains: “Fassbinder was someone for whom no boundaries existed, not between the real and the absurd, nor between safety and risk; neither between man and woman nor between life and death” (219). Accordingly, Kleist and Fassbinder are similar thinkers, and though a careful and thorough study of these similarities is well beyond the scope of this essay, Die Ehe der Maria Braun ’s treatment of gender and nationalism is curious enough to explain the juxtaposition with Kleist’s treatment of the same in Die Hermannsschlacht . In any event, both Hermann characters are rendered vulnerable because they are always potentially in danger of losing their wives to male representatives of an occupying force (Uecker 57), 5 yet, in keeping with the nationalist allegory, neither the vulnerability nor the danger ever materializes since both wives take the matter into their own hands by murdering these foreign representatives, thus reinforcing the couples’ mutual belonging and making the nation whole again, or, in Kleist’s case, for the first time. Finally, just as gender informs the study of German nationalism in Die Hermannsschlacht and Die Ehe der Maria Braun , so, too, does language. Both works, for example, adopt linguistic play that serves not merely to confuse the adversary, but also to mark the line that separates the German from the non-German and unites the former against the latter. In Kleist’s play, Roman confusion over the linguistic and geographical difference between Pffifikon and Iffikon leads the Roman army to get lost in the woods and end up right where the Germanic resistance can ambush them ( SW 1, 600—602: 1907—1943; MagShamhráin 87—89; Hanenberg 144). In Fassbinder’s film, Maria confuses the U.S. interrogator when she tells him, “Den Bill habe ich lieb gehabt, und ich liebe meinen Mann,” which the interpreter translates as “She loved Bill, and she loves her husband.” A more appropriate translation would be “I was fond of Bill, and I love my husband.” This mistranslation is striking for multiple reasons. It not only illustrates the failure of the occupiers to understand the occupied, but also reinforces the symbolic role that linguistic perspective plays in the plot by emphasizing the extent to which Maria is faithful to Hermann and, by extension, to Germany, despite her affairs with other, foreign men. Indeed, linguistic slippage-as Plug, MagShamhráin (Introduction, xxv—xxx), Hanenberg 144, and Pahl (19—41) demonstrate-is a mainstay in Kleist’s works, and Fassbinder certainly taps into this Kleistian feature to advance his own post-war version of the Arminius legend. 36 Robert Blankenship and Kevin P. Eubanks While this unexpected but unequivocal alignment of setting, plot, character, and style likely would be enough to justify a comparison of Die Hermannsschlacht and Die Ehe der Maria Braun , the most significant point of contact lies in each works’ critical messaging around German nationalism and national identity. The various formal and rhetorical parallels just revealed would appear to serve the same interpretive end in both drama and film-the transvaluation of the nationalist co-option of Germany’s foundation upon which both Kleist’s and Fassbinder’s adaptations depend and to which narratives of German national independence and unification have been linked ever since Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus’s (56—120) historical volume Germania was discovered by German scholars in the sixteenth century (see Krebs and MagShamhráin, Introduction, xxi). While Kleist’s play may be understood as “patriotic,” and it certainly supports the nobler democratic spirit that underwrites wars of liberation, it has been all too easy for readers of Kleist, due in no small part to scholastic consensus around Kleist’s intent in 1808 when the drama was first produced, to treat the document as a manifesto of fervent nationalism (see, e.g., Collenberg-Gonzalez, Hanenberg, MagShamhráin, Saltzwedel, and Uecker); however, one may also interpret Die Hermannsschlacht as a complex critique of nationalist tendencies that had already enlisted the Arminius legend by Kleist’s time and that continue to do so today. Indeed, the transvaluation of hypotexts is a pillar of the Kleistian aesthetic. In his chapter introducing the concept of transvaluation into his system of transtextuality, Gérard Genette (1930—2018) uses Kleist’s Amphitryon (1807) as an example, and in a later chapter, writes, “I do not wish to leave the subject of transvaluation without mentioning its most drastic and yet most enigmatic manifestation: Kleist’s Penthesilea ” (375—376). Although the radical reversal of roles in Kleist’s Penthesilea is a consummate example of Genette’s notion of transvaluation, Genette could have just as easily used Kleist’s Die Hermannsschlacht to illustrate the point. Earlier poetic representations of the historical battle in the Teutoburg Forest-such as Ulrich von Hutten’s (1488—1523) version from 1529, Daniel Caspar Lohenstein’s (1635—1683) reworking from 1689, and Johann Elias Schlegel’s (1719—1749) adaptation from 1740-1741-offered “generally favourable characterizations” of Hermann as the noble founder of the German nation. Kleist’s version, however, like Fassbinder’s, is noteworthy for its ambivalent treatment of Hermann’s character and virtue (MagShamhráin, Introduction, xxii). Although Kleist’s Hermann, a chieftain of an occupied tribe, has any number of positive attributes, he is above all “a Machiavellian anti-hero” (MagShamhráin, Introduction, xxii) whose strategic gains are made possible through ostensibly nefarious and disreputable means, rendering his character and motivations fundamentally unreliable, despite trends to characterize Kleist’s attempts to The Battle of Hermann Braun 37 stoke patriotic, anti-occupational fervor in the German public as unambiguous. Even though Varus and Augustus may be the historical corollaries of Bonaparte, Kleist’s contemporary description of Bonaparte in “Katechismus der Deutschen” (“The Catechism of the Germans,” 1809) is reminiscent of the savior of Germany in Kleist’s Die Hermannsschlacht (MagShamhráin, Introduction, xxii—xxiii), suggesting a parallel not between Hermann and the Arminius of legend, but rather between Kleist’s hero and the chief architect of Germany’s defeat in the Napoleonic Wars and the literal embodiment of Germany’s historical insecurity at the time the play was written. Perhaps Fassbinder’s film also notes this subversive slippage and condensation of indices when Oswald tells Senkenberg: “Versuchen Sie einmal im Leben nicht Senkenberg zu sein, sondern Napoleon oder Blücher, wenn das Ihnen lieber ist.” Although Die Hermannsschlacht is certainly about the legendary first war for German liberation and is intended to dramatically inspire and unify the German-speaking kingdoms against French occupation, Kleist’s much more dynamic, multivalent portrayal of Hermann repeatedly complicates this premise by scrutinizing the nationalist, imperialist, or otherwise anti-democratic impulses that accompany the fight for collective freedom and liberty. Peter Hanenberg calls Hermann’s “blind national exaltation” a “radical and absolute” (145) aim toward the achievement of which “all means are permitted” (142). Die Hermannsschlacht ends with Hermann’s entourage cheering Germania’s liberation from Rome even as the very existence and possibility of a unified Germania is thrown into question with Aristan’s persuasive defense in the play’s final lines: “Jedoch was galt Germanien mir? Der Fürst bin ich der Ubier” ( SW 1, 627: 2606—2608). Thus, Kleist’s play ends with both a celebration of German independence and a warning about the pitfalls of nation building captured in Hermann’s violent response to Aristan in the final lines of the play. Along with Hermann’s call to bring the fight all the way to Rome, a dramatic expansion of Hermann’s original and limited aims, this act suggests the possibility of tyranny following liberation under Hermann’s potential future reign (Allan 57). Further, Hanenberg ends his essay with the declaration that Kleist’s play is “an an early example of a moment when modernity could be frighted by itself. The lesson came as early as the beginning of the nationalistic nineteenth and a long time before Nazism. But history has shown us, finally, that no such radicalism could ever be strong enough to avoid its own repetition” (146). That statement reinforces Pahl’s point about Kleist and modernity, and it also connects Kleist’s play to the post-war period of Fassbinder’s film. Indeed, just as Kleist challenged societal norms surrounding gender and sexual orientation as those norms were being ever more firmly established (Pahl 4), he also resisted the popular discourse around nationalism in the early stages of 38 Robert Blankenship and Kevin P. Eubanks its historical development. Taken together, these subversive elements of Kleist’s drama suggest it is not so much that Fassbinder transvalues Hermann and the founding myth with which he is associated, but rather that Kleist did so already with Die Hermannsschlacht , a fact that reinforces the value of re-reading the film alongside the drama in order to grasp the film’s commentary on German nationalism during the time of the Wirtschaftswunder . Uecker makes room for this perspective when he ponders the extent of Kleist’s influence in the film: “Maria Braun may reject the offer of Kleist’s works […], but in her own private life these very issues soon emerge at the core of her relation with the three men who fall in love with her” (52). Although Uecker acknowledges a direct connection between Kleist and the “very issues” raised by the film, his analysis goes on to analyze them quite independently of that connection. Nevertheless, Uecker’s brief acknowledgement, like the brief and simultaneous encounter in the film with both Kleist and Fassbinder, convincingly resituates Hermann Braun, in particular, from the margins toward the center of the film’s discourse on postwar German nationalism. Uecker’s recognition that “[w]hile it has been widely accepted that Maria Braun should be seen as a representative of the German experience, the same interpretation is rarely applied to her husband, let alone his actions” (57), links Fassbinder’s Hermann more specifically to the symbolic desire for national “sovereignty and self-determination […] in the postwar period” (57) and, consequently, to the heroic protagonist of Kleist’s drama. The impact of these correspondences between Kleist’s drama and Fassbinder’s film is even more striking, and the implications clearer, upon examination of Uecker’s view of the film’s alleged avoidance of Germany’s Nazi past: Despite the film’s final allusion to unbroken historical continuities, Fassbinder avoids any reference to the one continuity which is usually at the centre of his generation’s discourse about post-war German history […]. The question of guilt or responsibility for what happened during the war is not once raised. […] What, if not the continuity of guilt for the Nazis’ crimes, constitutes West German society’s main characteristic? (49) In place of guilt, Uecker identifies a new and separate discourse on the restoration of German “control, independence, and sovereignty” (52) in the postwar moment and suggests that the film either “took [the guilt] for granted or assumed it was implied in the final sequence” or that the avoidance itself represents the repression of Germany’s collective guilt over the Nazi past (49). Whatever the case, it may be argued that the omission of any reference to this past not only “casts an ominous reflection on the film’s discourse” (49), as Uecker points out, but the omission also plays a definitive role in Fassbinder’s film through the character of Hermann Braun. Although Uecker’s association be- The Battle of Hermann Braun 39 tween Kleist and Fassbinder is fleeting, he not only breaks with scholarly tradition by centering both Hermann Braun and his character’s symbolic association with German occupation and nationalism (47), but in so doing he also effectively justifies the comparison with both the plot and protagonist of Kleist’s drama. If Hermann Braun is, as Uecker and others, such as Kaes, claim, the symbol of Germany’s desire to regain its national power and lost status, then Hermann Braun is also the potential return of what otherwise remains largely repressed throughout the course of the film, the reenactment, after National Socialism, of the occupied Germania featured in Kleist’s play and so, too, the embodiment of the private and public fear, anxiety, and insecurity surrounding its realization in history or fiction, past or present. Hermann Braun is thus not so much a character in the film as he is an allegorical reference to the past. It follows, then, that it is via Hermann’s character, as much as it is through Maria’s, that postwar Germany emerges as a zone of deep personal and generational conflict stemming from postwar Germany’s resentment of occupation and its deep suspicion of a pervasive nationalism registered in a distinctively postwar echo of Kleist’s occupation-liberation drama and in Hermann and Maria Braun’s characters. Although Fassbinder’s Hermann is certainly a reduced version of Kleist’s-he is fully demoted, domesticated, and, ultimately, excluded by Fassbinder’s title-this reduction carries immense weight in the film and confirms his decisive relevance to, and role in, the postwar nationalist allegory. Kaes goes as far as to associate Hermann Braun’s surname with the Nazi brownshirts (285). The aptronym Braun-like so much in the works of Kleist and Fassbinder-lies at the cusp of being both spurious and hermeneutically productive. That is, there is no evidence that Hermann Braun was a member of the historical militia that was eclipsed by the Schutzstaffel (SS). Nonetheless, the word “braun” is often used in Germany to index right-wing nationalist tendencies, and Hermann’s family name features prominently throughout the film despite the fact that Hermann is missing for much of it. Hermann Braun, read as Germany’s Nazi past, haunts the entirety of Fassbinder’s film in contradictory ways. On the one hand, Hermann Braun is much more than a defeated soldier and can just as reasonably be said to hold all the power for much of the film: he, like the Nazi past he represents, has a dangerous hypnotic control over Maria (Germany) from the beginning, and acquires her (and through her Oswald’s wealth) in the end. As such, Hermann Braun points to the continuity of the German nationalist spirit that underwrote the National-Socialist cause and that continued to wield its influence over the postwar space. On the other hand, this haunting, not unlike Kleist’s Hermann’s brief, yet curious, absence when the Germans finally meet and defeat Rome on the battlefield ( SW 1, 621: 2453—2454), points as much to the repression of Hermann 40 Robert Blankenship and Kevin P. Eubanks Braun’s character and cause as it does to any viable threat to Germany’s democratic future. In Fassbinder’s film, the Nazi past finds itself supplanted before it has even conceded defeat, forced to wander unnoticed in the present until it is safe to return to visibility, which, Fassbinder’s film insists, it must not ever be safe to do. Just as Fassbinder’s Hermann Braun is more than a symbol of Germany’s defeat, Kleist’s Hermann is more than a symbol of its victory; both are instead complicated meditations on the status of the defeated, the depth and consequences of the defeat, and on the possibility of achieving and, in the case of Fassbinder’s film, responsibly restoring German sovereignty and independence. Hermann Braun is the substance of the film’s commentary on German nationalism and the residual threat left over in the wake of Germany’s defeat in WWII. From this perspective, Hermann Braun may be read as a significant magnification of Kleist’s reflection on the ideological dangers born out of the struggle for independence and unification. Kleist’s drama anticipates Fassbinder’s film, and, through the character of Hermann Braun, Fassbinder’s engagement with the questions of German nationalism, national identity, and self-determination emerges as a direct expression of the postwar continuity-not the avoidance-of past guilt. As such, Fassbinder’s film situates the German citizen and the German masses at the intersection of a private and public conflict over that to which the nation has a right to aspire between the transgressions of the Third Reich and the false promises of a Wirtschaftswunder . 6 If in Kleist’s play the realization of an imagined victory may be called a symptom of the patriotic fervor that springs up in collective defeat, then by the time of Fassbinder’s film, this same fervor, embodied in the characters of Hermann and Maria Braun, has been converted into something quite different. In fact, the explosion at the end of the film suggests that the ongoing historical maintenance of this national identity is less a symptom than a cause of the anxiety represented in the film. Fassbinder’s use of Hermann Braun to represent Nazi Germany in the film responds to the well-known propagandistic elevation of Kleist’s Die Hermannsschlacht by National Socialism, and can be read as a deconstruction of the fantasy such elevation imagines (Reeve 267). 7 Despite the ‘victory’ of Hermann Braun and Maria’s final reunification, in the end, this more dangerous trend toward unity that is German nationalism cannot be tolerated, and Germany will have to move on without it, perhaps can only move on without it. The relative paucity of direct references to the Nazi past in Die Ehe der Maria Braun , which is to say, the lengthy absences of Hermann Braun throughout the film, is itself an important part of Fassbinder’s adaptation of Kleist’s play insofar as the symbolic absence or omission of both Hermanns lies at the center, not The Battle of Hermann Braun 41 the periphery, of the play’s and film’s treatment of German nationalism. In this reading of Die Hermannsschlacht , Hermann’s absence at the beginning of the eponymous battle is unexpected-what does it mean in a play with such a title, and in which Hermann is, on the one hand, Germany’s legendary liberator, to come across the line, “Und ehe Hermann noch den Punkt der Schlacht erreicht, Die Schlacht der Freiheit völlig schon entschied” ( SW 1, 621: 2453—2454)? According to conventional readings of the scene, Hermann’s presence is all but unnecessary because it is his strategy of deception, not Hermann himself, who wins the battle of the Teutoburg forest. Viewed another way, however, this circumstance effectively decenters Hermann, removing him from the cause to be celebrated and for which he is typically judged most responsible, namely, victory in the German war of liberation against the Romans. Interestingly, Fassbinder inverts the ratio-whereas the absence of Kleist’s Hermann surprises the reader because he otherwise plays the most active role throughout the play, Hermann Braun’s presence is equally as striking for Fassbinder’s viewers because Hermann is generally absent for much of the film. While Uecker recognizes that Kleist’s “radical political ideas” likely inform “the core of [Maria’s] relation with the three men who fall in love with her” (52), the extent to which Hermann Braun is the core of this relation remains understated and undeveloped. Simply put, Hermann Braun is not like the other men. While Maria is the titular and most visible character throughout the film, Hermann Braun is the man with whom she is inextricably and fatally bound, and he, too, like his Kleistian counterpart, is the driving force for the film’s plot and the chief motivation for most of Maria’s actions. Further, although the titles of Kleist’s drama and Fassbinder’s film are quite different-one paints a heroic scene, while the other describes a domestic arrangement-they nevertheless mirror each other in another sense. The marriage of Maria Braun is functionally tantamount to Hermann’s battle in Fassbinder’s adaptation. Like so much else in the film, the marriage referenced in the title refers to Hermann in his absence, as evidenced by the priority status “die Ehe” assumes in the film’s title, along with its grammatical subordination of the name, Maria Braun. Consequently, the marriage between Hermann and Maria, and thus, too, the real and imagined battle between the Nazi past and postwar German present, is the actual protagonist, the principle subject and object of the film. Thus, whereas Kleist’s Hermann-despite his brief absence at a critical moment-is all but ubiquitous in the play, Hermann Braun, who is physically all but absent in the film, is nonetheless very much present throughout the film, and the nature of the battle he wages is shown most clearly in those rare instances when he does, in fact, physically appear in the film. 42 Robert Blankenship and Kevin P. Eubanks After a fleeting glimpse at the film’s beginning, the viewer first meets Hermann Braun when Maria and Bill, an African American soldier, are in bed together. As Hermann lingers in the doorway, the expression on Maria’s face when she notices Hermann’s presence betrays her longing above all for her returned husband and the German past he represents. Although Hermann Braun immediately strikes Maria when she runs to meet him at the door, Maria instinctively kills Bill while Bill simultaneously restrains and consoles Hermann. In fact, Bill’s character, like Oswald’s, points unequivocally to the implications of the Allied military occupation: while the Allied military occupation sought to restrain German militarism after the war, Western investment in postwar West Germany, which Bill also clearly signifies, sought to console Germany by overseeing the kinds of political reforms and economic initiatives that would pave the way for its eventual reintegration into the family of Western democratic nations. Consequently, Hermann Braun’s return from the dead is what causes Maria to kill her American lover, who stands, literally and figuratively, in the way of such a return, and perhaps it is her intimacy with Bill-a member of the foreign occupying force who infiltrates Hermann’s private and public sphere- that prompts the German soldier’s return in the first place. The evidence for such repression lies in the apparent inexplicability of Maria’s violent assault on Bill-after all, she “was fond of him”-but Maria’s reaction is more easily grasped when one views Hermann and Maria Braun as committed to keeping together that which has been lost, a national identity seemingly snuffed out with the Nazis and struggling to reconstitute itself in the postwar era. Even when Hermann Braun, as the German past, returns to impose himself on the course of postwar history, he is still very much absent. He is, for instance, speechless throughout the entire scene with Maria and Bill. His impact is all-pervasive, but he himself is inert. On the one hand, Hermann Braun arrives as a refugee prisoner-of-war at his wife’s doorstep, starving, weakened, and-upon finding his wife in bed with Bill-demoralized. In this interpretation, Hermann is emasculated by the encounter and said to embody the “private fear […] of many German men” (Uecker 57). On the other hand, Hermann Braun’s expressionless face gives no indication of such demoralization. There is no recognition on his part of the infidelity. In fact, the only emotion conveyed in the scene is Maria’s breathless reaction to Hermann’s appearance at the door. For Maria, Hermann’s arrival signals the return of the impossible object of Germany’s nationalist desire and reinforces the depth of Maria’s commitment to that desire, prompting her to defend Hermann and the Germany he represents against the foreign aggressor. For a brief moment, at least, the Germany of the past and the Germany of the present are reconciled over the dead body of the occupier. This reunification, of course, cannot last, as it is built upon the trans- The Battle of Hermann Braun 43 gressions of the past, a circumstance clearly supported when Maria is put on trial for Bill’s murder by a U.S. military court; significantly, Hermann’s acceptance of responsibility for the crime reinforces that his return really did cause Bill’s death, and thus Maria is permitted to continue unimpeded on her path to prosperity amidst the Wirtschaftswunder . Hermann Braun’s second appearance occurs at the end of the film, and essentially finishes what his first appearance left incomplete by reinforcing his centrality to a plot in which he is routinely absent. While Hermann is in prison for Bill’s murder, Maria does indeed prosper and again takes an occupying lover. Oswald is a wealthy French entrepreneur, who recruits Maria to work for him because she speaks English, which she learned from Bill (“im Bett”), and because she proves to be an effective negotiator. He also sleeps with her, and eventually proposes marriage, but his advances are consistently rebuffed by Maria, whose loyalty remains with Hermann. When Hermann is finally released from prison, Maria attempts to pick him up, only to learn that he has already left and is traveling abroad. She thus continues her relationship with Oswald until he dies. Upon the reading of Oswald’s will, however, Maria discovers that Hermann and Oswald had entered a formal agreement behind her back that, in exchange for his leaving Maria to the terminally ill Oswald, Hermann would not return until after Oswald’s death, and Hermann would receive Oswald’s inheritance as compensation. Notably, the deal between Hermann and Oswald echoes the unspoken agreement between Hermann and Ventidius, in which Hermann cultivates Thusnelda’s relationship with Ventidius by encouraging their mutual desire and pretending to look the other way as the romance develops; in both scenarios, the Hermanns use Thusnelda and Maria, respectively, as bargaining chips to exploit the emotional vulnerabilities of their adversaries and, by way of this exploitation, to advance their political aims, and these arrangements demonstrate the striking lengths to which both Hermanns will go in order to achieve their desired “sovereignty” (Uecker 57). To be clear, Fassbinder’s film is not a direct cinematic translation of Kleist’s play, but an adaptation that treats select aspects of Kleist’s Die Hermannsschlacht as recognizable motives and draws on the tension between liberation and nationalism inherent in the play. While Kleist’s play demonstrates an awareness of the dangers of an ascending tyrant, Fassbinder’s film demonstrates a proportionally more prominent awareness of the dangers inherent to the aspiration of the modern nation-state. Nevertheless, given the inherent friction at the end of Kleist’s stirring tale of German triumph, one may imagine Hermann Braun as Fassbinder’s reflection in the twentieth-century postwar moment upon what Seán Allan calls Kleist’s invitation to adopt “a critical view of [his] central protagonist” (Allan 47). 44 Robert Blankenship and Kevin P. Eubanks In Kleist’s play, Hermann’s multiple acts of deception, as well as his order to execute Aristan at the end of the play, are the most frequently cited examples of this ambivalence. On the one hand, with his condemnation of Aristan, Hermann clearly intends to forbid any notion of an internecine war on the decisive day of battle against the Romans, and his verdict squarely aligns with one of the two stated political goals of the insurrection, namely, German unification. For Hermann, Aristan’s death is justified because Aristan is a traitor who has partnered with the Roman adversary and rejected Hermann’s invitation to join the postwar German alliance against Rome-according to that reading, Hermann keeps rather than breaks his conspicuous promise that “[…] Es soll kein deutsches Blut, [a]n diesem Tag, von deutschen Händen fließen” ( SW 1, 614: 2273—2274) since Aristan has not consented to this newborn national identification and thus is no longer German. On the other hand, however, Hermann does break his promise because Aristan is and remains a Germanic prince, and his forced exclusion by Hermann, especially as it takes place amidst Aristan’s desperate and, finally, democratic petition to be heard-“Hört mich, ihr Brüder-! ” ( SW 1, 628: 2623)-undermines the very independence and opportunity for self-determination for which Hermann has allegedly been fighting, that is, the other, equally primary, political aim of German liberation. Hanenberg reinforces this troubling aspect of Hermann’s nature: “[W]e should not try to see Herrmann as better than he is. He is not sacrificing his humanity for the benefit of truth […], but he simply longs for victory. There is no other, no deeper reason for him than the reason of his own self-proclaimed ambition. He is not in service of any transcendent truth but only of his own definition of what seems worthy and achievable to himself” (145). As Allan points out, “[b]y including the execution of Aristan-the only character besides Hermann to embrace a genuinely radical concept of freedom-[…] the discourse of German nationalism with which the play ends already hints at a new form of cultural imperialism that seems no less intolerant than the one just overthrown” (Allan 47 and 57). In this way, scholars, such as Allan and Krebs, suggest that the goals of Kleist’s Hermann extend well beyond liberation and unification and anticipate the problematic aspects of twentieth-century German nationalism as it takes root alongside Germany’s historical evolution into a sovereign nation-state and the parallel emergence of a collective German national identity (see Krebs 19—23). While it is important to distinguish Kleist’s demand for the removal of an occupation government from the concept of twentieth-century postwar nationalism, Fassbinder has adapted the ambivalences and questions of Kleist’s play to a postwar context. Hermann’s judgment and Aristan’s challenge pose critical and justifiable questions about the paradox of national liberation movements that Kleist was well ahead of his time in rais- The Battle of Hermann Braun 45 ing: What is Germania? Who belongs to it? And who or what determines such belonging? While both Marbod and Wolf acknowledge the persuasiveness of Aristan’s challenge, Hermann’s violent judgment quickly and shrewdly shuts down the debate by announcing, paradoxically, that the final determination of such national belonging rests solely with him and is enforceable through violence: “Diese Denkart kenn ich. Du bist imstand und treibst mich in die Enge, [f]ragst, wo und wann Germanien gewesen? […] Doch jetzo, ich versuchte dich, jetzt wirst du [m]ich schnell begreifen, wie ich es gemeint: Führt ihn hinweg und werft das Haupt ihm nieder! ” ( SW 1, 627: 2611-2613, 2616—2618). If the ambitions of Kleist’s Hermann belong either to the liberator or the tyrant, the intentions of Fassbinder’s Hermann are opaquer precisely because of his strategic absence throughout the film and, not coincidentally, because of the traumatic and public dislocation that Germany was suffering at the time, and of which Fassbinder intended Hermann and Maria Braun to be the private reflection (see Uecker, Kaes). Nevertheless, Hermann Braun’s motivation may be inferred not just from his well-established “symbolic function” as an allegory of the defeated German soldier (Uecker 45, 47, 52, and 56), but also from the transtextual echo with Kleist, to be the restoration of a German past with which he, and the Germany he signifies, is not yet finished. As Hanna Schygulla, the actress who played Maria Braun, explains in Annekatrin Hendel’s documentary film Fassbinder , the positive dream of a democratic Germany during the interwar period did not forestall the rise of fascism in Germany: “Trotz des Idealismus ist Hitler passiert.” Of course, one may argue it was because of, not despite, this idealism that Hitler succeeded in carrying out his cruel political vision since that patriotic zeal that can be and was, in fact, made to serve a wide variety of ideological ends, including those motivating Kleist’s protagonists and the characters of Hermann and Maria Braun. In the end, it would appear that Hermann Braun’s ambitions, however nameless and ill-defined, also demand unavoidable cruelty, as is painfully suggested in the tragic fates of Bill and Oswald, and in the correspondence linking Hermann’s return to Adenauer’s call for German rearmament amidst the new economic recovery. Maria Braun’s often lauded independence also demands cruelty, and what Uecker says of Maria applies equally to Kleist’s Thusnelda, that “If Maria Braun is indeed a victim, it needs more than a male conspiracy to destroy her. Her own determination never to look back at the victims of her career contributes as much to her final desperation as her husband’s betrayal” (58). Indeed, if Hermann Braun, like Adenauer, is willing to enter into a temporary contract with Oswald, himself a simultaneous reference to both the Allied victory over Hitler’s Germany and the liberal-democratic economic model that made the Wirtschaftswunder and the proposed German rearmament possible, then Her- 46 Robert Blankenship and Kevin P. Eubanks mann’s marriage to Maria represents a much more dangerous--and permanent--contract between the authoritarian force of Germany’s Nazi past and the economic potential associated with Germany’s accelerated recovery in the present, effectively reanimating what it took a world war to suppress. Like Hermann, Maria is Germany, too, but not the Germany of the past. She is instead the Germany of the economic miracle that works on behalf of its repressed former self. She is, as she says, the “Mata Hari des Wirtschaftswunders.” As Schygulla describes it, contrary to the popular reception of Maria’s character, Fassbinder thought of her generally as a negative, not a positive, force (Hendel). In fact, in addition to being a “Meister der Verstellung,” Maria’s economic mobility is built upon her thorough exploitation of others for material and social gain, all of which she does on behalf of her marriage to Hermann Braun. Maria’s economic success can be entirely attributed to her adeptness at deception and diplomacy, her unyielding pragmatism and bureaucratic focus, her lack of emotional attachment and reciprocity, and, finally, her total commitment to Hermann Braun and the nationalist wounds and ambitions he represents. It is neither a coincidence nor a surprise that Maria retains final agency in the film, however ambivalent it may be, or that the explosion for which she is knowingly or unknowingly responsible is caused by a gas leak, which recalls the means by which millions were murdered under the Nazi regime. Of course, Maria is a small capitalist, not a Nazi stormtrooper, but the threat her marriage to Hermann poses to the liberal-social democratic order is nevertheless an existential one. Thus the Wirtschaftswunder fails to render the transgressions of the past any less possible in the present, but rather creates equally fertile conditions anew for the return of the repressed-until it explodes, of course, which it must do, according to Fassbinder’s film, in order for Germany to overcome its past. Structurally and symbolically, the endings of Die Hermannsschlacht and Die Ehe der Maria Braun mirror each other in their challenge and resistance to nationalist pride and power. Hermann Braun’s final return coincides with the revelation that Maria’s relationship with Oswald was not a free act but a heteronomous arrangement between Hermann and Oswald. Directly thereafter, the radio announces the final moments of Germany’s dramatic win over Hungary in the 1954 World Cup championship, the house in which Maria and Hermann planned to live out their future explodes, and, finally, a dialectical montage of photographic negatives of postwar German chancellors is shown in a gradual, ominous succession to end the film. Both works end with joyful public celebrations of German victory unexpectedly interrupted by explicit, or, in the case of the parade of negatives , implicit violence. Interestingly, these codas render their violent judgments apart from the public, perhaps to discriminate between the positive aspects of the shared experience and sense of belonging that lies at The Battle of Hermann Braun 47 the foundation of national identity and the harmful ideological effects capable of being built around it, such as those effects hinted at in Hermann’s cruelty toward Aristan and the latent force of fascism that Fassbinder recognized in the heated political landscape of the late 1970s. The hope signaled in the German World Cup victory at the end of the film is both challenged and cautiously reinforced in the collision of circumstances at the end of Fassbinder’s film. On the one hand, the violent explosion that cancels out the public celebration of the German soccer victory and the photographic montage of failed national leadership constitute Fassbinder’s warning to temper any celebration of German national dominance. Even more importantly, the photographic progression of German chancellors since 1945 and the sonic equivalence that links the paroxysms of the German soccer crowd to the thunderous adulation of the masses at Hitler’s public rallies, like those made infamous in Leni Riefenstahl’s (1902—2003) Triumph des Willens ( Triumph of the Will , 1935), reveal a parallel unholy alliance at work on either side of the war (Kaes 278—279) and reinforce the suspicion that the marriage of Hermann and Maria Braun leaves the primary mechanism(s) that made the crimes of National Socialism possible, namely, the German nationalist fantasy, very much intact. The film begins and ends in ruins and is bookended by an image of Hitler and an incriminating lineup of those chancellors, from Adenauer to Schmidt (Willi Brandt is notably absent), who presided over Germany’s recovery after WWII, another circumstance that scholars, such as Kaes, view as unequivocal in its condemnation of preand postwar German nationalism (Kaes 278—279). On the other hand, just as the spectator is permitted in Kleist’s drama to celebrate Germany’s newfound independence and national unification, Fassbinder’s viewers are nevertheless invited to enjoy the German national victory over Hungary. If Hermann’s violent judgment of Aristan is Kleist’s warning about the dangers of nationalism at the dawn of the German nation, then the sudden and unexpected explosion that kills Hermann and Maria Braun is Fassbinder’s emphatic condemnation of the phenomenon in the postwar moment. The explosion that kills them, then, is as much a part of the national victory as the World Cup win. Consequently, the sound of the explosion that kills Fassbinder’s protagonists echoes just as convincingly in the sounds of celebration following the German war of independence in Kleist’s play and in the public outburst after the German national soccer victory. In capturing the joyful eruption of a new democratic Germany, Fassbinder’s film bids an unequivocal farewell to the nationalist foundation and signals its preference for the rubble left in the wake of the explosion to the rebirth of German nationalism in another guise. The palpable correspondences with Kleist’s drama more fully illuminate the scope and depth of the conflict over nationalism and national identity depict- 48 Robert Blankenship and Kevin P. Eubanks ed in Fassbinder’s film. Die Ehe der Maria Braun follows the spirit of Wolfgang Staudte’s (1906—1984) film, Die Mörder sind unter uns (The Murderers Are Among Us, 1946); however, whereas Staudte’s film, which was produced in the Soviet occupation zone, ends with the implication that the fictional Nazi war criminal Brückner will be appropriately locked up, in Die Ehe der Maria Braun Hermann Braun is let free to repeatedly haunt the scene of the Wirtschaftswunder until it explodes in what could be interpreted as Fassbinder’s take on the Kleistian murder-suicide. As such, the film is also about the use and abuse of cultural heritage, including the reception of Kleist in the post-war period. Although an accordion player is playing the “Deutschlandlied” while Maria meets the black-market dealer, the dealer grabs the attention of the merchant who is carrying the Kleist edition and the dress that Maria wants to buy by whistling the first four notes of Ludwig van Beethoven’s (1770—1827) Fifth Symphony, which was composed and first performed in 1808, the same year that Kleist composed Die Hermannsschlacht . In this scene, Fassbinder appears to interrupt the “Deutschlandlied” in order to hint that his film owes more to Kleist than meets the eye, and perhaps, too, to recommend to his viewers the subversive potential of Kleist’s work. Notes 1 As Seán Allan notes, there seems to have been a collective reevaluation of Die Hermannsschlacht in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with Ruth K. Angress’ 1977 article and Klaus Peymann’s 1982 production of the play at the Bochumer Schauspielhaus. Fassbinder’s own reevaluation of Die Hermannsschlacht in the form of Die Ehe der Maria Braun fits perfectly in that timeline. 2 The Sembdner edition consistently spells the titular hero’s name as “Hermann,” whereas Kleist spelled it as “Herrmann.” 3 These insights apply just as much to Die Hermannsschlacht as to Kleist’s other works. Pahl notes, for example, that Thusnelda stands in for Hermann in battle and thus reads the failure of Hermann’s masculinity as ironic: Hermann’s “excessive masculinity-marked by the double masculine signifier of his name (Herr Mann)-falters” (Pahl 134). In Pahl’s reading of Kleist’s play, Hermann’s real battle may be with his own feelings-the stage directions indicate, for example, that he is “deeply moved” by the song of the bards, and he is melodramatically unprepared even to speak-feelings that Pahl argues started to become gendered around 1800 (Pahl 134; MagShamhráin 103; SW 1, 613—615: Stage directions). The Battle of Hermann Braun 49 4 The other two films in Fassbinder’s trilogy directly addressing the state of the Federal Republic of Germany ( Bundesrepublik or BRD) are Lola (1981) and Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss ( Veronika Voss , 1982). 5 In Fassbinder’s film, Hermann sees Mr. Bill in the bedroom with Maria, and in Kleist’s drama, Hermann sees Ventidius go into Thusnelda’s room. Kleist’s Hermann observes: “It was to the right! The curtain rustled. He has gone into Thusnelda’s room” (MagShamhráin 23); “Rechts! Der Vorhang rausche. / Er bog sich in Thusneldens Zimmer hin” ( SW 1, 550: 505—506). 6 Uecker and Kaes emphasize the public/ private nexus around which Fassbinder’s symbolism in Die Ehe der Maria Braun is organized, demonstrating Fassbinder’s desire to filter the public (i.e, national, global) tension of the postwar period through the private, personal lives of his characters. 7 Die Hermannsschlacht was the most performed play in Germany in 1933 and 1934 (see Reeve 261—269). Works Cited Allan, Seán. “‘Die rache der barbaren sei dir fern! ’: Myth, Identity, and the Encounter with the Colonial Other in Heinrich von Kleist’s Die Hermannsschlacht .” Publications of the English Goethe Society (2009): 47—59. Angress, Ruth K. “Kleist’s Treatment of Imperialism: Die Hermannsschlacht and Die Verlobung in St. Domingo .” Monatshefte 69.1 (Spring 1977): 17—33. Caven, Ingrid. “Curious in the Present.” Chaos as Usual: Conversations about Rainer Werner Fassbinder . Ed. 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