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«Souverän meiner Zeit»: Opportunity Cost in Leo Perutz’s Zwischen neun und neun WILLIAM H. CARTER I OWA S TATE U NIVERSITY «freiheit beginnt mit f und endet mit t. dazwischen gibt es zweimal ein farbloses ei, ein unsympathisches r und ein versöhnliches h. das ist freiheit. jedes kleinste abweichen verstümmelt die freiheit oder zerstört sie überhaupt. der freie gebrauch des alphabets - wie er der freiheit angemessen wäre - legt die freiheit in fesseln. so demonstriert schon die benennung, das wort, der begriff, die lautfolge von freiheit, wie es um sie steht. sie kann nur unbeschädigt kommuniziert werden, wenn sie sich keine freiheit erlaubt.» Friedrich Achleitner 1 In a letter to the Frankfurter Zeitung dated June 5, 1930, Leo Perutz strongly objects to a characterization of his work published four days earlier in the newspaper’s Literaturblatt. Perutz explains that the piece titled «Kriminalromane, auf Reisen» misleads readers by mentioning him alongside Gaston Leroux, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Anna Katherine Green. He has never written a Kriminalroman. Nor does he care for the suggestion that his work is light reading for a long journey. He summarizes the lines in question: «Die vier saloppen Zeilen, in denen mich der Autor zu Ehren des Kursbuches als einen exakten Begleiter auf Reisen wünscht und in denen er behauptet, die Stationen meiner Erzählungen mit der Uhr in der Hand wie die Provinznester, die an der Strecke liegen, durchfliegen zu können, möchte ich doch Ihrer Aufmerksamkeit empfehlen» (Eckert and Müller, Leo Perutz 129). Not surprisingly, Perutz appreciates neither being considered a welcome alternative to a railway timetable nor having his narratives compared to «provincial backwaters.» 2 In fairness to the author of the piece, Walter Benjamin, he praises Perutz for being more precise than a timetable, «einen exakteren Begleiter, […] der die kräftig rhythmisierten und synkopierten Erzählungen verfaßte» (Benjamin, «Kriminalromane, auf Reisen» 382). 3 The precision of his prose notwithstanding, Perutz is clearly concerned with the presentation of his literary endeavors as trivial and the impression this leaves with readers. He takes the four-line «critique,» as he describes it at the beginning of the letter, very personally. Beyond the inaccurate categorization and unflattering description of his writing, the critic fails to appreciate the amount of time 98 William H. Carter and effort he has invested in his work, as he explains: «Es ist nicht die richtige Art, über einen Autor zu sprechen, der an jedem seiner Romane und an jeder seiner Erzählungen jahrelang sehr mühevoll gearbeitet hat. Zumindest geben diese vier Zeilen Ihren Lesern ein vollständig falsches Bild meiner Art und meiner Ansichten» (Eckert and Müller, Leo Perutz 129). Leo Perutz’s pointed response to the Literaturblatt article underscores his desire to be viewed as a serious author whose works, though easy to read, are more than casual reading. It should be noted that by 1930, Perutz had already enjoyed tremendous success as a writer for well over a decade. Admired by the public and intellectuals alike by this time, his novels had been translated into Czech, English, Finnish, French, Hungarian, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, and Swedish (Müller and Schernus 77-91). Despite contemporaries such as Hermann Broch and Alfred Döblin engaging his work during this period, Perutz remained concerned with the trivialization of his writing and, by extension, his legacy. He voices this apprehension in a letter written from Tel Aviv on May 4, 1946: «Ich bin für Europa ein forgotten writer» (Eckert and Müller, «Einleitung» xii). As if following this pronouncement, literary scholars overlooked Perutz for the next four decades. Fortunately, in the late 1980s his work reemerged and began to receive the well-deserved critical attention it warrants, thanks in large part to the efforts of Hans-Harald Müller. Yet the resurgence of interest in Perutz pales in comparison to the recognition awarded him by readers such as Adorno, Borges, Kirsch, Kracauer, and Tucholsky during the interwar period. 4 One work that helped Perutz gain this notoriety was Zwischen neun und neun (1918). 5 In this novel, Perutz brings together classical and libidinal economics within a Viennese setting. He presents, through various perspectives, an example of the economic principle of opportunity cost, on the one hand, and offers insight into Freud’s «economic» concept of Bindung, on the other. Following a reading of the discourse of time and money in the text, I conclude by considering the significance of the novel for Alfred Hitchcock’s first thriller, The Lodger. Zwischen neun und neun begins with a series of vignettes that take place between approximately seven thirty in the morning and twelve in the afternoon. In the first scene, the Trafikantin Frau Püchl steps out of her shop for a moment before the morning rush begins. A cold, wet day in Vienna, the weather is perfect for some schnapps. Yet with only a small amount left, she chooses to save it for later. In the eight o’clock hour, Frau Püchl tends to her regular customers. Shortly after nine, Frau Schimek, the owner of another Trafik visits the shop and recounts the events surrounding a recent dispute over a shipment of Hungarian cheese. During the course of their conversation, they «Souverän meiner Zeit» 99 notice the peculiar behavior of a man repeatedly walking by and looking inside. Finally deciding to enter, he opens the door with his left elbow and right knee, which takes some time. He keeps his hands underneath his coat, and his pants and boots are soiled. The new customer attempts to order a Butterbrot as Frau Püchl continues her exchange with her colleague. When she asks what he would like, he repeats it and tells her that he is in a hurry. She replies that he must wait his turn because there is someone ahead of him. While the two women continue to discuss the Hungarian cheese incident, he becomes increasingly agitated and repeats his order. At this point, Frau Schimek decides to return to her shop, and Frau Püchl inquires about the gentleman’s occupation. She assumes that he works in an office because he is in such a rush. He responds: «Jedenfalls hab’ ich meine Zeit nicht gestohlen» (Perutz 8). After completing the order, she asks for twenty-four heller. At that point, he begins to act even more unusually. He moves toward the bread but hesitates to take it. The Trafikantin asks whether he would like her to cut it into smaller pieces. He replies affirmatively, but after she does so, he still does not take it. When she asks whether he would like something else, he orders some Extrawurst. She cuts it and places it next to his bread and butter. Again, he partakes of neither. Instead, he begins to wander around the store, studying the labels of different products and the various signs hanging about. After making some small talk, he asks her to deliver the food to his home. The name is Stanislaus Demba. When she replies that she has never had such a request, he explains that he has some errands to run and does not want to carry these items around with him. Demba then turns the conversation to the year’s cherry crop, and two customers enter. Once they leave, he asks for a glass of milk, which she does not sell. Perhaps schnapps, he suggests. Replying that she does not sell schnapps either, Frau Püchl asks whether he is feeling well. Demba answers that indeed he has not been feeling well and has had a stomachache the entire time. After offering him the schnapps that she keeps in her apartment, she goes upstairs to retrieve it. While filling a glass, it occurs to her that Demba might have seen the money drawer as he was looking around and that he might be robbing her at the very moment. When she gets downstairs, he is gone. She hurriedly checks the money drawer only to find that nothing is missing except the food he had ordered. Fortunately, she still has her schnapps, which puts her at ease. The poor fellow must not have had any money, Frau Püchl concludes, in which case she would have given him the food. After enjoying her well-deserved schnapps, she looks outside for the mysterious Demba, who is nowhere in sight. Upon returning, she sees the twenty-four heller owed her: «Stanislaus Demba hatte das Geld gewissenhaft auf den Tisch gezählt und sich dann mit dem Butterbrot davon geschlichen, als ob er es gestohlen hätte» 100 William H. Carter (Perutz 13). Both time and money may be given or received, lost or stolen, depending upon one’s perspective. The opening scene of Zwischen neun und neun introduces the bizarre case of Stanislaus Demba as viewed through the perspective of those who encounter him on this particular day. His actions underscore the value of time and its relation to money. The following two scenes take place in the Liechtensteinpark between nine thirty and nine forty-five. Though requiring no introduction, according to the narrator, the reader is introduced to Hofrat Klementi, director of the ancient oriental special collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Professor Ritter von Truxa, a lesser-known member of the Akademie der Wissenschaften, and his dog Cyrus accompany Klementi for their regular morning walk in the park. During the course of their discussion about the state of research in the field of hashish use in the East, the two academics make their way toward their favorite bench in an isolated part of the park. There they come across Stanislaus Demba attempting to eat his breakfast. When Demba sees that these men are not simply passing through, he begins to leave but realizes he has left his food on the bench. With no other options, he takes a seat again. While the gentlemen are busy proofreading and editing, Cyrus settles near Demba. When he asks them to call the dog, it eats two pieces of his Extrawurst. The Hofrat apologizes and calls Cyrus, who responds by eating more and snapping at his owner as he tries to stop him. The Hofrat suggests that perhaps Demba could place his food on the other side of the bench, but he replies that it would spoil in the sun, with which the Hofrat agrees despite there being no sun. In any case, the point is moot because Cyrus has eaten all of the Extrawurst by now. After Demba makes a comment concerning the dog’s free meal, the two men discuss whether they should find another place to sit. For safe measure, they have this conversation in an extinct dialect of the Tuareg language. They decide to stay because it appears that they will be able to continue with their work in relative peace. Demba inquires about the dog and offers him a treat, but when Cyrus approaches him and raises a paw, he kicks him instead and then runs away. When Demba stumbles on his coat, the men hear a metallic sound resembling keys on a ring. Following this abrupt departure, the Hofrat believes he has just encountered a hashish smoker in Europe, as evidenced by how he was wearing his coat: «Als ob er etwas Kostbares unter dem Überzieher vor den Augen der Menge zu verbergen hätte. Sie wissen, der Haschischraucher bildet sich immer ein, irgendeinen geheimnisvollen Schatz bei sich zu tragen» (Perutz 24). 6 They attempt to follow this rare specimen but to no avail. Once again, those who encounter the odd figure interpret his actions according to their own perspective, both times in terms of what they deem valuable and what they perceive as valuable to Stanislaus «Souverän meiner Zeit» 101 Demba. In each case, Demba clearly has something to hide under that coat. All of which, the reader is constantly reminded, takes place within a certain time frame, indeed, many time frames that make up the bigger picture. Before jumping to the next scene, I will take a moment to consider the role of value in the Austrian economist Carl Menger’s theory of subjective value and the related principle of opportunity cost. Subjective value theory dates back to the eighteenth century. Sir James Steuart, the Scottish economist credited with theorizing supply and demand and a contemporary of Adam Smith, ushered in this tradition with the publication of An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Oeconomy (1767). Partially written in Tübingen, the Inquiry was translated into German by 1770 and widely discussed in Germany for the next two decades. During the following century, economic thought gained currency and relevance that continues to shape our world and our understanding of it. Compared with late eighteenthcentury Germany, «an importer rather than an exporter of economic ideas,» as Kenneth Carpenter writes, Austria was even less concerned with recent economic trends (12). «There had not been in Austria,» writes F.A. Hayek, «that great vogue of Smithian economics or that reception of English and French ideas in the field of economics that had swept most parts of Germany during the first half of the last century» (Hayek, «The Place of Menger’s Grundsätze» 5). In the preface to his 1871 Grundsätze der Volkswirtschaftslehre, Carl Menger credits the German tradition with laying the groundwork for his contribution. Beginning in the eighteenth century, this line of economic thought extended well into the twentieth century. 7 With regard to Zwischen neun und neun, a brief look at Menger’s subjective theory of value will provide the background for a reading of Perutz’s novel in terms of opportunity cost. In the Grundsätze, Menger defines value in terms of the satisfaction of human needs: «es ist somit der Werth die Bedeutung, welche concrete Güter oder Güterquantitäten für uns dadurch erlangen, dass wir in der Befriedigung unserer Bedürfnisse von der Verfügung über dieselben abhängig zu sein uns bewusst sind» (Menger 78). He emphasizes the individual decision making process, which is subject to error, and contends that the subjective determination of value is not arbitrary but rather based on its contribution to wellbeing: «Die Bedeutung, welche eine Bedürfnissbefriedigung für uns hat, findet ihr Mass nicht in unserer Willkür, sondern vielmehr in der von unserer Willkür unabhängigen Bedeutung, welche jene Bedürfnissbefriedigung für unser Leben, oder für unsere Wohlfahrt hat» (Menger 121). Menger’s subjective value theory paved the way for the principle of opportunity cost, which the economist Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk viewed as central to the Austrian 102 William H. Carter school. 8 Writing in The Quarterly Journal of Economics in 1894, David I. Green explains opportunity cost as follows: «By devoting our efforts to any one task, we necessarily give up the opportunity of doing certain other things which would yield us some return; and it is, in general, for this sacrifice of opportunity that we insist on being paid rather than for any pain which may be involved in the work performed» (Green 222). Green measures cost not in terms of physical effort expended but in the light of lost opportunity. The principle of opportunity cost emphasizes the central role that time plays in modern life and addresses the question of how one chooses to spend one’s time and the time of others. Green offers the following lucid, concise exposition of opportunity cost: The day is short, life itself is short, one’s powers are limited, and one’s possessions are seldom as large as he would like. Our opportunities, therefore, whether for pleasure, for work, or for acquisition, must be economized. It is not only our right, but it is our duty, to yield none of these opportunities without securing adequate return. The return may be in the general form of money, or it may be in recreation, direct happiness, or the pleasure which comes from helping others and the consciousness of rectitude. (Green 223). 9 The case of Stanislaus Demba provides an exceptional example of how quickly a day or a life might pass, the limits of one’s ability to act, and the extent to which possessions, either owned or desired, influence decisions and actions. Demba must repeatedly sacrifice opportunities because of the bind in which he finds himself. Constrained by time and money, he proceeds on his quest for freedom. In the third chapter of Zwischen neun und neun, Perutz introduces another decisive factor that his protagonist must economize along with time and money, namely, risk associated with the other. Still in the park from the previous episode, Demba encounters a nanny named Alice Leitner, who regularly brings two children there to play. She spends her time flirting with men who are quick to approach her. As she exchanges pleasantries with her acquaintance Frau Buresch, with whom she is sharing the bench, Demba, needing a moment of rest following his last encounter, takes a seat between the two. Preferring to crochet, the older woman retires to one end of the bench. Demba, wearing his coat draped over the shoulders, eventually notices the attractive woman seated next to him. Despite or perhaps because of his bohemian appearance, the young woman is drawn to him. Following a brief discussion of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, which Demba notices she is reading, she allows her umbrella to fall to the ground. To her surprise, her interlocutor does not pick it up, as the men she meets in the park usually do. Intrigued by his inaction, she allows the conversation about Ibsen to continue until Demba proclaims: «Souverän meiner Zeit» 103 «Küssen, Streicheln, Körper an Körper schmiegen […] sind nur dazu da, um uns abzulenken von dem einen, das wir der Natur schulden» (32). She considers leaving after this pronouncement, but Demba changes the topic by announcing that he has not eaten since yesterday afternoon. It is almost a quarter to ten. He explains that he cannot stay long because he has much to do but that he could not forego the opportunity to make her acquaintance. Asking if he might see her again, she responds that rather than taking the chance of missing each other in the park, he should write her and gives him the address. When she asks why he is not writing it down, he first says that he has memorized it but then tells her that he is illiterate. While he tries to convince her of this, the wind blows his hat off, and he asks her to give him a hand with it. When she asks the reason, he replies that he does not have any arms, explaining that he lost them in an accident at a bread factory. Fearful that he will show her what remains of them, she decides to leave. Her initial impression of him was wrong: «Alles, was ihr vorher als stolz zur Schau getragene Originalität, als die gewollte Uneleganz des Bohemiens erschienen war, erkannte sie jetzt als das, was es wirklich war: Als mühsam verborgenes Elend» (36). As she departs, she places some coins on the bench without his notice. Only after she and the children have left the park does it occur to her that without arms, he would be unable to pick up the money. The scene concludes with Frau Buresch witnessing Demba’s response to finding her charity: «Sie beobachtete, wie sein Gesicht sich in eine Grimasse der Bestürzung, des Ekels und der Enttäuschung entstellte, und sie sah mit Staunen, wie aus seinem Mantel zwei Fingerspitzen hervorkam, die das Geld mit wütender Gebärde auf den Boden warfen» (37). Up to this point in the novel, Demba’s encounter with the other has consisted of a transaction and a dispute. When he attempts to take a moment for himself, a timeout, he finds himself seated next to a beautiful woman. This chance meeting, though different in nature from the previous ones, is equally restricted by Demba’s dilemma. Unwilling to reveal his situation to this stranger, he chooses to lie. Because she takes him at his word, she believes that she is acting out of kindness when she leaves behind money for him. For Demba, the coins represent his inability to act as he wishes. Money is of no value to him, at least, for the time being. In the following chapter, we finally learn why Stanislaus Demba is in such a hurry. Perutz chooses an office as the setting for chapter four, a space where rumor maintains its currency through circulation. Unlike Demba’s earlier encounters, the office staff is familiar with him. He had once tutored Etelka Springer’s younger brother, and it is through her that he met Sonja Hartmann. For days, Sonja’s upcoming vacation to Italy with her boyfriend Georg Weiner has been the topic of discussion in the office. When Etelka asks Sonja what 104 William H. Carter Demba will think of the trip, she replies: «Der soll sagen, was er will. Wir sind endgültig fertig miteinander» (43). A conversation then begins about how handsome Georg Weiner is. When Demba comes up again, Herr Neuhäusl, playing with his pocket watch, recounts how about twelve hours ago he had to listen to Demba’s «Liebesgram» and «Rachepläne» in Café Sistiana (45). He explains: «Anfangs war er sehr aufgeregt, zum Schluß ist ihm dann eine Idee gekommen, da hat er sich beruhigt. Von sechshundert Kronen hat er etwas gesagt, die er sich verschaffen will, und damit wird er mit dem Fräulein Hartmann nach Paris fahren, hat er gesagt, oder an die Riviera» (46). Not reacting to this information in any particular way, Sonja continues about her business. While she is away taking a call from Georg, those in the office think they hear their boss coming up the stairs, but it turns out to be Demba. Once he and Sonja are alone, he confronts her about the trip and demands that she not go. Seeing that she fully intends to leave the following morning, his anger and frustration grow. Repeatedly looking at the clock, he explains that he is losing valuable time. She replies that he is not losing it but rather wasting it. At this point, she wonders what he has up his sleeve. Despite his assurance that he will have the money to take her on vacation the next day, she remains firm. Once it becomes clear to him that her travel plans do not include him, he sets his sights on a photo of Weiner that is lying on a table. When she attempts to grab the picture out of his hands before he can destroy it, she feels something cold and metallic. Sonja is convinced that he has a weapon and intends to use it. Initially uncertain about its type, she quickly decides that it is a Browning pistol. After he finishes tearing the picture apart with his feet, Demba turns to her and asks if she still plans to travel with Weiner. Because he meant the question rhetorically, he is surprised when she replies that she is still undecided. She needs to think it over, she says, trying to stall: «Durch Sonjas Kopf raste ein einziger Gedanke: Zeit gewinnen! Nur Zeit gewinnen. Er hatte eine Waffe in den Händen, er war jähzornig, er stand kaum sechs Schritte weit von ihr -» (58). Now convinced that she will choose him over his rival, Demba guarantees that he will have the funds he needs by that evening. Before leaving, he asks her to promise that she will go with him the following day, assuming he has the money. Believing to be under duress, she agrees as he hurries away «auf seine wütende Jagd nach Geld» (61). Leo Perutz had office experience. After attending courses in Differential- und Integralrechnung, Versicherungsmathematik, and Volkswirtschaftslehre at the Universität Wien, he studied Versicherungsmathematik, Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung, Mathematischer Statistik, Volkswirtschaft, and Handels- und Privatrecht at the Technische Universität (Eckert and Müller, Leo Perutz «Souverän meiner Zeit» 105 15-16). In October 1907, Perutz began work as an actuary at the insurance company Assicurazioni Generali in Triest, where he compiled and analyzed statistical data in order to calculate risks and determine premiums. The same month, Kafka took a position at the firm’s branch in Prag, thanks to the help of his uncle. 10 Coincidentally, both Kafka and Perutz left Assicurazioni Generali in July 1908. While Kafka’s departure was apparently due to health reasons, Perutz had a new position in Vienna. 11 At the beginning of October 1908, Perutz joined the mathematical department of the Anker Insurance Company. 12 With the exception of his military service during World War I, he continued to work there until July 1923, enjoying the challenges of this new field. 13 During his first few years at Anker, Perutz published articles titled: «Zinsfußschwankungen und Dividendenquote» and «Die theoretischen Grundlagen der mechanischen Ausgleichung» (both in Oesterreichische Revue), «Zum Kapitel der Dividendenreserverechnung» (Mitteilungen des Österreichisch-ungarischen Verbandes der Privat-Versicherungs-Anstalten), and «Über Sterblichkeitsgewinn» (Der National-Oekonom) (Eckert and Müller, Leo Perutz 20-21). In 1914, as Ulrike Siebauer points out, the insurance company relocated to Hoher Markt, where the firm had commissioned Franz Matsch to design the Anker clock. Completed between 1911 and 1917, the clock displays a figure from Viennese history each hour, and reminds passers-by of how time flies, the value of life, and the need to insure it (Siebauer 53). Stanislaus Demba requires no reminder of the essence of time. Time is his adversary in this race to get the money he believes will win Sonja Hartmann’s affection. After leaving her office, Demba encounters a series of lost opportunities. A Geldbrief containing payment for a Kolportageroman he has translated into Polish arrives for him, but he is unable to sign for it (70, 72). When he attempts to collect an advance on a tutoring job, he must leave before receiving the eighty crowns he sought. At one point, when an acquaintance actually puts seventy crowns in Demba’s pocket and sends him on his way, the wallet falls out. As a patrol officer tries to return it to him, he denies that it is his and watches another person claim it. He follows the man until he is in a position to confront him, but he turns out to be a criminal, who initially mistakes Demba for a business associate. In the end, Demba gets chased and, not surprisingly, does not recover his rightful property. This string of mishaps is not due to his lack of cunning or commitment. Rather, his inability to close these various transactions results directly from the fact that he has been handcuffed since the beginning of the novel. In chapter eight, the university student Demba confides his predicament to Steffi Prokop, a sixteen-year-old friend. Earlier that morning, he was attempting to sell an antique dealer a book that he had taken from the univer- 106 William H. Carter sity library under his coat. Although he had previously sold two other books obtained in the same manner, he had not intended to part with this one: «Ich hab’ es auch nicht hergegeben, die ganze Zeit über, und wenn ich noch so sehr in Geldnot war. Und in Geldverlegenheit war ich fast immer» (95). He was unwilling to part with it, Demba continues, even in the dead of winter when he could have used the money the most. However, when he learned of Sonja’s plans, he decided to sell it, but not before spending the entire night reading it. He explains: «Mein Herz hing an dem Buch» (99). He was willing to exchange one love for another, or so he had planned. Meanwhile, the antique dealer had offered two hundred and forty crowns for the book, not letting on that he had called the police. When they arrived on the scene and Demba realized that he had been set up, he lunged at the dealer and was subsequently handcuffed. He explains to Steffi that he had managed to escape and had locked himself into a room in the attic, where he had a moment to reflect on the prospect of freedom: «Und ich sah, wie reich ich gewesen war bei all meiner Armut, daß ich Souverän meiner Zeit gewesen war, es wurde mir deutlich wie nie zuvor, was das zu bedeuten hat: Freiheit. Und jetzt war ich gefangen, war ein Sträfling, die Schritte, die ich in der engen Dachkammer zwischen dem Gerümpel machte, waren meine letzten freien Schritte. Mir schwindelte, es gellte mir in den Ohren: Freiheit! Freiheit! Freiheit! Freiheit! Das Herz wollte mir bersten vor dem einen Wunsch: Freiheit! Nur noch einen Tag Freiheit, nur noch zwölf Stunden Freiheit! Zwölf Stunden! » (107-08). Perutz had originally titled the novel Freiheit before placing the emphasis on time. Constrained and confined to a small room with no apparent way out, Demba ponders the value of his own time, which he has now lost. As the police attempted to enter, he tells Steffi, he decided that he would rather die than be caught. Mustering the courage to jump out of the window, he hears a gramophone playing «Prinz Eugenius, der edle Ritter» - the song that plays on the Anker clock during the ten-o’clock hour (108). He finally jumped and, as he was falling, heard «wie die Glocke vom Kirchturm her neun Uhr zu schlagen begann, und dann -» (108). Steffi asks what happened next. «Nichts,» he replies, «Ich verlor das Bewußtsein» (108). After recovering his senses, he realized that he was free, despite remaining bound by time and now handcuffs. At this point, the novel restarts. Steffi and Demba quickly devise a plan to have a key made for the handcuffs, but it will not be ready until eight o’clock in the evening. In the meantime, Demba must get back to work, as he puts it, if he wishes to leave the next day with Sonja Hartmann. Considering the dilemma in which Demba finds himself, bound and determined to meet his self-imposed deadline, Zwischen neun und neun offers a unique example of Freud’s concept of binding (Bindung). Less well known, «Souverän meiner Zeit» 107 perhaps, than condensation (Verdichtung) and displacement (Verschiebung), binding plays an equally important «economic» role in Freud’s metapsychology. 14 The theory of the economic - the most theoretical of the three components of Freud’s metapsychology - tends to receive less attention than the dynamic and the topographical. While the dynamic approach deals with the pressure that the unconscious exerts, the topographical deals with the Unconscious, Preconscious, and Conscious and later the familiar distinctions of ego, id, and superego. The economic covers both the dynamic and the topographical with respect to cathexes. Unlike the French and Italian translations of «cathexis» as investissement and investimento, James Strachey’s translation of Freud’s term Besetzung undervalues the economic aspect of this concept, which is fundamental to the understanding of the circulation and distribution of psychical investments, in other words, libidinal economics. 15 In addition, Bindung plays an increasingly important role for Freud as he explores the relation between Eros and Thanatos, according to Laplanche and Pontalis: «Lastly, in the framework of Freud’s final theory of instincts, binding becomes the major characteristic of the life as opposed to death instincts» (Laplanche and Pontalis 52). 16 Indeed, it is within the framework of libidinal economics that Freud addresses the prospect of happiness. Consider what he writes in Das Unbehagen in der Kultur (1930): Das Glück in jenem ermäßigten Sinn, in dem es als möglich erkannt wird, ist ein Problem der individuellen Libidoökonomie. Es gibt hier keinen Rat, der für alle taugt; ein jeder muß selbst versuchen, auf welche besondere Fasson er selig werden kann. Die mannigfachsten Faktoren werden sich geltend machen, um seiner Wahl die Wege zu weisen. Es kommt darauf an, wieviel reale Befriedigung er von der Außenwelt zu erwarten hat und inwieweit er veranlaßt ist, sich von ihr unabhängig zu machen; zuletzt auch, wieviel Kraft er sich zutraut, diese nach seinen Wünschen abzuändern. (Freud, GW 14: 442) Despite or because there is no guaranteed course to happiness, the complete attainment of which always remains just out of reach, we must continue to strive toward it, Freud explains. There are simply too many factors involved that «machen sich geltend,» which might be read generally as «assert themselves» or, more specifically, in the monetary sense of «become valid» or in the legal sense of «being in force,» and hence enforceable. In the case of Stanislaus Demba, all of the above apply. Further, we shall see whether his «real satisfaction» meets his projected expectations, how much he is willing to risk on this venture, and to what extent he alters his outlook, in order to meet his own demands. 17 The events that transpire in chapter fifteen encapsulate the high and low points of Demba’s day. In keeping with his earlier stops and chance meetings, 108 William H. Carter Demba again finds himself in a situation where the money he needs - this time more than enough of it - is at hand yet, once more, unattainable. Attempting to collect money owed to him, he becomes involved in underground Bukidomino, a domino game in which bets are placed on individual players. In a back room of Café Turf, Demba allows the man who owes him money to bet his ten remaining crowns on Demba’s behalf. He instantly triples his money because the payout is 2: 1 (the original ten crowns plus twenty more), places the same bet with his earnings, and wins 90 crowns. Deciding to push his luck one more time because he has nothing to lose at this point, he bets everything. His acquaintance cautions him, «Du hasardierst! » To which Demba replies, «Das tu’ ich heute schon den ganzen Tag» (179). Against impossible odds, he wins two hundred and seventy crowns, which is more than enough to take Sonja on vacation the next day. While Demba is busy devising a way to collect his money, a situation arises with one of the players. A certain Dr. Rübsam cannot find his gold pocket watch. He insists that each of the players allow him to search them. When he asks Demba to remove his coat, he refuses and painfully looks on as Dr. Rübsam collects the money on the table as compensation for the watch. «Ich kann nicht anders,» he explains, «Not bricht Eisen,» the irony of which is not lost on Stanislaus Demba (186). Whereas the doctor now has his winnings and perhaps his timepiece as well, Demba still has neither time nor money. Disheartened by this setback and exhausted, he decides to walk home in the rain. With his unfortunate day nearing an end, he says to himself, after stepping in a puddle, «Es ist Zeit, daß ich meine Engagements lose» (189). He realizes that he is speaking the language of business: «Und auch diese Redewendung tat ihm auf seltsame Weise wohl. Sie klang so geschäftsmäßig kühl, so kaufmännisch berechnend und log die Gefühle weg, die schlecht verborgen hinter all den tönenden Worten lagen: Schmerz, Eifersucht und brennendes Verlangen» (189). Just as Demba seems to have resigned himself to the present situation, he sees Georg Weiner’s apartment, which happens to be along the short cut he decided to take home. Initially believing that Sonja is with him, he becomes extremely jealous, but, to his surprise, Weiner leaves the apartment alone. Determined to see Sonja one last time, Demba follows him to a restaurant. Once there, Demba invites himself to the table where Weiner’s acquaintances are gathered, and it is not long before the unwelcome guest has wine thrown in his face. Instead of reacting violently, as he has throughout the day, Demba finds he is powerless against their laughter. He wishes instead for revenge, and his wish is soon fulfilled: «Und er schrie zu Gott verzweifelt nach einer Waffe. Gott gab sie ihm» (209). As Weiner mockingly asks whether Demba would like another glass of wine, Sonja enters warning that Demba has a revolver. With one word, Sonja trans- «Souverän meiner Zeit» 109 forms Demba’s material problem to a perceived advantage. Not divine intervention but the word «Revolver» makes him the most powerful person in the room (209). In control of his situation for the first time today, not despite but because of the secret he fought so hard to keep, he relishes the role reversal. Regardless of this bit of good fortune, however, Demba remains a fugitive, believed to be armed and dangerous, and subject to flight. Georg Weiner, fearing for his life, blames Sonja for the current situation. She had pursued him, constantly calling and writing. Sonja becomes visibly upset, and Demba tells Weiner to stop. When he persists, she admits that it is true, and they agree that their relationship is over. Throwing the tickets to Italy at him, she says: «Und jetzt - da hast du dein Geld zurück» (215). Demba appears to have won the battle and seems to be on the verge of winning his war with Weiner, all without raising a finger: «Von selbst war sein Triumph gekommen, er hatte erreicht, was er sich den ganzen Tag hindurch gewünscht hatte, ohne Mühe, ohne Kampf hatte er es erreicht, nur weil er seine Hände unter dem Mantel versteckt hatte» (215). Not only is he no longer in need of money, Sonja has chosen him over Weiner despite having no idea what he has gone through for her. Precisely at this point, having obtained everything he sought, Demba loses interest in Sonja, and his ambivalence toward her surfaces: «Die Liebe war tot, nicht gestorben, o nein: verreckt, wie ein krankes, häßliches Tier. Aber der Haß lebte, der ließ sich nicht verscharren, der war groß und mächtig und zwang ihn, seine Rache zu vollenden» (216). Demba seeks retribution for the events that transpired against him, the freedom he lost, and the time he will never regain. He informs the men who enjoyed themselves at his expense that they have five minutes left. As the time approaches nine o’clock, the Kellner enters, giving the men a chance to jump on Demba. During the ensuing mêlée, Weiner believes he has been shot, and Sonja returns to his side. When one of the men wrestles Demba’s hands free from under his coat, revealing the handcuffs, there is a moment of collective shock, during which Demba escapes. Enraged that a «Schatten,» «Lüge,» and «Phantom» had threatened them with an imaginary revolver, the group hurries to inform the police (221). Fortunately, Sonja knows where he lives. Arriving home, Demba finds Steffi waiting for him. She had been there half an hour and mentions that a letter arrived for him. In the letter, Demba finds an apology from Dr. Rübsam, who found his gold watch, and two hundred and twenty crowns - Demba’s acquaintance had borrowed fifty crowns. Of course, the money is no longer of any value to him: «Was war ihm jetzt das Geld! Ein paar Fetzen bemalten Papiers, nichts weiter. Es kam zu spat» (223). Expecting the police to arrive at any moment, Demba wants only his freedom at this point. Steffi tries the key she had made, but it does not fit. She ex- 110 William H. Carter plains that the locksmith had lost the wax impression given him and asked her mother for Steffi’s diary, for which he thought he was fabricating the key. She suggests, again, that he turn himself in, adding that the punishment could not be that bad. Surely, he would be free in no time. «Bis auf die Handschellen,» he replies (225). When she does not understand the comment, he explains: «Die behalt ich mein Leben lang. Die behält ein jeder, der aus dem Kerker kommt» (225). When the police arrive and attempt to enter the room, Demba says that he had thought of Steffi twelve hours ago. He had wished to see her and to be in her company during his final moments, but now he wants her to go. His search for freedom has exhausted him, he says. There is no response. When he asks for her, he receives no answer. Suddenly, he realizes that he is in an attic and that the clock tower is striking nine o’clock: «Neun Uhr! Morgens? Abends? Wo bin ich? Wo war ich? Wie lange steh’ ich schon hier und hör’ die Turmuhr schlagen? Zwölf Stunden? Zwölf Stunden» (226)? Perutz does not set off in quotation marks these final thoughts of Stanislaus Demba. Rather, they blend into the description of his surroundings: the morning sun, swallows flying about, and a gramophone playing «Prince Eugen» (226). The novel concludes with the police arriving shortly after nine o’clock in the morning. Barely alive, Demba wanted to flee, but his injuries were so severe that he could not get up. His eyes, we are told, exhibited the last bit of life as they flashed back to the events leading up to this end. They then grew tired and finally shut. Zwischen neun und neun closes with the following description: «Die Handschellen waren durch die Gewalt des Sturzes zerbrochen. Und Dembas Hände, die Hände, die sich in Angst versteckt, in Groll empört, im Zorn zu Fäusten geballt, in Klage aufgebäumt, die in ihrem Versteck stumm in Leidenschaft gezittert, in Verzweiflung mit dem Schicksal gehadert, in Trotz gegen die Ketten rebelliert hatten - Stanislaus Dembas Hände waren endlich frei» (227). An ironic reminder and material remainder of Demba’s day, the handcuffs emphasize his «sacrifice of opportunity» and raise the question of time in the narrative (Green 222). In his reading of Perutz’s novels as «proleptische Rätselromane,» Matías Martínez includes a table listing the novels along with two categories: «Erzählrahmen» and «Erzählerfigur.» 18 Under these headings, Zwischen neun und neun has an anonymous narrator and the narrative takes place chronologically. Martínez describes the narrative’s time frame as «12 h vs. 12 sec.» (Martínez 117). The indeterminate amount of time the novel spans, whether twelve hours or twelve seconds, sometime in between or beyond, underscores Demba’s singular experience of time. As the novel clearly demonstrates, a few seconds may be either a lot or a little, depending on one’s perspective. In Zwischen neun und neun, Perutz intricately and inextricably binds together time and narrative leading up to «Souverän meiner Zeit» 111 the surprise ending that has been compared to Ambrose Bierce’s An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (1891). 19 The conclusion of the novel underscores the role of time in a text, where time is meticulously measured, and confronts the reader with the question of how she has just spent her time. Upon waking from a dream, one has no conception of how much time has passed either in the dream or in the waking world. At the end of a novel, however, one has a sense of how much time was invested and whether it was worth it. Presenting a lesson in economics within the context of Stanislaus Demba’s libidinal economy, Zwischen neun und neun cleverly draws attention to time as an increasingly scarce resource in the modern world. Perutz’s novel deserves credit for its insight into the value of time, both our own and other’s. The final image of this «sehr filmischer Roman» characterizes its cinematic quality (Siebauer 93). A great fan of the movies, Perutz was a regular in Viennese movie houses. 20 In 1915, he collaborated with Paul Frank to write the novel Das Mangobaumwunder, whose publication a year later led to a film contract and eventual adaptation. 21 Before publishing Zwischen neun und neun at the end of 1918, Perutz previewed it in newspapers in Berlin, Prague, Zürich, and Vienna. 22 Filmmakers quickly showed interest in the story, and Perutz sold the film rights before the novel appeared in print. 23 Directors also saw the potential to bring this work to the cinema. In 1925, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau had an inquiry made on his behalf asking «ob [Perutz] nicht vielleicht eine wesensverwandte Idee oder Novelle wie die Geschichte des Stanislaus Demba für ihn schreiben könnte» (Eckert and Müller, Leo Perutz 88). Although this collaboration never materialized, one aspect of Demba’s story eventually appeared on screen in Alfred Hitchcock’s silent film The Lodger (1927). Hitchcock described the film to François Truffaut as the «first true Hitchcock movie,» and it was very successful (Truffaut 30). The title character, suspected of being a serial killer, is handcuffed near the end of the film and dies attempting to escape. During their discussion of this scene and the visual effect of handcuffs, Truffaut comments, «Handcuffs are certainly the most concrete - the most immediate - symbol of the loss of freedom» (Truffaut 34). «There’s also a sexual connotation, I think,» Hitchcock replies. He then credits Zwischen neun und neun as his likely source of inspiration (Truffaut 34). 24 Neither Murnau nor Hitchcock ever filmed the story of Stanislaus Demba. Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures Corporation eventually gained the rights to the novel but never filmed it. 25 Despite his efforts either to see his novel adapted or to regain the film rights to it, Perutz never saw his story materialize on the big screen. 26 Perhaps in time a version of it will appear, but until we see the movie, we will have to continue to read the book, one that certainly rewards re-reading. 112 William H. Carter Notes 1 Achleitner 12. 2 In a 1919 Arbeiter-Zeitung article, Perutz had employed the term «Provinznest» when considering the future of Vienna in Europe: «Wenn es wirklich so kommen soll, daß Wien zum Rang eines abseits liegenden Provinznestes Europas herabsinkt, wenn Wien als Großstadt stirbt, dann haben wir hier den sonderbaren Fall einer Euphonie des Städtetodes» (qtd. in Schmidt-Dengler 14; originally in: Eckert and Müller, Leo Perutz 105). 3 «Vielleicht wünscht man sich zu Ehren des Kursbuchs einen exakteren Begleiter, wie Leo Perutz, der die kräftig rhythmisierten und synkopierten Erzählungen verfaßte, deren Stationen mit der Uhr in der Hand wie Provinznester, die an der Strecke liegen, durchflogen werden […]» (Benjamin, «Kriminalromane, auf Reisen» 382). Doron Rabinovici mistakenly attributes the review to Bertolt Brecht (Rabinovici 39). 4 «Dennoch ist Leo Perutz, der zwischen 1918 und 1933 einer der ‹meistgelesenen Erzähler deutscher Sprache› (Friedrich Torberg) war und dessen Werk so prominente Fürsprecher wie Theodor W. Adorno, Jorge Luis Borges, Egon Erwin Kirsch, Siegfried Kracauer und Kurt Tucholsky fand, bis heute für die Literaturgeschichte und für die literarische Öffentlichkeit eine nahezu unbekannte, vergessene Gestalt» (Eckert and Müller, «Einleitung» xii). 5 I would like to thank Maria-Regina Kecht and Helga Schreckenberger, co-directors of the 2006 NEH Summer Institute in Vienna dedicated to the topic of «Melting Pot Vienna: Then and Now,» for introducing me to this text, among many others, the National Endowment for the Humanities for its generous support, and my wonderful colleagues from the Institute. 6 Walter Benjamin, incidentally, had researched this topic and had planned a book on it. Cf. Über Haschisch. 7 Commenting on Menger’s acknowledgement of the influence of German economic thought in the preface to the Grundsätze der Volkswirtschaftslehre, Erich W. Streissler writes, «This statement has to be taken seriously and is, in fact, true of the whole Austrian school at least up to about the beginning of the First World War.» He further elaborates on the connection between the two schools of economic thought: «The Austrian school continued the older German tradition insofar as it treated the same topics, which were not central to other branches of ‹orthodox› economics: money, economic fluctuations (‹crises›), entrepreneurship and the determination of profits» (Streissler 493). 8 Citing an 1891 article Böhm-Bawerk published in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, Streissler and Weber write, «Böhm-Bawerk first tells us that the central doctrine of the Austrians was the discovery and use of the principle of opportunity cost; it is indeed true that this idea can be found in Menger» (Streissler and Weber 230). In his introduction to the Grundsätze, F.A. Hayek writes concerning Menger’s subjective value theory, «A theory of value can hardly be called complete and will certainly never be quite convincing if the rôle that cost of production plays in determining the relative value of different commodities is not explicitly explained. At an early point of his exposition Menger indicates that he sees the problem and promises a later answer. But the promise is never fulfilled. It was left to Wieser to develop what later became known as the principle of opportunity cost or ‹Wieser’s Law,› i.e. the principle that the other uses competing for the factors will limit the quantity available for any one line of production in such a way that the value of the product will not fall below the sum of the value which all the factors used in its production obtain in these competing uses» «Souverän meiner Zeit» 113 (Hayek, Introduction 19-20). Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk and Friedrich von Wieser were two of Menger’s most successful disciples, who each made substantial contributions to the Austrian school. 9 «Economizing» is central for Menger as well: «Throughout his work, Menger emphasizes the individual as a starting point for the causal explanation of all economic phenomena. The author considers human behaviour which seeks to satisfy needs as the most simple premise upon which everything may be built. This is defined as the principle of ‹economizing›» (Gloria-Palermo 15). 10 «Sein Onkel Alfred Löwy hatte Beziehungen zur Assicurazioni Generali; am 1. Oktober 1907 trat Kafka eine Stellung als Aushilfskraft in der Prager Niederlassung der in Triest beheimateten Versicherungsfirma an. Die Assicurazioni Generali war ein altrenommiertes Unternehmen für Transport-, Feuer- und Lebensversicherungen (gegründet 1831), das in vielen Weltgegenden Filialen unterhielt» (Hermsdorf and Wagner, «Schreibanlässe» 24). 11 «K[afka] kündigt bei der ‹Assicurazioni Generali› angeblich aus gesundheitlichen Gründen; ein Dr. Hahn bescheinigt ihm Nervosität und Herzbeschwerden» (Hermsdorf and Wagner, «Chronik» 981). 12 In her excellent Perutz biography, Ulrike Siebauer explains the type of work he would have done at Anker: «Alfred Breyer, bis 1995 Chefmathematiker beim ‹Anker,› der zu Beginn seiner beruflichen Laufbahn noch nach denselben Methoden gearbeitet hat wie Leo Perutz, erklärt den Tätigkeitsbereich so: ‹Anläßlich einer Volkszählung wird nicht nur die genaue Einwohnerzahl eines Beobachtungsgebietes festgestellt, sondern auch das Alter und das Geschlecht jedes einzelnen erhoben. Aus diesen Daten ergibt sich je Geschlecht die sogenannte Alterspyramide. Weiters werden in der Nähe des Volkszählungstermins in einem mehrjährigen Beobachtungszeitraum die Alter aller Verstorbenen erfaßt. Die Gegenüberstellung dieser Daten … liefert dem Demographen die Rohdaten für eine Perioden-Sterbetafel. Der Vergleich mehrerer derartiger Tafeln zeigt dann dem Versicherungsmathematiker die Entwicklungstendenz … . Die Barwerte und die Nettoprämien, also jene Grundwerte, die sich aus der Sterbetafel und dem Zinsfuß ohne Berücksichtigung von Kosten ergeben, waren teils in Büchern, teils in Mappen von losen Tabellen vorbereitet. Jede einzelne Tarifposition … wurde mittels einer Handkurbelrechenmachine aus dort nachgeschlagenen Grundwerten unter Einbeziehung der Zuschläge für die unterstellten Kosten errechnet und wieder in eine Tabelle eingetragen. Hierzu waren je nach dem Tarif ca. 5-20 oder auch mehr Schritte erforderlich›» (Siebauer 312-13, n. 7). 13 «Der Versicherungsmathematik, einer relativ jungen, expandierenden Disziplin, die vor allem im Bereich der Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung und der mathematischen Statistik anspruchsvolle Probleme aufwarf, galt jedoch nicht nur [Perutz’] berufliches, sondern auch sein persönliches wissenschaftliches Interesse. Er war aktives Mitglied der ‹Mathematisch-statistischen Abteilung› des ‹Österreichisch-Ungarischen Verbandes der Privat- Versicherungs-Anstalten›; an den Veranstaltungen der ‹Mathematisch-statistischen Abteilung› nahm er regelmäßig teil und hielt eine Reihe von Vorträgen zu versicherungsmathematischen Problemen. In den Jahren 1909 bis 1911 veröffentlichte er mehrere versicherungsmathematische Abhandlungen; die ‹Perutzsche Ausgleichsformel› war noch in der Versicherungsmathematik der zwanziger Jahre ein Begriff» (Eckert and Müller, Leo Perutz 20). 14 Here I am following the definition of «economic» as presented in Laplanche and Pontalis’s The Language of Psycho-Analysis: «Qualifies everything having to do with the hy- 114 William H. Carter pothesis that psychical processes consist in the circulation and distribution of an energy (instinctual energy) that can be quantified, i.e. that is capable of increase, decrease and equivalence» (127). 15 Donald Nicholson-Smith, the translator of The Language of Psycho-Analysis, writes in a note, «‹Cathexis› is the generally accepted rendering of ‹Besetzung.› James Strachey coined the word in 1922 from the Greek kat°xeiu, to occupy. He records in the Standard Edition that Freud was unhappy with this choice because of his dislike of technical terms (S.E., III, 63, n. 2). The German verb ‹besetzen› is indeed part of everyday usage; it has a variety of senses, the chief one being to occupy (e.g. in a military context, to occupy a town, a territory). An alternative English translation, used occasionally, is ‹investment,› ‹to invest›» (Laplanche and Pontalis 65). 16 They cite Freud, who writes in «An Outline of Psycho-Analysis» (1940), «The aim of [Eros] is to establish even greater unities and to preserve them thus - in short, to bind together; the aim of [the destructive instinct] is, on the contrary, to undo connections and so to destroy things» (Laplanche and Pontalis 52; SE 23 148; GW 17 71). 17 Following this passage, Freud offers the following advice on diversifying one’s portfolio: «Wie der vorsichtige Kaufmann es vermeidet, sein ganzes Kapital an einer Stelle festzulegen, so wird vielleicht auch die Lebensweisheit raten, nicht alle Befriedigung von einer einzigen Strebung zu erwarten. Der Erfolg ist niemals sicher, er hängt vom Zusammentreffen vieler Momente ab, von keinem vielleicht mehr als von der Fähigkeit der psychischen Konstitution, ihre Funktion der Umwelt anzupassen und diese für Lustgewinn auszunützen» (Freud GW 14 443). 18 Martínez elaborates on the «proleptic» quality of many of Perutz’s novels: «In jedem Fall wird analytisch in Form einer spezifischen, proleptischen Rätselstruktur erzählt: Der Leser wird zu Beginn des Textes, in der Erzählgegenwart des Vorwortes, mit einem erklärungsheischenden Sachverhalt konfrontiert, der durch die nachfolgend mitgeteilte Handlung genetisch erklärt wird. Deshalb taufe ich diese Romane proleptische Rätselromane» (Martínez 117). A few pages later, he concedes: «Der Roman Zwischen neun und neun, ebenfalls ohne Erzählrahmen, bildet einen noch zu erörternden Sonderfall» (Martínez 119). Cf. Eichner on Perutz’s narrative technique. 19 Hans-Harald Müller compares the two texts in the afterword to Zwischen neun und neun (Perutz 235-44). Martínez notes that these two texts may have inspired Jorge Luís Borges’s El sur (1944) and Julio Cortázar’s La noche boca arriba (1966) (Martínez 128, n. 17). 20 «Sehr häufig zog es Perutz ins Kino bzw. ins ‹Kinematographentheater.› In Wien gab es 1909 bereits 62 Kinolokale, drei davon faßten bis zu 2000 Personen» (Siebauer 59). 21 «Am 16. Juli 1915 und am 10. Januar 1916 bekam Perutz jeweils 200 Mark vom Langen-Verlag überwiesen, am 6. September 1917 für ein Filmangebot von ‹Mester-Film› 500 Kronen. Der Stoff wurde 1921 von der ‹Maxim-Film-Gesellschaft Ebner & Co› in Berlin unter der Regie von Rudolph Biebrach verfilmt und lief unter dem Titel ‹Das Abenteuer des Dr. Kircheisen›» (Siebauer 77-78). 22 These early installments appeared in the Berliner Tageblatt (1 June to 29 July 1918) and the Deutsche Zeitung Bohemia. Abendausgabe in Prague (1 August to 6 December 1918) under the title «Freiheit.» Further installments were published as «Zwischen neun und neun» in the Züricher Post und Handelszeitung. Abend-Ausgabe (29 September to 20 November 1919) and later in the Arbeiter-Zeitung in Vienna (20 November 1921 to 15 January 1922) (Müller and Schernus 66). 23 «Am 8. August 1918, kurz nachdem der Vorabdruck im Berliner Tageblatt beendet war, notierte Perutz: ‹Telegramm von Ambross-Film, kauften «von 9-9»›» (Siebauer 95). «Souverän meiner Zeit» 115 24 «Anyway, getting back to the handcuffs in The Lodger, I think the idea was inspired, to a certain extent, by a German book about a man who spends a whole day in handcuffs and tells about all the problems he runs into during that day» (Truffaut 34). When asked if the book was Perutz’s From Nine to Nine, Hitchcock responds: «It might be that one» (Truffaut 34). 25 «Die amerikanische Filmfirma ‹Universal Film Manufacturing Company,› die spätere ‹Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures Corporation,› erwarb bereits im April 1922 die Weltfilmrechte für den Roman ‹Zwischen neun und neun.› Am 7. September 1929 übertrug Perutz MGM - für unbegrenzte Zeit - auch die exklusiven Tonfilm- und Sprechfilm- Rechte. MGM hat den Roman jedoch nie verfilmt» (Eckert and Müller, Leo Perutz 87). 26 «Am 4. Januar 1941 berichtete Perutz dem im New Yorker Exil als Literaturagent tätigen Schriftsteller Franz Horch aus Tel-Aviv über seine vergeblichen Bemühungen, MGM entweder zur Verfilmung oder zur Freigabe der Rechte zu bewegen: ‹[…] teile ich Ihnen hiermit mit, daß ich die Sprechrechte von «Zwischen neun und neun» nur einmal, u[nd] zwar bereits im Jahre 1930 oder 31 an die Metro-Goldwyn verkauft habe. Seit dem Jahre 1935 habe ich mich eben so dauernd wie vergeblich bemüht, durch Anwälte und durch Vermittler die Metro-Goldwyn zu bestimmen, den Film entweder zu drehen oder mir die Filmrechte freizugeben. Zuletzt hat sich ein Pariser Anwalt noch im Jahre 1939 mit der Sache befaßt, aber mir nach Studium der Rechtslage von der Führung eines Prozesses abgeraten, da ich sachfällig werden müsse […]» (Eckert and Müller, Leo Perutz 87). Works Cited Achleitner, Friedrich. «freiheit.» einschlafgeschichten. München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2005. 12. Benjamin, Walter. «Kriminalroman, auf Reisen.» Gesammelte Schriften. Ed. Tillman Rexroth. Vol. 4: 1. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1972. -. Über Haschisch. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Taschenbuch, 1972. Carpenter, Kenneth E. Dialogue in Political Economy: Translations from and into German in the 18 th Century. Boston: Graduate School of Business Administration Harvard University, 1977. Eckert, Britta, and Hans-Harald Müller. «Einleitung.» Eckert and Müller with Berthold xii-xv. Eckert, Britta, and Hans-Harald Müller with Werner Berthold, eds. Leo Perutz 1882- 1957. Eine Ausstellung der Deutschen Bibliothek. Vienna: Zsolnay, 1989. Eichner, Hans. «Leo Perutz, Meister des Erzählens: Bemerkungen aus Anlaß seiner Wiederentdeckung.» German Quarterly 67 (1994): 493-99. Forster, Brigitte, and Hans-Harald Müller, eds. Leo Perutz: Unruhige Träume - Abgründige Konstruktionen, Dimensionen des Werks, Stationen der Wirkung. Vienna: Sonderzahl, 2002. Freud, Sigmund. Gesammelte Werke. Ed. Anna Freud. 18 vols. London: Imago, 1940- 52. Cited in the text as GW. -. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Ed. and trans. James Strachey. 24 vols. London: Hogarth, 1953-74. Cited in the text as SE. Gloria-Palermo, Sandye. The Evolution of Austrian Economics: From Menger to Lachmann. London: Routledge, 1999. 116 William H. Carter Green, David I. «Pain-Cost and Opportunity-Cost.» The Quarterly Journal of Economics 8 (1894): 218-29. Hayek, F.A. Introduction. Principles of Economics. By Carl Menger. New York: New York UP, 1976. 11-36. -. «The Place of Menger’s Grundsätze in the History of Economic Thought.» Hicks and Weber 1-14. Hermsdorf, Klaus, and Benno Wagner. «Chronik 1908-1922.» Kafka 981-96. -. «Schreibanlässe und Textformen der amtlichen Schriften Franz Kafkas.» Kafka 11-37. Hicks, J.R., and W. Weber, eds. Carl Menger and the Austrian School of Economics. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1973. Kafka, Franz. Amtliche Schriften. Ed. Klaus Hermsdorf and Benno Wagner. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 2004. Laplanche, J., and J.-B. Pontalis. The Language of Psycho-Analysis. Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. New York: Norton, 1973. Martínez, Matías. «Proleptische Rätselromane: Erzählrahmen und Leserlenkung bei Leo Perutz.» Forster and Müller 107-29. Menger, Carl. Grundsätze der Volkswirtschaftslehre. 1871. London: The London School of Economics and Political Science, 1934. -. Principles of Economics. New York: New York UP, 1976. Müller, Hans-Harald, and Wilhelm Schernus. Leo Perutz: Eine Bibliographie. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1991. Perutz, Leo. Zwischen neun und neun. 1918. Vienna: Zsolnay, 1993. Rabinovici, Doron. Credo und Credit: Einmischungen. «Wohin oder Der Preis der Nacht: Ein Nocturno für Leo Perutz.» Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2001. 22- 47. Schmidt-Dengler, Wendelin. «Der Autor Leo Perutz im Kontext der Zwischenkriegszeit.» Forster and Müller 9-22. Siebauer, Ulrike. Leo Perutz: «Ich kenne alles. Alles, nur nicht mich.» Eine Biographie. Gerlingen: Bleicher, 2000. Streissler, Erich W. «German predecessors of the Austrian school.» The Elgar Companion to Austrian Economics. Ed. Peter J. Boettke. Aldershot, Hants, England: Edward Elgar, 1994. 493-99. Streissler, E., and W. Weber. «The Menger Tradition.» Hicks and Weber 226-32. Truffaut, François. Hitchcock. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967. Leo Perutz’s Zwischen neun und neun: Freedom, Immigrants, and Nomadic Identity EDWARD T. LARKIN U NIVERSITY OF N EW H AMP SHIRE The final line of Leo Perutz’s highly successful novel of 1918 Zwischen neun und neun reads: «Stanislaus Dembas Hände waren endlich frei.» 1 The sentence simultaneously summarizes a principal conceptual aspect of the text as well as a fundamental aesthetic device. Written between March and November 1917 when the Czech-born Perutz (1882-1957) was recovering from a serious war wound and a bout with septicemia, the soberly written novel repeatedly expresses an interest in the hero’s freedom. 2 Indeed, when the novel was serialized in the «Berliner Tageblatt» (1918), the «Deutsche Zeitung Bohemia» (1918), and the «Wiener Arbeiterzeitung» (1921), it bore the title «Freiheit.» But what is the reader to make of the fact that only Demba’s hands are freed? A quintessential, if bewildering aspect of the human condition, freedom is a recurring theme in many of Perutz’s novels. And in a letter written in the 1930s to the Viennese journalist Eugen Gömöri, who had argued that lifetime imprisonment might be more humane than the death penalty, Perutz exclaimed, «Es gibt keine schlimmere Qual als die Aufhebung der persönlichen Freiheit.» 3 We recall additionally that Perutz himself fled Austria for Tel Aviv in 1938 to maintain his freedom. But in an age that had cast great doubt on the classical sense of an individual who could freely define him/ herself, Perutz too seems to have been skeptical about the attainment of personal freedom: Demba’s bound, isolated hands suggest that a self-determined identity may be only partially, or worse only theoretically achievable. The complexity of the problem of freedom in Zwischen neun und neun is reflected both in the unresolved thematic vectors of the novel’s plot and in the selected narrative stance. Thematically, the reader can wonder whether Demba’s limited freedom is the result of legitimate societal constraints (and so the transgressive Demba is arrested), of widely held intolerance of immigrants by the German Viennese, or of his own conscious or subconscious, excessive behaviors. Stylistically, while Perutz may be said to extend the realistic tradition of the nineteenth-century novel, he significantly incorporates unreal and fantastic elements into his novels. In Zwischen neun und neun one must speculate whether Demba only imagines the subsequent dream images as he lies dying outside the second-hand dealer’s building from which he has 118 Edward T. Larkin jumped, or whether he somehow experiences the narrated reality after the fall. (Narrators from the grave frequently do have much to tell us.) 4 Thus the narrative’s stylistic indeterminability parallels the thematic contingency of freedom. 5 Typical for Perutz’s narrative style, such conscious fusion or even confusion on the narrative and thematic levels may finally underscore the author’s acknowledgement of the uncertainty or fragility of a free identity, as it is determined not by the self, nor by society, but by a muddled mixture of inner volition, uncertain memory, vivid dreams, as well as social pressures. Through the inclusion of the unresolved, improbable, or incalculable, this writer of historical and fantastic novels finally confounds the realistic tradition of the nineteenth-century novel and offers a narrated world that is appropriate for the fin-de-siècle, i.e., one that is not intuitively commensurate with the traditional realistic aesthetic. 6 Apart from the issue of narrative complexity, approaches to Perutz’s literary works are further complicated by the author’s own resistance to speak openly about himself or about the works themselves. In an often quoted remark, the reticent and enigmatic Perutz informs a potential literary scholar of his reluctance to be more informative about his life: «Ich befürchte, mit einer Darstellung meines Lebenwegs weder bei den Lesern meiner Bücher noch bei den Lesern Ihrer Monatsschrift Interesse vorzufinden. Meine innere Entwicklung ergibt sich für jeden, nur nicht für mich, aus der Lektüre meiner Romane» (qtd. in Lüth, «Dämmerlicht» 60). 7 Absent any direction from this at times extraordinarily successful writer, 8 who was born in Prague to an assimilated, largely secular Jewish entrepreneurial family and moved to Vienna in 1899, scholarship has rightly focused on the bedeviling notion of identity in his intricate novels. As they illustrate the author’s predilection for nonevaluative, unreliable narrators, Perutz’s novels reflect a profound concern with the constitution of the individual. Der Schwedische Reiter, for example, explores how two men essentially inhabit one identity: a young nobleman, who has deserted from the Swedish army, and a thief, who steals his identity; St. Petri-Schnee portrays a hero whose identity is shattered by an undetermined period of unconsciousness such that past and future are hardly distinguishable. Jan Christoph Meister offers an insightful reading of identity in Perutz’s early novel Die dritte Kugel, in which it is finally unclear whether the one-eyed Captain Glasäpflein who suffers from a flawed memory is really the Count Grumbach about whom the Spanish rider narrates. Meister argues that the novel is structured «durch eben diese widersprüchliche wechselseitige Bedingtheit von Determinismus und Identität einerseits, Zufall, Willensfreiheit und Identitätslosigkeit andererseits» (87). 9 Hans-Harald Müller, perhaps the pre-eminent Perutz scholar in the world today, observes in general of the Leo Perutz’s Zwischen neun und neun 119 author’s oeuvre: «Mit psychischen Diskontinuitätserfahrungen und Identitätskonflikten, die von Problemen des Erinnerns und Vergessens herrühren, haben es die Protagonisten nahezu aller Romane und Erzählungen von Perutz zu tun; sie sind in seinem Werk nicht, wie noch in der Literatur des Jungen Wiens, der pathologische Sonderfall, sondern nahezu der Regelfall» (Leo Perutz 114). Identity, he concludes, comes at the cost of a deterministic worldview; one can be free if one forgoes an identity. It may be that Stanislaus Demba achieves neither freedom nor identity in Zwischen neun und neun. Similarly affirming the prominence of identity in Perutz’s novels, Marina Rauchenbacher notes, «In den Texten Perutz’ ist Identität das zentrale Thema, Erinnerung wird zum poetischen Programm» (64) 10 This essay, besides bringing Perutz to the attention of the American Germanist community and perhaps the English-speaking world, 11 aims to examine the author’s depiction of identity in his less studied novel Zwischen neun und neun. Uncertain identity or even an identity crisis marks not only many of Perutz’s novels, but it is also a hallmark of fin-de-siècle cultural life: one thinks of the psychoanalytical cases of Sigmund Freud, the volatile, subjectivistic ego («Das Ich ist unrettbar») of Ernst Mach, and the controversial, transcendentally grounded ego of Otto Weininger, among others. Peter Lauener summarizes the situation of the «Ich» at the turn of the century as follows: Das Ich als klar umgrenzte oder gar metaphysisch verbürgte, ganzheitliche, konstante Entität ist um die Wende zum 20. Jahrhundert nach einem jahrhundertelangen Zerfallsprozess problematisch geworden. Die Entwicklung wird sowohl als Befreiung und nötig für eine differenzierte Realitätswahrnehmung erfahren als auch als Gefährdung und Verlust. (145) Perutz appears less interested in rescuing the sense of self from its detractors and in joining the celebration of its liberation/ destruction than in simply portraying its destabilization. This elusive sense of self finds expression in Zwischen neun und neun in the judicious use of the motif of the (bound) hand as it suggests the impossibility of self-definition through volition, resistance to an imposed identity, and personal fragmentation. The repeated references to hands in the discrete but interconnected vignettes that make up this perplexing yet playful novel underscore Perutz’s artistic self-understanding. A self-averred aestheticist, Perutz left little to chance and would not have haphazardly included the plethora of such references. 12 Not surprisingly, the hand occurs in other key passages in Perutz’s novels as well. 13 Perutz’s choice of the hand should also be seen in the long tradition of the hand motif in literary texts even as it emphasizes the physicality (not the intellectuality) of the depicted Vienna. While the hand by virtue of its essential universality may be suggestive of a common humanity, scholars have examined the unique role of 120 Edward T. Larkin an oppressive hand, of bloodstained hands, of an iron hand, of collaborating hands, of a liberating hand, and of invisible, mysterious hands or comforting godly hands. They have discussed gentle hands, female hands, trembling hands and generative hands. That is to say, associated with the accumulation of power and wealth, the hand has been linked to acts of the will that display domination, aggression, revenge, and disregard for social order, but also care and affection. According to the Daemmrichs, «the imagery of the hand (gestures of friendship, raised fist, seizing of persons, wielding weapons) […] implies that hand and mind work together.» They conclude that the motif of the hand can «create visions of disorder that are antithetical to ideas of historical progress, human intellectual growth, and the civilizing influence of enlightened thinking» (129). 14 It is precisely these fixed, liberal, largely bourgeois values that are called into question by Demba’s bound hands, as they were questioned by Perutz’s contemporaries as well. In contrast to his restless striving and palpable suffering in pursuit of his self or identity, the bourgeois identity remains intact, unchanged, immutable, indeed actually oblivious of the stated intellectual values and impending social and philosophical crisis. If there is identity, it will need to be a highly malleable concept, not unlike that proposed by Rosi Braidotti, which will be engaged at the end of this essay. 15 I will read the identity of Perutz’s Demba as designating particularistic, nonuniversalistic interests that reveal an unstable and fragmented self even as he is representative, consciously or not, of a class of immigrants or outcasts in Vienna. In Demba’s bound hands one observes an identity whose potential for social disruption and for the upheaval of civilization is held in check, however precariously. His bound hands are both the result of his transgressions (theft) and the vehicle of his further attack on proper society, which he, as a kind of Zwischending, in part despises and in part wants to join. Through the repeated employment of the hand in various social contexts, Perutz expresses his interest in the identity or self-understanding of the individual characters within a broad social panorama. 16 The opening chapters present a series of misidentifications and introduce the notion that Demba, by virtue of his bound hands, is nowhere able to be himself. In the first chapter, Demba meets the neighborhood shopkeeper Frau Püchl of the Wiesergasse (9th district), who, because she has «alle Hände voll zu tun,» (5) can be said to be fully engaged or fully human. Believing that Demba failed to pay for his Butterbrot, Frau Püchl initially considers the student Demba a thief until she notices that he did in fact leave behind money for his sandwich. Through his inability to use his hands, due to the as yet unexplained handcuffs, the large, broad-shouldered, bespectacled Demba with his reddish mustache is Leo Perutz’s Zwischen neun und neun 121 held to be an outlaw. By and large, Perutz offers a physical and moral portrait of his hero that is not very endearing, even as he, Perutz, was known for his empathy both for the downtrodden and unfortunate as well as for those with whom he disagreed. 17 Demba is not particularly handsome, dresses poorly, and exudes a distinct lack of warmth. The hand that should bind him to humanity and secure his identity causes him to shun others. He can neither give nor take money, the primary mode of human intercourse in Perutz’s modern Vienna. In the second chapter, set in nearby Liechtenstein park, again in the 9 th district, the author illuminates the academic class of Vienna through a conversation between Hofrat Klementi and Professor Ritter von Truxa. Demba is erroneously thought to be a hashish user as a result of his agitated response to Cyrus, Professor Ritter’s dog of uncertain breed, who takes Demba’s food from him without resistance. 18 In this middle-class setting, which in its humorous pseudo-intellectual musings is oblivious to the world around it, the acerbic and resourceful Demba is again an outcast, perhaps seen as something beneath the dog, who in contrast to Demba does at least offer his paw but who in turn is then punished by Demba with a powerful kick. Similarly, the young Alice Leitner flirtatiously mistakes Demba for a member of the bohème element of society when he refuses to pick up her intentionally dropped umbrella, the polite thing to do. Having failed in her aim to attract Demba’s attention and afraid that he will want to show her his affected arm stubs, the babysitter leads the children off «an der Hand» (34), which signifies her entwinement with the family and her economic stability. Demba, lacking hands, is excluded from such personal connections, which form the heart of identity. Indeed, the reader hears nothing of Demba’s own family in the novel aside from the fact that he is of peasant descent. He is often among people, but remains nevertheless alone as he claims «mit diesen Handschellen bin ich abseits der Welt. Ganz allein steh’ ich gegen die Millionen anderer Menschen» (117). Once Perutz has illuminated the impression that Demba makes on his fellow Viennese, he introduces Sonja Hartmann, a rather superficial office worker and the object of Demba’s desire. Demba wants to reclaim her from the tennis-playing, fashion-conscious, and financially secure law student Georg Weiner, who, because he has passed a university test, was rewarded with 300 crowns by his father, a wealthy leather dealer in Leopoldstadt. The «chinless» Weiners may represent the assimilated Jewish perspective that embraced the Enlightenment ethic of bourgeois self-determination, rationalism, and individualism. Emancipation, culture, education and identity as a German Viennese form Weiner’s natural habitus. Upon his entry, the employees in Sonja’s office on the Franz Josef Kai (1st and 2nd districts), particularly 122 Edward T. Larkin Klara whose «reizende Hände» (46) Demba praises, all want to shake Demba’s hand, i.e., to welcome him into the office community, yet he cannot accept their invitation without revealing his liability. Given Demba’s volatile passions, authoritarian commands [«Du wirst nicht fahren» (50)] and predilection for violence, he also does not fit in the prescribed commercial world. Indeed, in his conversation with Sonja, Demba’s hand turns to a fist, suggesting a potential violent outcome, before he convinces her to give him time to get the needed money for a trip to Venice. In order to reflect on his problem of how to raise the money for the trip and to acquire a new coat, Demba returns to his room, likely in the 9th district, where his roommate Oskar Miksch observes him nourishing himself with his two hands in the dark. Ignorant of Demba’s real dilemma, i.e., the handcuffs and his interest in (but not really affection for) Sonja, Miksch, who in contrast to Demba has steady employment as a railway worker, argues that Sonja is free - «frei» and «ungebunden» (61) - and not beholden in the least to Demba. Miksch seems to uphold a sense of identity that rests on individual volition. The scene also presents a failed opportunity for Demba to acquire the money for his translation of a colportage novel into Polish from German. When the postman brings the money in a letter for Demba, he refuses to sign for it, claiming absurdly but from his perspective necessarily that a required signature is beneath his dignity. Again, Demba’s lack of hands prevents his participation in society’s economic intercourse. His bound hands mark him as a nonparticipant. A second possibility to raise the needed funds lies with Willy Eisner, an employee at a bank on Kolingasse in the 9th district near the University, whose desire to shake Demba’s hand meets with a vituperative rebuff. But he too will not help Demba because, as he repeatedly says, his hands are tied - «gebundene Hände» (69, 70, 71). In contrast to Demba, Willy appears to be able to pursue if not yet achieve a middle-class, more carefree identity. In effect, he does not see his hands tied. The artist Perutz freezes Demba’s accelerating freneticism for a moment as he humorously places his hero in the Café Hibernia (near the stock exchange in the first district) where he enjoys a meal safely ensconced behind a large stack of books, which unfortunately cannot include the requested «Handbuch für Ingenieure» (75; emphasis mine). Demba next visits the sixteen-yearold Steffi Prokop, who is both a parallel and a contrast figure to Demba. Harboring unrequited, even ignored feelings of affection for Demba, Steffi, like Demba, is marked by her scarred face as an outsider, but she is also the picture of order and morality. Before explaining his crime to her at her apartment in the Kolingasse (9th district), Demba as tutor improves Steffi’s attempt to cite from the Horatian ode 1.2 «Integer vitae sclerisque purus» and continues the Leo Perutz’s Zwischen neun und neun 123 line, one that is not without relevance to the plot. While often only the first line is quoted, the Horatian lines reads: Integer uitae scelerisque purus non eget Mauris iaculis neque arcu nec uenenatis grauida sagittis, Fusce, pharetra, Or in English: The man who is upright in life and free of sin has no need of Moorish spears or a bow or a quiver heavy with poisoned arrows, Fuscus, By virtue of his theft, Demba is of course not upright and blameless, and he defends himself by his intentional deceitfulness, which functions as a kind of poisoned arrow, since nearly all who come into contact with him misunderstand him or denigrate him. But the lines also confirm that the student Demba is one of the few characters in the novel who has a clear interest in intellectual matters despite the many instances of his eating in the novel. He knows Latin, has written a dissertation, translated a Diensbotenroman into Polish, and he can tutor in the areas of geography, mathematics, and physics. At one point, he even denigrates Horvath for his lack of university education (182). 19 In relating his crime to Steffi, Demba explains to her that he first tried to sell the stolen books in the Johannesgasse and Weihburggasse in the first district before eventually finding a buyer in sordid tenements in Heiligenstadt in the 19th district. The conversation with Steffi is further illuminating because it raises explicitly the question about the narrative levels of consciousness when Demba wonders out loud, «Vielleicht träume ich … Sicher ist alles nur ein Traum» (83). The reader is thrown off balance - how can the dreamer narrate his own uncertainty about the dream? 20 There is simply no firm ground in Perutz’s writing: if other writers employ multiple perspectives to unsettle the reader, Perutz typically makes use of shifting levels of consciousness. It may be that the fantastic in this novel is aimed more at the reader’s reflection on his own sense of freedom than at Demba’s struggle toward freedom. But Demba does not follow up on this query, as dreams even in the dream world are fleeting. In assessing his day, the language-sensitive Demba congratulates himself despite the fact that everything he attempted - «angepackt» (84) - has gone awry. He then observes, «Manchmal ist die Sprache geradezu witzig. ‹Angepackt› ist nämlich wirklich nicht das richtige Wort. Also sagen wir: Angerührt -, nein, in die Hand genommen - auch nicht! » (84). This is precisely Demba’s problem (and Perutz’s artistry): since his escape from the police, Demba has 124 Edward T. Larkin not been able to take his destiny into his hands at all. In contrast to many others presented in the novel, Demba is not able to define himself. Others define him, as thief, hashish smoker, misfit, etc. He has rather had to conceal that which would enable him to become a free self. Despite his efforts he simply cannot translate his ideas into reality, e.g., get a sandwich, take the letter from the mailman, etc. To Steffi, he finally confesses, without shame, that he has sold two of the stolen library books to a dealer in antiques - a study of the idylls of Calpurnius Siculus, allegedly an unoriginal poet whose pastoral style has been characterized as devoid of genuine feeling (perhaps like Demba), and his Hapax legomena, itself reflective of the uniqueness of the character of Demba. When he attempted to sell the third of the stolen books, a valuable, bejeweled book, he encountered difficulties with the police. The prospective buyer of the book is apparently a Galician Jew, who lives near the foul-smelling brewery and whom, Perutz makes clear, Demba detests. When Demba initially senses that the dealer may have tricked him, he attacks him with his weapon, his not yet bound hands: «Ich fuhr ihm mit beiden Händen in den Bart» (97). Aggression and a volatile temperament are certainly fundamental to Demba’s identity as we have seen him earlier physically mistreat Sonja. After Demba is placed in handcuffs by the police, he attacked the officers «mit beiden Händen» (97), securing his escape to freedom: «Mir schwindelte, es gellte mir in die Ohren: Freiheit! Freiheit! Freiheit! » (99). By leaping from an attic window, he indeed eludes the police and secures his freedom, «Bis auf die Handschellen» (102), a phrase used by Perutz to conclude chapter eight and begin chapter nine, essentially the midpoint in the novel. As already noted, the hand in this novel exaggerates the physicality of humanity. Demba gradually approaches this view when he tells Steffi in chapter nine: «Ich habe nie vorher gewußt, daß man so oft im Tage seine Hände braucht. Viel öfter als das Gehirn, das kannst du mir glauben, Steffi» (106). Rationality and intellectuality are subordinate to physicality and determinism in Demba’s Vienna, as hands are deemed more necessary than ideas. Through his subsequent characterization of his hands as «Hände, die wie zwei Lastpferde, wie zwei Maulesel aneinandergespannt waren» (113), the notion of a spiritual or intellectual humanity is again called into question. Demba may begin to see himself as the settled middle class sees/ treats him: more subservient animal than self-determining human. But the failure of integration lies not only with an exclusionary and exaggerated self-perception of the bourgeoisie; Demba’s solipsistic self-understanding also contributes mightily: «Ich erkenne nur mich selbst als Richter über mich an» (107). Demba’s egotism and selfabsorption, which he equates with freedom, are thus seen as the reasons for his dilemma. 21 His rejection of prison - «die schlimmsten aller Folterstrafen» Leo Perutz’s Zwischen neun und neun 125 (108) - recalls Perutz’s previously noted opposition to life imprisonment. In Demba’s opposition of the capacity to punish - «Daß die Menschheit die Macht hat, zu strafen, das ist die Ursache jeder geistigen Rückständigkeit» (109) - one hears not only his self-centered fear for his freedom but also perhaps a critique of distorted bourgeois authoritarianism. He thus does not want to put his fate in the hands of such judges. Despite the growing realization that his attempts to secure the money may be futile, some new alternatives are presented, but all lead to the same result: without hands he is unable to take the money. Frau Dr. Hirsch, wife of the affluent and condescending lawyer, whose children Demba tutors, cannot understand why Demba does not pick up the envelope containing his wages, nor his dropped cigar that burns a hole in the carpet at their apartment on Esslinggasse in the first district. Demba’s self-exculpatory lies demonstrate once again his inclination for dissimulation or self-fragmentation. Mendacity may preclude a unified identity, but it may be the only option available to him. 22 In the subsequent episode involving Herr von Gegenbauer of Praterstraße, Demba clearly demonstrates his ability to manipulate others, as he successfully cons his former student into giving him the money he is owed for having tutored him, albeit unsuccessfully. As Gegenbauer places the envelope for the cost of replacing Demba’s lost notebooks into his coat pocket, Demba concludes that one can indeed get money «ohne eine Hand zu rühren» (130-31), without lifting a finger, even without shaking hands. But Demba’s luck is shortlived as a policeman attempts to return to him his dropped envelope. Demba cannot reclaim the envelope from the policeman lest he reveal the cuffed hands. In perhaps the most enigmatic of the chapters, Demba is seen following Herr Kallisthenes Skuludis in the Graben; 23 he believes that the elegantly attired Skuludis has taken the envelope from the policeman. Skuludis, apparently an experienced high society thief himself, is wary of Demba and acts, not unlike Demba, to conceal his true identity. Humorously the mutual misunderstandings result in a total lack of communication. As the ultimately outwitted Demba pursues the fleeing Skuludis across from the Opera House, Demba reaches for the rail of the departing streetcar and his bound hands are exposed to Skuludis, which causes the latter to acknowledge, with some sympathy, a fellow professional in Demba, whom he might have helped. Demba elicits understanding only from those similar outcasts - Skuludis and Steffi, and perhaps a generous reader. Having failed to recoup his missing funds, Demba next goes to Dr. Becker at the Kohlmarkt in the first district, whose children he had tutored in geography, math and physics. As a precaution, he wraps his arm to feign an injury allegedly the result of a house fire. When the uniquely charitable and compassionate Frau Dr. 126 Edward T. Larkin Becker arrives home, she insists that Demba go immediately to her husband’s practice since she does not have her «Portemonnaie bei der Hand» (158). This, of course, he cannot do, and thus he leaves the household once again without the desired eighty crowns. Before he entered the Beckers’ apartment, Demba had read the headline of the newspaper lying in the stairwell: «Rücktritt des ungarischen Ministerpräsidenten» (149). This incident provides a hint concerning the time of the novel’s action, for even as Perutz wants to offer a panoramic background for his hero, he does not explicitly tell the reader the time of the action. 24 It is likely that the resignation in question is that on 23 May 1917 of Count Stephan Tisza, the Hungarian Prime Minister, who had initially discouraged the ultimatum given to Serbia in July 1914, following the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand and his wife Sophie in June 1914. Hoping for an alternate means to respond to Serbian nationalism since he feared war would harm Hungary’s influence in the dual monarchy, he is also said to have opposed the use of unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917 fearing that the United States might see this as an opportunity to enter the war to aid England and present insurmountable difficulties for the Central Powers. 25 Count Tisza served from 1913 to his resignation in 1917 and was assassinated on October 31, 1918. 26 If this is the case, then Perutz’s oblique tip to the reader reinforces the sense that the portrayed Vienna did not take the war seriously. Within the novel, the reader learns only that the son of Demba’s landlady is away on military service. At the time of the writing of the novel in 1917, the carefree portrayed Viennese way of life had all but vanished. The grim economic condition following the deaths of Kaiser Franz Josef (1830-1916) and the unpopular, assassinated Prime Minister Karl Graf von Stürgkh (1859-1916) had already contributed to mass hunger and to an acute sense of disorientation in many quarters of the Viennese population. Maureen Healy observes, «1917 was the turning point. The Viennese faced a marked increase in hunger, social discord and low-level violence, and their rampant law-breaking became a protracted civilian mutiny against ineffective government» (25). 27 It is remarkable that Perutz does not in 1917 offer greater detail about war-torn Vienna. Siebauer writes of Perutz’s position with respect to the war, «Perutz’ Einstellung zum Krieg zeigt Skepsis und Distanz. Er stellte sich der grausamen Realität. […] Perutz war nicht begeistert, aber auch seine Anteilnahme war denkbar gering» (80). Faced with the imminent end of the monarchy, Perutz, himself reasonably well-off at the time and a strong believer in transnational monarchism, 28 wishes perhaps to focus on the elements that had prepared the way for the social and cultural crisis, which included questions about social and ethnic identity. We remember that Demba jumps from the window to the folksong recalling the cap- Leo Perutz’s Zwischen neun und neun 127 ture of Belgrade from the Turks two hundred years earlier in 1717 by Prince Eugen. Demba then seeks out his friend Herr Doktor Hübel in the reserved room of the Café Turf near the Praterstern, from whom he hopes to receive some forty crowns owed to him. He quickly finds himself engaged in an unfamiliar buki domino game (an expression of the author’s own fascination with randomness of games of chance). 29 Demba wins repeatedly and disinterestedly - «ohne enen Finger zu rühren» (164), each time betting the whole winnings as he cannot pick up the money. It is significant that, as he plays at the table, he imagines what the other players must be wondering. Of particular interest is the fact that he does not have his own visions, e.g., «Arm im Arm mit Sonja» (169). One may see this musing as another expression of Demba’s lack of his own sense of self or identity. In contrast to the other players, he of the bound hands lacks an identity that can even create realizable dreams. When shortly thereafter Dr Rübsam accuses Demba of stealing his watch and asks him to take off his coat, Demba panics because he fears he will have to forfeit his jackpot, now in Dr Rübsam’s hands. Enraged, he attempts to break his handcuffs: «Und mit einer gewaltigen Anstrengung rebellierte er gegen seine Ketten, die Muskeln dehnten sich, die Adern schwollen, in höchster Not wurden seine Hände zu zwei Giganten, die sich empörten, die Kette knirschte - Das Eisen hielt» (174). The rebellion fails. Despite his best physical efforts Demba cannot reclaim the money that Dr Rübsam puts in his own pocket «mit nicht ganz reinem Gewissen» (174). Perhaps belying his conscious intention to withdraw from the contest, a dejected Demba is next seen in front of Georg Weiner’s apartment house, where his pained hands - «seine Hände schmerzten» (175) - remind us again of his tormented existence: «[Demba] hatte sich seinen gefesselten Händen zum Trotz um des Geldes willen in den Wirbel des Alltags gewagt» (175). The outsider Demba cannot succeed in his bold attempt to integrate himself into society, in part because he has come to believe that «eine straffe Organization tückischer Zufalle stand gegen mich» (175) and that the «zwingende Natur der Umstände» (176) must prevail. The novel’s depiction of a dance with determinism seems to enter its final stages. From his apartment Weiner steps onto the Liechtensteiner Strasse and Demba intends to accompany him to the Residenzkeller. Reluctant to order food at the restaurant since he cannot show his hands, Demba concocts a story about how in Baghdad one drinks beer through a straw, but he is ridiculed for his ignorance (and for his slovenly appearance). Departing from his affected congeniality, a drunk and stumbling Demba breaks a mirror and intends to strangle his ridiculers «alle drei mit bloßen Händen» (194). Amidst the ensuing confusion, Sonja, who has arrived 128 Edward T. Larkin late on the scene, screams that Demba is concealing a revolver «in der Hand» (195). The mistaken revelers, now «in seiner Hand» (198), believe they see the revolver under his coat, and Weiner even claims to feel the muzzle of the revolver in his body. Sonja’s subsequent rejection of the cowardly Weiner and her throwing of the ticket onto the ground give Demba an opportunity to reclaim her affection. No longer does he have to live «mit leeren Händen» (201). But even as he feels a weight lifted from him, for he has achieved what he wanted - «ohne Mühe, ohne Kampf hatte er es erreicht, nur weil er seine Hände unter dem Mantel versteckt hatte» (201) - Demba abandons his desire for Sonja. She was his, but «er fühlte nichts» (201). Incapable of identitybuilding compassion, he will have his rebellion; he will offer his disruption of the order. 30 But the chance for a successful rebellion (and for a happy end) are quickly foreclosed. Demba’s actions in the Residenzkeller, in which he splits himself into two characters as he imagines himself killing the guests with his lethal nonweapon, punctuate his disunified, disjunctive identity. 31 Before he can «shoot,» however, he is attacked by Dr Fuhrmann and others, who exclaim «die Hände! Packen Sie die Hände! » Demba’s hands, the fundamental expression of his being, that with which he might secure his happiness or cause the desired disruption, are the objects of their attack. The scene is rife with humor as Weiner even claims to have been shot. Once Demba is subdued, Horvath triumphantly pulls «Dembas Hände unter dem Mantel hervor, zwei unselige, hilflose, jammervolle Hände, mit Ketten kläglich aneinandergefesselt» (205). Not only his hands, but his very existence has been miserable, pitiful, and wretched. Still, one final move is required before the suffering can end. Demba escapes in the concluding chapter to his apartment. Awaiting him is a letter from Dr. Rübsam whose watch has been found and who has returned to Demba the 270 crowns, but this brings no joy. Worse yet, Steffi’s key cannot open the handcuffs to fulfill his wish: «Die Hände muß ich frei haben» (208). As Demba observes, «Wer aus dem Kerker kommt, der muß seine Hände vestecken, denn sie sind für immer geschändet. Er kann keinem Menschen mehr frei und offen die Hand reichen» (210). The hand, as vehicle for self-determination and resistance, is linked again with freedom. Imprisonment, be it real or psychological, leaves a permanent mark that prevents entry into bourgeois society and the formation of a self. The handcuffs capture his life as unassimilated burgher. At the sound of knocking on the door, the reader feels transported back to chapter eight when Demba had explained his leap from the window to the tune of the anonymous «Prinz Eugenius, der edle Ritter,» which details the taking of Belgrade by Prince Eugen von Savoyen in 1717. If only Demba could be such a successful liberator! As Steffi vanishes, the «Malzgeruch» and Leo Perutz’s Zwischen neun und neun 129 the «Grammophon in der Ferne» reappear (211). The narrator subsequently informs us that just outside the «Hof des Trödlerhauses in der Klettengasse» (211) the not yet lifeless body of Demba was found: «Nur seine Augen wanderten. Seine Augen lebten. Seine Augen irrten ruhelos … . tauchten unter in der brausenden Wirrnis des Daseins … wurden sehr müde und fielen zu» (211-12). Once again, a partial Demba lives, his eyes wandering aimlessly, ceaselessly, desperately. Demba’s frenetic, near Woyzeck-like agitation (we recall Perutz reference to his model’s «Erregung») continues in the restless eyes and again contrasts with the utter fixity of the bourgeois identity, which has largely remained unmoved by Demba’s appeals. The compulsively displaced Demba has been constantly in transition, even if he has not fully abandoned the quest for an essential unity, which consists metaphorically in the acquisition of funds to take Sonja on vacation and thereby enter bourgeois society. But that is not to be. His death brings his freedom, we are told: Die Handschellen waren durch die Gewalt des Sturzes zerbrochen. Und Dembas Hände, die Hände, die sich in Angst versteckt, in Groll empört, im Zorn zu Fäusten geballt, in Klage aufgebäumt, die in ihrem Versteck stumm in Leidenschaft gezittert, in Verzweiflung mit dem Schicksal gehadert, in Trotz gegen die Ketten rebelliert hatten - Stanislaus Dembas Hände waren endlich frei. (212) But what does this freedom mean? 32 What kind of identity has Demba achieved? The mere cessation of physical suffering? Certainly Demba is freed of his obsession, but he obviously does not enjoy a sense of autonomous self-determination. He experiences no epiphany of being. Perhaps Rosi Braidotti can offer a clue to assessing Demba’s identity. In her opposition to «metaphysically fixed, steady identities» (5) Braidotti speaks of a nomadic self: «The nomad’s identity is a map of where s/ he has already been; s/ he can always reconstruct it a posteriori, as a set of steps in an itinerary. But there is no triumphant cogito supervising the contingency of the self; the nomad stands for movable diversity, the nomad’s identity is an inventory of traces» (14). Demba’s displacements, his tracing through Vienna as it were, reflect an essential aspect to the nomadic subject. In his encounters with the diverse social groups in Viennese society, Demba creates a reconstructable history of his person, of his identity. The reader can follow his dream-like recreation of where he has been, of his itinerary through Vienna. Braidotti’s emphasis on the transitioning of the self between experiences is indeed descriptive of Demba’s trajectory; it even accounts for the nearly imperceptible and highly confusing interaction between the real and the dream that marks the narrative’s plot. In his narration of Demba’s quest for self-understanding or identity, Perutz does not suggest a point at which an identity is achieved. 33 There is no cogito that drives the self or supervises the self; there is only contingency 130 Edward T. Larkin and eventuality. Even Demba’s continuous consciousness, the foundation of individuality and identity, is interrupted or questioned in the mixed narration, thereby undercutting a fixed identity; only the obsessive quest seems to provide some consistency of individuality. Materially bound, Demba shows no wholeness, only eyes and hands; he is truly a different kind of subject. As a translator, he is between languages; as immigrant, he is between cultures; and as an educated member of an immigrant class, he is between classes. Perutz, a nonnationalistic thinker, may have welcomed a nomadic, transnational subject. He may even have lived it, as a resident of Austria and Tel Aviv. Besides the trudging through the city, Demba’s nomadicity is further accentuated by his desire both to join the bourgeois world and to be critical of it. Critical, even caustic of bourgeois order, Demba nevertheless wants to be a part of it. Moreover, his leap from the window could instantiate Braidotti’s nomadism as it demonstrates a «vertiginous progression toward deconstructing identity; molecularisation of the self» (16). In his fall, Demba is physically molecularized. The question of a reconstruction remains unanswered despite Müller’s suggestion «daß der Held aus der Begegnung mit dem Tod nichts gelernt hätte, selbst wenn ihm ein zweites Leben geschenkt worden wäre» (Zwischen 218). 34 While Demba may or may not have acted differently the second time around, this does not mean that he could not have acted differently. There are occasional signs of remorse in his character that suggest the possibility of a different chosen path. It is finally the reader that Perutz has in his sights. Perutz’s variation in the repetition of Demba’s seemingly futile attempts to secure the needed money does not lead to tedium and stagnation; it rather conveys an imaginative attempt to free the reader, if not Demba, from dogmatism and fixity. The text’s humor fulfills the same liberating function. It may be helpful to recall Tzvetan Todorov’s definition of the fantastic (in this case the curious dream vision) as a hesitation or «Unschlüssigkeit.» According to Todorov, «The fantastic is that hesitation experienced by a person who knows only the laws of nature, confronting an apparently supernatural event» (25). He further writes, «the fantastic is based essentially on a hesitation of the reader - a reader who identifies with the chief character - as to the nature of the uncanny event» (157). The modern reader is committed to the laws of nature. Even as we may not want to identify fully with the ill-tempered Demba, we can be sufficiently sympathetic to his plight. The hesitation that the reader experiences with respect to the reality of the narrative levels and again at the conclusion of the novel may provide a hope that he or she can have a more clearly defined sense of freedom than could Demba. In other words, the humor and imagination of the text enable the reader’s critical awareness and facilitate his or her (perhaps nomadic) self-definition. Our Leo Perutz’s Zwischen neun und neun 131 hands are not bound. They can implement our ideas as they derive from our reading. We can appreciate a non-fixed identity. Demba’s nomadic becoming, however, must fail in part because it lacks an «intensive interconnectedness» (5). His near maniacal self-absorption prevents him from making attachments, thereby creating an identity that links him to society and to time. His relationships are not reciprocal but self-serving, and his penchant for excess enslaves him. He remains apart from the culture even as he is of the culture. He is thus finally unable to create his self in Vienna, and he remains more homeless (cultureless) than nomadic. Moreover, as has perhaps become clear, Demba’s resistance to the sacred culture of a fixed bourgeois identity lacks a «critical consciousness that resists settling into socially coded modes of thought and behavior» (5). Even if he does articulate his opposition to the static Viennese social configuration, the provocative Demba does not sustain such a position. Situated in the interstices of Viennese society, Demba ought to be able to deconstruct the fixed identities, but his obsessive pursuit of the money renders him, like the similarly obsessive Vittorio in Wohin rollst du … Äpfelchen, less capable of a thoroughly critical consciousness. Demba’s hands want both to particularize the universal, i.e., to rebel against the dominant Viennese order, and to allow the universal, i.e., to accept, even enter, the order. 35 Demba may remain too attached to the quest through money for fixity and integration into bourgeois society. Perhaps in that sense it is proper to say that only his hands were freed: «Stanislaus Dembas Hände waren endlich frei.» (212) Disembodied and disconnected, the hands suggest an expression of a modern, fragmented, perhaps anonymous identity in a bourgeois Vienna. Demba’s hands cannot act in coordination with the mind. He cannot realize his wishes or identity. Nor does he connect in an intimate human relationship or have the capacity to offer a thoroughgoing resistance to the order. Seeking imagined wholeness and authenticity, Demba finds only fragmentation and artifice. From a philosophical perspective, the subject Demba remains an alienated and unstable self (perhaps with multiple identities) who is unable to integrate himself into Viennese society. While we as readers may find some hope in Zwischen neun und neun for a greater sense of freedom and identity through an identification with Demba, Demba himself may need to take solace in a remark uttered by Dr. Amberg in St. Petri-Schnee. Clinging to the questionable reality of his love for Babiche, he says, «Was man im Traum besitzt, kann einem keine Welt von Feinden nehmen» (70). 36 Perutz’s novel may additionally tell us something about the particular immigrant quest for identity in Vienna within the long fin-de-siècle. Between 132 Edward T. Larkin 1880 and 1910 the population of Vienna nearly doubled, due in large part to immigration. Around the turn of the century, about a quarter of the population of Vienna had been born in Bohemia or Moravia alone. Vienna was thus either an uneasy melting pot or a mosaic. 37 As Rüdiger Wischenbart notes, immigrants came to a Vienna that «not only promised work and wages, but also - equally tempting for some - education, training, a new culture, in short, a new identity» (39). Demba’s hands may be the hands of the rising underclass (or working class) or of the not yet fully assimilated immigrant. The welldocumented problems of assimilation by the huge influx of immigrants in the later decades of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century find expression in Demba’s interaction with the Viennese. Of course, the immigrant class performed the manual and menial labor for Vienna (we can point to the many nannies who came from Bohemia, as well as to those in Perutz’s parent’s house in Prague), and Demba exhibits some characteristics that suggest his immigrant status. Perutz, himself an immigrant to Vienna in 1899, thematicizes the immigrant identity in the novel as it challenges the perception of (and desire for) a German-dominated Vienna at the turn of the century. Demba stands out first by his name. Perutz makes no definitive comments about Demba’s heritage. But Stanislaus is a common, Latinized form of Stanislav, a Slavic name that in recent generations may have had greater association with the working class than with the bourgeoisie. 38 Demba, which likely derives from the Slavic word for oak, is also not an uncommon peasant name in Poland 39 even if his oaken strength is sorely tested, perhaps broken, in this novel. It has also been suggested that Demba may be a «Czechicized» Polish name corresponding to a common Czech surname Duba. 40 Demba himself tells the reader how his peasant origin had actually been of use to his dissertation argument. That he has translated a novel into Polish lends additional credence to the suspicion that he immigrated to Vienna from Poland. Demba also seems to have had no problem translating the novel (he is to be well paid), and only once in the novel is there reference to his German language skills when Dr. Rübsam tells him at the Buki table, «Sprechen Sie gefälligst deutsch» (168). One can easily imagine an excited Demba speaking his mother tongue. We might conclude that he is not a first-generation immigrant. We don’t see him associate with other immigrants, whom he might choose to avoid in his quest to enter bourgeois society. 41 He does see himself as different from the antiquarian in outlying and disreputable Heiligenstadt. By virtue of his education, Demba differs from the newly arrived immigrants who would have faced much greater hardship, for example, in the proletarian suburb of Ottakring. His life is not characterized by the extreme poverty of the industrial neighborhoods. He is not a Bettgeher, nor is he subject to the exploitative Leo Perutz’s Zwischen neun und neun 133 rationalization of the developing capitalism that was taking hold of the city, and he does not experience the prostitution, criminality, homelessness, social unrest and the developing political mass movements that prevailed in Vienna at the turn of the century. He does not become a «Massenmensch,» but he does seem to bear a similar kind of cultural stigmatization. He can venture into the first district but is more often found outside the center of the city even if only occasionally in the farthest corners of the city. We see very few instances where he exhibits a sense of power, which may be expected of an as yet not fully assimilated immigrant. Power for Demba is force, not influential wealth, political connection, or social grace. But like the new immigrants, he similarly has no freedom to determine his existence despite his educational training. Demba’s housing in the ninth district provides further evidence that he is to be situated closer to those at the periphery of Viennese society. His apartment is not well defined (in contrast to the many others that have street locations). Maderthaner and Musner have made explicit the virtual inhumanity of the housing, employment, and environmental conditions in the industrial regions on the periphery of the Viennese ring. In their research of the ninth district at the turn of the century, they conclude that the Lichtental area, for example, was «heruntergekommenes, gefährliches Slumgebiet» and a «höchst sanierungsbedürftiges Konglomerat von engen, dumpfen Gassen mit niederen, geduckten Vorstadthäusern» (Anarchie 141). Moreover, Demba does not explicitly long for a transfigured Heimat of an immigrant’s village even if he does express anxiety about the restrictiveness of the city. By and large, nature, as a respite from oppressive city life for many immigrants, finds little expression in the novel. Further, Demba clearly experiences the resentment of the Viennese. The historian Maureen Healy speaks of the disdain that many immigrants faced: «Residents of Vienna spoke and wrote of a state (Staat), a fatherland (Vaterland) and of constituting half of an empire (Reichshälfte), but they did not consider refugees from the eastern part of this half to be Austrians (Österreicher)» (15). It is clear that Demba, from an unspecified elsewhere and living outside the desirable first district, was estranged from the prevailing bourgeois-elite society as it sought to emulate the values of the antiquated nobility, delight in fashion, and maintain an Enlightenment sense of self-realization and economic well-being. Perutz, who was from the upper bourgeoisie even if he occasionally fell on hard times, may characterize Demba from the perspective of a haughty bourgeoisie, which generalizes about the lower classes. Thus Demba becomes a representative of the lower classes, albeit with some tongue in cheek. Demba shares character traits with the Kleinbürgertum of the xenophobic Christian Social Party. Besides some crudeness, a penchant for violence, even brutal- 134 Edward T. Larkin ity, sweatiness, and deviance, Demba also expressly makes misogynistic slurs, suggesting that Hedda Gabler is a poor role model for women and that Sonja should not go to the coffeehouses. Revealing a strong anti-Semitic streak, he especially wonders about the possibility of a Jewish «Geheimbund aller dieser Kinnlosen» (94). Interestingly, he does this even as he imagines himself (again one sees a split in him) in the upper classes as when he describes himself after his successful meeting with Gegenbauer «anscheinend den besseren Ständen angehörend» (134). Hands. Everyone has them, nearly. Perutz takes pains in Zwischen neun und neun to draw attention to the hands of the Viennese with whom Stanislaus Demba interacts. While their hands exude purposefulness and even a confident, smug attitude as they construct and embrace their identities and pursue their pleasures, Demba’s hands, bound, suggest the impossibility of self-definition, resistance to the prevailing social order, and personal fragmentation. Their boundness points to an outsiderness (immigrant status) and a lack of identity. Perutz’s novel thus captures fundamental aspects of turn-of-thecentury Vienna. The threatened sense of self that so permeated the intellectual class of Vienna is demonstrated not in the oblivious bourgeoisie but in peasant immigrant Demba. The perilous tendency toward excessive subjectivity, a principal aspect of the identity crisis, can also be read in Demba’s character. It may not be an exaggeration to say that Demba epitomizes the rising individualistic values of the turn of the century and of concomitant «desocialisaton of the individual» (Le Rider 4), which instantiates the existing personal isolation and permanent anxiety. 42 But one must also accept that Demba’s isolation is equally the result of the behavior of the bourgeois classes with whom he interacts. His bound hands are an expression of the exclusionary practices and beliefs of the established middle class toward those not like themselves. That Perutz sees the question of individual self-determination in the larger social context can be seen in his introduction to the novel in the Wiener Arbeiterzeitung in 1921 where he writes that the novel does not present the «Schicksal eines einzelnen, sondern daß es mir als das Symbol der in Schlingen verstrickten und in Ketten geschlagenen Menschheit erscheint» (Zwischen neun und neun 219). The sometimes seemingly disinterested Perutz has captured in his novel the potential loss of freedom and identity of both the individual and of humanity. Leo Perutz’s Zwischen neun und neun 135 Notes 1 Leo Perutz, Zwischen neun und neun (212). All references to this volume will be cited by page number in the body of the paper. The successful book found suitors among the film moguls, e.g., Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures Corporation purchased the rights in April 1922 but never made the film, and Alfred Hitchcock observes that his film The Lodger was likely prompted by Perutz’s novel. Hans Sturm wrote a successful theatrical version of the novel for the Hamburg stage in 1923. 2 Perutz makes reference to Zwischen neun und neun in a comment of 19 February 1915 when he writes in his notebook, «Eine Idee zu einer Novelle; ‹Der Mann mit den Handschellen›» (qtd. in Müller, Leo Perutz 38). In her biography of Perutz, Siebauer cites the following commentary by Perutz, which appeared as an introduction to the novel in the Arbeiterzeitung in May 1921: «In der ungarischen Stadt Szolnok, als ich dort im Frühjahr 1916 auf den Abgang meiner Marschkompanie wartete, entstand in mir der Gedanke dieses Romans. Ich saß im Kaffeehaus, dem einzigen, in dem die Freiwilligen verkehren durften … Da tauchte plötzlich in der Tür des Kaffeehauses die Figur eines jungen Mannes auf, dessen Anblick mich mehr verblüffte, als wenn es ein Offizier gewesen wäre. Ich kann es heute nicht sagen, was der Grund der über mich hereingebrochenen lähmenden Unruhe war. Vielleicht sein unsteter Blick, vielleicht die eigentümliche Art, mit der er seinen Arm und seine Hand unter seinen Wetterkragen steckte. Einige Augenblicke starrte er - mit unverständlicher Erregung - in den Zigarettenrauch des Kaffeehauses, dann machte er kehrt um und verschwand. Ich sah ihn niemals mehr. Es war Stanislaus Demba» (93). 3 The letter continues «Die Natur ist milder als der Mensch, sie verhängt über die Lebewesen sehr oft einen frühzeitigen Tod, niemals aber irgend eine Art Kerkerstrafe» (qtd. in Siebauer 101). 4 Zwischen neun und neun reveals close proximity to Ambrose Bierce’s «An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge» in which the hero Peyton Farquhar, condemned to death by hanging, envisions his escape from the bridge and his return to his beloved wife only to realize, as the final sentences make clear and as the narrator explicitly confirms, that the release had only been a reverie: «Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge» (98). But the reader of Zwischen neun und neun, in contrast to that of «An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,» wonders repeatedly if he has understood Perutz’s tale adequately, for the author is far more mischievous in his telling of the story. 5 Dietrich Neuhaus uses the term «Indizienroman» (60). Müller speaks of the incongruity of the various narratives - «die Unvereinigkeit der erzählten Geschichten» (Leo Perutz 38). 6 One is compelled to mention Perutz’s near incomparable novel Nachts unter der steinernen Brücke, originally published in 1953, in which the fourteen Novellen, seemingly self-enclosed and unchronologically narrated, only reveal their coherence in the final story. 7 One must also consider Perutz’s comment to a young Germanist: «Ich bin der Meinung, daß es für junge wissenschaftliche Arbeiter wichtigere Themen gibt als die sogenannten germanistischen. Meine Bücher wollen gelesen werden und gefallen, haben aber nicht den Ehrgeiz, Objekte wissenschaftlicher Betrachtung zu sein» (Müller, Leo Perutz 98). 8 Meister (338) cites Hans-Harald Müller who quotes Friedrich Torberg as saying that Perutz was one of the «most widely read narrators in German.» One should also note 136 Edward T. Larkin that Perutz was highly respected as an author by such writers as Ian Fleming, Italo Calvino, Graham Greene, Jorge Luis Borges, Bertolt Brecht, Carl von Ossietzky, Hermann Broch, Kurt Tucholsky, Theodor Adorno, Egon Erwin Kisch, and Siegfried Kracauer. One would think that the praise of such illustrious intellects would have ensured that Perutz would not be a «forgotten writer,» as he characterized himself in a letter from Tel Aviv to his friend Gerty Hanemann in 1946 (qtd. in Müller, Leo Perutz 85). Perutz was trained as an actuary and worked for many years at an insurance company (he actually began to work for the same company that Kafka worked for in the same month), and it was not until 1923 that he was able to achieve his goal to become an independent writer. While he was able to live from his writing and from income from the family company, he experienced financial hardships in the later twenties. 9 On the other hand, Siebauer maintains that «die Identitätsverwirrung wird nicht thematisiert, Hauptmann Glasäpfelein durchlebt sie und mit ihm der Leser» (69). I agree that the reader is key; it is the reader who must finally sort out the question of identity. 10 Writing mostly on Der schwedische Reiter, Rauchenbacher observes, «Aus diesen Problemen entsteht bei Perutz und Lernet-Holenia die Idée fixe der gefährdeten Identität - das heimatlose Subjekt, das nicht mehr in der Lage ist, sich über Zeit und Raum als Individuum in einem sozialen Geflecht zu definieren, ist auch nicht fähig, sich selbst zu kennen. Identität ist austauschbar, sie kann gestohlen werden und ist somit eminent gefährdet» (112). 11 Among the first to introduce Perutz to the North American Germanist community was Hans Eichner. 12 Müller quotes Perutz who characterized himself as an author «der an jedem seiner Romane and jeder seiner Erzählungen jahrelang sehr mühevoll gearbeitet» (Leo Perutz 46). An avid music listener, Perutz went to great lengths to ensure that his sentences had an appropriate sound. Siebauer quotes from a letter by Perutz to Berman: «Jeden Satz, den ich schreibe, denke ich mir - schon rein automatisch - laut gelesen und pflege jede Forderung meines sehr verwöhnten Ohrs … oftmals auf Kosten des Sinns und des Satzgedankens zu erfüllen» (65). 13 In the highly successful novel Wohin rollst du, Äpfelchen … (1928) Perutz depicts in Georg Vittorin a figure who is as seemingly one-track-minded as Demba. Vittorin quests obsessively for his former torturer, the commandant Michael Michajlowitsch Suljevkow, only to find him making model toys in Vienna. In the final paragraph Perutz writes of the frequently misunderstood Vittorin, «Und mit einer Handbewegung strich Vittorin zwei Jahre, in denen er Abenteurer, Mörder, Held, Kohlentrimmer, Spieler, Zuhälter und Landstreicher gewesen war, aus seinem Leben - mit einer gleichgültigen Handbewegung, die einem verlorenen Vormittag und einem durchnäßten Mantel galt und nichts verriet» (246). One gesture of the hand suffices to undo the sole purpose of his existence for several years. 14 One might also recall how we can take something into our own hands as when Tita in the film Como agua para chocolate (1992) quite consciously observes the power of her hands and determines to construct herself - as chef - to attain a sense of self apart from being her mother’s captive caretaker. 15 Arguing for the broader term identification over an ambiguous identity in part because it insists on noting the identifiers, Brubaker and Cooper present a useful survey of the various and sundry meanings of identity. They note that the individual or the collective identity «may be governed by particularistic self-understandings rather than by putatively universal self-interest.» Or identity can «denote a fundamental or consequential Leo Perutz’s Zwischen neun und neun 137 sameness among members of a group or category.» As a kind of «selfhood» it can «point to something allegedly deep, basic, abiding, or foundational.» It can further «highlight the processual, interactive development of the kind of collective self-understanding, solidarity, or ‹groupness› that can make collective action possible.» Finally, it may underscore «the unstable, multiple, fluctuating, and fragmented nature of the contemporary ‹self›» (6-8). While I am sympathetic to their theoretical concerns about the usefulness of the concept, identity may still be an appropriate notion if one specifies at the outset how one intends to use it. 16 Siebauer correctly notes that the novel reveals «die Blindheit, die Mitleidslosigkeit, die Bereitschaft zur üblen Nachrede, die Phrasenhaftigkeit und das Prahlertum der Wiener Gesellschaft» (95). 17 It may be interesting to note that Perutz, whose motto was contra torrentem - against the flow - had among his friends some who were members of the Nazi party. 18 According to Siebauer, Perutz was himself a user of hashish for a while (56). 19 If one were to see Demba as the representative of intellectual concerns, one might agree with Mandelartz’ assessment of Perutz’s oeuvre that «im immer schlechtmöglichsten Ausgang der Geschichte in der Kollision von materiellen und ideellen Interessen äußert sich die tiefgehende Skepsis des Autors gegenüber der Wirksamkeit humanistischer Ideen und dem Versuch ihrer Durchsetzung» (Poetik und Historik 194). The conclusion makes clear that Demba does not succeed; ideas do not have effectiveness in humanizing society. But, given Demba’s behavior, we might not want to label him as a defender of humane ideas even if he is a representative of intellectual matters. 20 In his very short analysis of Zwischen neun und neun, Lauener notes that even in the imaginary dream world Demba’s ego experiences «zwei fiktive Erzählebenen» (173). 21 One is reminded of the equally solipsistic and iconoclastic Vittorin in Perutz’s novel Wohin rollst du, Äpfelchen … who claims, «Ich will nicht in die Tretmühle zurück, ich habe einen Abscheu vor diesem Wort ‹gesicherte Lebensstellung›. Ich will frei sein, unabhängig sein, ich will für mich selbst arbeiten und nicht für anderer Leute Tasche» (236). 22 Mandelartz believes that Perutz’s characters can only succeed in their essentially hopeless worlds through deception: «So erscheint in den Romanen ein Weltentwurf, demzufolge der Mensch dem Schicksal erbarmungslos ausgeliefert ist. Seine Würde erhält er aber nicht etwa in dessen Anerkennung, sondern in der (letztlich erfolglosen) Revolte. Gegen die nach unerbittlichen Gesetzen der Ökonomie ablaufende Geschichte können sich Liebe, Gnade und Menschlichkeit nur temporär und nur auf dem Umweg über Lüge und Schein behaupten» («Leo Perutz» 1149). 23 One wonders whether Perutz had in mind the devious figure of Stephanos Skuludis (1838-1928), the Greek international diplomat, banker, and arms dealer who became the Prime Minister of Greece but was forced to step down in 1916 (perhaps because he would not accede to the Allies’ demands) and was later imprisoned. Perhaps this is further indication that the time of the action of the plot is 1916. 24 Wendelin Schmidt-Dengler observes, «Daß Perutz in seinen Texten leicht erkennbare Zeitbezüge ausklammert, ist kein Beweis dafür, daß er seine Epoche nicht wahrgenommen hätte; ebensowenig läßt sich aber daraus folgern, daß in diesem Werk nicht auch die historischen Vorgänge in eigentümlicher Transformation erkennbar sind» (16). I had initially assumed the «Rücktritt» referred to the controversial Count Badeni’s dismissal in 1897, which would have placed the action of the novel twenty years earlier; Badeni, however, was not Hungarian, but Polish. 138 Edward T. Larkin 25 See the introduction by Fritz-Konrad Krüger to Major General Harry Hill Bandholtz’s An Undiplomatic Diary. 26 With respect to the prospects of political action, Perutz remained skeptical. Thus Müller: «Als Skeptiker und Wahrscheinlichkeitstheoretiker faßte Perutz Politik als ein weitgehend anomisches Geschehen auf, das den einzelnen zwar nicht von verantwortungsbewußtem Handeln dispensiert, ihn jedoch daran hindert, allzu große Hoffnungen in den Erfolg politischen Handelns zu investieren» (Leo Perutz 68). 27 Of interest is also her finding: «On a typical day in 1917, shoppers had formed 783 lines outside of shops or market stalls around Vienna» (82). Yet in Zwischen neun und neun Perutz does not reflect these widespread concerns. Nor are they found in Perutz’s diary apparently, as Siebauer notes, «Doch die Sorge um die tägliche Nahrung bestimmte das Leben von Leo Perutz keineswegs. In seinem Tagebuch liest man meist nur, mit wem und in welchem Restaurant er ‹genachtmahlt habe›» (97). 28 In 1939 Perutz writes from Tel Aviv to Richard A. Berman, «[…] so ist und bleibt es meine Überzeugung, daß nur durch ihn [Bund der Legitimistischen Jüdischen Frontsoldaten] übernationale Staaten möglich werden. Nationalstaaten in diesem Europa bedeuten immer den Krieg. Übernationale monarchistische Staaten sind die einzige wirkliche Friedensgarantie» (qtd. in Müller, Leo Perutz 62). 29 Perutz’s description of the booky-domino, allegedly derived from a bookmaker game, has found its way into the wikipedia.de website: http: / / de.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Bukidomino: Vier Spieler spielen eine Partie «normales Domino», gemeint ist vermutlich ein Blockdomino für vier Personen: Die Steine eines Sechser-Dominos - auf einer alten Liste verbotener Spiele wird das Booky- oder Sechser-Domino angeführt - werden verdeckt gemischt und verteilt; ein Spieler beginnt, die übrigen Spieler legen nacheinander je einen Stein an. Wer nicht anlegen kann, muss aussetzen. Wer zuerst alle Steine angelegt hat, ist Sieger. Vor jeder Spielrunde können neben den beteiligten Spielern auch die Zuschauer, die Galeristen, auf einen der vier aktiven Spieler setzen (Zitat: «wie auf Rennpferde»). Diese Wetten werden beim Spielleiter, dem Buki, abgeschlossen. Gewinnt der Spieler, auf den man gesetzt hat, so erhält man vom Buki «Dreifaches Geld». Wie aus Perutz’s Beschreibung klar hervorgeht, ist damit eine Gewinnquote von 2 : 1 gemeint: Nachdem Stanislaus Demba, die Hauptfigur des Romans, 10 Kronen gesetzt und gewonnen hat, besitzt er 30 Kronen, sein Gewinn beträgt daher nur 20 Kronen. Sodann lässt er Einsatz und Gewinn stehen - er legt «Geld auf Geld» - und gewinnt abermals, wodurch sich sein Vermögen auf 90 Kronen erhöht. Nach einem weiteren Gewinn besitzt er 270 Kronen und wird dann vom Buki um den Gewinn und den ursprünglichen Einsatz geprellt. 30 Siebauer (129-30) tells us that Perutz too could on occasion engage in fisticuffs: Perutz was involved in one physical argument in the Café Herrenhof when he insulted a young woman who had come to express her high regard for his writing. An acquaintance by the name of Opaltek took offense and a «Handgemenge» ensued. Similarly, he offended the writer Otto Soyka by saying that everyone had an animal that looks like him and that his own animal was Soyka. 31 Lüth sees the influence of Arthur Schnitzler, whom Perutz in fact esteemed, in Zwischen neun und neun: «Die psychische Verfassung Dembas, seine extremen Bewußtseinsvorgänge, die ihn als gesellschaftlichen Außenseiter, der das Leben in seinen Konventionen als Gefängnis schlechtin empfindet, charakterisieren, werden durch diesen mo- Leo Perutz’s Zwischen neun und neun 139 mentanen Einsatz von Erlebter Rede und Inneren Monolog dem Leser intensiv und unmittelbar nachvollziehbar gemacht. Vor allem an solchen Stellen wird der erzähltechnisch-stilistische Einfluß von Arthur Schnitzler auf Perutz greifbar» (Fin de siècle 45). 32 Surely Jan Christoph Meister is correct to challenge the reader of Perutz to discern some meaning in the novels (even if the author does not) when he observes, «… [Perutz’s] œuvre as such should rather be read and appreciated as an investigation into the possibilities of reinstating the category of ‹meaning› in the modern world, apparently governed by blind coincidence» («Leo Perutz» 328). 33 Müller says something similar, i.e., his identity is what he produces: «Im Mittelpunkt seiner Romane steht nicht das sich selbst deutende oder vom Autor analysierte, sondern das wollende und handelnde Ich, das, erfolgreich oder scheiternd, seine Identität und seine Lebensgeschichte, wie brüchig auch immer, selbst produziert» (Leo Perutz 123). 34 In «Structure narrative» Müller extends this interpretation - that the individual would not learn if he were given a second chance at life - to the larger political scale, namely that after World War I Perutz saw a similarly ineducable humanity: «L’interprétation que j’esquisse est compatible avec celle que Perutz lui-même donne de son texte. Si Perutz, en 1917, avail modelé le destin d’un individu incapable de tirer profit de sa rencontre avec la mort pour une seconde vie, il pouvait, après la fin de la Première Guerre mondiale, avoir le sentiment que les peoples dan leur ensemble n’avaient tiré aucune leçon de la guerre et de la renncontre ave la mort» (89). 35 Additionally, Braidotti’s nomadism is developed with respect to female subjectivity and may be perhaps only marginally applicable to Demba. 36 Dr. Friebe tells Dr. Amberg, «Der Traum gibt uns mit verschwenderischen Händen, was uns das karge Leben schuldig bleibt.» 37 See John 21 and 32. 38 Information is based on an email from Professor Chris Harwood, a lecturer at Columbia University. He observes that Demba may be an offshoot of Dembo, a more typically Jewish name in Eastern Europe. 39 I am indebted to Professors Aleksa Fleszar and Stephen Trzaskoma of the University of New Hampshire for their assistance in understanding the etymological origin and the Slavicness of the names. 40 I am grateful to Professor Jirí Rejzek of the Karl’s University in Prague for this information and to former student Renata Horakova who served as contact to Professor Rejzek. 41 John references Norbert Elias’ and John Scotson’s theory of the established and the outsiders, according to which «locals who had been themselves immigrants and could be categorized as belonging to the same social class assumed a higher position in the social hierarchy vis-à-vis the new arrivals» (41). 42 Le Rider draws on Georg Simmel’s understanding of the crisis of the individual as a crisis of identity that results in the desocialisation of the individual. He includes a quote from Simmel’s analysis of Rodin: «Denn das Wesen der Moderne überhaupt ist Psychologismus, das Erleben und Deuten der Welt gemäß den Reaktionen unsres Inneren und eigentlich als einer Innenwelt, die Auflösung der festen Inhalte in das flüssige Element der Seele, aus der alle Substanz herausgeläutert ist, und deren Formen nur Formen von Bewegungen sind» (Simmel 184). Demba is nothing if not «Formen der Bewegung.» 140 Edward T. Larkin Works Cited Bandholtz, Harry Hill. An Undiplomatic Diary. Ed. Fritz-Konrad Krüger. New York: Columbia UP, 1933. Bierce, Ambrose. «An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.» Ambrose Bierce’s Civil War. Ed. William McCann. New York, Avenel, NJ: Wings Books, 1996. 86-98. Braidotti, Rosi. Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory. New York: Columbia UP, 1994. Brubaker, Rogers and Frederick Cooper. «Beyond ‹Identity›.» Theory and Society 29.1 (2000): 1-47. Daemmrich, Horst and Ingrid Daemmrich. Themes & Motifs in Western Literature: A Handbook. Tübingen: Francke, 1987. Eichner, Hans. «Leo Perutz, Meister des Erzählens: Bemerkungen aus Anlaß seiner Wiederentdeckung.» The German Quarterly 67 (1994): 493-99. Forster, Brigitte und Hans-Harald Müller, ed. Unruhige Träume - Abgründige Konstruktionen. Dimensionen des Werks, Stationen der Wirkung. Wien: Sonderzahl, 2002. Healy, Maureen. Vienna and the Fall of the Habsburg Empire: Total War and Everyday Life in World War I. New York: Cambridge UP, 2004. John, Michael. «‹We do not even possess our selves›: On Identity and Ethnicity in Austria, 1880-1937.» Austrian History Yearbook 30 (1999): 17-64. Krieger, Arndt. «Mundus symbolicus» und semiotische Rekurrenz. Zum ironischen Spiel der Wirklichkeitssignale in Romanen von Leo Perutz. Düsseldorf: Tenea, 2000. Lauener, Peter. Die Krise des Helden. Die Ich-Störung im Erzählwerk von Leo Perutz. New York: Peter Lang, 2004. Le Rider, Jacques. «Between Modernism and Postmodernism. The Viennese Identity Crisis.» Vienna 1900. From Altenberg to Wittgenstein. Tr. Ralph Manheim. Ed. Edward Timms and Ritchie Robertson. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1990. 1-11. Lüth, Reinhard. «Im Dämmerlicht der Zeiten. Ein Porträt des phantastischen Erzählers Leo Perutz.» Die dunkle Seite der Wirklichkeit. Ed. Franz Rottensteiner. Frankfurt am Main: Surhkamp, 1987. 60-89. -. «Leo Perutz und das Fin-de-Siècle. Zu den literarischen Anfängen des Romanautors Leo Perutz und ihren Wurzeln in der Wiener Literatur um 1900.» Modern Austrian Literature 23.1 (1990): 35-53. Maderthaner, Wolfgang and Lutz Musner. «Outcast Vienna 1900. The Politics of Transgression.» International Labor and Working-Class History 64 (2003) 25-37. -. Die Anarchie der Vorstadt. Das andere Wien um 1900. Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1999. Maderthaner, Wolfgang. Kultur Macht Geschichte. Studien zur Wiener Struktur im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Vienna: Lit, 2005. Mandelartz, Michael. Poetik und Historik. Christliche und jüdische Geschichtstheologie in den Romanen von Leo Perutz. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1992. -. «Leo Perutz.» Biographisch-bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon. XVIII (2001): columns 1141-1149. http: / / www.bautz.de/ bbkl/ p/ perutz_l.shtml Meister, Jan Christoph. «Leo Perutz (1892-1957).» Major Figures of Austrian Literature: The Interwar Years 1918-1938. Ed. Donald G. Daviau. Riverside, CA: Ariadne Press, 1995. 327-53. Leo Perutz’s Zwischen neun und neun 141 Meister, Jan Christoph. «Das paralogische Lesen von Identität - Leo Perutz’s Roman Die dritte Kugel.» Modern Austrian Literature 22.1 (1989): 71-91. Müller, Hans-Harald. Leo Perutz. Munich: Beck, 1992. -. Afterword. Zwischen neun und neun. By Leo Perutz. Munich: dtv, 2004. 215-19. -. «Structure narrative et interpretation du roman Le Tour du Cadran.» Leo Perutz ou L’Ironie de l’Histoire. Ed. Jean-Jacques Pollet. Tr. Hélène Barrière. Rouen: Centres d’Études et de Recherches Austrichiennes, 1993. 79-93. Neuhaus, Dietrich. Erinnerung und Schrecken. Die Einheit von Geschichte, Phantastik und Mathematik im Werk Leo Perutz. Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1984. Perutz, Leo. Der Judas des Leonardo. Munich: dtv, 2005. -. Nachts unter der steinernen Brücke. Munich: dtv, 2002. -. St. Petri-Schnee. Munich: dtv, 2005. -. Wohin rollst du, Äpfelchen … Munich: dtv, 2005. -. Zwischen neun und neun. Munich: dtv, 2004. Rauchenbacher, Marina. Wege der Narration. Subjekt und Welt in Texten von Leo Perutz und Alexander Lernet-Holenia. Vienna: Praesens, 2006. Schmidt-Dengler, Wendelin. «Der Autor Leo Perutz im Kontext der Zwischenkriegszeit.» Forster and Müller, eds. 9-22. Schorske, Carl E. Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980. Siebauer, Ulrike. Leo Perutz «Ich kenn alles. Alles, nur nicht mich.» Eine Biographie. Gerlingen: Bleicher, 2000. Simmel, Georg. Philosophische Kultur. Gesammelte Essais. 2nd ed. Leipzig: Alfred Kröner Verlag, 1919. Todorov, Tzvetan. The Fantastic. A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre. Trans. Richard Howard. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1975. Wagner, E. Peter. «Introduction: Retrospectives on an Empire and its Capital.» Vienna: The World of Yesterday, 1889-1994. Ed. Stephen Eric Bonner and F. Peter Wagner. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 1999. 1-18. Wirschenbart, Rüdiger. «Vienna 1910: A City without Viennese.» Vienna: The World of Yesterday, 1889-1994. Ed. Stephen Eric Bonner and F. Peter Wagner. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 1999. 36-42. Narr Francke Attempto Verlag Postf. 2560 · D-72015 Tübingen · Fax (07071) 7 52 88 Internet: http: / / www.narr.de · E-Mail: info@narr.de Kultur - Herrschaft - Differenz Endre Hárs / Wolfgang Müller-Funk / Ursula Reber Clemens Ruthner (Hrsg.) Zentren, Peripherien und kollektive Identitäten in Österreich-Ungarn Kultur - Herrschaft - Differenz 9, 2006, VI, 295 Seiten, 58,-/ SFr 98,- ISBN 3-7720-8133-9 Der Sammelband thematisiert interdisziplinär das Verhältnis von Zentren und Peripherien in der späten k.(u.)k. Monarchie im Spannungsfeld von Kultur und politischer Hegemonie. Auf diese Weise werden Logiken von realer und symboli scher De- und Reterritorialisierung sichtbar: Infrastrukturen der Herrschaft ebenso wie narrative Konstruktionen von Identität und Differenz. Das Zentrum (die Metropole) ist jener Ort, an dem sich auch die symbolische Produktion der jeweiligen Kultur großteils vollzieht (Verlage, Medien, Museen etc.), während die Peripherie vor allem als Gegenstand dieser Produktion fungiert. Zur Besonderheit und Brisanz des Gesamtgefüges der späten k.(u.)k. Monarchie gehört, dass hier das Verhältnis von Zentrum und Peripherie häufig von sprachlicher, ethnischer oder religiöser Differenz begleitet ist und z.T. mit quasikolonialer Herrschaft einhergeht. Remapping and Repopulating the Geographical Past: Memory and History in Ilse Tielsch’s Novel Trilogy XENIA SREBRIANSKI HARWELL U TAH S TATE U NIVERSITY Recently, theories of space and place have become important areas of discourse in a number of different disciplines, including architecture, gender studies, anthropology, and environmental psychology (Low 38), as public and private spaces have been read for what they can tell us about, among other things, power relations, attitudes towards the past, collective memory, and cultural identity. «As social relationships are intertwined with spatial perception, human attachment to places attracts researchers from many fields,» suggests architect Dolores Hayden (16), who has written about the interconnections between memory, history, and identity as they are tied to the urban landscape. Historian Karl Schlögel devotes his work Im Raum lesen wir die Zeit: Über Zivilisationsgeschichte und Geopolitik to examining history within a spatial context: Es hat sich für mich so ergeben, daß sich eine um den Geschichtsort kreisende Darstellung als die am meisten geeignete Form der Vergegenwärtigung von Geschichte herausgestellt hat. […] Immer erwies sich der Ort als der angemessenste Schauplatz und Bezugsrahmen, um sich eine Epoche in ihrer ganzen Komplexheit zu vergegenwartigen. Der Ort selbst schien Komplexheit zu verbürgen. Der Ort hatte ein Vetorecht gegen die von der Disziplin und von der arbeitsteiligen Forschung favorisierte Parzellierung und Segmentierung des Gegenstandes. Der Ort hielt den Zusammenhang aufrecht und verlangte geradezu die gedankliche Reproduktion des Nebeneinander, der Gleichzeitigkeit der Ungleichzeitigkeit. (10) Of interest within this context are the novels of Ilse Tielsch, whose trilogy - Die Ahnenpyramide (1980), Heimatsuchen (1982), and Die Früchte der Tränen (1988) - is characterized by a spatially centered narrative strategy. Tielsch’s exploration of ideas of homeland, personal and collective memory, nationality and identity, and the meaning of war, exile, and humanity are firmly situated within a spatial discourse. Ilse Tielsch was born in 1929 in Auspitz (Hustopecˇe), a small town in what is now the Czech Republic. Raised in Southern Moravia, she fled the region alone in April 1945. At the conclusion of World War II, her family and friends were evicted 1 from their homes in the German-speaking areas of Moravia and 144 Xenia Srebrianski Harwell repatriated to Germany or Austria. By the 1980s, the decade in which Tielsch writes her novels, there is, obviously, no physical space to contest. However, her works do contest the public memory of that space. By situating her family in the region over extended past time, she claims legitimate residency and belonging to place, and appears to evoke the notion of a peaceful, perhaps even mythical, «Zweivölkerland.» 2 In locating her family within the historical events of the twentieth century, Tielsch describes both the attitudes of its members towards these events as well as the impact these events have on their personal lives. In this regard, it appears that she wishes to remind readers of that portion of the Sudeten German community that did not participate in expressions of German nationalism and that was integrated into its local milieu. 3 She also portrays their suffering and losses after the war 4 and their difficulties in adjusting to life in ethnically and linguistically similar regions of Germany and Austria, which had nevertheless treated them as outsiders. By offering a counter-narrative to the view that the German speakers living in Southern Moravia were illegitimate occupiers of the region, Tielsch reinserts them into the historical tale of the area and carves out a space for them within collective historical memory. In this way, Tielsch addresses the idea of competing conceptions of the historical cultural identity of her homeland. For her, the contestation of memory involves ensuring not only that the experience of her community is remembered but also how it is remembered. As Dolores Hayden states, «And even bitter experience and fights communities have lost need to be remembered - so as not to diminish their importance» (11). To those who experienced the loss of their homeland, there is solace in memory. Healing also lies in narrating, or writing, a completed tale - in creating a complete story out of what may appear to be a disjointed experience or view of the past. The narrator Anna states in Die Ahnenpyramide, «Ich will aus Landschaften, Dörfern und Städten, aus Häusern und in diesen Häusern lebenden Menschen, […] etwas zusammensetzen, das ein GANZES ergibt. Ich habe HEIMWEH nach diesem Ganzen, nicht nach dem Ort, in dem ich geboren worden bin» (202). This quote clearly suggests that in this particular case the longing of the individual in exile is not necessarily or specifically to reoccupy a specific space. Rather, it seems that the exiled individual needs to overcome a sense of fragmentation and disjointedness incurred by emigration. For this narrator, and presumably for Tielsch as author, the gesture of creating a completed narrative is a means by which to overcome such loss. Schlögel writes, «Der Bezug auf den Ort enthielt insgeheim immer ein Plädoyer für eine histoire total - wenigstens als Idee, als Zielvorstellung, auch wenn es in der konkreten Ausführung möglicherweise nicht gelungen sein mochte» (10). It is noteworthy that in the quoted passage from Ahnenpyramide, the narra- Remapping and Repopulating the Geographical Past 145 tor employs the terminology of geography to speak about achieving wholeness - she will rely on the physical landscape, both natural and man-made, to construct the completed narrative, the «histoire total» that Schlögel refers to, to advance toward psychological wholeness. I would like to suggest that the narrative line of the trilogy is strongly supported by a structure defined by the narrator’s changing relationship to space - in its acquisition and ownership, its loss, and its reacquisition, and that the trilogy culminates in the achievement of the psychic integrity the narrator seeks, which then, ironically, is followed by an abandonment of that specific place’s significance. Die Ahnenpyramide, the first novel in the trilogy, focuses on life in the old homeland and traces the narrator’s genealogy and familial presence in the region, concluding with the events that take place on the eve of the Second World War. The second work, Heimatsuchen, deals with the arduous transitional period after the war, following the expulsion of Germans from Czech lands and the narrator’s own flight from home. The last volume, Die Früchte der Tränen, touches on the decade following the end of the war, the adjustments to the new homeland, a final coming to terms with the meaning of the old homeland, and normalization. I would like now to discuss each novel in greater detail, emphasizing in each the dominance and relevance of spatial imagery. Die Ahnenpyramide is particularly rich in spatial discourse and in the manipulation of space. The starting point for the narrative is the sketch of the family tree in the shape of a pyramid, which is drawn by the father when the narrator is still a child. The narrator recalls that when she was small she felt that each name was crowded into a box and that she desired to give the ancestors space and bring them to life. She realizes this desire through the primary technique of the work - the panoptic gaze of the narrator. The primary portal to the past and the agent by means of which the panoptic gaze is effected is the photograph. Typically, the narrator’s perspective begins as a stance above and looking down into the photograph. «Ich halte die Lupe vor mein rechtes Augenglas, neige mich noch näher zu dem Bild hinunter» (17), she says repeatedly, or, again, «Ich setze die Brille auf, […] um die Gräser, die Unkrautpflanzen, die Blätter der Bäume zu unterscheiden. […] um noch besser zu sehen, halte ich die Lupe vor mein rechtes Augenglas, gehe nahe an die Fotografie heran, kneife das linke Auge zu» (16). This is often followed by the narrator’s imagined entry into the space of the photograph: Ich halte die Lupe vor mein rechtes Augenglas, neige mich noch näher zu dem Bild hinunter, […] da streift mich ein Windhauch, ich fühle ihn auf der Haut. Ich stehe auf der schmalen Dorfstrasse, die Sonne scheint, die Blätter der Bäume bewegen sich, ich höre sie rauschen, […]. Ich rieche Gras, rieche Erde und Staub, fühle Sonne und Wind auf der Haut. (17) 146 Xenia Srebrianski Harwell Imbuing the photograph with descriptors that reflect a sensual memory, as here, foregrounds the narrator’s intimate familiarity with place. As Dolores Hayden points out, «An individual’s sense of place is both a biological response to the surrounding physical environment and a cultural creation, […] From childhood, humans come to know places through engaging all five senses, sight as well as sound, smell, taste, and touch» (Hayden 16). The above passage in Die Ahnenpyramide suggests that bodily memories from the distant past can continue to live on in an individual in much the same way as memories of the mind do. A more intimate panoptic and imagined physical experience of the past is portrayed when the narrator actually becomes a part of the family of her forebears. While looking at a photograph of a christening, the narrator imagines her ancestral family walking from their house to the church and then celebrating after the ceremony. Suddenly she herself becomes part of the scene: «Ich sitze beim Tisch, esse Krautkuchen und sehe sie der Reihe nach an, die beiden Paten und das Paar, Anna Josefa und Johann Wenzel» (21). By linking her senses and her kinesthetic presence to the photograph, the narrator is able to transform, as in the case of the sketch of the pyramid, the two-dimensional space of the photograph into a living three-dimensional space: «Etwas seltsames passiert. Das Bild wird plastisch, dreidimensional, die Kanten der Mauern treten hervor, die Fensterflügel mit den kleinen gläsernen Scheiben stehen von der Hauswand ab« (16). When the narrator enters the photograph, she literally brings the past to life by introducing movement into a normally static space. The fact that the subject of the photograph she enters is a christening is also not without significance. As a traditional ritual, it further grounds her ancestors in the homeland. Most importantly, however, the technique of having the narrator transverse the space into and within the photograph serves to link the static past with the living present, which again underscores the longstanding presence of the family in that area. At other times the narrator acts not only as the observer/ participant in the past (via the photograph) but also its «creator.» In one instance, for example, she lays out on a table about thirty photographs of her father’s village, placing them in an order that reconstructs the village’s geography. In another, the narrator, taking on the panoptic perspective of a bird in flight, speaks of naming hills and of putting fish in streams (32-33), as well as of laying out farms. Her mimetically godlike creative role reminds us of Biblical creation scenes and conveys the sense that events connected with her ancestors and the ancestral landscape extend back in history to ancient, even Biblical, times. The narrator’s recreation and resurrection of her ancestors - she speaks of breathing life into them, of «liberating» them from the frozen space of the Remapping and Repopulating the Geographical Past 147 photos to allow them to move through the streets of the town - enables the reader to see them as real people occupying real space. Also contributing to this is the description of the daily work environment of her ancestors, including both the reproduction functions of the women and the work functions of men and women. Again from a panoptic perspective, the narrator is «able» to see through walls as mothers sing lullabies to their children. She «watches» as her great-grandfather produces linen fabric and describes the spatial arrangement of the work site. The detailed description of labor within the space of the old homeland is another way for the narrator to demonstrate that, through work, these people had earned the right to live there. The beautiful image of the fields being covered with drying blue linen fabric offers a visual representation of ownership and occupation of space. Even the bluing of the river with the dye acts as a curious symbol of belonging which may perhaps be viewed as a «marker» of territoriality. When the narrator then recalls the old linen tablecloth that is in her father’s possession, this material artifact serves again to connect her to the past. In addition to describing the different types of work generations of her family have performed, the narrator further legitimizes her family’s claim to the space by noting her ancestors’ ties to the land, which were grounded in multitudes of struggles to settle, protect, and rebuild it generation after generation: Sie blieben, nahmen das Land, das man ihnen zuwies, rodeten es, schlugen die Wälder, gruben die Steine aus der roten Erde aus. Immer wieder wurden die Häuser, die sie gebaut hatten, niedergebrannt, von den Hussiten, von den Schweden, von kaiserlichen Truppen, wurde gemordet, geplündert und zerstört. Immer wieder flüchteten sie sich in die Wälder, kehrten zurück, begannen neu […] Sie gaben nicht auf, blieben im Land, überlebten Hungerjahre und Katastrophen […]. (14) In the description of their hardships on the land, the generations themselves are rendered by the narrator as a series of «begats»: «Einer von Adams Söhnen zeugte Georg, […], Georg der Erste zeugte GEORG DEN ZWEITEN. Georg der Zweite zeugte PAULUS. Paulus zeugte GOTTLIEB» (15), and it is likely not accidental that the first ancestor in the narrator’s family tree is named Adam. The allusions to the Old Testament again imply that the family has existed within the old home place from time immemorial. The map is another important narrative artifact within this novel, functioning as a metonymic shorthand to encapsulate historical events, or as a spatial marker extending the panoptic view. Schlögel discusses some functions of maps: Karten erscheinen hier gleichsam als eine andere «Phänomenologie des Geistes,» als «Zeit, in Karten gefasst.» Für Historiker sind Karten in der Regel Hilfsmittel, während sie in Wahrheit doch viel mehr sind: Weltbilder, Abbildungen von Welt, 148 Xenia Srebrianski Harwell Projektionen von Welt, für die alles gilt, was für historische Texte in der Regel auch gilt: die Kriterien der Quellen - und Ideologiekritik. Karten bilden Macht ab und sind Machtinstrumente. (12) In Die Ahnenpyramide, the map draws attention to the changed geographical boundaries of a changing world. The narrator’s father, Heinrich, draws maps of the towns of his youth that exist now only in his memory, and describes the built and natural landscapes within them. Heinrich’s mapmaking is a recreative act, as well as a political one. The listing of names of German towns that no longer exist or the names of which are no longer German names, and also the laconic mention by the narrator of relative populations of Germans and Czechs in various towns, or the fact that «(1913 war die Kleinstadt Mährisch Trübau noch fast ausschließlich von Deutschen bewohnt.)» (155) reenacts a kind of spatial, or locational, genealogy, that simultaneously demonstrates loss and argues for the belongingness of Germans in the region. Schlögel suggests that maps represent «die Abbildung des Nebeneinander und der Gleichzeitigkeit» (13). The novel’s imagery brings to life the notion of the map as palimpsest, with layers of history and meaning variously interpreted, erased, or revealed. The narrator of Die Ahnenpyramide asks us to erase the latest layer and to peer at and acknowledge the one below. In Die Ahnenpyramide several childhood scenes reflect the narrator’s great familiarity with, and therefore confidence in, the space she occupies. In one such scene, the narrator remembers the pleasure of running her fingers over the edges of a carpet at home and of retaining the memory of its contours in her fingertips. In another, she recalls a game of walking through her house holding a mirror up to the ceiling to skew her view, but never to disorient her. The tactile/ physical memory of home speaks to her intimacy with the living space and the resulting unquestioning deep sense of security regarding her perception of reality. However, in the next novel of the trilogy, Heimatsuchen, rootedness and sense of belonging to a place disappear. With the trauma of war and exile, the loved and protective «felicitous space» (Bachelard xxxi) of the narrator’s childhood, the space represented by the familiar carpet edge, is replaced by the spaces of the narrator’s diaspora, which at the least bring discomfort and at the extreme are threatening. The border plays a central role in the representation of trauma and exile, and the site of the border crossing becomes an ominous space in the postwar world. Svetlana Boym calls the border «a site of encounter» (241). For the narrator as a sixteen-year-old girl who travels often to visit her parents in a different sector of Austria, the border as the site of repeated encounters is both a psychological and physical threat as well as a way of life. Each crossing Remapping and Repopulating the Geographical Past 149 requires the use of a false identity card, which necessitates acquaintance with and, consequently, the assimilation of, each new false identity, which is subsequently followed by the destabilization of the narrator’s own identity. The sense of disequilibrium is also at times accompanied by fear of physical violation across the border that is her body. For example, in one scene a border guard at an isolated station asks the narrator (Anni) to disembark the train: Später, wie gesagt, ist die Eisenbahnbrücke über die Enns zu einer gewöhnlichen, nicht besonders langen Brücke geschrumpft. Damals schien sie der neben dem Zug stehenden ungewöhnlich lang, vor allem ungewöhnlich einsam zu sein. Weit entfernt, beinahe unerreichbar, der amerikanische Posten am jenseitigen Brückenende, das hölzerne Wächterhäuschen, in das der Russe nach Abfahrt des Zuges vielleicht zusammen mit ihr zurückkehren würde, eine dunkle, drohende Gefahr. Anni, neben dem Zug, hatte Angst. (299) Here the border, normally conceptualized as a narrow space, a line, expands, and takes on the features of a «horror vacui» (Schlögel 9) in the perception of the narrator, whose fear skews her perception of spatial distance, elongating it in accord with her paralyzed desire to negotiate the space. Aberrations in spatial perception may also occur at other highly emotional, but ultimately positive, moments. For example, when the narrator is reunited with her mother, whom she had believed to be dead, the city seems to collapse inward: Anni liess Rücksack und Weihnachtsbaum fallen und lief auf ihre Mutter zu. […] Bemerkenswert daran ist, […] dass alles dies auf dem in der Erinnerung bewahrten Bild eng aneinandergeschoben wirkt, so, als habe man alles mit einem einzigen Blick wahrgenommen. Kirche, Schloss, Heiligenfigur, Heldendenkmal, das niedrige Haus, in dem die Eltern ihre Unterkunft hatten, alles also, was in Wahrheit relativ weit voneinander entfernt im Zentrum des kleinen Ortes angeordnet liegt, ist zu einem vom dämmrigen Zwielicht des Winternachmittags umgebenen MIT- EINANDER zusammengedrückt worden. (142-43) Peter Osborne theorizes that «all exile’s manifestations involve a crisis in the experiences and representation of space and its meaning» (9). In Heimatsuchen, this crisis manifests itself in the narrator’s amnesia and shifts the spatial focus from physical spaces to mind spaces. Jenijoy LaBelle states that «Amnesia provides a convenient novelistic device for creating an adult character who must undergo primal acts of self-identification» (105). Indeed, whereas the distant past could be easily remembered or imagined by the narrator, as in the first novel, in the second work her more immediate past of personal experience in adolescence is, for a time, inaccessible to her. Thus the adult narrator, writing about herself as a teen-aged refugee, detaches herself from her youthful persona by referring to herself only in the third person. Her dec- 150 Xenia Srebrianski Harwell laration that she wishes to face the past without emotional involvement and to put it behind her is testimony to the narrator’s need to repress a traumatic period in her life. While carefully avoiding her own memories, she is nevertheless drawn to the reminiscences of her family and friends. Svetlana Boym identifies this mechanism, typical of some exiles, as a «survivalist aesthetics of estrangement and longing» (xix), stating that «Perhaps what is most missed during historical cataclysm and exile is not the past and the homeland exactly, but rather the potential space of cultural experience that one has shared» (53). Anna’s nostalgia for her lost community, and particularly for the lost community of women who might have provided emotional support during her adolescent years, creates the impetus for her pursuit of the diasporic stories of family and friends. Boym writes that «psychic space should not be imagined as solitary confinement» (53). However, for the narrator, the period of amnesia is a time of solitary confinement, lasting until the memories of others begin to fill the empty spaces in her mind. This initiates the recollection of her own memories, which gives her the ability to formulate her story as a whole and thus to achieve one of her goals. Interestingly, she next pursues wholeness in a different way - by devoting herself to tracing her town’s history from its origin in 903, once again emphasizing the significance of place: Der Zwang, diesen Ort nachzuzeichnen, sein sich im Lauf der Jahrhunderte änderndes Bild anhand der Aufzeichnungen von Chronisten zu verfolgen, sich mit seiner Geschichte vertraut zu machen. Lange Vergangenes mit erlebter Gegenwart, die ebenfalls schon längst Vergangenheit geworden ist, in Verbindung zu bringen, ein Ganzes entstehen zu lassen, ein möglichst vollständiges Bild des Ortes zu malen. (25) In Die Ahnenpyramide, as the narrator recalls the ancestors who worked with flax in the countryside, her thoughts suddenly fast forward to present-day Vienna, and she contemplates the types of spaces she and her parents utilized as housing after leaving their homeland - a kitchen, a tunnel room near the Stefansdom, the toilet of a railroad car, bushes near a railroad, a bedroom in Upper Austria, a bed in Linz, a root cellar, a barn, and a room in a farmhouse. Juxtaposed to the farming and village images which represent the family’s forward-moving process of establishing itself in Moravia, this series of images of makeshift housing represent a kind of backward motion - an unraveling of the genealogy of place. From a stable location the individuals are thrust into temporary and primitive quarters. In the final novel of the trilogy, Die Früchte der Tränen, this unraveling of space finally comes to an end as a new place, Vienna, is established as the site of long-term residency. Die Früchte der Tränen focuses on the life of the narrator and her family in Austria and Germany during the first postwar decade. Refugees are now confronted with urban spaces. Natural landscapes, with which the old home- Remapping and Repopulating the Geographical Past 151 land was so deeply associated, are relegated to the background and become «collectibles» (33) and nostalgic remnants in the form of photographs and postcards. Destruction and reconstruction of the urban landscape is one of the focal points of this last novel in the trilogy. Hedwig, the narrator’s aunt, confronts a postwar cityscape when she visits Nürnberg. Shocked at the destruction, Hedwig is estranged not only from the strange physical landscape - «Aus den Trümmern ragten bizarre Reste von Türmen, Mauern, Gewölben. Nackte Fensterbogen sah sie» (51) - but also from the people moving about, who seem like dehumanized «Höhlenbewohner» (52) to her. She is unable to overcome the violence of her physical reaction to the disorienting landscape - a terrible revulsion, shivering, weakness and a deep internal feeling of coldness. The destroyed landscape becomes a gathering point for all her anxieties and is linked to her subsequent lengthy illness. The apprehension Hedwig feels is amplified by the enumeration of the natural catastrophes in the world at the time (1953-54) - avalanches, floods, and extreme cold, as well as the incursion of atomic particles from atomic bombs - a new dangerous phenomenon at the time - into the natural environment, as if nature too feels revulsion at the war that has just transpired. The mood of disjointedness and anxiety, experienced by Hedwig and reflected in the natural and built landscapes, expresses a form of postwar traumatic stress, a condition that for Hedwig is complicated and prolonged by her continued hope that her husband would eventually return alive from the former eastern front. The mood of unease extends to images of urban reconstruction as well. The narrator speaks of the joy that the restoration of major buildings in Vienna, such as the Stefansdom, Oper and Burgtheater, has brought to the residents. But she adds that the restoration is so complete, «Als wäre nichts geschehen» (340), introducing a disquieting undertone with the suggestion that restoration may, while restoring, also involve the erasure of aspects of recent history. The urban landscape undergoes not only restoration, but modernization as well. However, the products designed by contemporary architects are modern and glitzy. Whether or not these architects are intentionally designing buildings to create a visual break with the past in order to disassociate postwar society from the war period, their products appear to be disconnected from the recent experiences of the public. For example, the narrator, like others, is too poor to relate to the shine and sparkle of the new structures. Perhaps these structures speak too much of the future, while she is trying still to deal with the present and the past. Wartime experiences also affect the way the individual interprets personal space. The parents of one of the narrator’s friends, Lilly, are an example of 152 Xenia Srebrianski Harwell this. Lilly’s mother painstakingly preserves the family’s house exactly as it was before the war, as if by maintaining that space she can create a bridge between past and present, while circumventing change and the intervening chaos. Lilly’s father, on the other hand, a soldier who endured Soviet captivity, finds that he cannot live in a house plush with belongings, or tolerate a crowded space. Slowly and ritualistically he dismantles the interior of his house until it resembles a bare cell. Captivity, hardship, and stark survival have altered his perception of what is livable space. For others, like the narrator, the desire to acquire one’s own personal space is a strong impulse in the postwar period. After years of living in crowded conditions with strangers and then sharing tight quarters with in-laws, where, for example, the only nook the narrator can call her own is her bed, she energetically and almost fanatically seeks her own apartment and obsessively fills it with furniture, which she actually begins to buy before there is even the promise of acquiring an apartment, so great is her need for her own home and possessions. The narrator’s pregnancy at this time is a parallel filling of space - of maternal space, and both apartment and child represent the quest for a stable home site in exile and the normalcy in life that it signifies. The acquisition of an apartment for her family heralds the conclusion of the narrator’s transitional experience of exile. Architectural historian Gwendolyn Wright suggests that homes act as metaphors, «suggesting and justifying social categories, values, and relations» (quoted in Spain 111). While the location of the apartment, on the outskirts of Vienna, may speak of a spatial segregation and a lack of choice and may reflect the refugee’s lesser status in Austrian society, the narrator nevertheless understands her luck in having achieved ownership of her own space at a time when housing was in short supply. Die Früchte der Tränen presents a cautious relationship to the notion of home. In speaking about the creation of a new living space in Vienna, the narrator likens it to gathering threads to recreate a cocoon. At the same time, she admonishes herself that the cocoon’s security is only an illusion. Life experience has taught her that home places are impermanent, and can be lost or taken away arbitrarily. Here she echoes a sentiment expressed earlier (in Die Ahnenpyramide) by her father, who, referring to the shifting borders of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, remarks, «Man kann, ohne seine Wohnung, das Haus, in dem diese Wohnung liegt, die Stadt, in welcher das Haus steht, zu verlassen, zuerst österreichischer, dann tschechoslowakischer, dann deutscher, dann überhaupt kein Staatsbürger mehr sein» (139). The narrator also distances herself from her focus on space/ homeland in this last novel of the trilogy. Heretofore, the concept of the border was bound up with spatial boundaries and exclusion; now it gains significance as a Remapping and Repopulating the Geographical Past 153 temporal boundary - the past beyond the border, the present on this side of the border. Space becomes a function of time, and specifically of past time, and the narrator relegates the space of the past to the past. The novel revolves around the narrator’s ambiguous relationship with a girlhood friend, Judith. The work begins with Judith’s death and in flashbacks explores the narrator’s obsession with her. Initially perceiving Judith as seductive and alluring, the narrator eventually recognizes her to be nothing more than a gray-haired corpse. In the course of the novel it becomes clear that on one level Judith is a metaphor for the homeland. With Judith’s burial and other cemetery imagery (a trip through old-homeland cemeteries, for example), one has the sense that it is the past that is being buried, and with it the allegiance to place. The narrator’s sudden and unexpected insight that what she has longed for may not have been space after all (i.e., the homeland), but time - the time of youth - unexpectedly deflates the significance that she has heretofore allocated to place. The narrator also realizes that group cohesion disappears when members of a community no longer share the same living space and therefore the same experiences: «wir hatten nichts mehr miteinander gemeinsam als die Erinnerung an eine sehr kleine Stadt in Mähren» (459). At the same time, she also begins to understand that for the younger generation the old homeland is only a storytelling space. She as the gatherer of stories and the storyteller, links past and future generations, achieving her desire to be «Bindeglied zwischen vorher and später» (Die Ahnenpyramide 202). In conclusion, I’d like to return to the historian Karl Schlögel. He asks, «was geschieht, wenn wir Geschichte und Ort zusammen denken? […] Was gewinnen wir an historischer Wahrnehmung und Einsicht, wenn wir Örter und Räume endlich (wieder) ernstnehmen? » (11). Michael Kammen points out that «memory is, by definition, a term which directs our attention not to the past but to the past-present relation. It is because ‹the past› has this living active existence in the present that it matters so much politically» (5). He also points out that «memory is more likely to be activated by contestation» (13). Ilse Tielsch’s novels participate in the «discourses of inclusion and exclusion of national cultures» that Frank Trommler theorizes to be an impetus for the recent works that privilege space over time (241). For Jones and Pay, terms like ‹our past› and ‹heritage›, both denot[e] some form of ownership […]. To whose past, however, do we refer? The notion that history in some way belongs to, or is the concern of, ordinary people is not, of course new, but it is a new development for them to wish to take control of their own past, and thereby their present and their future. (160) 154 Xenia Srebrianski Harwell In Dolores Hayden’s view, «Social memory relies on storytelling» (46). Tielsch has told her story, thereby creating a position - a space - for herself and her people in the discourse on past, heritage, and place. Notes 1 For a brief discussion of the history and issues relating to the terminology used to describe the expulsion of Sudeten Germans («Vertreibung,» «Ausweisung,» «Aussiedlung,» «Umsiedlung,» etc.), see Tampke 73. The narrator of Die Ahnenpyramide also contemplates the language used to talk about expulsion. Faced with responding to a questionnaire that asks her to define the word «homeland» in 30 or fewer lines (98- 107) and to establish how she left the Sudetenland by checking a box next to the words «Flucht,» Vertreibung» or «Sonstiges» (101), she plays with the definitions of words such as «Flucht,» «Flüchtling» and «Vertreibung» and assesses the extent to which these definitions describe her own departure: «Anni ist nicht in WILDER UNORDNUNG davongelaufen […] Anni ist zwar freiwillig aus der Stadt, in der sie geboren worden ist und in der sie mit ihren Eltern gelebt hat, weggegangen, also eigentlich nicht VER- TRIEBEN worden, hätte jedoch versucht, wieder zurückzukehren, um dort zu leben, hätte man sie vertrieben. Das kommt, sage ich, allerdings auf das gleiche heraus» (104- 05). 2 For a historical treatment of German-Czech relations, see Tampke and Prinz. To read about recent attempts at German-Czech reconciliation, see Becher. Tampke defines the term «Zweivölkerland»: «German settlement in this part of central Europe has been recorded throughout the second millennium of the Common Era […] They lived together with their Czech neighbours in a bilingual community sometimes referred to as a Zweivölkerland - a two peoples’ country - or a Zweivölkerstaat - a two peoples’ state» (xiv). One of the ways in which Tielsch conveys the spirit of a two-people’s community in Die Ahnenpyramide is with reference to language. Already on the second page of the novel the narrator states, «Ich war das Kind Anni, aber ich hatte mehrere Namen, ich hörte auf Anni genauso wie auf Annika oder moja malinka, was soviel wie MEINE KLEINE hieß. Beim Spiel mit den Freunden zählte ich zweisprachig, EINS, ZWEI, DREI oder JEDEN, DVA, TRI. Die Landeshymne beherrschte ich in zwei Varianten. KDE DOMOV MUJ, KDE DOMOV MUJ, oder auch WO IST MEIN HEIM, MEIN VATERLAND» (8). She returns to this idea later in the novel, having recalled the words to some songs she had known in both languages: «Mir wird bewußt, was ich beinahe vergessen hatte: daß das Zusammenleben mit Menschen anderer Muttersprache dem Kind selbstverständlich gewesen sei» (233). At another point, the narrator addresses an issue of national identity linguistically. In answer to a question by her husband as to how a German ancestor could have had a Czech name, she replies, «Sie haben miteinander gelebt, sie haben untereinander geheiratet, sie haben wahrscheinlich auch ihre Sprachen gewechselt […] Deutsche Namen sind tschechisch geschrieben worden, tschechische deutsch, manchmal hat man die Namen einfach von einer Sprache in die andere übersetzt, manchmal hat sie ein Pfarrer im Kirchenbuch falsch geschrieben. Franz aus Nemcˇice ist MÄHRER gewesen, ob seine Muttersprache deutsch oder tschechisch gewesen ist, wissen wir nicht, nehmen aber, da Nemcˇice beinah ausschließlich von Tschechen bewohnt war, das letztere an. Vermutlich wird er, als Gastwirt, beide Sprachen gesprochen haben, Remapping and Repopulating the Geographical Past 155 und erst sein Sohn […] wird sich, nachdem er sich in B. mit Veronika Pospischil verheiratet hatte, für die deutsche Sprache entschieden haben» (211). 3 A favored technique of Tielsch’s is to juxtapose historical/ political events with a depiction of the narrator’s family, and in doing so, to comment on the events and to portray the family’s position with regard to these events. This is particularly true for events from the past, of which the narrator has no direct knowledge. For example, while speaking about the upheavals of 1913, when relations between Germans and Czechs deteriorated (Ahnenpyramide 153), the narrator notes that things are still peaceful in the town of B., where her family resided (155). She then moves to a discussion of the events that transpired in 1914 in Brünn (158-61). Within this framework of the events of 1913-1914, however, the narrator pictures her grandmother, Friederike: «ich sehe sie beim Lesen des WOCHENKALENDERS FÜR GERMANISCHE VORNAMEN lächeln. Nein, es wäre ihr nicht eingefallen, eines ihrer Kinder Baldegunde, Gotwin, Ermenhilda […] Starkhand oder gar Heimwo zu nennen. DEUTSCHE ELTERN, GEBET EUREN KINDERN GERMANISCHE NAMEN! Sie liest, weil sie es nicht für möglich halt, daß ihre Zeitung allen Ernstes solche Vorschläge unterbreitet» (156). In another example, the narrator states, «Die Kornblume im Knopfloch, der Kornblumenkranz im Haar, das Zeichen dafür, daß man national denkender Deutscher war, sagt der Vater […] daß aber Vater und Mutter nie Kornblumen im Knopfloch oder im Haar getragen haben» (270). In speaking of her father’s work as a physician, the narrator states, «Daß es Sprachen- und Nationalitätenprobleme für Heinrich kaum, in Verbindung mit seinem Beruf überhaupt nicht gab, daß ihm die Kranken jene Art von Vertrauen entgegenbrachten» (255). The narrator appears to wish to deflect criticism that she may be painting too rosy a picture of the times and to forestall such a possible reaction, states immediately afterwards, «Nein, keine Idylle in jener schwierigen Zeit der ausklingenden zwanziger, der beginnenden dreißiger Jahre […] Keine verfärbten Erinnerungen, deine SANFTEN BILDER, ich wehre mich dagegen […] schattenlose Bilder zu malen» (255). It is also important to take into consideration the age of the narrator, born in 1929, and to keep in mind that when she writes about events from her lifetime, particularly from her early life, they are written from the perspective of a child, and are therefore narrow in scope. The narrator says, «DU MUSST DICH ERINNERN, sagen die Kinder manchmal, DU HAST DOCH DAMALS GELEBT. Ja, sage ich, aber ich bin ein Kind gewesen und habe von dem, was mich nicht betroffen hat, kaum etwas bemerkt» (271). The narrator does not avoid this period, but introduces it through her technique of citing newspapers from that time (265-66; 278-80). The perspective of the child may in fact allow the narrator to maintain a certain distance from those events. The newspaper accounts, while also contributing to the distancing effect, do counteract the child’s naiveté. While the child Anni recalls the summer of 1938 only as the year she got her own bike and learned to dive, the juxtaposition of headlines for this period supplements her lack of knowledge by referring to events not only having to do with the German-Czech issue, but to the wider German world, as for example, to Vienna and in Germany - to events that affected Jewish life (279-80). Another aspect of Tielsch’s technique is to have an artifact trigger some aspect of memory. This occurs, for example, towards the end of Die Ahnenpyramide, when the narrator’s mother produces a copy of Die Ahnenpass and the narrator recalls her fear of not appearing adequately Aryan. She remarks, «Damals also hat das Kind schon mehr von dem, was geschach, begriffen, zum Beispiel: daß es ein furchtbarer Schicksalsschlag sei, NICHT ARISCH ZU SEIN» (304). 156 Xenia Srebrianski Harwell In general, the narrator portrays her parents as privately critical of the Nazi regime (305, 380, 394) but outwardly attempting to live according to their own values. Thus, her father, a physician, treats everyone, regardless of nationality or race. Her mother continues working with both German and Czech new mothers even though she is forbidden to distribute materials to Czech women, until she is warned by German authorities to stop this activity. Her parents tolerate the fact that their child is being indoctrinated into Nazi rhetoric in school and camp to protect her and themselves (380). As the narrator documents the changes that occur in her town after the Nazi takeover, she focuses on the reduction of liberties and on the change in the nature of the citizens, who are now more inclined to report neighbors to the authorities. Her repeated tongue-in-cheek reference to the town as that «verträumte kleine Landstadt» (342) reflects her critical attitude toward both the Nazi presence and the residents who support it. It is interesting to note that the narrator in her adult guise finds herself in the position of both questioner and questioned with regard to this period of her life. For example, because as a child she is unaware of the significance of the disappearance of the Jews from the town, she seeks information from her mother: «Und wer ist in das Haus eingezogen, durch dessen mehrfarbiges Türglas das Licht rot, grün und gelb auf die Steinfliesen des Flurs gefallen ist? Und wer hat das Haus mit dem breiten, braun gestrichenen Holztor bewohnt? […] Und wer hat sich an den Versteigerungen beteiligt, wer hat die Einrichtungsgegenstände aus den von den Juden verlassenen Häusern ersteigert, in sein eigenes Haus übernommen? WIR NICHT! sagt die Mutter. Aber, sage ich, es sind Leute aus UNSERER STADT gewesen» (301). As an adult, the narrator is queried by her daughter: «Was wäre gewesen, sagt meine Tochter, wenn Hitler den Krieg gewonnen hätte? […] Wie es denn überhaupt möglich gewesen sei, in einer solchen Zeit ein normales Leben zu führen, zu essen, zu schlafen, zur Schule zu gehen, als ob nichts geschehen wäre? ES IST MÖGLICH GEWESEN, sage ich» (308). 4 The narrator of Heimatsuchen sites statistics in discussing the general expulsion and deaths of Sudeten Germans, but in her focus on the personal, which we find throughout all three novels, she also repeatedly notes that individual acts of goodness or evil were not determined by one’s nationality («MAN MUSS IMMER DEN EINZELNEN MENSCHEN SEHEN, sagt die Mutter, immer und überall kommt es auf den einzelnen Menschen an» [46]). The narrator also notes that her parents carry no legacy of bitterness about the past (19). Works Cited Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. New York: Orion, 1964. Becher, Peter. «Deutsche und Tschechen: Vertreibung und Versöhnung.» German Studies Review. 30: 2 (2007). 259-66. Boym, Svetlana. The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books, 2002. Eibicht, Rolf-Josef, ed. Die Sudetendeutschen und ihre Heimat: Zur Diskussion um Rückkehr und Wiedergutmachung. Wesseling: Gesamtdeutscher Verlag, 1991. Glotz, Peter. Die Vertreibung: Böhmen als Lehrstück. München: Ullstein, 2003. Hayden, Dolores. The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996. Hermann, A.H. A History of the Czechs. London: Allen Lane, 1975. Remapping and Repopulating the Geographical Past 157 Jones, Sian and Sharon Pay. «The Legacy of Eve.» The Politics of the Past. Ed. Peter Gathercole and David Lowenthal. London: Unwin Hyman, 1990. 160-71. Kammen, Michael. Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1991. Kural, Vaclav. Konflikt anstatt Gemeinschaft? : Tschechen und Deutsche im Tschechoslowakischen Staat (1918-1938). Praha: Ustav mezinarodnich vztahu, 2001. LaBelle, Jenijoy. Herself Beheld: The Literature of the Looking Glass. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1988. Luža, Radomir. The Transfer of the Sudeten Germans: A Study of Czech-German Relations, 1933-1962. New York: New York University Press, 1964. Low, Setha M. On the Plaza: The Politics of Public Space and Culture. Austin: U of Texas P, 2000. Mamatey, Victor S., and Radomir Luža, eds. A History of the Czechoslovak Republic 1918-1948. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973. Osborne, Peter. New Zealand conference program «Creativity in Exile,» July 2003. Prinz, Friedrich. Nation und Heimat: Beiträge zur böhmischen und sudetendeutschen Geschichte. München: Sudetendeutsches Archiv, 2003. Schlögel, Karl. Im Raum lesen wir die Zeit: Über Zivilisationsgeschichte und Geopolitik. München: Carl Hanser Verlag, 2003. Smelser, Ronald M. The Sudeten Problem, 1933-1938: Volkstumspolitik and the Formulation of Nazi Foreign Policy. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1975. Spain, Daphne. Gendered Spaces. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina Press, 1992. Tampke, Jürgen. Czech-German Relations and the Politics of Central Europe: From Bohemia to the EU. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Tielsch, Ilse. Die Ahnenpyramide. Graz: Verlag Styria, 1980. -. Heimatsuchen. Graz: Verlag Styria, 1982. -. Die Früchte der Tränen. Graz: Verlag Styria, 1988. Trommler, Frank. «Forum: German Studies and Globalization/ Space instead of Time: Recasting the New Paradigm.» German Quarterly. 78 (2005): 240-42. Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG Postfach 25 60 · D-72015 Tübingen · Fax (0 7071) 97 97-11 Internet: www.francke.de · E-Mail: info@francke.de Genderfragen und Identitätskonstruktionen stehen im Mittelpunkt des vorliegenden Forschungsbandes, der die rasante Entwicklung und politische Kraft der internationalen Frauenbewegung innerhalb der österreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie darstellt. Ein besonderes Augenmerk gilt den jeweiligen Frauenbewegungen in den Kronländern der Monarchie, ihren intellektuellen und praktischen Vorstellungen und Zielen sowie ihrer speziellen Bedeutung im Zusammenhang mit dem erstarkenden Nationalismus und anderen Bewegungen. Auf beeindruckende Weise wird die Diskrepanz zwischen modernen emanzipatorischen Entwürfen und den sie begleitenden patriarchalen Praktiken nachgezeichnet, sodass ein lebendiges, von Brüchen geprägtes Bild der Frauenfrage in der späten österreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie entsteht. Waltraud Heindl / Edit Király / Alexandra Millner (Hrsg.) Frauenbilder, feministische Praxis und nationales Bewusstsein in Österreich- Ungarn 1867-1914 Kultur - Herrschaft - Differenz Band 8 2006, VIII, 273 Seiten, 2 Abb., € [D] 49,00/ SFR 84,00 ISBN 13: 978-3-7720-8131-6 Faschinger’s Aesthetic Analysis of Power Relations in Wiener Passion MARIA-REGINA KECHT R ICE U NIVERSITY «Nicht die Feinde des weiblichen Geschlechts sind es, welche gegen dessen Emancipation sich auflehnen, sondern dessen wärmste und aufrichtigste Freunde. Nur wer das Weib achtet und liebt, wer es anbetet und verehrt, kann sein höchstes Glück darin finden, es zu bevormundschaften und die schwere Last des unbestrittenen Ober-Regiments auf sich zu nehmen.» Anton J. Grosshoffinger, Die Schicksale der Frauen und die Prostitution (1847; 15) «It seems to me … that the real political task in a society such as ours is to criticize the working of institutions which appear to be both neutral and independent; to criticize them in such a manner that the political violence which has always exercised itself obscurely through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight them.» Michel Foucault, «Human Nature: Justice versus Power» (1974; Rabinow 6) A cursory look at the original jacket of the hard-cover edition of Faschinger’s Wiener Passion - with its creamy and reddish-brown colors and its depiction of a small café table covered with a white tablecloth - may evoke in the prospective reader a whole series of clichés about Vienna. It most likely includes the image of Vienna as a historically important, pleasant, entertaining, culturally rich, and music-filled metropolis that attracts hundreds of thousands of international tourists every year. They come to admire the splendor of Vienna’s imperial and royal past and are captivated by the city’s successful strategies for making history come alive - at least the part of history that is intended to be enshrined in cultural memory and thus solidify a positive national identity one can refer to proudly. Even if the jacket design of Faschinger’s novel and its back-cover twosentence plot summary appeal to the mind-set sketched above, the story of Wiener Passion, running to more than 550 pages, presents two alternative models of Vienna. Each breaks with cherished myths, and neither one would be ratified by the municipal tourist board. There are two distinct story lines which, though separated by a hundred years, interweave and connect in fanciful ways. The plot set in today’s Vienna functions as a 181-page frame for the 375-page story-within-a-story that takes us back to the last decades of the nineteenth century. Faschinger’s satirical view of modern Austria’s capital 160 Maria-Regina Kecht focuses on its musical traditions and cultural institutions, as well as on its cosmopolitan image, with plenty of comical elements; her critical and polemical narration about the center of the monarchy is more encompassing in thematic scope and far more realistic, notwithstanding the inclusion of some light-hearted legends and lore. She imaginatively revives a part of the city’s fin-de-siècle history that has been ignored and forgotten. In the protagonist, Rosa Havelka, a young Bohemian immigrant seeking employment in Vienna, Faschinger creates a «life story» that allows her to pursue the feminist and engagé political agenda of her previous novels, so despite the familiar delightful humor and the elaborate nature of her yarn, Faschinger’s Wiener Passion is a profoundly serious portrait of the sordid reality most inhabitants of Vienna endured in the late nineteenth century. Through her choice of topic and her expansive, well-researched treatment of the fictional history, Faschinger breaks new literary ground. 1 Anyone familiar with European literature is likely to recall grim depictions of London, Paris, Berlin, or St. Petersburg, but will find it difficult to point to an imaginary cityscape of Vienna that goes much beyond the boundary of the Ringstraße and the milieu of aristocrats, intellectuals, and liberal bourgeoisie. As intricately as the names Stefan Zweig, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and Arthur Schnitzler are connected with the city of Vienna, they, among others, have contributed to the discursive construction of an exclusively high-culture metropolis. Discussions of modernity or nostalgia for «the world of yesterday» are squarely located inside the Ring and, as Wolfgang Maderthaner and Lutz Musner note, «Thema ist ein imaginiertes, historisiertes und naturalistisch geordnetes Wien, in dem alle Ströme europäischer Kultur zusammengeflossen sind und dessen Multiethnizität nicht als Quelle politischer und kultureller Konflikte, sondern als quasi alchimistische Voraussetzung eines speziellen Genius loci entschlüsselt wird, dem es […] gelänge, alle Spannungen in Harmonie aufzulösen und dadurch ein spezielles Wienerisches Flair zu schaffen» (69). What is entirely ignored and what has been largely excluded from preservation in (and thus the transmission of) cultural memory is the following: namely the history and reality of the life led by the vast majority of Viennese, who struggled for subsistence as workers, craftsmen, domestic servants, seasonal migrant laborers, or homeless and down-and-out men and women. This is indeed the «invisible modernity» of the metropolis; this is the «other» Vienna so compellingly analyzed by Maderthaner and Musner - and by Faschinger, who insists on creatively inverting common modes of perception, and thereby pays tribute to these forgotten individuals of fin-de-siècle Vienna. 2 Wiener Passion is about victims: against a well-drawn panorama of economically exploited and socially marginalized characters, we are asked to ac- Faschinger’s Aesthetic Analysis of Power Relations 161 company Rosa Havelka on the thorny and painful journey through her short life, which ends in execution on the gallows. (As one can delineate fourteen stations of this woman’s passion, the narrative structure might be considered an irreverent debunking of Catholicism through parodistic inversion.) The author, however, is not really interested in the unhappy story of the orphaned Bohemian country girl, who is lured to seek a modicum of well-being amidst the renowned splendor of the Viennese capital. Rather, Faschinger is intent on revealing the multiple social and ideological forces that effectively constitute Rosa Havelka as a female subject and place her repeatedly into destructive power relations. In her own remarks on the plot of Wiener Passion, Faschinger observed: Opfer und Täter sind zwei Seiten einer Münze, das gehört immer zusammen. Immer. Täter sind nur möglich, weil Opfer möglich sind. […] Weil die Opfer mitmachen. Aber manchmal sind die Zwänge ja so stark, dass man von vornherein kaum Chancen hat … [wenn es] um wirtschaftliche Zwänge [geht], wo die Befreiung sehr schwierig oder nahezu unmöglich ist. Da wird ein konsequenter Niedergang erzählt, der Niedergang einer Person mit vielen Begabungen, dadurch, dass sie bestimmte Normen einfach annimmt. (Roethke 56) She demonstrates that the protagonist’s downfall is brought about by her unquestioning acceptance of particular accepted norms enforced by means of various disciplinary practices and penalizing strategies. The novel can be considered a poignant artistic intervention on behalf of the most downtrodden and abused of fin-de-siècle Viennese society, namely its female domestic servants. In taking up their case, Faschinger restores suppressed history and symbolically returns lost human dignity to them, 3 but even more importantly, she engages in a political struggle to unmask the insidious power/ knowledge complex and - to stay with Foucault’s concepts - a struggle to identify the «technologies» effecting the subjection of individuals. From Faschinger’s earlier novels and her comments in various interviews we know she is convinced that any hope of altering unequal power relations and eliminating unfair gender conditions depends on our understanding the past and our ability to reconquer territory that has been lost to pervasive cultural practices of discrimination and exclusion. 4 Wiener Passion is a fascinating exploration of an overwhelmingly androcentric network of power and its manifold strategies of surveillance and control. My reading of Faschinger’s text is guided by Foucault’s genealogical studies of the concept of the subject and will concentrate on the process of Rosa Havelka’s subjectification (assujettissement) by means of disciplinary measures aimed at producing «docile» bodies. Discipline refers here to mechanics of power that «define how one may have a hold over others’ bodies, not only 162 Maria-Regina Kecht so that they may do what one wishes, but so that they may operate as one wishes, with the techniques, the speed and the efficiency that one determines» (Foucault, Discipline 138). The effecting of a «docile» (female) body - referring quite literally to the physiological being, but also implying the social, psychological, and mental state of the subject - is the work of institutions and fields of discourse that can all be subsumed under the concept «pastoral power.» As the term suggests, «pastoral power» claims to assure individual salvation, and its practitioners need to know a great deal about individuals and their thinking and feeling in order to look after them effectively. Pastoralism drives the activities of the modern welfare state and characterizes the efforts of education, medicine, jurisprudence, science, and so on. In fact, this is the individualizing aspect of government in its original role of designating «the way in which the conduct of individuals or of groups might be directed: the government of children, of souls, of communities, of families, of the sick […]. To govern, in this sense, is to structure the possible field of action of others» (Foucault, «The Subject» 221). The «governing» modes of various institutions that take a special salvation-oriented interest in Rosa Havelka will be discussed in the next several pages. I will examine Faschinger’s aesthetic depiction of the patriarchal «will to power» and, specifically, the desire to subjugate women for the purpose of creating and maintaining a healthy social body that relies on the acceptance of seemingly natural categories of masculinity and femininity. Faschinger identifies several spheres and their representatives as collaborators in the complex measures of creating «docile» female bodies: at the most individualized level, the family and, within it, mothers as primary caretakers; the school system for girls administered by Catholic nuns; the health-care system, which becomes a vast domain of «bio-power» over bodies and minds; the legal system and correctional facilities dealing with deviance and resistance; the Catholic Church, which presents the hierarchical social order as divine order; and, most influential of all in inculcating values and identities, capitalist economics with its coercive forces. So the question arises - given Faschinger’s feminist agenda - how does she succeed in imparting an empowering perspective, despite the fact that Rosa Havelka’s life story spirals from one subordinate subject position to the next and is, as the author suggests, an unavoidable decline and fall? Answering this question requires a closer look at the process of subjectification. Apart from a socially pervasive gender hierarchy which ranks Rosa Havelka as a female, per definitionem, in an inferior position, there are various categories within the order of public, hegemonic discourse that, in effect, create her Faschinger’s Aesthetic Analysis of Power Relations 163 «deviant» identity. This, in turn, enables and results in a pattern of dependent relationships that allow the more powerful party to exert disciplinary practices on her body, mind, and soul. Having been born out of wedlock - the daughter of an uneducated Bohemian cook in a Viennese household in Marienbad - Rosa is the embodiment of her mother’s sinfulness. According to the Catholic Church, Rosa thus brings with her a predisposition towards an immoral life and requires special surveillance and guidance. As a domestic servant with bourgeois families in Vienna, she is not just factually at the lowest economic level, she is also at the mercy of employers who expect dishonest, deceptive, and unruly behavior of «her kind.» Her national identity (Czech) puts her at odds with the dominant German population in Vienna at a time when mass immigration from the Habsburg crown lands was perceived as an imminent threat to the well-being of the royal and imperial capital. When Rosa steals a musical instrument in order to make a living as a street musician, she thus «confirms» that her «true» immoral and criminal self is in need of training at a correctional facility. Trying to obtain food and shelter through occasional prostitution, Rosa joins a large number of young down-and-out females whose moraland healththreatening conduct requires the strong intervention of the police vice squad and the medical experts. Displaying psychological disturbances scientists declared «typical» of the female nature, Rosa becomes a case to be treated in psychiatric wards. Shock treatment and other therapeutic interventions are applied to regulate her behavior and thus protect society from any dangers. So the emerging picture is clear: in the scheme of late nineteenth-century bourgeois Austrian society, Rosa is an unproductive, corrupt, sick, and sinful creature whose crime of stabbing her husband to death is an entirely «logical» climactic ending to her deviant life trajectory. From the reader’s point of view, however, Rosa’s own reflections on her life - as constructed by Faschinger - are more likely to be persuasive. She believes «daß eine Lebensgestaltung gemäß der den Menschen von Religion und Jurisprudenz vorgeschriebenen Richtlinien für Individuen meines Zuschnitts nichts anderes als die Katastrophe, den Untergang zur Folge haben muß» (92). It is a complex web of normalizing practices - many «prescribed guiding principles» - that, despite their pastoral intent, have destructive consequences. Central to the mechanisms of discipline and punishment is, as stated above, the (female) body, and, in many variations, female sexuality. Rosa is raised to serve others - in every possible respect. Her interaction with the world is based on the premise that it is a Christian woman’s duty to respond obediently and joyfully to the desires and demands of others. Therefore, Rosa wants to be docile and compliant even if it means that in practically all rela- 164 Maria-Regina Kecht tionships, professional as well as personal and intimate, she is forced to accept and/ or adopt others’ opinions, wishes, and desires, and submit to them. Regardless of whether the dominant person in a series of oppressive and inegalitarian relationships is male or female, it is the Law of the Father that governs the process of subjectification. Rosa’s relationship to herself and her body is profoundly shaped by the dynamics of patriarchal disciplinary power. In fact, the effectiveness of this power reveals itself in «its ability to grasp the individual at the level of [her] self-understanding - of [her] very identity and the norms that govern [her] practices of self-constitution» (Sawicki 161). Rosa is either dependent on others or under their control, which makes «even modes of self-governance […] perniciously disciplinary» (162). Readers familiar with Faschinger will not be surprised to learn that Rosa’s subject formation originates in the upbringing her mother provides. 5 Far from offering any empowerment and thus being a source of affirmative subject formation, Libussa Tichy, a sexually abused and exploited domestic servant herself, is unable to muster resistance to her employer or teach her daughter to learn from her mother’s suffering. 6 On the contrary, she dogmatically instructs her child in the Christian obligation to accept one’s social and economic position because «es wäre nicht nur unvernünftig, sondern verstieße gegen die göttliche Weltordnung, […] sich gegen eine dienende Existenz aufzulehnen. Eine dienende Existenz sei eine gottgefällige Existenz. […] Der Wunsch, anderen zu helfen, sie zu unterstützen und zu entlasten, entspreche einem natürlichen Bedürfnis der weiblichen Seele …» (95). Clearly, Catholic teachings and general misogynous ideas of the «nature» of the female species converge here. There is no reason to speculate whether, in the story’s historical context, a person like Libussa Tichy would have been familiar with the physiological and psychological constructions of gender difference propagated in scientific as well as popular publications of the time. She would most likely not have been aware of the power/ knowledge complex responsible for the polarization of gender characteristics and the «natural» derivation of typical and acceptable social and cognitive abilities from the biological-anthropological constitution of femaleness. 7 Nevertheless, Libussa Tichy understood that a woman’s duty rested in her willing subordination to any man’s wishes. Her material legacy to her daughter appropriately includes items essential to a good life as she sees it: a prayer book to help strengthen virtue and joyful suffering; a small statue of the Virgin Mary, most revered accessory to the Lord in seeking forgiveness; and four cookbooks and the Goldenes Hausfrauenbuch, an invaluable guide and reference for any self-respecting woman eager to please a man. Faschinger’s Aesthetic Analysis of Power Relations 165 Not only does Rosa’s mother avoid enlightening her daughter on issues of sexuality, offering myriad superstitious tales instead which completely confound the girl and leave her clueless about her body, she also instills in Rosa the conviction that life’s twists of fate call for «Nachsicht und Geduld,» «Barmherzigkeit und Vergebung» (117). This maternal process of subjection is political in its function and pastoral in its benign intent, but disastrous in its consequences. It is control within the debilitating norms of patriarchy, and it certainly does not empower Rosa or enhance her autonomy. The mother figure executes socialization in compliance with male-defined notions of acceptability and thus helps effect the «docile and productive» body desired by modern social-power networks. It is worth noting that Faschinger’s Wiener Passion - a story devoid of fathers - presents a whole spectrum of mother figures skillfully disciplining their children, exerting stifling control over them, and successfully laying the groundwork for the emergence of individuals who experience forms of subjection without resistance. 8 Since these women are themselves the products of far more powerful practices of subjectification, Faschinger’s biting criticism is reserved for the representatives of the male power/ knowledge complex. In her aesthetic analysis of the power relations that hold Rosa Havelka in their tight disciplinary and discursive grip, Faschinger points her accusatory finger at the institution of the Catholic Church. Its hypocritical pastoral preaching to the poor and disenfranchised, indoctrinating them to endure their miserable lives and promising them happiness after death, not only strengthen an unjust class structure, but also support a body intent on individual isolation and normalization. In Wiener Passion, the Church and its servants refer to God’s will when they assist in the state’s efforts to «forge a docile body that may be subjected, used, transformed, and improved» (Rabinow 7), and when they collaborate with the state in measures «to normalize anomalies through corrective or therapeutic procedures» (Rabinow 21). Since the Church, in Faschinger’s opinion, sides with the powers that be in order to preserve its own dominance, it inevitably assumes a profoundly androcentric position in its care of the religious community. Women are idolized, if we are to understand the priests’ and nuns’ views in Wiener Passion correctly, as models of devotion, self-sacrifice, and moral virtue as long as they are willing to follow one of two prescribed paths: either that of a loving wife serving her family, or that of a celibate nun serving the bridegroom Jesus Christ. The premise is that if the virtue of demure, modest, and submissive behavior is not nurtured, a woman easily loses her moral compass and strays from the «prescribed guiding principles.» Since «by nature» woman is a weak vessel, 9 the risk of her 166 Maria-Regina Kecht yielding to illicit sexual desires is a real concern to the Church and the state. Moral education emphasizing both the preciousness of virginity and the duty of marital procreation is thus considered critical in these concerted efforts at preventing the degeneration of society. Rosa Havelka encounters the fervor of salvation through religious edification throughout her life. Early on, the country pastor in Marienbad teaches Rosa an incontestable lesson in the rewards of feminine modesty. He refuses Rosa’s dying mother the blessing of Holy Water from Lourdes for which the child comes begging in order to attempt to save her mother’s life. With pompous self-righteousness, the priest expresses regret that he is unable to help but says it would not be Christian to do so because Libussa Tichy «habe sich im Laufe ihres zugegebenermaßen mühseligen Lebens leider eine schwere Verfehlung zuschulden kommen lassen, sie habe einen Fehltritt begangen, der sozusagen am Anfang [von Rosas] Existenz stehe, einen gravierenden Fehler» (114). Miraculous water must be reserved for those women, «die die schwierige Aufgabe, nicht vom Pfad der Tugend abzuweichen, besser bewältigt hätten als [Rosa’s] Mutter» (115). Even though Rosa is too young and innocent to comprehend what terrible mistake her mother made that would disqualify her from receiving the comfort of Lourdes water, she surmises that Libussa Tichy must have sinned gravely, thus not deserving to be saved from death. What harsher punishment can there be? Rosa’s sinful predisposition - being the «Domestikenbastard» (101) - invites special attention and Christian disciplinary measures on the part of the nuns of the Ursuline convent where Rosa is schooled after her mother’s death. It is there that Rosa is instructed to develop a different voice - literally, through discipline applied to her vocal cords in order to transform her natural alto into an angelic soprano, and figuratively, through prayer, Bible study, and hagiographic reading to redeem her descent and background. The nuns seem to believe that if Rosa follows God’s calling and enters the service of the Church, she may achieve the perfection of Catholic normalization. And, for a while, Rosa makes progress in this direction. She is a quiet, withdrawn girl, who loves to read stories about saintly lives and tries to comfort herself by contrasting her mother’s death to the horrible sufferings of Catholic martyrs: «Ein so wißbegieriges Kind, […] ein ganz und gar verinnerlichtes Naturell, ein von Grund auf kontemplativer Charakter. […] Man dürfe sich einiges von Rosa erwarten» (150). Not surprisingly, in their educational endeavor the Ursulines also take perfecting the female body very seriously. Like all the other girls at the school, Rosa is constantly told - in vivid metaphorical images from «Flora and Fauna» (153) - that a young woman’s most important quality is her chastity. Faschinger’s Aesthetic Analysis of Power Relations 167 Avoiding any mentally contaminating contact with sin and therefore not enlightening the adolescents on issues of anatomy and biology, the nuns engage in a discourse on sexuality that constructs femininity as a vulnerable amalgam of virtues that require utmost protection against ubiquitous hazards, and the responsibility for successfully guarding the treasure of «Sittsamkeit, Keuschheit, Unschuld, Tugendhaftigkeit und Zucht» (153) rests completely with the woman. Just as Faschinger starkly reveals the Marienbad priest’s hypocrisy and misogyny through Rosa’s encounter with him, she unmasks the nuns’ selfserving, bigoted practice of Christian doctrines by creating a psychological situation that calls for pedagogical sensitivity and empathy rather than moral outrage and stern punishment. When Rosa befriends Olga, a converted Jew, it is the bond between two lonely outsiders. Their adolescent rapture for each other makes them forget their sense of isolation, and their homoerotic desires allow them to discover their bodies, new sensations, and emotions. However, as soon as their relationship is exposed and identified as gravely sinful and deviant, the will of a furious God must be executed: Olga is dismissed from school - her immoral behavior is linked to her Jewish origin - and Rosa, having shown so much early promise in leading a virtuous life, is given the opportunity to demonstrate contrition. Her soul is to be saved, her body to be chastened, and, let’s not forget, her voice to be purified (the task assigned, interestingly enough, to the lesbian nun, Sister Perpetua). But this arduous process of Catholic subjectification is thwarted: Olga immediately commits suicide, an act which is neither acknowledged as such nor regretted by the devout women, and Rosa, in utter despair and confusion, runs away from her monastic surroundings. What the Ursulines in Prague may have failed to do, namely exert their pastoral power over a weak and lonely human being in order to assume full control over the subject, the widow Galli in Vienna - a passionate member and honorary chair of the «Wiener Verein zum Schutze christlicher Wertmaßstäbe» (390) - almost succeeds in doing when she offers Rosa employment in her house. Faschinger’s cynical portrait of this pathologically religious woman is not devoid of caricature-like distortions, but it undoubtedly helps to strengthen her ideological argument about the deleterious impact Catholicism has had on the development of subjects. Here we encounter pure, evil lust for domination hidden under the cloak of Christian salvation and Nächstenliebe! Rosa’s victimization at the hands of the widow is possible only because she has already internalized norms of obedience and submission; she has interiorized the disciplinary gaze and created modes of self-governance. Thus she is willing to comply with «den Befehlen der 168 Maria-Regina Kecht Herrschaft, auch den befremdlichsten und widersinnigsten, ohne Ausnahme» (336). At first it seems as though Galli is coming to Rosa’s rescue since she is unemployed and without shelter. We are even led to believe that the kind lady is in solidarity with members of her sex when she comments, «insbesondere wir Frauen seien der Schlechtigkeit der Welt schutzlos preisgegeben» (318). But this veneer of compassion and empathy is stripped away swiftly, exposing a zealous evangelism that endorses penitential exercises and self-chastisement to redeem the world’s evils. Rosa’s feminine talent of embroidery is utilized to expand the widow’s vast decorative collection of artistic Holy Crosses 10 and biblical quotations, and Rosa’s religious schooling makes her an ideal reader of the Old Testament. Both practices are intended to nourish and purify the girl’s soul. When these self-disciplining exercises are insufficient in the struggle against the seductions of the world, Galli physically punishes Rosa, who spends her minimal free time with a pleasant young fellow, strolling through Prater Park and enjoying the popular social ritual of the Fünfkreuzertanz. Later, left to her own recognizance, Rosa feels forced to demonstrate her remorse through self-flagellation: «[W]ir seien Sünder, alle, alle seien wir Sünder vor dem Herrn und müßten Buße tun bis ans Ende unserer Tage, damit wir nicht in ewige Verdammnis gestoßen würden, auch ich, ja, vor allem ich müsse mein begehrliches junges Fleisch züchtigen, um nicht alle Qualen der Hölle erdulden zu müssen, sie befehle es mir» (334-35). The body becomes the object of painful disciplinary retribution. The weakness of human flesh must be penalized in order to restore control over the expression of moral deviance and to regain God’s love. Rosa’s body needs to have its inferior status inscribed through the lashing of the «Lederschnur, in die spitze Metallteilchen eingeflochten waren» (336). In this way, she learns techniques to regulate her behavior and voluntarily - ultimately, naturally - produce a «docile» and «subjected» body. Faschinger’s portrayal of the process of Entmündigung and humiliation is, despite its comic exaggerations and its references to the widow’s dabbling in magic, frightening. In fact, we see Rosa’s submission to Galli’s ruthless domination deteriorate into total surrender, leaving a suicide attempt - the extinction of the self - as her only recourse. In Wiener Passion we meet a goodly number of other impressively pious and ostensibly caring men and women who participate in the discursive production and upholding of the Catholic power/ knowledge complex. Their share in the application of pastoral «technologies,» their contribution to the subjectification of Rosa Havelka and thus the effecting of her as an individual - as an inferior, depraved female - is what Faschinger resolutely condemns. Faschinger’s Aesthetic Analysis of Power Relations 169 As was pointed out earlier, so-called pastoral power has moved beyond its ecclesiastical institutionalization in the eighteenth century, and its functions have spread and multiplied since then. The modern state has made good use of this isolating (and at the same time all-inclusive) approach to the organization and control of the social body. In Wiener Passion we witness the workings of jurisprudence and its correctional facilities as they pursue the truth of their disciplinary discourse and intervene on behalf of Rosa Havelka’s improvement and, of course, much more importantly, on behalf of a healthy society. Since the family was considered the sanctuary of personal happiness and the foundation of the state, late nineteenth-century legal discipline enshrined a very gender-specific type of juridical truth in order to regulate family relations and spouses’ rights and duties, as well as disciplinary action in case of transgression; and these laws also applied to domestic servants living and working within families: «Die Rangordnung von Mann und Frau wurde […] im Sinne des patriarchalischen Systems strikte festgelegt: Dem Mann wurde die unumstrittene Vorherrschaft zuerkannt» (Heindl 162). Not only were women not recognized as bodies corporate (Rechtspersonen), hence having to accept the «natural» abrogation of many rights in favor of their husbands or fathers, they were also completely dependent on a man’s rules and decisions. The male head of household was, of course, in charge of the property, including the wife’s. He also had the right to see all his wishes fulfilled - by his wife, his children, and his servants. These wishes were not infrequently construed to include sexual rights over his female servants. Not fulfilling the wishes of his domestic authority could lead to legally condoned physical punishment. 11 Obviously, the rigorous Austrian Dienstbotenordnung of 1810 not only reflected the general patriarchal jurisdiction, but also legitimized arbitrary authority over domestic employees, the vast majority of whom were female. As social historians have underscored, this authority extended beyond the actual human labor of the subordinate; it usually encompassed all aspects of the individual’s being, thus entangling her in a web of subjectifying practices (see Tichy 34). The Dienstbotenordnung consisted of 161 paragraphs effectively legalizing abuse and exploitation. Like Rosa Havelka in Wiener Passion, servants had no legally stipulated working hours and were «on duty» for sixteen to eighteen hours a day; they had no protection against physical overexertion; they could not refuse any assignment without risking dismissal for insubordination; they had no privacy and minimal freedom when off-duty; they were given wretched accommodations, often in closets or bathrooms, and were not allowed to have regular meals and frequently starved; they had no right to health insurance and were rarely allowed to report sick since phy- 170 Maria-Regina Kecht sicians usually sided with the employers; and they could not appeal to the police when they were treated with brutality and violence because the representatives of law enforcement protected the socially powerful. When, in 1851, a mandatory Dienstbotenbuch was introduced - a kind of report booklet that allowed employers to record their evaluations based on their conscience (! ) - the degree of disciplinary power over domestic servants increased even further. Not guided by any official criteria, the law permitted employers to judge a servant’s «Fleiß, Treue und Sittsamkeit» (Tichy 38) and, since the booklet had to be presented to each potential new employer, the servant was totally dependent for survival on her previous employer’s good will. Judging by the statistics of female domestic servants who lost their positions permanently and drifted off into prostitution, goodwill was hard to come by. 12 All these legal and historical realities are incorporated into Faschinger’s narrative about Rosa’s Viennese work experience. 13 We see her naive acceptance of her first position as a servant in the household of the upper-middle-class family of Oberpostrat Roman Lindner, where she is immediately informed that domestic law and order are to be strictly maintained. In case of disobedience, «sei die Herrschaft […] befugt, [ihr] gegenüber Züchtigungsmittel anzuwenden» (213). Rosa dutifully carries out all the assigned tasks, which amount to corporeal punishment as a matter of work routine (heavy labor, insufficient nutrition, sleep deprivation). Due to exhaustion she can barely keep up with the demands, thus seeming to validate her employers’ notion of slovenly, disobedient, and unqualified Bohemian maids. When she collapses and loses consciousness, she is given neither aid nor sympathy; on the contrary, she is scolded for her carelessness and instantly fired. In her servant booklet the Lindners record «labiler, schwer lenkbarer Charakter» and «unüberwindliche Arbeitsscheu» (229). With the help of a friend, Rosa succeeds in finding another position as a maid, this time with nobility in an apartment on the Ringstraße. For even less remuneration and less food, Rosa is supposed to do domestic chores and take care of the family’s small children. Faschinger’s depiction of the master’s and mistress’s hypocrisy makes the ruthless exploitation of women servants in their legal helplessness quite obvious, no matter how hilarious the representation may be: Auch was meine Ernährung betreffe, müsse ich einsehen, daß sie bei den gegenwärtigen Lebensmittelpreisen nicht allzu üppig sein könne, doch sei darauf hinzuweisen, daß zu reichhaltige Gerichte sehr rasch zu Fettleibigkeit und in weiterer Folge zu verschiedenen Erkrankungen des Organismus führten, weshalb eine weniger opulente Verpflegung, die sich auf natürliche und schmackhafte Kost beschränke, vom gesundheitlichen Standpunkt aus ohnehin vorzuziehen sei, ich wolle mir doch Faschinger’s Aesthetic Analysis of Power Relations 171 meine kräftige Konstitution erhalten, der menschliche Körper, vor allem der jugendliche, komme im allgemeinen mit einer wesentlich begrenzteren Nahrungszufuhr aus, als gemeinhin angenommen werde. (256) This pseudo-rational explanation for the aristocratic von Schreyvogels’ starving Rosa in accordance with some official health standard is a vivid expression of pastoral power that pretends to look out for Rosa’s well-being - her nutritional salvation - while effectively controlling her behavior and maximizing her dependency. And its consequences in the process of the subordinate’s subjectification are virtually pre-programmed: constantly hungry, Rosa secretly starts taking food from the kitchen and cellar; she becomes a thief, placing herself outside the rules, not only of the «Regulations Regarding Servants.» She manages to cover up her misdeed through lies but still loses her position when she is reported to have let the children under her care interact with ruffians and vagabonds. Her character is now described as an «Ausbund an Hinterhältigkeit und Verlogenheit, ja […] geradezu gemeingefährlich» (267). Such insidious qualities call for instant dismissal, and Rosa is lucky not to be taken to the police. In the household of the von Schreyvogels, we realize, a servant’s corrupting influence will not be tolerated; different standards, however, apply to the master. His authority over others and their duties and services - endorsed by law, as we recall - includes sexual control over their bodies (Verfügungsgewalt). Rosa is seduced by the artful, skirt-chasing nobleman and gets every encouragement «ihm auch auf diesem neuen Gebiet zu Diensten zu sein» (278). When the amorous affair loses its charm, and Rosa’s docile body is pregnant, the power dynamics find yet another expression. We witness Faschinger’s sarcastic unmasking of self-serving male power and its willful effect on an inferior (female) subject: Rosa is stigmatized as a typical domestic servant who cunningly and calculatingly uses her claim of pregnancy for extortion. Any responsibility for the situation is vehemently denied: Man kenne die weiblichen Dienstboten, die sich mit solcherlei Hintergedanken auf ein Verhältnis mit ihrem Herrn einließen, zur Genüge, es seien in der überwiegenden Mehrzahl flatterhafte und raffgierige Mädchen, die sich während ihrer Ausgehnachmittage nach Gutdünken mit Männern ihres Standes herumtrieben und, wenn diese Liebschaften Folgen zeitigten, ihren Dienstgebern die Verantwortung dafür in die Schuhe zu schieben trachteten, um frech Kapital daraus zu schlagen. (285) Given the claim that Rosa has demonstrated promiscuity, mendacity, and rapacity, it is obvious that such an individual represents a danger to the moral fiber of a decent family 14 and to society. A vast legal corpus was available and 172 Maria-Regina Kecht experts from various disciplines could be called upon to provide the necessary evidence of such danger should the servant girl dare to turn to the courts. As indicated above, in late nineteenth-century Austria there was no gender equality before the law, and this was based on the accepted «scientific truth» positing a «natural» difference between the sexes that proved the female to be inferior and deficient. 15 So information provided to the courts or the police by women was, as a matter of rule, not taken seriously, particularly when the woman was of low social status. We see this exemplified later in the novel when Rosa finally turns to the authorities not to request any help for herself, but to prevent her husband, Karel Havelka, a mentally disturbed sexoffender, from persecuting and assaulting Viennese women. At the police station her account is ridiculed - «[sie] solle keinen Unsinn reden» (541) - and her insistence on the accuracy of her statement is countered by a mocking reference to the typical, insane fantasies of a housewife. Rosa’s customary submissiveness is displaced by obstinacy as soon as she learns that the police suspect a man who is totally innocent of the serial attacks. Her plea to be given credence cannot persuade the officer, however; on the contrary, Rosa is immediately accused of being drunk and threatened with appropriate legal action. We readers, of course, already know from the plot development that Rosa speaks the truth and has every reason to worry about her perverse husband’s continuing crimes. We also know, however, that within the discursive practices of jurisprudence, Rosa’s truth will not be heard because it is not attached to a body of power. Her opinions are automatically disqualified because, as a woman, she is neither entitled to disagree with male authority - particularly not in a public context - nor trusted to have any sense of judgment. Like most of Rosa’s contemporaries, the policemen of Wiener Passion are convinced that women are hysterical by nature. Oddly enough, this characteristic - anatomically derived, ostensibly scientific evidence for female weakness - is not considered a mitigating quality when Rosa is tried for stabbing Karel Havelka to death while he is attacking yet another young woman. Female aggression was, as historians have noted, treated far more harshly by the Austrian courts of the time than male acts of violence. Killing your husband - not just any man - was an additional aggravating factor, and it did not matter whether the crime was committed in self-defense or in defense of someone else (for details, see Kolleth). Rosa is convicted of murder and executed on the gallows. The judicial system fails to recognize its mistake. Power and truth are identical. The systematic, normalizing processes of the law have identified the anomaly of this particular individual, and the legal web of supposedly objective codification has created Faschinger’s Aesthetic Analysis of Power Relations 173 a murderer out of Rosa Havelka. Overwhelming power relations have, as Faschinger illustrates, an immediate hold upon this subject and her body. As we have seen, the Catholic Church and the state’s jurisprudence provide various «prescribed guiding principles» and impose multiple disciplinary practices on Rosa, but Faschinger adds another institution or discipline to the power/ knowledge complex. She identifies medicine as an injurious influence on woman’s perception and understanding of her self. By the time of Rosa’s «passion,» medicine had acquired the reputation of being the most progressive science, and it had advanced to the status of being the superior discipline in diagnosing the pathologies of modern society and eliminating them through appropriate therapies: «Damit lag das öffentliche Wohl und der allgemeine Fortschritt des Menschengeschlechtes in den Händen der Medizin» (Bührmann 86). The technologies and practices of such bio-power turned out to be particularly manipulative of women. We must not forget that the nineteenth-century ascendancy of the «Wissenschaft vom Weib» - the favorite preoccupation of established biologists, physicians, and anthropologists, as well as moralists - had its consequences. It quickly developed into a major invasive control mechanism over the female body, female sexuality, and, by derivation again, over acceptable feminine behavior. 16 Clearly, discourse about the physical, mental, and psychological nature of «healthy,» «good,» and «sane» women and all forms of gender-specific deviance was patriarchal. This seemed perfectly logical to the participants in the relevant discussions, since male thinkers had already convinced themselves that man was the representative species of humanity in general and fully responsible for the rise of civilization, and that woman was his polar opposite in every regard. 17 Woman, being different from man, was a deviation from the norm, and therefore she required closer scientific scrutiny. Faschinger is obviously quite familiar with this kind of truth production. Her satirical portrayal of misogynous medical beliefs and practices humorously debunks the nineteenth-century concept of a «natural» gender difference and underscores its historical constructedness. Perhaps because of their therapeutic emphasis on the subject’s confessions and thus their very individualized incursions into the private (female) self, Faschinger chooses the vanguard medical subdisciplines psychiatry and psychoanalysis to illustrate the arrogance and the erroneousness of medicine’s efforts at salvation. 18 Every single example of the intervention of the state’s bio-power and every piece of advice its medical experts dispense in Wiener Passion make it clear that the patient’s or client’s own understanding of the condition under scrutiny is ignored. She lacks the necessary knowledge to make accurate comments 174 Maria-Regina Kecht about her body or mind, and her «naturally» hysterical condition invalidates any of her observations. Instead, ready-made categories of mental and psychological pathologies are quickly evoked, diagnostic judgments pompously enunciated, and therapeutic actions prescribed. Faschinger’s fictional prototype of a medical know-it-all, Dr. Doblhoff, an ambitious academic and civil servant at the largest Viennese insane asylum, is comic in his self-delusions, but our laughter trails off as we recognize the detrimental, even disastrous consequences of the man’s pastoral power. Rosa makes her first acquaintance with Dr. Doblhoff and his wisdom when she finds herself in a straightjacket in a padded cell in the women’s ward at the Alsergrund psychiatric hospital. Widow Galli has had her delivered there after discovering Rosa, in desperation, standing on the windowsill and about to jump out and kill herself. The therapy immediately applied at the hospital - isolation, immobilization, and cold-water dousings - is intended to snap her back to normal. Her suicide attempt is swiftly diagnosed as the culmination of her aberrant inclination to self-punishment, for which Galli has provided persuasive testimony. Rosa’s own insistence that her lacerations are the result of Galli’s frequent corporeal punishment is dismissed as the typical excuse of a sick mind, and Doblhoff does not care to hear about the living situation which has driven her to this impulsive act of despair. A tidy clinical picture is established instead: the physical symptoms of Rosa’s pathological condition are considered to be self-induced, «da [Rosa] offenbar übertrieben strengen Bußpraktiken anhinge, eine Gewohnheit, die gleichfalls nicht für eine robuste geistige Gesundheit spräche und auf die krankhafte Tendenz zur Autopunition schließen lasse» (357). Her deeply disturbed mental state is considered to govern her perceptions, and these are, by deduction, also abnormal. A passage from Wiener Passion will illustrate this and capture the spirit of Faschinger’s rendition of medical discourse, which passes off its disciplining practices as a salutary means of improving the sick self. Rosa describes the scene: Ich fragte den Arzt, in welche Zelle man mich gesperrt und weshalb man mich gefesselt hätte, worauf er meinte, weder würde er das Kabinett, in dem ich mich befände, mit dem etwas abwertenden Begriff Zelle noch das zugegebenermaßen nicht sehr bequeme Kleidungsstück, das mir aus gutem Grund übergestreift worden sei, als Fesselung bezeichnen, das sogenannte Einsperren, das sogenannte Fesseln seien zu nichts anderem als zu meiner Beruhigung und Mäßigung getroffene Maßnahmen, im übrigen würde er die Schwestern veranlassen, mich unverzüglich in den Krankensaal zurückzubringen, das Kabinett stünde schließlich nicht mir allein zur Verfügung, die Anstalt sei überbelegt, es gebe viele, die nur darauf warteten, sich ins Kabinett zurückziehen zu dürfen. (358) Faschinger’s Aesthetic Analysis of Power Relations 175 Rosa is then allowed to spend her time in the company of the mentally retarded, the phobic, and the psychotic, as well as alcoholics. Lacking opportunities for interaction and conversation for months, she reads the few books in her possession - over and over again, until she can recite them by heart and thus entertain herself. Her audible monologues become compulsive, she cannot help but describe out loud everything she does, and soon the other patients react violently to her annoying habit. Medical intervention becomes necessary. Dr. Doblhoff believes that Rosa’s logorrhea, which is the result of «tiefgehende Perturbationen [des] seelischen Zustandes» (360), would in fact mandate her transferal to the ward for the incurably ill/ insane, but given the enormous nuisance she represents to everyone in the ward, she will be discharged. As the reader has seen before, Rosa’s own explanations, causally connecting her utter boredom and loneliness to her compulsive talking and thus denying a chronic or even incurable disease, are patronizingly brushed off as naive and abstruse misconceptions of «hochkomplizierte psychische Vorgänge» (362). In fact, her presumptuous self-diagnosis is considered to confirm the profile of a psychotic patient. In this kind of power game, science becomes an instrument of regulation and subjectification while it repudiates the individual’s own different and largely intuitive understanding. Due to this particular manifestation of the power/ knowledge complex - with Dr. Doblhoff as the key player - Rosa is forced to suppress her voice, question her own judgment, and submit to the wisdom of the medical expert. A hundred pages later when, through a series of coincidences, Rosa accepts Doblhoff’s invitation to work as his cook and housekeeper while his wife is being treated for tuberculosis in far-away resorts, our heroine dutifully internalizes the master’s disciplining practices and becomes her own best censor in controlling her own conduct. In order to please and be accepted as normal, Rosa does not interrupt her employer’s lectures, submits to his opinions, withholds any comments or questions, and learns to demonstrate her participation through «ein, zwei bestätigende, ermutigende oder bedauernde Laute» (475). Observing such obvious progress towards normal feminine behavior, Doblhoff expands the spectrum of domestic services and rewards himself with sexual favors that lead to a promise of marriage, since his wife’s death has been predicted by a team of experts. Faschinger puts her fictional psychiatrist into an increasingly aggressive and antagonistic competition with Dr. Freud, and in this context Doblhoff shifts his research from the study of female hysteria to the examination of the «Funktionieren der menschlichen Seele» (456) and, therefore, to the analysis of dreams. Rosa’s recurrent nocturnal forebodings of Frau Doblhoff’s recu- 176 Maria-Regina Kecht peration and return cannot, however, be accommodated within the complex theoretical framework of dream interpretation and its links to the analyst’s understanding of repressed early childhood sexuality. Of course, as the reader can predict, Rosa’s non-scholarly analysis of her dreams turns out to be confirmed by a telegram announcing the wife’s arrival in Vienna. The proposed wedding is cancelled, Doblhoff returns to his matrimonial routine, and Rosa has his child out of wedlock. As if to prove to us that the medical profession is irrevocably patronizing and doctors are utterly self-satisfied, used to operating in a high-handed manner, and incapable of admitting mistakes, Faschinger brings Doblhoff back to the stage when Rosa grows concerned about her husband’s strange obsession with Sisi, the Empress of Austria. Even though the psychiatrist thinks «er [sei] nahe daran, an der Ignoranz und Unbelehrbarkeit der unteren sozialen Schichten, vor allem an der ihrer weiblichen Angehörigen, zu verzweifeln» (469), he is willing to share his new scientific findings about obsessive-compulsive neurosis. Based on his insights, however, he cannot corroborate Rosa’s reasons for anxiety and subscribe to her suspicion that Havelka may have been assaulting women resembling Sisi. Not only does Doblhoff adamantly deny the possibility that the man’s presumably mild neurosis may lead to violence, he also warns Rosa of symptoms suggesting her relapse into insanity, since her statements about her husband are «ebenso ungeheuerliche wie absurde Anschuldigungen» (536). It is not clear here whether Doblhoff’s scientific hubris or his acute sexism weighs more heavily in his misjudgment. Interestingly enough, Faschinger does not have the disciplining powers of the state medical apparatus bear on Rosa’s (and other minor characters’) prostitution and their «professional hazard,» syphilis, even though these interrelated issues are at the core of late nineteenth-century public debates. In fact, science, government agencies concerned about population regulation and public health, and church institutions all joined forces in combining care and control through a web of strategies to fight unbridled (female) sexuality and its physiologically debilitating and morally corrupting impact. Prostitution was probably the most thoroughly policed human activity in fin-desiècle Vienna! Still, we do not see this kind of surveillance and pastoral power in Wiener Passion. Instead, Faschinger chooses to place Rosa’s termination of her first and unwanted pregnancy, as well as her problems with venereal disease contracted through occasional prostitution, into the hands of a wise woman. Even though Black Sophie, a midwife and skilled abortionist, the «sachkundigste Engelmacherin von Wien» (305), is quite a strange character with a disposition towards superstition, she is the only «expert» in the novel who Faschinger’s Aesthetic Analysis of Power Relations 177 administers truly pastoral power without exerting disciplinary and normalizing control over the subject receiving her aid. Without any invasive procedure she helps Rosa regain control over her body - undo the fruit of too docile a body - and later Black Sophie gives her the right kind of herbal medicine to stop the progress of syphilis. No moralistic exhortations or penalizing actions accompany this intervention of salvation. The contrast to the practices of official medicine is stark and may appear almost facile, but the figure of Black Sophie, living in poverty on the periphery of the city and practicing an alternative (illicit) «Wissenschaft vom Weib» that truly benefits and comforts women in distress, allows Faschinger to introduce a female character who has managed to escape the massive network of socialization and subjectification, and who has thus not been «normalized» by the reach of the power/ knowledge complex. As the focus of this interpretation is on Faschinger’s critique of pastoral power, of institutional bodies of authority offering salvation while effecting the individual’s subjectification, I will not closely examine the anonymous disciplinary powers which, in their wide dispersion, are admittedly very effective and, in fact, perhaps even more insidious because their ubiquity may make their operations appear entirely natural and conceal any target for resistance. 19 There is no explicit pastoral intent, however, attached to these forces. In Wiener Passion we can observe omnipresent sexist social mores prescribing gender roles, regulating gender interactions, and creating - like the disciplining systems Foucault describes - armies of docile and compliant females who have interiorized the male gaze and his judgment. The second «institutionally unbound» control mechanism that influences Rosa Havelka’s sense of identity is rampant xenophobia, particularly anti-Czech and pro-German-national sentiment. Since most female domestic servants in Vienna were Bohemian and Moravian immigrants, the convergence of sexual, economic, and ethnic modes of disciplining them are impossible to miss. Some brief comments on both may suffice to delineate the picture. All of Rosa’s intimate relations are highly inegalitarian. No matter whether the male partner is of low or high social status, a worker, an artist, or a nobleman, a lover or a husband, Rosa is resolutely placed into a subordinate position that is defined by service, sacrifice, and submission. In practically all of these relationships, Rosa is told to keep quiet and act as an audience for the man’s eloquence. The role of the man - equally vehemently propagated in a multitude of scientific and popular publications of the time - is endowed with authority, initiative, and self-determination. Rosa’s willingness to comply with her various masters’ wishes, or rather demands, requires her 178 Maria-Regina Kecht emotional, mental, and physical complaisance. Some extreme examples of imposed discipline - with the purpose of perfecting Rosa’s desired femininity while strengthening male domination - include the writer Kornhäusel’s use of Rosa’s back for his creative penmanship, 20 Archduke Rudolph’s repeated demands that Rosa show her loyalty and love by joining him in his exit from life, 21 and her husband’s insistence that she transform herself into a copy of Empress Elisabeth by reducing her weight to 50 kg, developing a chronic ailment of the lungs, and inducing anemia for an elegant, pale complexion. 22 Rosa fails to achieve these men’s ideal of femininity even though she tries so hard «zu einem weiblichen Wesen zu werden, das sein eigenes Glück und das anderer sicherstellt, indem es weibliche Güte, Milde, Hilfsbereitschaft, sanftes Verstehen und mitfühlendes Wissen ausstrahlt, ununterbrochen aus übervollem Herzen und mit offenen Händen schenkt und nicht halsstarrig auf seinem Standpunkt beharrt, sondern sich in Streitfragen nachgiebig und versöhnlich zeigt» (525). When for once Rosa chooses to be self-willed and uncompromising in her anxious pursuit of the serial offender Havelka, she pays for such reprehensible conduct with her life. Faschinger’s decision to give her heroine Bohemian ethnicity is more than preserving historical authenticity; it allows the author to develop yet another dimension of the forces policing and governing Rosa Havelka. In early childhood Rosa is considered a «böhmischer Bauerntrampel» (101) amidst the upper-middle-class children of the Viennese Stellvertretender Kurdirektor. At the school of the Ursuline nuns, she is the lone Bohemian girl among daughters of German-Austrian civil servants, and her lessons in history identify the Young Czechs with nefarious rabble-rousers and unpardonable troublemakers. In Vienna Rosa becomes one of hundreds of thousands of Czech immigrants who, according to history, flocked to the capital in order to earn a living and soon discovered that being Czech was a guarantee for isolation and ostracism. Amidst the increasingly fanatical German-Austrian rule of the city of Vienna, Czechs found themselves in an economic, social, and even linguistic situation requiring self-abnegation and assimilation in order to become what they were allowed to be - and that was, above all, servants! In her jobs, Rosa’s Bohemian descent is added cause for class-conscious condescension and distrust. What in fiction the protagonist experiences on an individual level, in history most of Rosa’s compatriots indeed experienced collectively. They shared a distinct sense that survival in the royal and imperial capital was possible only if one was willing to serve the masters in place - the real Viennese - and assure them of one’s undivided loyalty. All gestures of submission, however, merely had the effect of underscoring the «natural» inferiority attributed to the Czechs. Those who refused to bow, like Rosa’s friends Ljuba Faschinger’s Aesthetic Analysis of Power Relations 179 and Milan, felt forced to leave a city that required an oath on its «German character.» Czechs in fin-de-siècle Vienna developed a self-image in which we can recognize the subjected self of Rosa Havelka: Man sah sich als «Dienstbotennation», als «zugereistes Gesinde», als «Sklaven, die ihren Kopf nicht heben dürfen, weil es sonst Peitschenhiebe setzt», als Mißhandelte, die «in geistiger und körperlicher Knechtschaft stehen» und nur «mit Fußtritten bedacht werden», als «systematisch verfolgte Stiefkinder», als «völlig rechtloses Element auf dem Stand fahrender Zigeuner und sklavischer Heloten», während einer «langen Zeit babylonischer Gefangenschaft», schließlich als «Unkraut auf germanischem Feld», als «wehrloses Opfer im ungleichen Kampf» und als «blutig mißhandeltes wehrloses Wild.» (Glettler 422) It is, in particular, the last two metaphors that quite aptly capture the biography of Faschinger’s heroine - far beyond the ethnic aspect of her fictional existence. We witness a victim and recognize that her acceptance of subordinate, subject positions is not the result of her «free» will but the effect of multiple disciplining practices which powerfully inscribe their norms and their truths in the individual self. The internalizing of these norms makes the individual’s self-governed conduct appear «natural» and thus reduces struggle and resistance. This condition is cause for Faschinger to intervene aesthetically. Her narrative opposition to real-life normalization and subjectification is impelled by her frustration with existing ideological power structures and their ruinous impact on women. Faschinger, endowed with her talent as a writer, explores «how power actually operates in our society,» just as the philosopher Michel Foucault has urged us to do. As the Foucault epigraph to this essay states, «The real political task in a society such as ours is to criticize the workings of institutions which appear to be both neutral and independent; to criticize them in such a manner that the political violence which has always exercised itself obscurely through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight them» (Rabinow 6). Through satire and comic exaggeration Faschinger shapes her pen into a weapon of critique. Using a double-voiced narrative style, which emerges from Rosa’s presentation in consistently indirect speech, the author guarantees distance from the «truth» of the utterances related to us. Mental space is thus created, allowing the reader to question, doubt, and disbelieve what she (and Rosa) is being told. Choosing the naive servant girl as the narrator, who merely renders «what happened» without adding any comments, reflections, or analysis becomes an efficacious tool in the unmasking of institutions and practices of pastoral power. The interface between the story and the novel’s frame also serves this purpose very well, because we are invited to compare and contrast life in Vienna around 1900 and 2000. Furthermore, we 180 Maria-Regina Kecht are placed into the position of voyeur-readers watching the fictional reader of Rosa’s manuscript - Magnolia Brown, an American-Austrian actress visiting Vienna in the late 1990s - empathetically respond to Rosa’s text and her fate as she gradually realizes that this woman is her great-grandmother. If Faschinger herself has referred to the polyphonic structure of Wiener Passion, aptly called «Wiener Stimmen» in its draft phase (Roethke 54), I would like to add the concept of counterpoint, because I think this is the underlying principle of her aesthetic, feminist politics here. Counterpoint signifies one musical note set against another musical note, hence one part set against another part. At the levels of composition, view-point, and language, Faschinger lets us «hear» the alternatives to the hegemonic values, beliefs, and practices put forth, and therefore, even though we witness Rosa’s «konsequenter Niedergang,» we are offered an empowering perspective that allows us to identify the workings of subjectifying power so that we can resist them better. The nun whom Faschinger appoints to preface Rosa’s writings - composed in her death cell - may express the hope that this report of an unrepentant, godless soul will persuade its readers to live a «gottgefälligeres Leben» (88); yet it is not her voice but Rosa’s that makes her own preamble resound within us. We hear a strong voice calmly passing judgment on the circumstances of an insufferable, wretched life, understanding what forces have destroyed it, and expressing the wish that any future readers may fully recognize the «verhängnisvolle[r] Fortgang» (92) of this life. I dare say Rosa’s wish is fulfilled, and Faschinger has won political allies. Notes 1 My suggestion that with Wiener Passion Faschinger produces a piece of counter-memory does not take into account that in the early twentieth century, the little-known writer Felix Salten and the nonauthenticated persona/ author Josefine Mutzenbacher described daily life among the lower classes in the districts beyond the Ring. Adelheid Popp and her journalistic reflections on the conditions of working women also come to mind; however, none of these texts has gained canonical status in twentieth-century literature. 2 In an interview with Gisela Roethke, Faschinger states, «Mir geht’s darum, das [die große Epoche der Jahrhundertwende] zu demontieren und zu zeigen, dass Wien zu diesem Zeitpunkt in erster Linie eine Arbeiterstadt gewesen ist mit Massen von unterdrückten männlichen und weiblichen Arbeitern, die von einer Minorität ausgenützt wurden. Darüber hört man wenig, wenn über diese Zeit gesprochen wird. Das wird beschönigt oder ignoriert, indem man die andere Seite, den Höhepunkt der Malerei, der Musik in dieser Zeit betont» (Roethke 55). 3 Hubert C. Ehalt, co-editor of the volume Glücklich ist, wer vergißt …? Das andere Wien um 1900, remarks on how our image of the past is often distorted by a persistent focus on high-culture achievements. He observes, «Die Art und Weise, wie die ‹kleinen Leute› Faschinger’s Aesthetic Analysis of Power Relations 181 in der Vergangenheit ihre Lebenswelt wahrgenommen und bewältigt haben, fand kaum je einen schriftlichen Niederschlag; und die historischen Zeugnisse von Auflehnung und Widerstand wurden zudem durch die jeweils herrschenden Mächte häufig zerstört und dann von der Geschichtsschreibung in einem dies verstärkenden Nachziehverfahren ignoriert» (11). 4 When I asked her about ways to develop a historical consciousness, Faschinger responded, «Durch ununterbrochenes Nachdenken über die eigene Biographie bzw. - in einem umfassenderen Kontext - über die Geschichte des eigenen Landes, durch den Vergleich von Vergangenheit und Gegenwart des persönlichen Lebens bzw. des eigenen Landes sowie durch den Vergleich mit den Biographien anderer Personen bzw. der Geschichte anderer Länder.» 5 See Faschinger’s comments in her interview with Roethke: «Aber es scheint so zu sein, dass man von der Unterdrückung durch die Mütter, wie’s in meinem Falle gewesen ist, auf die größere Unterdrückung durch die Väter und durch die politischen Zustände kommt» (47). 6 Not only was Rosa fathered by her mother’s employer, «der Stellvertretende Kurdirektor von Marienbad» (93), resulting in her mother’s complete dependence on his good will, Rosa also owes her orphaned state to this man: her mother dies because his continued sexual assaults result in another pregnancy and a botched abortion. 7 For a concise description of the role of gender differentiation in the formation of modernity in the second half of the nineteenth century, see esp. Bublitz 17-18. 8 Such mothers are present on both narrative levels in the novel. Interestingly enough, Faschinger also describes the city of Vienna as a mother figure. Several times we are told that everyone loves Vienna just like his or her own mother: «Nicht nur die Wiener liebten Wien, alle Welt liebe Wien. […] Man liebt es so innig, so wie man seine Mutter liebt» (14). Given the insidious form of caring Faschinger attributes to her fictional mother figures, the reader is left to conclude that Vienna is a stifling, destructive environment in which those who insist on loving her do not dare to speak out. 9 Examining the dominant discourse of various late nineteenth-century Viennese scientists and philosophers on sexuality, historian Franz X. Eder observes, «Die übersexualisierte Frau ist nun nicht mehr eine ‹gefallene Hure›, sondern eine Marionette ‹genetischer› Prädispositionen. Wie die sogenannten ‹Wilden› gehorcht sie willenlos den (sexuellen) Gesetzen der Natur und ist, im Gegensatz zum Mann, der im wahrsten Sinn des Wortes seine Natur ‹beherrscht›, nicht Herr ihrer selbst» (170). 10 Here is the actual description of the «sanctified» environment: «Auf sämtlichen Oberflächen von Tischen, Kommoden und Regalen, auf den Sitzflächen, Polstersesseln und Sofas lagen Zierdecken und -deckchen, allesamt bestickt mit Kreuzmotiven. Frau Galli, die meine Blicke bemerkte, meinte, das Kreuz, jenes Holz, an das unser lieber Herr Jesus geschlagen worden sei und auf dem er sein Leben für uns Sünder gelassen habe, sei für sie das schönste Ornament, ein Symbol von unendlicher Vielgestaltigkeit» (320). 11 See S. Kolleth: «Die §§ 91, 92 des ABGB unterstellten die verheiratete Frau in allen häuslichen und außerhäuslichen Angelegenheiten der Aufsicht und der Entscheidungsgewalt ihres Gatten. Ihm oblag die Ernährung seiner Familie, die Verwaltung der Finanzen, auch etwaiger Güter der Gattin und die Tätigkeit größerer Geschäfte. Ehefrauen waren damit fast völlig vom Gatten abhängig. Außerdem sprach das Gesetz den Ehemännern ein ‹häusliches Züchtigungsrecht› zu, das ihnen auch die Anwendung von physischer Gewalt gegen Gattin und Kinder zur Durchsetzung seines Willens gestattete. Daher wurde bei gerichtlichen Verhandlungen über Mißhandlung einer Ehegattin immer zu- 182 Maria-Regina Kecht erst auch geprüft, ob der Mann nicht in Ausübung seines Züchtigungsrechtes gehandelt habe» (146). 12 According to Maderthaner and Musner, in 1890 - when Rosa Havelka was in (fictional) domestic services - there were more than 86,000 servant girls in Vienna. This amounted to about 34% of all employed women. According to Tichy, 94% of the domestic servants were single. Almost half of all prostitutes (between 30,000 and 50,000, according to historian Karin Jusek) identified themselves as former servant girls. 13 In fact, there is plenty of evidence that Faschinger largely relied on Marina Tichy’s study in her creation of the «authentic» life story of Rosa Havelka as a domestic servant, suggesting that her choice of the name «Tichy» - Rosa’s maiden name - may be a gesture of gratitude toward the social historian for her invaluable research. 14 Karin Walser provides an interesting analysis of the ideological motivations that underlay the attributing of a «natural» predisposition towards prostitution to domestic servants: «Gerade Dienstmädchen auffallender ‹Prostitutionsanfälligkeit› zu bezichtigen, erschien für eine diskursive Strategie gegen die Lösung von Frauen aus umfassender familialer Abhängigkeit von besonderer Funktionalität. Da sie als Bezugsrahmen die Arbeitgeberfamilie hatten, eigneten sie sich hervorragend als Objekt, um die Verfolgung eigener, familienunabhängiger Interessen als ‹sittlich gefährdend› zu brandmarken.» (105). 15 See Kolleth: «Trotzdem Frauen nie eine Minderheit darstellten, wurden sie immer also solche behandelt. Das ‹Weibliche› wurde jahrhundertelang für unnütz und minderwertig erklärt, Männer mußten ihre weiblichen Anteile unterdrücken und negativ besetzen. Gerade die Jahrhundertwende präsentiert sich als Blütezeit der Negativliteratur über Frauen. Einerseits wurden ihnen ganz unfaßbare Fähigkeiten zugeschrieben, welche den Männern nur Schaden und Unglück bringen konnten, andererseits versuchte man sie intellektuell und charakterlich zu absolut minderwertigen Wesen zu stempeln. Die Fülle an derartigen pseudowissenschaftlichen Abhandlungen über das ‹Wesen der Frauen› mutet wie der letzte verzweifelte Versuch, die patriarchalische Gesellschaftsstruktur zu retten, an» (147-48). 16 Claudia Honegger, commenting on the steady rise of a new discipline, namely «womanology,» observes, «Während um 1850 der Kosmos der Großen Anthropologie als integrierter Wissenschaft vom Menschen zerfällt, ‹der Mensch als Mann› von den unterschiedlichsten kognitiven Bemühungen erfaßt und in diversen akademischen Disziplinen verhandelt wird, verschwindet der ‹Mensch als Weib› (Lou Andreas-Salomé) aus dem Thematisierungskanon der Human- und Geisteswissenschaften, um ganz von der neuen psycho-physiologischen Frauenkunde umschlungen zu werden» (211). 17 The cultural critic Hannelore Bublitz remarks, «[D]ie anthropologisch-biologisch und psychiatrisch-medizinisch gedachte Geschlechterdifferenz, eingebunden in eine Fortpflanzungsökonomie darwinistischer Prägung, [konstituiert] eine der zentralen binären Machtstrukturen, auf die Herrschaftsverhältnisse moderner Gesellschaften gegründet sind» (17). 18 In her interview with Ellie Kennedy, Faschinger explains, «Früher gab’s die Beichte, jetzt gibt es eben die Psychoanalyse. Früher saß der Priester im Beichtstuhl und hörte sich an, was der Beichtende oder die Beichtende zu sagen hat, und dann war es der Psychiater, der ja auch wie ein Priester dasitzt und dessen wichtigste Funktion die des Zuhörens ist. Ich finde, das ist wieder ein Fremdbestimmtsein.[…] Ich denke mir lieber, warum sollte man eigentlich nicht Vertrauen haben in sein eigenes Arsenal an Fähigkeiten, an Intelligenz, an Intuition, an Inspiration. Warum sollte man sich von anderen Leuten sagen Faschinger’s Aesthetic Analysis of Power Relations 183 lassen, was man zu tun hat? Im Grunde ist das alles auf soziale Gleichrichtung ausgerichtet» (26-27). 19 For the concept of «institutionally unbound» disciplines and their effects, see Bartky. 20 Depending on Kornhäusel’s mood, his inscriptions onto Rosa’s back are quite violent and painful. Ultimately, Rosa contracts a major infection from this «artistic» bloodletting: «[Mein Gönner] betrieb seine Schreibtätigkeit noch gereizter und ritzte seine Wörter noch tiefer in meine Haut, was zu zunehmendem Blutaustritt und schließlich zu einer Sepsis mit hohem Fieber, Schüttelfrost, sehr raschem Puls und Atembeschleunigung führte, welche mich auf Wochen hinaus ans Krankenlager fesselte und als Beschriftungsobjekt untauglich machte, was wiederum seine Frustration verstärkte» (419). 21 Rosa is among the mistresses the Archduke tries to recruit for his suicide. It is Rosa’s staunch religious conviction - namely, that suicide is a mortal sin - that prevents her from yielding to her lover’s wishes. (Competing and incompatible «prescribed guiding principles» here! ). Her resistance leads Rudolph to comment derisively, «[E]r frage sich, womit er es verdient habe, […] ständig von Weibspersonen umgeben zu sein, die ihn mit ihrem sentimentalen Gewäsch, ihrem dümmlichen Gefasel auf die Nerven fielen und denen sowohl die Courage wie auch das tiefere metaphysische Verständnis dafür abgingen, ihn, eine Natur, die in ihrer Zwiespältigkeit einerseits Faust, andererseits Hamlet gliche, in den Tod zu begleiten» (430). 22 Havelka’s ever-increasing (ludicrous) demands are presented within the framework of the social norms governing marital interactions. Any objection to the husband’s dictum is countered, as follows: «[E]r verstehe mich [Rosa] nicht ganz, eine junge Ehefrau müsse ihrem Mann doch jeden Wunsch von den Augen ablesen und könne ihm eine so geringfügige Bitte nicht abschlagen, ein Ersuchen, dem nachzukommen mich sicherlich nicht gereuen werde …» (513). Works Cited Bartky, Sandra Lee. «Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power.» Feminism and Foucault. Reflections on Resistance. Ed. Irene Diamond and Lee Quinby. Boston: Northeastern UP, 1988. 61-86. Bublitz, Hannelore, ed. Das Geschlecht der Moderne. Franfkurt a.M.: Campe, 1998. Bührmann, Andrea Dorothea. «Die Normalisierung der Geschlechter in Geschlechterdispositiven.» Bublitz 71-94. Eder, Franz X. «‹Diese Theorie ist sehr delikat ….› Zur Sexualisierung der ‹Wiener Moderne.›» Die Wiener Jahrhundertwende: Einflüsse, Umwelt, Wirkungen. Ed. Jürgen Nautz and Richard Vahrenkamp. Vienna: Böhlaus Nachf., 1993. 159-78. Ehalt, Hubert Christian, et al., ed. Glücklich ist, wer vergißt …? Das andere Wien um 1900. Vienna: Böhlaus Nachf., 1986. Faschinger, Lilian. Wiener Passion. Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1999. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books, 1979. -. «The Subject and Power.» Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow. Chicago: Chicago UP, 1982. 208-26. Glettler, Monika. Die Wiener Tschechen um 1900. Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, 1972. Grosshoffinger, Anton J. Die Schicksale der Frauen und die Prostitution. 1847. 184 Maria-Regina Kecht Heindl, Waltraud. «Ehebruch und Strafrecht. Zur bürgerlichen Moral in Österreich um 1900.» Das ewige Klischee. Ed. Autorinnengruppe Uni Wien. Vienna: Böhlaus Nachf., 1981. 155-78. Honegger, Claudia. Die Ordnung der Geschlechter. Frankfurt a.M.: Campus, 1991. Jusek, Karin J. «Sexual Morality and the meaning of prostitution in fin-de-siècle Vienna.» From Sappho to de Sade: Moments in the History of Sexuality. Ed. Jan Bremmer. London: Routledge, 1989. 123-42. Kecht, Maria-Regina. Unpublished interview with Lilian Faschinger, July 2003. -. «Geschichte(n) aus der Truhe holen: Macht und Ohnmacht in Wiener Passion.» SCRIPT 19 (2001): 24-31. Kennedy, Ellie. «Identity through Imagination: An Interview mit Lilian Faschinger.» Women in German Yearbook 18. Ed. Patricia Herminghouse and Ruth-Ellen Boetcher Joeres. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2002. 18-30. Kolleth, Sabina. «Gewalt in Ehe und Intimpartnerschaft.» Ehalt 145-71. Maderthaner, Wolfgang, and Lutz Musner. Die Anarchie der Vorstadt: Das andere Wien um 1900. Frankfurt a.M.: Campus, 1999. Rabinow, Paul, ed. The Foucault Reader. New York: Pantheon, 1984. Roethke, Gisela. «Lilian Faschinger im Gespräch mit Gisela Roethke.» SCRIPT 19 (2001): 42-59. Sawicki, Jana. «Feminism, Foucault, and ‹Subjects› of Power and Freedom.» Feminist Interpretations of Michel Foucault. Ed. Susan J. Hekman. University Park: Pennsylvania UP, 1996. 159-78. Tichy, Marina. Alltag und Traum: Leben und Lektüre der Wiener Dienstmädchen um die Jahrhundertwende. Vienna: Böhlaus Nachf., 1984. Walser, Karin. «Prostitutionsverdacht und Geschlechterforschung. Das Beispiel der Dienstmädchen um 1900.» Geschichte und Gesellschaft 11.1 (1985): 99-111. Austrian Identity and the Sexualized Racial Other: Lilian Faschinger’s Wiener Passion and Peter Henisch’s Schwarzer Peter GARY SCHMIDT U NIVERSITY OF W EST G EORGIA Some twenty years ago Reinhold Grimm asked whether there is a «German Blackness» of its own, four years after Sander Gilman had suggested the possibility of a German blackness without blacks. Yet today, while it will still take much political and cultural labor to erode significantly the image of Germany as a white nation, the Federal Republic can no longer be spoken of as a nation without blacks or where people of color are invisible in literature, film, and other electronic media. 1 Austria has proven more resistant than Germany to the «de-whitening» of its self-image. After the Waldheim Affair and the opening of the East Block a wave of xenophobia brought increasing support to Jörg Haider’s right-wing populist Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ), culminating in its participation in a national coalition government from 2000 to 2002. In a political and cultural environment in which populist xenophobia is able to thrive, albeit not unchallenged, blackness, more than ever, remains a paradigmatic space in which everything believed to be antithetical to Austrian identity is subsumed. 2 Although hegemonic constructions of blackness in Austria do not exist in the absence of blacks, fear of blacks is produced discursively to a degree disproportionate to their small numbers. In such an environment, blackness often figures synecdochically for a broader category of foreigners that does not include all people without Austrian passports but only specific groups stigmatized as inimical to Austrianness and so-called Austrian values. Hence, an analysis of the function of blackness in Austrian literature must take account of the complex nexus of significations through which Austrian identity is produced against an abject other and how the literary system of signification negotiates this nexus. In Austria, blackness continues to be constructed by whites, not only by xenophobic politicians for malevolent political purposes but also by leftthinking authors who continue the critical tradition of the older anti-Heimat generation (Fetz 179-81). While writers such as Lilian Faschinger and Peter Henisch have created black characters who challenge the nation’s self-image as exclusively White and European, these characters may in fact be seen as constructions of blackness that work from within the same discourses that al- 186 Gary Schmidt so inform racist xenophobia and hence can be examined within this tradition. While many scholars understandably celebrate Faschinger’s and Henisch’s denaturalization of Austria’s self-understanding, viewing their texts as significant contributions to the discussion of multiculturalism, 3 a thorough literary analysis of their novels leads to a closer examination of the figurative language they use to represent blackness and the manner in which the paradigmatic category of the Black is renegotiated within existing discourses of race and nation. The present analysis applies insights of queer theory to examine ways in which hegemonic discourse constructs monolithic identities using signs of race, gender, and sexuality. This approach allows one to evaluate how the literary texts in question renegotiate these inscriptions. As Randall Halle emphasizes in his recent study Queer Social Philosophy, «queering» should be understood as having a double meaning: while queer theory has often emphasized the subversive potential of deconstructively revealing the inconsistencies, exclusions, gaps and irreconcilabilities of identity constructions and thus demonstrated the impossibility of reducing desire to procreative heterosexuality, a complementary approach examines the «queering» enacted by hegemonic discourses that create the abject outside of identity, i.e., the process by which nonprocreative desires are rendered deviant (Halle 10). Henisch’s and Faschinger’s novels can be read as «queering» race insofar as blackness appears as a subversive potential disrupting ethnically pure genealogies and denaturalizing commonly accepted alignments of race, culture and national identity. Yet blackness also acts as a central signifier of abjection for a whole range of «non-Austrian» identities. In Wiener Passion (1999) and Schwarzer Peter (2000), blackness appears literally as hybridity: the female protagonist of the frame narrative of Wiener Passion is an American woman whose white Austrian mother taught her to sing Schubert’s «Die Forelle» and whose black American father, a jazz musician, imparted to her his own musical heritage in the spiritual «Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.» The title character of Schwarzer Peter is a Besatzungskind, born from the union of a white Austrian mother and a black American soldier, who speaks Wienerisch but is instinctively attracted to the black keys of the piano and the jazz he hears on the radio. It is not insigificant that Faschinger maps difference onto axes of both race and gender: Magnolia’s same-sex parent is of a different race (Magnolia is black, her mother is white), whereas her different-sex parent is outwardly of the same race (they both have black skin). In this fashion, difference (i.e., what is constructed textually as racial and sexual difference) predominates in Magnolia’s parental attachments. It becomes impossible to read her rediscovery of an «Austrian» identity in her maternal lineage as an attainment of self-identity. Not only will she always be marked Austrian Identity and the Sexualized Racial Other 187 as different in Austria due to her dark skin color, her desire for Austria, unlike that of the culturally atavistic Viennese residents, whose pleasure lies in the ceaseless repetition of ossified cultural forms, can be read as desire for that which is different from herself. Figured this way, homogeneity of desire and identity appears as the binary opposite of their heterogeneity, leaving little room for a dialectical play between the two. In this context, homoeroticism appears as the very opposite of hybridity; it tropes as a desire for sameness that permeates contemporary Austrian life, entrenched in power and invested in the repetition of the same that requires the exclusion of the other. Henisch, in contrast, creates a parent-child race/ gender mapping that situates difference entirely on the side of the mother and an elusive sameness on the side of the father. Whereas over the course of the narrative the darkskinned Peter becomes increasingly estranged from his white Austrian mother, he spends years on a fruitless quest in search of his black father. The logic of the text suggests an interpretation of this character’s quest for an absent father, which can be construed as a desire for sameness and self-identity denied to him in an Austria where blacks are still spoken of as Moors, as containing a homoerotic component; hence the recurrence of homosexual episodes between Peter and other (white) Austrians is invested with a certain internal consistency. The figuration of the homoerotic in a discussion of difference and sameness in these literary treatments is of no minor significance: it not only touches on a central discussion of queer theory 4 but also participates in an intertextual negotiation with canonical works of German-language literature in which sexuality and national identity are discussed in close proximity. 5 Finally, the psychoanalytic tropes and narratives deployed in such literary texts invoke theoretical and political responses to fascism in which queer sexuality appears only in neuroses that are causally linked to irrational fear of the racial other. 6 Faschinger and Henisch instrumentalize race metaphorically and metonymically within the semiotic economy of a psychoanalytic critique of Austrian xenophobia, such that blackness tends to represent all those elements that have been repressed or abjected from Austrian identity, including, for example, the multicultural demographic legacy of the Habsburg Vielvölkerstaat, which belies all claims that a pure German ethnicity can function as the defining characteristic of Austrian identity. 7 Hybridity - defined here as a cultural environment in which specific practices, products, and values cannot be traced unproblemtically to a clearly delimited national culture but in which national and ethnic traditions interact, overlap, and alter one another in a nonhierarchical fashion - appears not only as a desideratum, but also as a repressed reality of contemporary Austria. While blackness, as a literary 188 Gary Schmidt metaphor, is equivalent to the conscious celebration and living of hybridity for Faschinger and Henisch, whiteness is its denial. Blackness makes visible the hybridity inherent in all Austrians; it is the affirmation of change and life, while whiteness is solipsism, purism, and death. 8 Faschinger’s and Henisch’s preferencing of hybridity also suggests a reversal of the historical path of antisemitism that led to the realization of genocidical racism in Nazi Germany. In antisemitic discourse, Jews and Blacks often occupied the same paradigmatic space, that of the «mongrel,» the homeless, the nationless or of the foreign body that could not be integrated into the Volk; indeed, Jews were sometimes referred to as «White Negroes» (Gilman 1985: 30-31), an idea alluded to in Wiener Passion (46). 9 Of course, the appearance of blacks in literature as manifestations of hybridity is nothing new. In the nineteenth century the mulatto appeared as particularly problematic, a character who often represents the irreconcilability of the European and non-European temperament or character, most famously, for example in Kleist’s Die Verlobung in St. Domingo. As Susanne Zantop pointed out, an analysis of color in Die Verlobung must be framed within the discourse of miscegenation that continued to inform much anxiety about race relations well into the twentieth century because of its challenge to categories and boundaries. Literary tropes of miscegenation inhabited a whole series of German literary negotiations, extending well beyond the overt thematization of European-African relations. As Yaya Elsaghe has provocatively demonstrated in his studies of the textual construction of German identity in the works of Thomas Mann, the literary representations of a time period when the internal and external borders of the German nation were being redefined contain ample evidence of the interchangeability of blacks and Jews in a semiotic system in which races and ethnicities become defined according to their cultural and geographic affinity to the Reich. 10 In the texts of Thomas Mann, hybridity becomes a problematic characteristic that, although feeding aesthetic productivity, also makes the artist into a marginalized figure dangerous to the health of the new German nation-state. Elsaghe suggests that such a paradoxical relationship requires in compensation Mann’s endless textual production of Germany and Germanness against a racial and sexual other. In this context, elements foreign to German culture introduced into the artist’s background through the mother (significantly, often via German immigration to the New World and the subsequent return of later generations, as in Mann’s own family history) sometimes suggests Jewishness, sometimes blackness and certainly always queerness, in the sense of failure to live up to the heterocoital imperative (Halle 15-21). 11 In Mann’s novels it is the return of the Auslandsdeutsche Austrian Identity and the Sexualized Racial Other 189 whose blood has become mingled with that of non-Europeans that presents a Dionysian challenge to the ordered life of the newly established German nation and threatens a disruption in the continuity, even the continued existence, of the Volk. 12 In this fashion, racial mixing and queer desire become mutually imbricated in tropes of degeneration and infertility, a fact also recognized by authors who were critical of purist notions of ethnicity and race. Wolfgang Koeppen, for example, a very close reader of Thomas Mann, 13 embraced Dionysian sensuality precisely in its capacity to subvert exclusive and monolithic conceptions of Germanness that led to fascism. 14 For Koeppen, miscegenation became the prerequisite for biological and cultural fertility, a reversal of nineteenth-century fear that interracial sexuality would result in sterility. Homosexuality necessarily occupies a problematic position in any literary portrayal invested in fertility and the continued existence of the nation, whether defined racially as Volk or reconstructed to include multiple racial and cultural players. Koeppen’s use of homosexual pederasty to invoke sterility and passivity is negatively charged in the helpless and irrelevant intellectual Edwin in Tauben im Gras but positively coded in the composer Siegfried Pfaffrath in Tod in Rom, whose homosexuality is the very prerequisite for his radical rejection of his parent’s fascist values, the absolute negation of procreative repetition necessary for the birth of something truly new rather than an eternal return of the past. Since homoeroticism also plays a role in Wiener Passion and Schwarzer Peter, it is productive to examine its functioning as trope within the greater negotiation of racial hybridity and its meaning for Austrian identity. Significantly, both these novels, like the aforementioned writings of Thomas Mann and Wolfgang Koeppen, fantasize black-white relations in the framework of a return to the Old World in which «Black» and «Jewish» become interchangeable signifiers. In the frame narrative of Wiener Passion, half-Austrian, half African-American Magnolia travels to Vienna to receive voice training in preparation for playing the role of Anna Freud in a Broadway Musical about the father of psychoanalysis. In Schwarzer Peter, the title character returns to Austria after living many years in New Orleans, where he had hoped in vain to discover his paternal roots. Through the figure of the returning black Austrian, who condenses a broader history of multiculturalism that was truncated and repressed when, after the demise of the Hapsburg Empire, ethnic Germanness came to be seen as a prerequisite for Austrian identity, these narratives fantasize the renewal of Austrian culture as a U-turn out of the dead-end street that not only led to the Anschluss and the Holocaust but lives on in the party platform of the FPÖ. Faschinger and Henisch belong to a significant group of contemporary Austrian writers who have turned to the production of postmodern historical 190 Gary Schmidt fiction, with the apparent intent of subverting commonly held views on Austrian history, including the image of fin-de-siècle Vienna as a glamorous cosmopolitan center 15 and the foundational myth of the second republic, which presented Austria largely as a victim of Nazi Germany. In particular, these authors have been concerned with exploring the position of outsiders whose histories have not been told, including immigrants, workers, and women, as well as ethnic and sexual minorities. Such literary portrayals mirror recent historical scholarship, which emphasizes the contrast between the image Austria presents of its history and the reality of ethnic and class struggle that has been repressed from national memory. 16 Of course, Austria-criticism is not a recent appearance in literature. Yet, as several scholars have observed, the new post-Bernhardian generation of writers is distinguished from the earlier «anti-Heimat» literature in its use of humor, its willingness to entertain, and its deployment of narrative to resolve conflicts through unexpected and even implausible resolutions. For example, both Wiener Passion and Faschinger’s earlier novel Magdalena Sünderin end not with an Auslöschung, but with a kind of provisional and highly tenuous synthesis (Fetz 187). Faschinger, in particular, consciously uses humor and irony to suggest the hypocrisy of Austrian ethnocentrism. Magnolia’s archconservative Tante Pia expresses her doubts about Magnolia’s ability to participate as an equal in the everyday life of an Austrian as she defines it, for example by lighting the antique stove whose noxious fumes, ironically, killed Pia’s own daughter, or in the preparation of «Kuttelflecksuppe,» a Bohemian recipe she feels she cannot fully entrust to Magnolia, whose racial heritage excludes her from full admission to citizenship in Pia’s eyes. Since «Kutteln» - chitterlings or chitlins - are widely perceived in the United States to be soul food, Faschinger seems to suggest an area of culinary overlap that would certainly not be to the liking of the racist Tante Pia and would demonstrate the absurdity of her insistence on cultural purity (65). In its own playful approach to identity and foregrounding of role play and performance, the novel suggests its own reading as a postmodern text that foregoes giving psychological depth to its characters. Yet a truly postmodern approach to Austrian identity, which would serve to defamiliarize identity constructions by simultaneously reinscribing and subverting them, 17 would also need to reflect on its own unconscious, its own blind spot, in which sexual development appears central to the development of self and a key to the repressions/ frustrations that lurk behind a refusal of those who are perceived as ethnically or racially different. Wiener Passion, while demonstrating the power exerted over women and female sexuality by maledominated medico-juridical discourse in the late nineteenth century in a way Austrian Identity and the Sexualized Racial Other 191 that has been interpreted as Foucauldian (Kecht), at the same time attempts to account for persistent xenophobia and ethnocentrism in present-day Austria through a familiar Oedipal narrative of stagnated psychosexual development. Indeed, via the frame narrative, the novel suggests an analogy between repression of heterosexual desire (desire for the other being understood as necessarily heterosexual) and the deliberate forgetting of Austria’s multicultural heritage. The Binnengeschichte of Wiener Passion narrates the life of Rosa Havelka, whose diaries are found by Magnolia tucked safely away in an old chest in her octogenarian aunt’s spare room. Rosa, who wrote down her story waiting for her execution for the murder of her abusive husband, is a Czech woman who, like so many others, came to the late nineteenth-century Austrian imperial capital in search of work as a maid in an upper middle-class German-speaking household. Rosa Havelka is stigmatized with almost all the marks of abjection through which late nineteenth-century Viennese society created the Other that formed the contours of its own imagined identity: she is the illegitimate child of a maid who was treated as the sexual property of her male employer. Later on, she too is seduced by the head of the household in which she labors, when his wife is pregnant and apparently unwilling to satisfy his sexual appetite. 18 As a Czech, Rosa represents a group that formed the largest minority in turn-of-the-century Vienna. Such domestic servants were often forbidden from using their native language in the home of their employers. Indeed, upon obtaining the Heimatrecht in Vienna, Czechs, as well as other so-called immigrants from the Kronländer of the dual monarchy, were required to sign an oath upholding the German character of the city (John 28), a policy associated with the popular but notoriously antisemitic mayor Karl Lueger, whose rhetoric served as a model for Hitler and whose statue continues to stand to this day on the Lueger Platz at the end of the Wollzeile, one of Vienna’s most frequented shopping streets. Faschinger makes such connections between past and present explicit in her portrayal of the contemporary Viennese. When Magnolia and her aunt pass by the Karl-Lueger-Gedächtnisskirche in Vienna’s Zentralfriedhof, Tante Pia praises Lueger as an extraordinary mayor, «der den Grundstein dazu gelegt, seine Vollendung aber nicht mehr hätte erleben dürfen» (67). While she is literally refering to the church, this is also clearly an ironic reference to the Holocaust, which Lueger, who died in 1910, did not live to witness. That Pia’s attitude toward the Holocaust is characterized by repression and denial is seen in her regret that there are Jewish graves in the Zentralfriedhof, which in contrast to the Christian graves are neglected. «Eine Schande für national und katholisch empfindende Österreicher deutscher Muttersprache,» she quotes 192 Gary Schmidt her late husband as having said (67), a statement that reveals not only the multiple exclusions necessary to arrive at her highly restrictive notion of Austrianness but also the projection of guilt onto the victims of these exclusions. 19 Through the presence in the frame narrative of such explicit allusions to historical agents of the time period narrated in the Binnengeschichte, Tante Pia, as well as Magnolia’s voice teacher, Josef Horvath, a much younger man who nevertheless shares many of the attitudes of the older woman, appear as the contemporary agents who continue to carry out Lueger’s xenophobic charge on the personal level of an identity dependent on abjectification of the ostensibly non-Austrian. In this fashion the frame narrative structure serves not only as the vehicle for Magnolia to recover a lost aspect of her identity (her Czech-Austrian heritage), via identification with the abject victims of fin-de-siecle Viennese culture (as Kecht rightly notes), but also as a means to identify the continuing operation of the psychological structures of abjectification that are dependent on repression and stalled development in the absurd characters of Josef Horvath and Tante Pia. The frame structure thus functions to foreground the way in which contemporary Viennese society continues to prop up an anachronistic, ethnocentric and morally hypocritical self-image that denies its multicultural demographics, both historically and in the present, and remains fixated on a notion of culture centered on Germanness and Geist. Such a critique of German culture as «spiritual» offers a queer potential in its revelation of the suppressed multicultural body evident in the neurotic symptoms of Josef Horvath. Yet, Faschinger’s critique of spirit and recuperation of the body is based on a figuration of cultural sterility as failure to procreate, a trope that Lee Edelman has analyzed extensively for its heteronormative implications. Not for nothing […] does the historical construction of the homosexual as distinctive social type overlap with the appearance of such literary creations as Tiny Tim, David Balfour, and Peter Pan, who enact, in an imperative most evident today in the uncannily intimate connection between Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort, a Symbolic resistance to the unmarried men (Scrooge, Uncle Ebenezer, Captain Hook) who embody, as Voldemort’s name makes clear, a wish, a will, or a drive toward death that entails the destruction of the Child. That Child, immured in an innocence seen as continuously under seige, condenses a fantasy of vulnerability to the queerness of queer sexualities precisely insofar as that Child enshrines, in its form as sublimation, the very value for which queerness regularly finds itself condemned: an insistence on sameness that intends to restore an Imaginary past. (Edelman 21) An obsession with the past, a rejection of difference and compulsion to repeat the same, are characteristic of Josef and Tante Pia, who become ciphers for Austrian Identity and the Sexualized Racial Other 193 the moribund character of contemporary Austrian society. Tante Pia remains childless after the death of her daughter; Josef, who until his heterosexualization through Magnolia is both childless and infirm, resides quite literally in the death house of composer Franz Schubert, having replaced the seven members of a Turkish family who were seen by one of the Schubert Museum’s employees as inappropriate inhabitants of the house of a composer of «eine zutiefst deutsche Musik» (22). Josef’s sterility also appears as a hypochondriac’s susceptibility to illness and a need to be mothered that have resulted in a conscious choice for cultured (and cultural) infirmity. For the sickly fatherless child, art - or more specifically the German art of music, and hence a notion of Austrian identity founded on Germanness - appears as a consolation offered by his mother that traumatically reduces the adult Josef to a Wiederholungszwang: «Als ausgebildete Pianistin versuchte sie meinen Heilungsprozess unter Anwendung der Kunst zu beschleunigen» (15-16). Follwing the motto, «was Schönberg und Berg nicht glückt, das wird auch Codein und Penicillin nicht gelingen» (16), Josef’s mother foregoes use of antibiotics to cure her son’s infections, trusting instead in the power of masterpieces of Viennese musical modernism, first and foremost Gustav Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder, a song cycle based on a series of poems that aestheticizes child death and hence displaces the figure of childhood innocence and hope from the future to an irrecoverable past. That Frau Horvath’s reverence for the curative powers of culture are closely associated with class identity are evident in her disdain for her neighbor, daughter of a construction worker in Vienna’s working-class neighborhood Ottakring who never advanced beyond the eighth grade and hence can know nothing of the «Kunst der Heilung durch seelische Beeinflussung mit Hilfe der Musik» (17). Schubert’s song cycle «Die Winterreise» represents for Josef the pinnacle of German music. Already as a sickly child he identified with «der Leiermann,» the outcast organ grinder who in anticipation of a bitter death in a barren landscape devotes himself completely and utterly to his art. Josef’s admiration of Schubert represents an absolute rejection of life for the consolation of an art that is sufficient unto itself, a mode of being enabling not only the repression of sexuality but also the renunciation of one’s individual desire to higher ideals. This is precisely the ideal of self-sacrifice brought to its fullest expression in National Socialism, a connection hinted at when Josef remembers how his mother constantly reminded him of the «übermenschliches Opfer» required of the artist (24-25), a superhuman rather than inhuman sacrifice. Josef is ultimately cured of his sickness unto death and «rescued» from a homosexual attraction to his former prefect in the Vienna Boys’ Choir when he and Magnolia, against all odds, fall in love and produce a child, a living icon 194 Gary Schmidt of a cultural hybridity that rejects Austrian solipsism, reembraces a repressed ethnic diversity, and restores a future temporality to the child as metaphor. It can hardly be attributed to chance that all of the composers favored by Josef’s mother lived and worked in Vienna or that almost all of them come from mixed ethnic backgrounds at the periphery of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and from a working-class milieu, the very origins that Frau Horvath regards as incompatible with culture. This demonstrates not only how the construction of an Austrian national identity based on cultural Germanness operates via repression but also how even Germanness itself, when constructed via culture, functions as only a part taken from the whole; working-class people and their material concerns are abjected from this identity. Considering the association of German culture with a purely spiritual realm, we might turn to a remark made by Franz Fanon in Black Skins, White Masks to consider why it is necessary that a black woman cure Josef of an identity based on disavowal of biological needs. Fanon writes, «To suffer from a phobia of Negroes is to be afraid of the biological. For the Negro is only biological» (165). This is not to say that Faschinger reduces Magnolia to her biological functions but that, by returning the material body to Austria in a black woman who becomes an active agent in its cultural production, she encodes the multiple exclusions and disavowals performed by the construction of an Austrian identity based on a spiritualized construct of German culture. Schubert is a particularly important figure for the disavowal of corporeality in this construct. Indeed, it is while visiting the composer’s grave at Vienna’s Zentralfriedhof that Josef first encounters Magnolia, suggesting not only a return of the repressed body but also of the diversity of Austrian cultural heritage denied both by Josef and Tante Pia in their insistence on German culture as the foundation of Austrianness, this diversity itself being associated with the body as antithesis of spirit, which is culturally pure, i.e., German. Faschinger’s selection of Schubert may be a further example of her ironic subversion of the stereotypes used to reinforce racial boundaries. Significant aspects of the composer’s biography are not mentioned by Josef in his first-person narrative, for example his early death, possibly from the effects of tertiary syphilis (McKay 331), nor the recurrent rumors surrounding the composer’s omnivorous sexuality (McKay 157), although these facts may be known to many of her Germanspeaking readers. A disavowal of this aspect of Schubert’s life at the official level is suggested, however, by the Schubert museum employee’s claims that the dampness of the apartment led to the composer’s early death (74). Regardless of how he died, Schubert’s biography makes him an excellent candidate for consideration as an example of degeneration, a concept central to racial and eugenic thought in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that allowed Austrian Identity and the Sexualized Racial Other 195 a projection of mental and physical illness onto categories of outsiders that often stood in for one another metaphorically: Jews, blacks, criminals, and prostitutes. 20 The frame plot of Wiener Passion is, however, driven not only by play but through reinscription of a culturally recognizable narrative of maternal domination and stunted masculine development, in which Faschinger mobilizes familiar images of homosexuality as narcissism, which, as Tim Dean argues in Homosexuality and Psychoanalysis, confounds «self-love and love of the same» (123) and hence is often read as fear of the other and intolerance of difference. Love of the same appears to undergird the cultural sterility satirized in Wiener Passion, for example in the Viennese women who spend their time meticulously copying revered works of medieval art, including the Cathedral of Chartres and the tapestries at the Musée de Cluny in Paris, but also in Josef Horvath’s conscious emulation of Schubert’s biography in his membership in the Vienna Boys Choir, which from Magnolia’s perspective is nothing more than the purveyor of sentimental kitsch appealing to the nostalgia of «Auslandsösterreicher» (79). 21 Such cultural repetition, carried out by the disempowered (Josef is almost starving due to his lack of money), appears as a kind of national cultural Wiederholungszwang, a means by which the dispossessed seek to gain control over the German cultural identity that has been imposed upon them by performing an «ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichen» akin to the «fort/ da» game described by Freud in Jenseits des Lustprinzips (207). Cultural and biological sterility become metaphorically linked in the topos of homosexuality in the Vienna Boys Choir; Josef’s friend the prefect is as great an obstacle to his psychosexual development as his mother. Again, Josef’s personal arrested development is linked to a national narrative in which Vienna appears as the great mother, for whom the child holds a powerful yet repressed ambivalence. This arrested development expresses itself through a typical psychoanalytic narrative of homosexuality: the prefect is a substitute father figure for the fatherless Josef who discovered and encouraged Josef to play female roles (133), impressed him with his external appearance (133), and ultimately shared an intimate afternoon with him in the Palmenhaus in the gardens of Schönbrunn Palace (an artifically tropical environment also used as a motif for unnatural sexuality in Koeppen’s Das Treibhaus) that the prefect would like to repeat (136-37). The narrative seems to take Freud’s elaboration of the conflict between sexual drives and death drives in Jenseits des Lustprinzips quite literally; the death drive, which seeks a return to a previous state, keeps Josef not only traumatically bound to his mother in dreams and visions, but also is the foundation of his nostalgia for life in the boys choir and his relationship to the prefect. The text constructs the prefect’s homosexual- 196 Gary Schmidt ity as a logical consistency: a man who has irreversibly dedicated himself to preserving such a sterile and hopelessly kitschy organization cannot possibly be open to heterogeneous desire, i.e., heterosexuality. Magnolia, however, can offer Josef a new stimulus to push his development ahead, a counterweight to the backward pull of the prefect. 22 She does this by offering Josef not something which is entirely new but rather a degree of difference that also offers enough sameness to be recognizable to Josef and to satisfy his longing for return to past states without succumbing to them. I wish to make clear that my intent is to offer not a psychoanalytic reading of Wiener Passion in the traditional sense, but a critique of the way psychoanalytic tropes are deployed. Faschinger’s use of such tropes is no mere coincidence, for Magnolia even takes on the role of analyst who helps Josef to overcome his old neuroses in a talking cure and through transference. 23 Josef confesses to Magnolia the passion that, as an adolescent, he felt for the prefect, passion so strong that he considered committing suicide by throwing himself from the Riesenrad in the Prater, a passion «über welche ich nie zuvor mit einem Menschen gesprochen habe, da sie, so muß gesagt werden, weit über den Rahmen der üblichen Beziehung zwischen Sangeskollegen hinausgegangen war» (188). As spontaneous analyst, Magnolia fails to thematize the social prohibition that has led Josef to maintain silence about his passion for the prefect for so long and relegates the significance of the relationship to a past about which Josef is entirely too concerned. That Josef’s desire for the prefect should be viewed as an obsessive neurosis capable of cure is further seen in the way Magnolia indeed manages to successfully break it - by returning with Josef to the gardens of Schönbrunn, not for a visit to the Palmenhaus, but for vigorous exercise. In his discussion of transference in Jenseits des Lustprinzips, Freud emphasizes that old neuroses are never eradicated from the unconscious, simply replaced with less dangerous ones (Jenseits 204). Transference is crucial for the analysand and cannot occur without the analyst’s bearing a certain resemblance to the original object that caused the neurosis. In Magnolia’s case this appears in her resemblance to the Austrian Empress Elisabeth (Sissi), which Josef at first finds highly disconcerting due to Magnolia’s obviously «non- Austrian» racial heritage. Sissi also plays a role for Josef through his mother, in whom he believed to see a resemblance to the empress. 24 Josef is able to open up to Magnolia’s difference only through his ability also to find sameness in her. 25 Applying Josef’s personal development to Austrian identity, one might say that Faschinger sets limits to Austria’s ability to open up to racial and ethnic diversity, a replacement of adolescent neurotic xenophobia with a more gentle, integrative cultural chauvinism being possible that in turn also Austrian Identity and the Sexualized Racial Other 197 involves a rediscovery of repressed cultural heritage, for example in Josef’s «discovery» of the Song of Solomon. This psychically grounded circumscription of change, the queering of national identity being restricted to what is proximate based on psychic requirements, undermines an emphasis on performativity found elsewhere in the novel. It should be noted that Faschinger goes to great length not to essentialize race or gender difference. This is seen, for example, not only in the role reversal of the typical doctor/ patient relationship and the male/ female binarisms of strength/ weakness, sickness/ health, reason/ unreason, spirit/ body that are thematized in the Binnengeschichte (Josef, for all his profession of German Geist remains hopelessly imprisoned by his body until Magnolia initiates him into a sensual pleasure that releases him from his obsessive repetition of childhood illnesses), but also in subversion of racist stereotypes, particularly of black female sexuality, which in the time of the Binnengeschichte was represented not only as primitive lust but also signified the feared outcomes of unrestrained sexual activity: degeneration, sterility, and disease (Gilman 1985). Reprimanded by her aunt for being excessively thin, Magnolia’s body appears as the antithesis of the protruding buttocks of Sarah Bartman, the so-called Hottentot Venus, whose body was read in the nineteenth century as a marker for primitive sexuality associated not only with black females but also prostitutes (Gilman 1985: 88-91). Significantly, Magnolia is herself propositioned by a carriage driver as if she were a prostitute (Faschinger 386-87), and the lurking killer murdering foreign women invokes a Jack-the-Ripper motif that further underscores the continued presence of nineteenth-century images of black female sexuality in contemporary Vienna. 26 The fact that Magnolia wears only black also suggests a performative aspect of her identity, for it shifts attention from her skin to her clothing. Her conscious role playing is also emphasized in her increasing interest in Anna Freud, which shifts from her preparations to play the Broadway role to her interest in Anna Freud’s psychoanalytical project and her assumption of the role of Josef’s analyst. The logic of performativity is further illustrated by a discussion about racial casting between Magnolia and her producer. Although Magnolia sees an inconsistency in a black woman’s playing the role of «white-skinned» Anna Freud, she later invokes Peter Brook’s unconventional casting to demonstrate her suitability to play Shakespearian roles traditionally assigned to whites. Her producer, on the other hand, seizes on her mentioning of Brook as proof of a black woman’s suitability to play a Jew but at the same time suggests that Magnolia should take the role of Anna Freud out of economic considerations, doubting that she will have very many better offers due to her dark skin color (45-46). The inconsistencies of these argu- 198 Gary Schmidt ments demonstrate the strategic invocation of race and the ultimate absurdity of imposing monolithic correspondences between race and theatrical role, ultimately suggesting the possibility of performances in which a presumed relationship between race and character identity plays no role. By explicitly using stereotypes to build her own characters, Faschinger assumes a postmodern stance, providing hints that the characters are not to be read as having great psychological depth or complexity. By foregrounding clichée, Wiener Passion rejects a hermeneutic of the mulatto, such as that undertaken by Kleist in Die Verlobung in Santo Domingo (Zantop); it resists giving meaning to skin color and insists instead on performativity of roles. Yet Faschinger’s use of clichée is inconsistent. While Magnolia is given little psychological depth as a character, the same cannot be said for Josef, even if a queer critique of such depth reveals its reliance on clicheed representations. The pseudo-depth invested in Josef is significant when one considers that the text itself suggests he be read as a cipher for Austrian solipsism. If Wiener Passion can in part be read as resistance to the pathologizing of the female body and female sexuality in fin-de-siècle psycho-medical discourse, the novel reinscribes pathologizing narratives of male sexual development originating in the very same discourses. Such a move reveals the tip of an iceberg floating in the German/ Austrian Left’s unconscious regarding the relationship between homosexuality and fascism. 27 Faschinger creates a narrative whose plot outcome must be ascension to heterosexuality, the only alternative to financial ruin and death. While a white Austrian author’s attempt to write from the perspective of a black man might be considered offensive, a kind of ethnic drag - defined by Katrin Sieg as «the performance of race as masquerade» (2) - that can only lead to essentialism, Henisch’s Schwarzer Peter provides cues that the cultural category of blackness is the object of examination, not racial characteristics per se. The title of the novel is a reference to a card game of the same name, its American cultural equivalent being perhaps «Old Maid.» The Schwarzer Peter card is the odd card whose holder loses the game. By selecting this title for his novel and for his protagonist, Henisch foregrounds his objective of examining Austrian society’s historical production of the racial other and how Austria’s self-image as a white European nation continues to function today in xenophobic political discourse. Yet he also suggests to his readers his own identification with the character, since he referred to himself as «der schwarze Peter» already in Die kleine Figur meines Vaters. 28 Further, since both Die kleine Figur and Steins Paranoia are partly autobiographical texts that can be categorized with those of other authors who have recently discovered their Austrian Identity and the Sexualized Racial Other 199 Jewish heritage and have undertaken the task of «inventing their own Jewish identity» (Lorenz 144), Schwarzer Peter, like Wiener Passion, marks an attempt to juxtapose historical and contemporary antisemitism with antiblack racism. In contrast to Faschinger, however, Henisch positions queer sexuality - sexuality exceeding and resisting the norms of procreative heterosexuality - in the same paradigmatic space as queer race. If Wiener Passion allowed at least the provisional integration of Magnolia’s hybrid identity into contemporary Austria through a reinscription of the heterocoital imperative, Peter’s racial and sexual incompatibility with Austria’s identity regime results ultimately in his permanent exile from his country of birth. Since the life span of the protagonist is roughly equivalent to that of the Second Austrian Republic, a country in which his identity as an Austrian is repeatedly called into question, in which as a child and teenager he is often called «Murl» or «Negerl» and an allegedly friendly neighbor tells him to wipe the black shoe polish off his face, Schwarzer Peter, like Wiener Passion, clearly suggests that its personal and family story be read also as a national narrative. Scholars have clearly felt compelled to defend Henisch against possible charges of essentialism, 29 but in making such apologies one should be careful about reproducing notions of authenticity, as well as about drawing a border around Henisch’s novel that would make it immune from a critique of how race functions in the narrative. Dvorak, for example, argues that it was not Henisch’s attempt to create an «‹authentic› black character, in particular not within the framework of American readers’ expectations» (194). One wonders what a literary project attempting to create «an authentic black man» would have looked like, but the assumption seems to be that if a lack of realist intent can be demonstrated, then not only is the text immune from critique but also nothing can be gleaned from it about the cultural production of racial difference or how such productions can be subverted. Rather than erasing the role of race in the novel by subsuming it into a general thematization of «Anderssein» that is presumed to be what the novel is «really» about, I would like to examine specifically the way in which Schwarzer Peter critiques monolithic identity constructions in a way that combines sexuality and race. Schwarzer Peter differs significantly from Wiener Passion in aligning homoerotic desire with a queer liberating potential that allows an intimacy between black and white. Homosexuality is first introduced into the narrative in Peter’s childhood attraction to his classmate Puschnig, who ironically was nicknamed «Der Weisse» (46) because of his extremely pale pigmentation and blond hair color. Like Peter’s father, Puschnig’s father, a Russian soldier, is also absent, which gives the two boys a kind of symmetry and offers a logic for their attraction that is also marked by gender: 200 Gary Schmidt Während ich die Bläschen und Kratzer an meinen Beinen kaum mehr beachtete, kaum mehr bemerkte, versuchte er, mit seiner weißen, empfindlichen Haut auch die geringfügigsten Reizungen und Verletzungen zu vermeiden. / Nun wäre mir diese Zaghaftigkeit bei jedem anderen wahrscheinlich auf die Nerven gegangen. Bei ihm aber machte sie einen Teil seines Charmes aus. Ich mochte ihn, ja. Ich mochte ihn wirklich gern. Ein bißchen kam er mir allerdings vor wie ein Mädchen. (45) The association of Pushnig’s whiteness with femininity through physical fragility and Peter’s blackness with masculinity and strength not only reproduces the biological/ spiritual binarism satirized by Faschinger but also appears to allow the relationship to be read as heterosexual. Yet Peter clearly distinguishes this homosexual experience from his previous activity with girls, giving it a queer interpretation as «difference in sameness» (46). Nun zeigte sich, daß sich jenes Spiel auch in anderer Besetzung spielen ließ. Ich fand es nicht weniger spannend als mit den Mädchen. Es war etwas anders, gewiß, eine Variation. Während dort der Unterschied das Aufregende gewesen war, war es hier die Gleichheit. Wobei diese Gleichheit sich wiederum unterschied. Und gerade diese Verschiedenheit im Gleichen hatte etwas sehr Reizvolles. So war das zumindest zwischen Puschnig und mir. An den Stellen, die normalerweise bedeckt blieben, schien seine Haut noch weißer zu sein als sonst. Was soll ich sagen? Das Spiel wurde uns nicht langweilig. Wenn wir einander so gegenüberstanden, spürten wir immer wieder aufs neue unser Blut pochen. Es war aufregend. War es so aufregend, weil es verboten war? Eigentlich hatte ja niemand ein derartiges Verbot ausgesprochen. (46-47) The boys do not tire of their sexual game; although it leads nowhere and is constantly repeated with equal pleasure, it is neither compulsive nor crippling to their development. It appears neither as substitute for the real thing nor perversion and presents at least an attempt to integrate an erotics of race and gender, although this can be interpreted in different ways. In one sense, a racial heterogeneity is superimposed onto a gender homogeneity; the difference in sameness is repeated in other homoerotic episodes in Schwarzer Peter insofar as Peter’s homosexual liaisons occur only with white men. By mentioning the absence of an explicit prohibition on juvenile homosexual activity, Henisch does not suggest that such activity was accepted in postwar Austria, for he situates the boys’ «affair» prior to their first confession, in preparation for which they first became familiarized with the concept of sin and its «blackening» effect on the soul: «Eine schwarze Seele war eine sündige Seele. War dann - in logischer Konsequenz - ein schwarzer Körper auch ein sündiger Körper? » (49). 30 The two boys’ interpellation into the law of the Church is one in which sexual sin is inextricably linked with a racial hierarchy and hence a moment which irrevocably separates the two, destroying their Austrian Identity and the Sexualized Racial Other 201 friendship. Upon seeing Puschnig exit the confessional, Peter seems no longer to find a difference in sameness but merely an effeminizing difference in Puschnig’s whiteness: «Endlich kam er [Puschnig] zurück, die Augen unter den langen, weißblonden Wimpern niedergeschlagen. An mir vorbei ging er bis zum Mittelgang, wo er einen geradezu unverschämt feminin wirkenden Knicks machte und ein Kreuz schlug» (51). In contrast to what he suspects Puschnig has admitted to the chaplain, Peter makes no mention of «Unkeuschheit» in his own confession: «So habe ich meine schwarze Seele behalten» (52). Thus, racial and sexual difference first gain reified meaning in church prohibitions that create hierarchical categories; such categories not only constitute an inside and an outside of Austrian identity but also both reinforce and disavow an operation of abjection continuous with the fascist past. Significantly, Henisch both subverts and reinscribes a projection of sexual difference onto the racial other in his use of the Prater, that strange and exotic park totally within the city of Vienna yet containing so many abject elements of Austrian identity (a theme also emphasized strongly by Faschinger in Wiener Passion), as a site for little Peter and Puschnig’s activities. The Prater can be viewed as a symbol for those polymorphously perverse desires and identifications inside Austria which, however, are projected onto others viewed as primitive and belonging to the «outside.» It has been well documented that the Prater functioned as a location where racial outsiders were exhibited for the viewing pleasure of the Viennese in the early twentieth century. 31 Since his mother’s apartment is directly across the Danube Canal from the Prater, Peter quickly discovers this urban park as his own private jungle: Dann tauchte ich aber wirklich ins Unbekannte. Dichtes, staubig-grünes Gebusch und Gerank. Da und dort hingen von den Bäumen Lianen. Dazwischen liefen schmale, gewundene Schleichwege. / Und immer wieder überraschende (nun wirklich noch nie erblickte) Lichtungen. Altweibersommerfäden oder zwischen hohen Halmen gespannte Spinnennetze glänzten in der Sonne… Mein Gott, war das schön, mein Gott, war das (ja) erregend! Ich spürte diese Erregung im ganzen Körper, in der ganzen Seele. Ich war Tarzan, den ich natürlich im Kino gesehen hatte, aber Johnny Weissmueller war mir zu weiß. Ich war ein den Weißen, die sich die Herrschaft über mich und meinesgleichen angemasst hatten, glücklich entflohener, schwarzer Prinz. (23) Described in this way, the Prater becomes a primal forest outside of the constraining limits of Viennese culture, yet also within the city itself. It is thus not only a place of wild, lush vegetation but also of sexual excitement, somewhat akin to Gustav Aschenbach’s vision of voluptuous phallic flora when he first encounters the strange, animalistic foreigner in the English Garden in Death in Venice. We recall that Thomas Mann also associated forbidden desire with 202 Gary Schmidt the non-German, even the non-European, while at the same time irrevocably situating such desire within the psyche of the German artist Aschenbach and hence challenging the drawing of a clear boundary around national and sexual identity only to reinscribe such boundaries in Aschenbach’s demise. In this sense, Mann’s novella functions very much as the abject is described to operate by Kristeva in Powers of Horror. The narrative project of Schwarzer Peter, it seems, is to challenge this abjection of the racial and sexual outsider in affirming a queer sexuality that foregoes the drawing of identity boundaries. Yet the ultimate failure of this project seems to lie not only in Austria’s investment in maintaining the boundaries between white heterosexual identity and racially hybrid queerness but also in the utopian and possibly self-abnegating nature of Peter’s queer desire, illustrated in his love-hate relationship with his childhood tormentor, Robert Reiter. When Robert first encounters Peter on the soccer field, he calls him a «Murl» and excludes him from the game. Later, Peter gains Robert’s respect and they become close friends, until Robert becomes uneasy about their growing intimacy: «Es war schön, einander so nahe zu spüren,» Peter tells us. «Ich genoss es. Anscheinend genoss ich es ein bisschen zu sehr. Auf einmal löste sich mein Freund sehr abrupt von mir and schaute mich an, als hätte ich etwas falsch gemacht: befremdet» (132). Later Robert and his friends trap Peter, whose guard is down, and beat him up, calling him a «warme […] dreckige, schwarze Sau! » (142) That this act of abjectification - expulsion from the white male Austrian community - is a central psychological factor in Peter’s inability as an adult to conform to the expectations of heterosexual family life is seen in Robert’s return at the end of the novel to destroy Peter’s marriage through blackmail and seduction. In these final scenes, Robert’s psychic wholeness is itself revealed as a mirage - «ein einsames Häufchen Unglück» (531) who succumbs to alcoholism, he is himself an abject figure - yet at the same time Peter’s unshakable desire for Robert is revealed as a weakness that is strangely juxtaposed to Peter’s own regressive longing for his mother, who «ausgerechnet damals sterben [musste]» (534). «Weißt du, jetzt, da Du tot bist, kann ich es Dir ja sagen,» Peter writes to his dead mother. «Auf Roberts Zebrafell habe ich an Dich gedacht. Ich weiß nicht, ob Du verstehst, was ich meine, ich meine nichts Schmutziges. Oder gar nichts mehr. Scheiße» (534). Peter associates his desire for Robert with a longing for an irrecoverable maternal body; in his attempt to express this longing, meaning appears to break down and the only signifier remaining is that of bodily abjection: «Scheiße.» Peter’s relationship with Robert demonstrates how his queer desire migrates between a longing for the illusory wholeness of German-Austrian identity Austrian Identity and the Sexualized Racial Other 203 and an identification with its abject victims. In the army, Peter is attracted to a certain corporal Friedl, who is distinct from the others precisely in his lack of brutality, but whose appearance is stereotypically «Aryan» (blond and blueeyed); yet at the same time Peter is plagued by guilt about the victimization of the weak and intellectual Freislinger whose victimization by the unit serves to draw attention away from Peter. Although nothing happens between Peter and Friedl, who as the embodiment of the «German type» is a beneficent counterpart to the homophobic, xenophobic Robert, Peter himself has the opportunity to assume the role of the stronger who shows compassion for the weaker in an act revealing precisely the queerness behind the stronger’s projected phallic identity. In a clandestine homosexual encounter between Peter and Freislinger in the shower, Peter attempts to show Freislinger an affection that he cannot express in words: this private forbidden sexual act communicates what cannot be expressed publically in the all-male community of the army. Further underscoring the split trajectory of Peter’s desire is the fact that he finds himself attempting to imagine Friedl as he reaches for Freislinger’s penis. Unlike in Faschinger’s novel, homosexuality is not part of a developmental narrative in Schwarzer Peter. Neither do Peter’s youthful escapades with Puschnig and Robert lead him to become a homosexual as an adult, nor do homosexual encounters completely cease but remain as a queer potential that sometimes appear utopian and self-abnegating, sometimes self-affirming through compassion. The only resolution offered by the end of the novel is that the quest for an identity grounded in sameness must inevitably fail. Peter’s personal quest for his father fails just as much as his attempt for recognition by Austrian society. When his wife finds out about his extramarital and homosexual liaisons, she redraws the boundaries between her own white European identity and his unpredictable sexuality, the «dunkle Triebhaftigkeit» and «verfehlte Veranlagung» she sees resulting from his «genetic» difference (535). Queer sexuality and race are once again abjected and must remain in permanent exile. Notes 1 See, for example, Oguntoye et al. (1986 and 1992) and Ayim (1997). 2 See Reisigl and Wodak (2001) for a discourse-historical approach to xenophobic and racist political rhetoric in post-Cold War Austria. 3 See, for example, Vidulic (2004) and Kecht on Faschinger and Michaels (2002) and Dvorak (2004) on Henisch. 4 See, for example, Bersani, Dean, and Edelman. 204 Gary Schmidt 5 See discussion below of Thomas Mann and Wolfgang Koeppen. 6 See Halle (1995 and 2001), Hewitt, Meve, Grumbach, Jones, and Schmidt. 7 I use the terms «abject» and «abjection» as they are deployed by Judith Butler in Bodies That Matter, who builds upon Kristeva, who writes in Powers of Horror: «[I]t is thus not lack of cleanliness or health that causes abjection but what disturbs identity, system, order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules, the in-between, the ambiguous, the composite» (4). See Turner (111) for a definition of abjection from a queer theoretical perspective based on Judith Butler’s use of Julia Kristeva. 8 Historian Oliver Rathkolb writes of a peculiar Austrian solipsism or «Ich-Bezogenheit», «eine Konstante, die sich aus den letzten Jahrzehnten der Monarchie herleitet» (24) and is visible today in the highly developed national pride of Austrians (which stands in rather marked contrast to the national feelings of their German neighbors). 9 This affinity between antisemitism and antiblack racism was also noted by Franz Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks (90, 122). 10 In Elsaghe’s interpretation, Austria-Hungary is particularly problematic for Mann, appearing as a cordon sanitaire between the Reich and the non-German lands of Eastern and Southern Europe (39-52). 11 Consider, for example, the demise of the Buddenbrooks in the early death of the weak and sensitive Hanno or Gustav Aschenbach’s failure to produce a male heir. 12 As Sander Gilman writes, «[I]nterracial marriages were seen as exactly parallel to prostitution in their barrenness. If they produced children at all, these children were weak and doomed» (Pathology 107). See Naranch on fears of cultural and racial degeneration associated with German emigration to South America and Eastern Europe (31-34). 13 See Herwig, Pizer, and Marx, as well as my own critique of their heteronormative approaches to the Mann-Koeppen relationship in The Nazi Abduction of Ganymede. 14 In Tauben im Gras, miscegenation and the subversion of a Eurocentric definition of Germanness are linked in the narrative of Washington Price and Carla; whether or not their baby will be born makes up a significant element of suspense in the novel. This not-yet-born product of the union between a black American and a white German is the biological equivalent to the German-influenced jazz of Herr Behrend, who has married a Czech woman. 15 This is a point of continuity with the «Anti-Heimat» literature, e.g., Bernhard’s avowed purpose of destroying fairy tales and the myth of «beautiful Austria» (See Fetz 180). Fetz sees Faschinger as deliberately taking up the Bernhardian tradition in Magdalena Sünderin (181). See Michaels for a description of how Henisch can be situated in this group of writers (242-52). 16 See, for example, John (1996 and 1999), Rathkolb (2005) and Maderthaner (2005). 17 Linda Hutcheon’s definition in The Politics of Postmodernism: the aesthetics of postmodernism is a «complicitous critique» (9). Vidulic situates Faschinger in this proximity by describing Wiener Passion as a revisionist historical novel that emphasizes correspondences between past and present for the purpose of historical and contemporary satire: «Die zentrale Aussage dieser Satire lautet: Die Vergangenheit ist nicht abgeschlossen - sie ist omnipräsent» (Vidulic 411). 18 See Kecht for an analysis of the Binnengeschichte. 19 Further, for the cemetery visit Josef dons a «Lodenmantel,» that regional costume which comes to dominate the Viennese cityscape after the expulsion of the Jews in Hugo Bettauer’s 1922 satire Stadt ohne Juden. Austrian Identity and the Sexualized Racial Other 205 20 See Gilman (1985: 217-38) for the association of the artist with the madman and Mosse for a description of the genius as degenerate in Lambroso’s Genius and Madness. 21 Schubert entered the Hapsburg Court Chapel Choir at age 11 (McKay 14). 22 Compare Freud (240). 23 Significantly, Fanon discusses Anna Freud’s research on ego-withdrawal and impaired development (50-51), a topic highly relevant to Josef. Magnolia hence not only plays the role of Anna in her therapeutic effect on Horvath, she might even be interpreted as using her theories to recognize his impaired development. 24 Sissi plays an important role in the development of the ambivalent mother motif; like the city of Vienna, she too is described with mixed feelings by the neighborhood women who dominate Josef’s circle. 25 Magnolia’s function in the narrative cannot be described solely in terms of her status as an outsider who, through her naivete, serves to denaturalize petrified elements of Austrian culture and identity, as Vidulic claims: «Trotz des letzlich irrelevanten genetischen Erbes ist und bleibt die vorurteilslose und selbstbewusste Magnolia eine «Botin aus der Fremde» - die - selbst völlig immun gegen den Geschichtsmuff der Stadt - ihren wundersamen Gatten ganz spontan aus seiner Vergangenheitsfixierung befreit» (412). 26 Reisigl and Wodak claim that foreigners in Austria are commonly attributed with potency, fertility, and an overactive, predatory sexuality (55). 27 Reisigl and Wodak find the explanations offered by psychoanalysis and critical theory for fascistic racism and xenophobia, including «repressed homosexuality,» to be at least worthy of mention, although they distance themselves from the methodology of these schools of thought. On Elfriede Jelinek’s reading of Jörg Haider as a covert homosexual see Schmidt (9-10). Halle’s remarks on the problematic relationship between certain strains in feminist psychoanalysis and male homosexuality are also of significance (144-45). Fanon also suggests a connection between racism and repressed homosexuality (163-78). 28 See Schobel on Henisch’s move from more purely autobiographical forms to the use of «poetic license» in treating biographical themes. 29 See Dvorak and Schober. 30 Indeed, homosexuality was prosecuted even more harshly in postwar Austria than in Germany (Bunzl 132.) Henisch’s affirmation of a guilt-free juvenile homosexuality that is only later corrupted by church doctrine is diametrically opposed to Heinrich Böll’s portrayal of his own experience in postwar West Germany. For example, many of Böll’s male protagonists and narrators speak of never having dreamed of masturbation (alone or with other boys) until questioned by their priests if they had engaged in such activities. For Böll, the Church created such «perversions» through its constant surveillance of youthful sexuality (Schmidt 77-83). That the postwar Church, both Catholic and Protestant, was indeed obsessed with sexual sin is well documented by Dagmar Herzog in Sex After Fascism. «Shifting moral debate away from mass murder and onto sexual matters was one of the major tactics used by West Germans both in domestic politics and international relations. […] [T]he relentless emphasis placed by postwar Christian spokespeople on the moral requirement of premarital heterosexual chastity (this point indeed represented a manifest reversal of Nazi standards) functioned successfully to distract attention from the continuities between Nazis and postwar Christians in values relating to the issues of eugenics, birth control, abortion, and homosexuality» (104-05). 31 See, for example, Schoenberg’s discussion of Peter Altenberg’s Ashantee (67-72), as well as Gillman’s discussion of the same text (1985: 111-15) 206 Gary Schmidt Works Cited Ayim, May. Grenzenlos und unverschämt. Berlin: Orlanda Frauenverlag, 1997. Bersani, Leo. Homos. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1995. Bunzl, Matti. «Queering Austria for the New Europe.» Sexuality in Austria. Contemporary Austrian Studies, 15. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 2007. 131-44. Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter. New York and London: Routledge, 1993. Dean, Tim. «Homosexuality and the Problem of Otherness.» Homosexuality & Psychoanalysis. Ed. Tim Dean and Christopher Lane. Chicago and London: U of Chicago P, 2001. 120-43. Dvorak, Paul F. «Peter Henisch’s Schwarzer Peter: Formulating Self-Identity on an Austrian Backdrop.» Visions and Visionaries in Contemporary Austrian Literature and Film. Ed. Margarete Lamb-Faffelberger and Pamela S. Saur. New York: Peter Lang, 2004. 187-98. Edelman, Lee. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Durham and London: Duke UP, 2004. Elsaghe, Yahya. Die imaginierte Nation: Thomas Mann und das ‹Deutsche.› Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2000. Fanon, Franz. Black Skin, White Masks. Tr. Charles Lam Martemann. New York: Grove Press, 1967. Faschinger, Lilian. Wiener Passion. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1999. -. Magdalena Sünderin. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2007. Fetz, Gerald A. «Post-Bernhardian Austria in Lilian Faschinger’s Magdalena Sünderin.» Austria in Literature. Ed. Donald G. Daviau. Riverside, CA: Ariadne, 2000. 179-92. Freud, Sigmund. «Jenseits des Lustprinzips.» Das Ich und das Es. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1997. 191-249. Grimm, Reinhold. «Germans, Blacks, and Jews; or Is There a German Blackness of Its Own? » Blacks and German Culture. Ed. Reinhold Grimm and Jost Hermand. Madison: U of Wisconsin P: Madison, 1986. 150-84. Gilman, Sander L. On Blackness without Blacks: Essays on the Image of the Black in Germany. Boston: G.K. Hall and Co., 1982. -. Difference and Pathology. Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race, and Madness. Ithaca and London: Cornell UP, 1985. Grumbach, Detlef, ed. Die Linke und das Laster: Schwule Emanzipation und linke Vorurteile. Hamburg: MännerschwarmSkript, 1995. Halle, Randall. «Between Marxism and Psychoanalysis: Antifascism and Antihomosexuality in the Frankfurt School.» Journal of Homosexuality 29 (1995): 295-317. -. Queer Social Philosophy: Critical Readings from Kant to Adorno. U of Illinois P: Urbana and Chicago, 2004. Henisch, Peter. Schwarzer Peter. Residenz Verlag: Salzburg and Vienna, 2000. -. Die kleine Figur meines Vaters. Salzburg: Residenz Verlag, 2003. Herwig, Oliver. «Wolfgang Koeppens Absage an den Aesthetizismus. Die Strategie der literarischen Auseinandersetzung mit Thomas Mann im Roman Der Tod in Rom.» Zeitschrift für Germanistik 5 (1995): 544-53. Herzog, Dagmar. Sex after Fascism: Memory and Morality in Twentieth-Century Germany. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton UP, 2005. Austrian Identity and the Sexualized Racial Other 207 Hewitt, Andrew. Political Inversions: Homosexuality, Fascism, and the Modernist Imaginary. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1996. Hutcheon, Linda. The Politics of Postmodernism. London and New York: Routledge, 1989. John, Michael. «We Do Not Even Possess Our Selves»: On Identity and Ethnicity in Austria, 1880-1937.» Austrian History Yearbook 30 (1999): 17-64. -. «Mosaik, Schmelztiegel, Weltstadt Wien? Migration und multikulturelle Gesellschaft im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert.» Wir: Zur Geschichte und Gegenwart der Zuwanderung nach Wien. Ed. Peter Eppel. Vienna: Eigenverlag der Museen der Stadt Wien, 1996. Jones, Jason B. «Loving Civilizations’s Discontents: Reich and Jouissance.» Homosexuality & Psychoanalysis. Ed. Tim Dean and Christopher Lane. Chicago and London: U of Chicago P, 2001. 120-43. Kecht, Maria-Regina. «Faschinger’s Aesthetic Analysis of Power Relations in Wiener Passion.» Colloquia Germanica 39 (2006): 159-84. Koeppen, Wolfgang. Gesammelte Werke 2. Suhrkamp: Frankfurt, 1990. Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror. New York: Columbia UP, 1982. Lorenz, Dagmar C.G. «Separate Reality, Separate Nations? Austria in the Works of Jewish and Non-Jewish Authors.» Austria in Literature. Ed. Donald G. Daviau. Riverside, CA: Ariadne; 2000. 132-54. Maderthaner, Wolfgang. Kultur, Macht, Geschichte: Studien zur Wiener Stadtkultur im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Vienna: Lit, 2005. Marx, Friedhelm. «Polyphone. Musik und Romanform bei Wolfgang Koeppen.» Wolfgang Koeppen-Mein Ziel war die Ziellosigkeit. Ed. Gunnar Müller-Waldeck and Michael Graz. Hamburg: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1998. 139-54. McKay, Elizabeth Norman. Franz Schubert: A Biography. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Meve, Jörn. «Homosexuelle Nazis»: Ein Stereotyp in Politik und Literatur des Exils Hamburg: MännerschwarmSkript, 1990. Michaels, Jennifer E. «The Jambalaya Principle: Otherness and Multiculturalism in Schwarzer Peter.» Balancing Acts: Textual Strategies of Peter Henisch. Ed. Craig Decker. Riverside, CA: Ariadne, 2002. 242-66. Mosse, George L. Towards the Final Solution: A History of European Racism. New York: Howard Fertig, 1978. Naranch,Bradley.D.«InventingtheAuslandsdeutsche: Emigration,ColonialFantasy, and German National Identity, 1848-71.» Germany’s Colonial Pasts. Ed. Eric Ames, Marcia Klotz, and Lora Wildenthal. U of Nebraska P: Lincoln and London, 2005. 21-40. Oguntoye, Katharina, May Opitz and Dagmar Schultz. Farbe bekennen: Afrodeutsche Frauen auf den Spuren ihrer Geschichte. Berlin: Orlanda Frauenverlag, 1986. [reprint Fischer: Frankfurt am Main, 1992.] Pizer, John. «From a Death in Venice to a Death in Rome: On Wolfgang Koeppen’s Critical Ironization of Thomas Mann.» The Germanic Review 68.3 (1993): 98-107. Rathkolb, Oliver. Die paradoxe Republik: Österreich 1945 bis 2005. Vienna: Paul Zsolnay Verlag, 2005. Reisigl, Martin and Ruth Wodak. Discourse and Discrimination: Rhetorics of Racism and Antisemitism. New York: Routledge, 2001. Schmidt, Gary. The Nazi Abduction of Ganymede: Representations of Male Homosexuality in Postwar German Literature. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2003. 208 Gary Schmidt Schobel, Eva. «Facts and Fiction: On the Process of Development in and to Schwarzer Peter.» Balancing Acts: Textual Strategies of Peter Henisch. Ed. Craig Decker. Riverside, CA: Ariadne, 2002. 242-66. Schoenberg, Barbara Zeisl. «The ‹Belle-Epoque› of Kraus, Altenberg and Petzold.» Austria in Literature. Ed. Donald G. Daviau. Riverside, CA: Ariadne, 2000. 60-74. Sieg, Katrin. Ethnic Drag: Performing Race, Nation, Sexuality in West Germany. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2002. Turner, William B. Genealogy of Queer Theory. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2000. Vidulic, Svjetlan Lacko. «Marlene Streeruwitz’ Nachwelt (1999) und Lilian Faschingers Wiener Passion (1999): Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des historischen Frauenromans.» Zagreber Germanistische Beiträge Beiheft 8 (2004): 399-416. Zantop, Susanne. «Changing Color: Kleist’s ‹Die Verlobung in St. Domingo› and the Discourses of Miscegenation.» A Companion to the Works of Heinrich von Kleist. Ed. Bernd Fischer. Rochester, NY and Woodbridge, Suffolk: Camden House, 2003. 191-208. The Politics of Austrian Hip-Hop: HC Strache’s Xenophobia Gets Dissed BERET NORMAN B OISE S TATE U NIVERSITY In August 2006, a youthful, proudly conservative politician in Austria, Heinz- Christian (or HC) Strache, the new face of the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ), employed the medium of hip-hop music to get his party’s nationalistic message out to voters before the Nationalrat elections on October 1. The text to «HC-RAP: Österreich zuerst» foregrounds his party’s antiestablishment and antiimmigrant platform, and the song presents this politician’s obvious artistic limitations, but it marks a bold step into the arena of younger potential voters. In a prompt and unexpected riposte, more than fifty Austrian rappers (or MCs) responded within three weeks in August and September 2006 to the call to «diss» or show disrespect to Strache and his song. This appeal and its results were published by the online Austrian newspaper derStandard.at and by the online newsmagazine hiphop.at. At the finale for this HC Diss Contest on September 22, 2006 in the club Planet Music, a crowd of approximately 500 cheered on the winning rapper, a twenty-year old Viennese man with the MC name Koryphaios. With the finale’s slogan, «Hip Hop Gegen Rechts,» and the many levels of disrespect the rappers showed Strache and his xenophobic statements, these artists clearly spoke up for the positive influence of multiethnic integration in contemporary Vienna. HC Strache presents a notable figure for discussion. His antiforeigner focus - evident in the main slogan on his website, «Sozialstaat statt Zuwanderung» 1 - augments his self-proclaimed stance as populist and straight-talking rebel. His party currently holds fourth place in the parliament behind the Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs (SPÖ), the Österreichische Volkspartei (ÖVP) and Die Grünen, after narrowly losing votes to Die Grünen in October 2006. Yet before this electoral loss, Strache’s campaign managers were very busy. In addition to using the medium of hip-hop music, HC used another tool in his campaign, one that materialized in HC-Man, a cartoon super hero in Strache’s likeness and also a take-off on Superman. 2 This figure shows Strache as a fighter for ordinary people. As with the rap song, Strache includes his party’s clear antiforeigner policies in these cartoons, a subject to which I return below. 210 Beret Norman Born in Vienna in 1969 and educated at a commercial school and later as a dental technician, Heinz-Christian Strache chose to enter politics, as his website proclaims, because he «[war] im roten Wien aufgewachsen,» 3 and thus his voice was underrepresented. He is proudly not red or left-leaning, rather he upholds his party’s conservative and nationalistic ideas. After quickly moving upward within Vienna’s local and regional politics since 1991, Strache became the FPÖ’s Bundespartieobmann in April 2005 - after the controversial former FPÖ chairman, Jörg Haider, left the FPÖ to create a new party, the Bündnis Zukunft Österreich (BZÖ). Soon thereafter the FPÖ won a surprising 14.9% of the votes in Vienna’s elections in October 2005. Foreshadowing the later song, Strache’s widespread poster campaign for that election touted such antiimmigrant slogans as «Daham statt Islam,» «Arbeit statt Zuwanderung,» and «Wien darf nicht Istanbul werden.» 4 One year later in October 2006, as Strache had reached an apex in the party as the FPÖ Klubobmann, 5 he had to watch as his party barely maintained its twenty-one seats in the Nationalrat, with only 11.04% of the votes; the FPÖ had slipped to the position of the fourth party behind Die Grünen 6 by a mere 0.1% of the votes (Wahlkarten). Turning to the summer of 2006 and Strache’s campaign for his party’s standing in the Nationalrat, there is at least one possible reason Strache expanded his campaign into the musical arena: to be in front of a political rival in the BZÖ party. Because the FPÖ und the BZÖ are close rivals, it is a safe assumption that Strache’s campaign managers would have had an idea that the BZÖ’s campaign included a song. In fact this rival, Peter Westenthaler, released a song entitled «Wir halten ’zam» at the end of August - a week or so after Strache’s song. 7 In its repeated refrain and simplistic melody, Westenthaler’s song is reminiscent of a pop folk song; through it, as one journalist ironically noted, Westenthaler «hat sich der österreichischen Seele erinnert und in Austro Pop-Manier einen Song produzieren lassen» (Schulz). Like Strache, Westenthaler displays limited musical abilities and need not fear losing his political position to a singing career. The two rival politicians produced similar themes in their songs. Wiener Zeitung journalist Andreas Rauschal states, «Bei allen Gegensätzen verbindet Strache und Westenthaler eines: Das Beschwören eines Wir-sind-Wir-Gefühls auf Basis der neuen alten Werte.» Westenthaler bases the «wir» in his song on those Austrians who cherish the surrounding landscape of mountains, rivers, forests and lakes: Wir Österreicher leb’n im schönsten Land der Welt Schaut’s euch um, wir haben all’s was zählt Berge, Flüsse, Wälder und die klaren Seen Dieser Fleck der Erde ist doch wunderschön. («Wir halten ’zam») The Politics of Austrian Hip-Hop 211 On the surface this song appears inclusive, in that anyone who lives in Austria appreciates the country’s natural beauty. Yet based on campaign statements that Westenthaler made at the time, specifically his call for the deportation of 300,000 foreigners (Klenk) - at least those foreigners who are reluctant to integrate («Bleiben nicht mehr viele übrig») - one finds his communal celebration of place to be exclusionary; it is a coded appeal only to those Austrians who find their identity based in this connection to location. A parallel in Strache’s song arises not in the first-person singular pronoun, «I» in his lyrics, but rather the underlying «wir» in the opening and closing voiceover supports Strache in his battle for Austrians’ right to «be a master in one’s own home.» The words of the closing voiceover clarify this: «HC Strache kämpft dafür, dass wir Österreicher / Herren im eigenen Haus bleiben. / Deshalb ist er unsere Wahl» (Strache, «HC-RAP»). Thus, whereas Westenthaler excludes non-Austrians in his song by focusing on a subtle connection to the Austrian landscape, Strache excludes foreigners through a strengthened position of Austrians’ sense of place and self-government. It is clear that Strache taps into an already existing mindset in this manner, but other statements in his song turn the «wir sind wir» feelings into nationalistic and xenophobic demagoguery. Strache’s website clearly reinforces this position, as the «neue alte Werte» (Rauschal) on which he focuses are populist and antiimmigrant issues: jobs for Austrians (not for asylum seekers), checks and balances in government to protect workers’ pensions (not the fraudulent «fat cats» 8 ), and policies that are Austrian-centered (not looking to Brussels and to the European Union for guidance). Despite the similar themes, the candidates used two very different musical genres. But why did Strache choose the medium of hip-hop? Oddly enough, one could view Strache’s use of hip-hop as justifiable. Hip-hop, as Michael Putnam describes it, is a distinct mouthpiece of those who feel underrepresented and marginalized within a given culture (69) - and Strache makes clear that he felt marginalized growing up in «red» or left-leaning Vienna. Yet the use of hip-hop seems paradoxical, because, while he and the FPÖ demand more restrictive deportation measures of foreigners, Strache uses «ausgerechnet [ein] der afroamerikanischen Kultur entsprungene[s] Stilmittel - d[as] Rap» (Rauschal). The paradox remains: Strache, with the complaints of social ills in a localized forum in his song (Putnam 70), has technically used the genre of hip-hop appropriately; but Strache discharges his xenophobia through a genre of music that has always spoken for those against whom his majority culture’s xenophobia rages. The introduction to Strache’s song replicates the image of this youthful politician as a lone fighter against all other, inherently fraudulent, politicians. 212 Beret Norman A booming voice, «[eine] sonore Erzählstimme im Stile des ‹Asterix›-Prologs als moralische Instanz» (Rauschal), announces that in 2006, only one politician does not support the Machtrausch of the ÖVP; and yes, this solitary politician is Strache, in his «unbeugsame Partei,» the FPÖ («HC-RAP»). As Strache takes up the microphone after the introduction and in the first of two lengthy verses with a chorus in between, he reveals his three main topics: the country is in trouble because current politicians are corrupt, he is the plainspoken rebel who can make a difference for Austria’s future, and the immigrants in Austria who refuse to integrate should leave. Strache lists the problems he sees in Austria in the first verse: «Skandale, Bestechung, Korruption und Verrat / das sind die Eckpfeiler in unsrem Staat» («HC-RAP»). One example of corruption can be seen in the BAWAG (Bank für Arbeit und Wirtschaft und Österreichische Postsparkasse AG) scandal that was revealed in March and April 2006. 9 The president of the Österreichischer Gewerkschaftsbund (ÖGB), Friedrich «Fritz» Verzetnitsch, is a member of the SPÖ, and thus Strache’s FPÖ and the ruling ÖVP party could locate the corruption in the SPÖ. In a poster, Strache’s campaign specifically labels Alfred Gusenbauer of the SPÖ, the new Chancellor of Austria since January 2007, and Verzetnitsch as «Arbeitnehmerverräter» and identifies their collaboration as «SPÖ/ ÖGB Raubtierkapitalismus» that exists within the SPÖ. 10 Thus Strache’s claim of scandal in government is well documented, and his party remained unblemished by this biggest recent incident. The second verse introduces Strache’s xenophobia. Strache sets this discussion into the context of losing one’s own culture with the arrival of immigrants, as he purportedly speaks for others: «Ich sag nur das, was sich alle denken / Wir wollen unser Land nicht mehr verschenken, / an Menschen, die unsre Kultur / nicht schätzen» («HC-RAP»). His lyrics follow an illogical line by immediately connecting this purported lack of integration among immigrants to unemployment and to an increase in crime: Wer sich nicht integrieren will, für den hab’ ich ein Reiseziel: Ab in die Heimat, guten Flug! Arbeitslose haben wir hier selbst genug. Einbruch, Raub und Überfall, Verbrechen steigt schnell und überall. («HC-RAP») With Strache’s advice to foreigners - «go home if you don’t like it here» - he adds to his populist and antiintellectual position. Perhaps most disturbing in the illogic of these few central lines in Strache’s lyrics is the direct association of foreigners with crime, which is also one of Strache’s main campaign themes for the FPÖ, as one can easily find stated (without supporting documentation) The Politics of Austrian Hip-Hop 213 on his website: «Straffällige Ausländer abschieben! Kriminelle sind sofort abzuschieben. Dafür wollen wir ein Staatssekretariat für Rückführung und eine Fremdenpolizei. Wer als Eingebürgerter straffällig wird oder die Inte-gration [sic] verweigert, muss die Staatsbürgerschaft wieder verlieren.» 11 In his song, Strache also provides solutions to these problems - solutions that lie in his personal strengths and his political resolutions. He will be a watch dog for the people («aufpassen»); he will speak the truth («aufschreien»); he will not complain and thus will not add to the «Jammertal» of politicians; he will not wear rose-colored glasses («keine Heile Welt vorgeben»); but he will represent the ‹little guy› («der bei dem kleinen Mann steht») («HC-RAP»). The conclusion of the song is worth repeating, because Strache so heavily claims this portrayal of «Retter» or savior who will help Austrians keep what is good about their culture and their country. To repeat the words of the closing voiceover, «HC Strache kämpft dafür, dass wir Österreicher / Herren im eigenen Haus bleiben. / Deshalb ist er unsere Wahl.» This nationalistic refrain calls for further self-determination for Austria’s politicians, i.e., a lessening of a focus on Brussels and on the EU, and thus rings patriotic. Strache simplifies the situation of immigrants, as well as the aggregate composition of «Austrian culture» in the Viennese population, thereby forgetting that at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, one third of Vienna’s population (e.g., more than 500,000 people) came from the non-German speaking regions of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy (John 138). Vienna has long enjoyed this multilingual and multiethnic mixture within its population, as a quote from the Ostdeutsche Post in 1858 regarding the restructuring of Vienna into a Weltstadt - a city that would correctly represent the many nations within the Kaisersstaat - shows: it states that «italienisch[e], ungarisch[e], slawisch[e] [und] griechisch[e] Viertel» would have to be included in the city (John 137). Such historical elements of internationalization contradict Strache’s unclear - while unstated - definition of what integration means to him or to the FPÖ. Statistics from 2001 show that Vienna’s population of immigrants remains high: 23.6% of the population (1.2 million) was born outside of Austria; this number represents an increase of about 8% since 1988 (John 142). Austrian rappers responded to this ostentatious politician by using their art aggressively. Michael Eric Dyson, a well-published U.S. scholar of the hiphop genre and the culture that surrounds it, provides an apt comment to begin this discussion: «hip-hop is neither sociological commentary nor political criticism, though it may certainly function in those modes through the artists’ lyrics. Hip-hop is still fundamentally an art form that traffics in hyperbole, parody, kitsch, dramatic license, double entendres, signification and other lit- 214 Beret Norman erary and artistic conventions to get its point across» (xii). Similarly in her thorough discussion of the evolution of rap music, Cheryl Keyes clarifies the background of hip-hop and also bases hip-hop in art. Keyes notes that hip-hop began in the Bronx, New York, during the early 1970s and became a «youth arts mass movement» involving four elements: «disc jockeys (DJs/ turntablists), emcees (MCs), breakdancers (b-boys and b-girls) and graffiti writers (aerosol artists)» (1). Additionally Keyes mentions a hip-hop attitude rendered in the form of stylized dress, language, and gestures associated with urban street culture (1). It was on August 23, 2006, that two media outlets, derStandard.at and hiphop.at, called on rappers to reclaim their genre and to show disrespect to Strache’s «übles Machwerk»: «[a]ls Anfänger fehlt es ihm dabei recht gewaltig am sogenannten Flow, der Wortfluss holpert wie eine Pferdekarre über Kopfsteinpflaster.» This call for a «große Disserei» of Strache’s song was a success. More than fifty rappers in Austria sent in their battle songs of response to «HC-RAP.» From these submissions, the jury selected twelve finalists - up from the originally planned eight («RapperInnen wehrt euch»). The jury itself did not include any voices from Strache’s FPÖ party, but there was an attempt to make it a fairly representative panel of knowledgeable persons from the music scene. The six judges in the jury included four connected to the media: two representatives from both the online newspaper derStandard.at and two from the online hip-hop website, hiphop.at. Joining these four were two from the music scene: one representative from the host club, Planet Music in Vienna, and one representative from a local Viennese hip-hop recording studio and music distributor, Goalgetter. The last three votes were given to the public at large: one vote each from the online voting at both websites, derStandard.at and hiphop.at, and one audience vote at the finale («RapperInnen wehrt euch»). In my discussion of the songs written and performed by the twelve finalists, 12 it becomes apparent how these artists - half of whom are located in Vienna - successfully rebuke Strache’s feeble attempt to use the art form of hip-hop to his political advantage. And in these twelve songs, Keyes’ larger discussion of an urban street consciousness plays a role; Keyes paraphrases U.S. rap artists in the following central sentiment: «rap is from the streets. If you don’t know what’s going on out there, you can’t do rap» (5). Certainly the streets of hip-hop may refer to its origins in the streets of New York’s City’s borough, the Bronx, where hip-hop and rap began. But I find the description by social activists’ on this grassroots British website useful in this discussion: «[t]he street, at best, is a living place of human movement and social intercourse, of freedom and spontaneity» (Reclaim the Streets! ). Al- The Politics of Austrian Hip-Hop 215 though the proof of what Strache or any of the finalists «know» about the streets of Vienna or the social intercourse thereupon cannot be verified here, one may infer from the quick and negative response by rappers to Strache’s performance that Strache and his DJ apparently do not «know» the streets of Vienna; they do not participate in the youth culture or in the social interactions that take place amidst people on the streets, and they do not understand or appreciate the urban arts of the Viennese hip-hop scene. The finalists’ songs include many items from Dyson’s list of how hip-hop lyrics «traffic in hyperbole, parody, kitsch and artistic conventions to make a point» (xii). The traditional disrespect of hip-hop battles 13 appears in these songs, as Strache’s (poor) singing skills and the song itself are criticized. But the rappers also respond to Strache’s political ideas and comment on how politicians should behave; one group called RapAddicted sings: «wir brauchen ehrliche Menschen, die gerne Barrieren durchbrechen.» A critical reading of the twelve finalists’ song lyrics finds responses to specific and central issues of Strache’s political campaign - especially about the integration of immigrants in Vienna. In keeping with Keyes’ sense of street consciousness in rap, the lyrics in several of the finalists’ songs function as a critical reflection on contemporary, localized problems in Austria. In his comparative article about hip-hop in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and in Newcastle on the Tyne, England, Andy Bennett discusses hip-hop’s evolution into a global and local form; Bennett admits that the commodification of hip-hop has «facilitated its easy access by young people in many different parts of the world», yet he says this is how hip-hop gets reconfigured «in ways that engage with local circumstance» (180). The finalists of the HC Diss Contest have reworked their expressions of hip-hop into a localized engagement that disputes Strache’s alleged truths about their city and country. The MCs address the problems immigrants face - even though merely three of those in the finalists’ count are immigrants - but overall they contradict Strache as they sing about the diversity and the tolerance that exist in Austria. And in a nod to the localized reflection, one of the two online media sponsors, hiphop.at, specifically mentions how political the rap songs are: «Mit über 50 Einsendungen gibt der politische Rap ein kräftiges Lebenszeichen von sich» («HC Diss Contest: Der Rap ging nach hinten los»). This upholds Bennett’s discussion of «glocalized» hip-hop moving away from the African-American beginnings to today’s worldwide use of hip-hop to take on controversial issues of local topics (180). 14 The finalists represented different areas of Austria and all sang in German. 15 All of the finalists were male (with the exception of Anais, the eight-yearold daughter of Topoke who sang one verse of his song). The twelve finalists 216 Beret Norman were more precisely 24 MCs and DJs: ten from Vienna, seven from Upper and Lower Austria and four from Tirol. And three of the 24 were «Ausländer» living in Austria. The rappers all rapped in German - except for several stanzas in English by the reggae band Shakadelix; this use of German and of Austrian dialect speaks to Bennett’s reading of how rappers «glocalize» hiphop and make it their own (180). Five common themes appear in the twelve finalists’ songs in response to Strache’s «HC-RAP.» The first, a curt discussion of what is bad in the song, upholds the tradition of a battle in hip-hop: one rapper puts another down by pointing out the weaknesses and by doing the skill better. Second, several rappers mention their lack of political interest before they heard Strache’s rap and state that this song made them become political. And the third, fourth and fifth subjects specifically counter Strache’s antiforeigner sentiments by calling Strache a Hetzer or rabble-rouser and by connecting him to ideas of Aryan supremacy, Hitler and the Nazis, and then by showing the diversity that already exists in Vienna. Overall the rappers reveal a level of political satire in all of the four subjects above. They highlight Strache’s follies both in his own political field and especially as he stepped into the rappers’ territory, as the winner, Koryphaios, sings: Du hast von allen Musikarten, die Falsche gewählt. Willkommen! Du hast dich nun auf unser Schlachtfeld bewegt. MC HC, dieser Schuss ging nach hinten los. Denkst du dass du so nur eine einzige Stimme holst? («Ich muss gestehen») 16 Koryphaios, whose MC name references the main speaker of a chorus in a Greek tragedy, deftly presumes another battle might follow this rap attempt by Strache; and Koryphaios thus includes Alfred Gusenbauer as he sings this comical verse: HC, pass auf! Ich will dich nicht belügen, an deine Stelle würde ich mich vor den anderen Politikern hüten. Die wollen auch sicher so cool sein und nicht tatenlos herum hocken. Vielleicht battelt dich der Gusenbauer demnächst in moonwalken! («Ich muss gestehen») Eleven of the twelve rappers describe the shortcomings of the «HC-RAP». 17 These eleven MCs take a typical hip-hop battle position and show disrespect by putting down the other rapper’s song. Several use clever means of telling Strache how inferior his song is. The Viennese group Fat Poets Society 18 picks up on the term Strache’s song uses to describe Austria’s current situation, «Jammertal»; but Fat Poets Society instead claims that the «HC-RAP» The Politics of Austrian Hip-Hop 217 adds to a «musikalisches Jammertal» («HC-Rache»). The MC Koryphaios ironically points out the song’s medicinal potential by calling it a «musikalisches Brechmittel» which Strache should patent; and he insultingly adds that Strache’s posters also provide a type of relief: «Ich liebe deine Wahlplakate. Glaub nicht, dass das ein Schmäh wäre, / seitdem sie da sind brauch ich kein WC mehr» («Ich muss gestehen»). The quartet from Tirol, LA Splisz, 19 in an indirect approach to their disrespect, takes literary license and raps a psychological fairy tale about Strache as a young boy who was not loved and who thus learned to hate «fremde Menschen» («Heinz-Christian»). This attempt to explain Strache’s xenophobia does not try to cover up the problematic issues; rather the rappers in LA Splisz base their psychological reading within their belittling by citing Strache’s deficiencies as a man based on a dysfunctional upbringing. Such displays of disrespect are expected on this musical «battlefield,» and the singers have done their job well. A second commonality in the songs lies in the rappers’ admission of a lack of direct interest in politics until they heard Strache’s rap song. One MC in Fat Poets Society sings of his reluctance to be politically active, but this song left him no choice: «Ich gebe zu, ich habe mich politisch nie engagiert / […] Was hat es mich interessiert? Mir war das alles zu hoch / Bis ‹Österreich zuerst› kam und jetzt frag ich mich wieso» («Strache Diss»). In the midst of his disrespect, the MC Kugelblitz sarcastically thanks Strache for getting him to be more politically active: «du solltest niemal wiederrappen / doch ich danke dir, denn du weckst mein politisches Interesse» («H.C. Stache»). RapAddicted transforms a line in Strache’s refrain: «du [Strache] bist höchstens unser Untergang.» And finally, in the high point of the finalists’ satire, the MC Javar steps into a fake policy debate, as he suggests a Swiftian proposal: «Wir brauchen ein Gesetz das Ausländermord erlaubt / Dann werden alle meine Sorgen […] abgebaut» («0-8-15 v. Javar»). In addition to such obligatory rebukes and the necessity of a political response, several groups address the misinformation and hype within Strache’s antiforeigner rhetoric. Fat Poets Society and RapAddicted, another group from Vienna, 20 direct their criticism toward the inflammatory nature of Strache’s lyrics: RapAddicted lists the offenses and admonishes Strache for spreading hate through his weapons - the campaign posters and this song: Du bist ein Ausländerfeind Hetze und Aufständerei sind die Eckpfeiler und Headlines der Blauen Partei […] Doch anscheinend ziehst du es vor zu den Waffen zu greifen und Hass zu verbreiten statt ein bisschen Klasse zu zeigen. («HC») 218 Beret Norman Fat Poets Society also criticizes Strache for how he riles people up using antiforeigner rhetoric: «Ich hasse Hetze gegen Minderheiten, denn es ist leicht / so wie 1933 damals schon im Dritten Reich […]» («Strache Diss»). The duo Appletree & Krizzfader, the latter of whom labels himself a «Frankreich Export,» 21 intertwines a pun with Krizzfader’s French background and claims that Strache is so xenophobic that he would be able to find «Rassenkonflikten in einer Café Latte» («Abgeschoben»). Such comments display the rappers’ understanding that Strache’s ideas increase the sense of dislike and mistrust of foreigners within the Austrian population. These rappers also connect Strache and his antiimmigration bandwagon more specifically to the Nazi propaganda of the Third Reich. The three MCs of Fat Poets Society reference the Third Reich three times in their song «Strache Diss» when they refer to the years 1933 and 1938, and when they mention Strache’s «Arische Neigung» as his «beständige Zeuge.» More confrontationally, Appletree & Krizzfader question Strache directly in their song, «Abgeschoben»: «Denken Sie nicht, dass die Leute informiert sind / über das Geschehen und die Zeit von 1945? » RapAddicted accuses Strache of still living during the times when such racial discrimination was allowed, «du lebst anscheinend in den 30er Jahren» («HC»). Employing piercing irony, the MC Javar speaks as though he is Strache as he sings the praises of Hitler - someone whom Strache would have apparently admired: Warum muss Österreich so viele Ausländer rein lassen? Sie stapeln sich mit Dreck und man muss sie einfach hassen. Ich wünsche, ich hätte gelebt als Hitler an der Macht war. Der war ein wahrer Führer, der genau wie ich gedacht hat. («0-8-15 v. Strache») And Roman Ticker, in his satiric love song to Strache, «Lieber Heinz,» points out how other people talk about Strache: «Die Leute reden zwar, du bist ein dreckiger Bastard, ein Nazi […], aber ich teile mit denen keine Meinung.» The last common theme is integration. Fat Poets Society, RapAddicted, and Topoke & Anais clearly state how they view integration as successful and ongoing in Vienna. Fat Poets Society describes how diverse Vienna is: «Wir sind ein Becken für Kultur und Pluralismus / Multi-kulti ist mir lieber als ein Kult des Rassismus» («Strache Diss»). And RapAddicted sings, «wir brauchen ehrliche Menschen, die gerne Barriere durchbrechen» («HC»); such barriers would most likely include racial discrimination. For Topoke & Anais, the former an MC, the latter his pre-teen daughter, Strache’s xenophobia lies close at hand; the biographical information Topoke provides for himself says he is «sowohl aus dem Kongo, als auch aus Frankreich und Österreich.» 22 In their duet entitled «Dass ich nicht lache,» Anais raps directly to Strache: The Politics of Austrian Hip-Hop 219 «Mein Vater und ich, wir mögen dich nicht / denn unsere Blut ist dir nicht rein genug; » Topoke continues and points out how present-day Vienna and the future of Austria will remain diverse, while he also criticizes Strache’s campaign policies: Schau her! Auch ich bin ein Sohn dieses Standes. Meine braune Haut: Zukunft. […] Du sollst nicht lügen und auch nicht betrügen und schon gar nicht Minderheiten für deine billigen Tricks benutzen denn Österreich ist seit jeher ganz bunt. («Dass ich nicht lache») Another MC, Der Diener, questions Strache’s humanity: «Andere Kulturen zu diskriminieren / Nennen Sie das Integrität? / Ein guter Mensch kennt keine Rassen, mein lieber HC Strache» («HC Strache Diss»). Beyond these five common themes in the finalists’ song lyrics, what is of interest is that so many of the songs are so similar. Only two finalists, the group LA Splisz, who placed fifth with their psychological «reading» of Strache in their «Kindermärchenstunde,» and the second-place winner, Roman Ticker, show Strache disrespect in distinct forms: a farce and a love song respectively. Ticker’s song won the most votes from three of the six music representatives on the jury - more votes from these members than any other finalist - thus raising Ticker’s musical value. 23 Although he was not present at the Planet Music finale, Roman Ticker won second place with his seemingly positive yet ironically critical reply to Strache in the love song, «Lieber Heinz.» Taking what on the surface appears as an opposite stance from that of all the other MCs, Ticker praises Strache for his widespread poster campaign, as well as for his appealing manner of speaking, «wie du lachst, wenn du da stehst,» and for his ability to pack such a message into his rap. As part of his ironic strategy, Ticker repeats negative comments others make but refutes such sentiments: «Die Leute reden […], du bist ein Nazi, […] ich teile mit denen keine Meinung.» The song’s most apparent element of disrespect lies in its declaration of love for Strache, because it is not just any one who is in love with Strache, but a black man, a «schwarzer Häftling» 24 who cannot even vote: «Hey, Heinz, vielleicht verstehst du mich nie, aber Heinz, in dich ist ein Neger verliebt.» As if he expects a backlash, Ticker adds this bit of explanation to his refrain: «Liebe ist stärker als Demokratie.» In other words, the love Ticker feels for Strache makes him overlook politics, as he sings at the end, «Vergiss die Politik! Wir zwei könnten glücklich sein. Und für ein Kind mit dir würde ich mich auch integrieren.» 25 Alluding to the problem of immigrants’ lack of integration, which Strache points out in «HC-RAP,» Ticker uses sarcasm in his clarifica- 220 Beret Norman tion. Ticker’s means toward this goal of integration take the form of «Mozart- Taler essen, Lederhosen tragen, Bier trinken und Kampagnen gegen Drogen starten.» As Strache does not mention (in his song nor on any campaign or policy information on his website) how he envisions the «proper» integration of immigrants, Ticker’s road to Strache’s potential ideal of integration may not be so far-fetched: look and act more like (white) Austrians. Ticker concludes his pronouncement of love by pointing out deficits in society and in politicians and asking for honesty from Strache. It is in this last verse and last refrain that Roman Ticker summarizes a majority of the finalists’ views but also remains true to his «love song» as he submits to Strache’s suggestion in «HC-RAP»: In diesem Staat hier fehlt es an Courage. Es fehlt an Demokraten, die noch leben was sie sagen. Es fehlt an Demokraten, die auch geben was sie haben. Politik gibt es doch in allen Regenbogenfarben. Aber Heinz, ich bin schwarz, und du weißt, du bist weiß, ich bin schwarz, ich bin arm, du bist reich. Aber Heinz, bitte sag es mir gleich, weil wenn ich keine Chance habe, dann fliege ich gleich heim. («Lieber Heinz») The final line of the song references Strache’s solution to the problem of immigrants who do not integrate, yet this statement reverberates in irony, since this relatively anonymous (and in the entire contest, faceless 26 ) MC, Roman Ticker, shows in his song how well he has integrated himself into Viennese urban street culture and into the art form of hip-hop. He also shows his «glocalized» situation: he portrays the experience of a dark-skinned man in a predominantly white society that ostracizes him based on his appearance. And yet it is Ticker’s skill of folding many layers of critique into seemingly petty comments that distinguishes his from the other finalists’ songs. After praising Strache’s magical blue eyes in the numerous election posters, Ticker says Strache is only missing «ein ordentlicher Schnauzbart / Ja, ein Schnauzer direkt unter der Nase.» This comment, along with the description of Strache’s manner when he stands in front of a crowd with a speech, «in dem [Strache] jede Menge Message verpackt ha[t]», imply a reference to Hitler. Certainly other rappers in the contest mention Hitler’s name directly, but this and other subtle comments by Ticker reach a larger level of commentary, even though they appear as ostensibly inconsequential quips in his song. A further comment raises the technical meaning of integration, as Ticker’s sarcasm strikes an absurd balance. By following his extreme comment, «für ein Kind mit dir würde ich mich auch integrieren,» with the obtuse «solu- The Politics of Austrian Hip-Hop 221 tion» of eating Mozart chocolate, wearing Lederhosen and drinking beer, Ticker illustrates how outrageous Strache’s premise of integration is. By using a tourists’ version of «all things Austrian» to describe a likely method for immigrants to integrate into Austrian society, Ticker shows the absurdity therein and also shows how Strache misuses the term «integrerien.» The more correct terms for Strache and his party’s goals would be «assimilieren» or «anpassen.» As other rappers state, Austria is already quite integrated because of the diverse ethnicities represented in its population. One can quickly imagine how even Strache would appreciate the existing integration in cuisine - for instance, eating various ethnic foods - and in consumerism. Thus Ticker points out the absurdity of Strache’s ideas of integration by reaching the extreme conclusion: starting a family with Strache would be an incentive for Ticker to «integrate,» or rather, assimilate. In other words, Ticker’s show of disrespect surpasses the other finalists because he also disses Strache’s policy by pointing out the fallacy in his notion of integration. If Strache’s real goal is for immigrants to integrate, then he already has his success: immigrants live and work in Austria - they have integrated themselves into Austria in so far as they combine together with other members of the society to make it whole. Ticker’s song points out this verbal distinction in two absurd images: first the idea of starting a family with Strache; and second that of assimilating (not integrating) into Austrian society by upholding inaccurate stereotypes. The cover image on his rap CD reveals Strache’s other unorthodox step into youth culture; it displays a comic book superhero-like figure, HC-Man. 27 As Strache’s likeness or alleged alter ego, the HC-Man uncovers «problems» in Austria - problems that are local and national. These cartoons continue to foster the image of Strache as the citizens’ savior from failing local and national leaders who do not protect Austrians’ rights - at least Strache’s ideas of Austrians’ rights. Leaders whom HC-Man faces are Vienna’s liberal mayor, Dr. Michael Häupl, and the former Chancellor, Wolfgang Schüssel (ÖVP). Strache views the local problems to be the Viennese mayor’s rose-colored view of integration, and national problems center on Schüssel’s actions within the European Union. The HC-Man cartoons that focus on Vienna’s Mayor Häupl attack his proimmigration policies. In these, Häupl is often depicted as pro-Turkish, as the Häupl cartoon figure wears the color red of liberal Vienna, but also of the Turkish flag. In the backdrop of several cartoons, the Turkish flag’s emblems of a half-moon and a star appear and allude to Häupl’s ostensible affinities. In the three panels of one cartoon entitled «Wien ist anders» (a parody of one of the city’s tourism slogans), 28 the caricature displays an overweight and 222 Beret Norman sweating Mayor Häupl in a too-tight red spandex suit talking to the media - his yellow cape around his neck appears to make his breathing difficult. In the cartoon the Häupl figure maintains that, as the mayor, he makes sure that integration happens in Vienna. In the second panel and as if to prove his point, the Häupl figure points at a Viennese apartment building. But the irony is visual: there are two Turkish restaurants in the lower, commercial level, and on the residential balconies above, there are seven Turkish flags, two Austrian flags and one Ethiopian or Senegalese flag (green, yellow and red stripes), along with nine satellite disks. In front of the building is a pile of trash on which a large rat and a calico cat sit. The depiction of garbage becomes a motif in the cartoons, as whenever foreigners are implied, garbage is shown. HC- Man, carrying an Austrian flag, flies into the third panel and states, «Genau verkehrt, Herr Bürgermeister. Die Ausländer und nicht die Wiener sollen sich anpassen.» This cartoonist (who is unnamed on the website) apparently prefers traditional flowerboxes to satellite disks on balconies, and HC-Man evidently desires that all immigrants wave only Austrian flags, i.e., give up their previous national identity. In another cartoon with a specific target, HC-Man uncovers the dangerous vanity of former Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel. The Schüssel figure, a tiny, older man in a gray spandex suit, is shown to care most about his own image and his legacy, according to the cartoons entitled «Schüssels Größenwahn» and «Schüssels Gesetzlosigkeit» 29 - the latter refers to Austria’s possible support for Turkey to enter into the European Union, a topic against which the FPÖ remains steadfast. Seeing a larger (distorted) image of himself in the mirror, the Schüssel figure practices body building poses. This self-centeredness is shown to spread into Schüssel’s foreign policy. Thus the apparent danger is that what is best for Austria will not prevail, because Schüssel was only concerned about his appearance of strength or about a reflection of a strong legacy. Other HC-Man cartoons further the idea that the integration of foreigners is not functioning in Austria, which in turn is detrimental to the country. More disturbing than the above-mentioned specific caricatures of political figures are the depictions of foreigners as nonhuman green aliens, for example in a cartoon titled «Wien Multi-Kulti»; the more specific title for this on Strache’s website reads, «Inländer raus-Ausländer rein? Nicht mit HC Man! » 30 In this cartoon’s third panel a space-alien-like figure has spray-painted the cartoon’s title onto a wall, which includes the symbol for anarchy as the «a» in the word «Raus.» This figure is green and thus could be a reference to the members of Die Grünen; yet with a ring in its nose, a ring in one ear and the spray paint can in its hand - the figure resembles a rebellious and criminal youth. The The Politics of Austrian Hip-Hop 223 green color, instead of referencing the political party, could also point to extreme difference in appearance. It is the Mars-Mensch, the ultimate alien, but it can also represent a technical alien, that is, a non-resident, an immigrant or asylum seeker in Austria. The third panel’s bubble, which contains HC-Man’s text, reads, «Die lieben Grünen und GrünInnen sagen doch immer: ‹Das sind jene qualifizierten ausländischen Kräften auf die wir in Österreich nicht mehr verzichten können.›» The cartoon shows how the green alien is not working, as the Greens’ policy would have one believe, but rather spends his time defiling walls and does not mind the garbage or smells around him (portrayed by an empty soda can and a pile of feces with flies next to the alien’s foot). Moreover, the term «ausländische Kräften» places individuals into a generic group - and thus allows for a very dehumanizing effect, as in the drawing. These foreign-born workers are unknown, unidentifiable and are «all the same.» This cartoon exhibits a level of racial discrimination that offends; the dehumanized alien is clearly not Austrian and is involved in a criminal activity (defilement of property). Such a prejudicial depiction remains very problematic on a website that lacks any thorough discussions of Strache’s party’s policies toward the topics of asylum seekers, of immigration or of steps toward integration; rather Strache’s website limits policy information to more than 20 varieties of posters and magazine inserts, 19 radio spots and one video for the (2006) campaign. And of course there are pictures of the smiling politician. One questions to what end such a xenophobic super-hero status is helpful to a politician in a well-educated population in the middle of Europe, where international dialogue has been firmly established since the days of Chancellor Kreisky. But Strache’s ostensible super-hero status is being questioned. Recently published pictures of Strache show him at age eighteen with three men who are officially recognized as right-wing extremists. In the photographs, which were released in mid-January 2007, young Strache and his then companions are shown participating in a purported game of Paintball or Gotcha in the Carinthian forest, and they are wearing army fatigues. Due to the clothing, some journalists questioned if the pictures did not instead depict military-like practices, and thus the journalists raised the possibility of Strache’s involvement with a neo-Nazi faction in Austria. 31 The media frenzy around these pictures was certainly exaggerated and appeared most interested in selling newspapers; but the possibility of Strache being connected with known ultraconservatives remained in Austrian newspapers, radio and television for five weeks. Strache’s main line of defense remained, «Ich war nie ein Neonazi und 224 Beret Norman werde nie einer sein,» and that he is a «leidenschaftlicher Demokrat» (Zimmermann). In conclusion, the clever riposte by those in Austria’s hip-hop community to the «HC-RAP» uncovers various aspects of Heinz-Christian Strache’s xenophobia and thus of course that of the FPÖ. Strache is not without critics, yet it is important to think twice about his appropriation of the cultural vehicle of hip-hop. His use of this musical form, along with his attempts to tuck his xenophobia into the seemingly harmless use of clever graphics, evident in the HC-Man cartoons, prove dangerous; they oversimplify complex issues, they incite mistrust and even a palpable dislike of immigrants and foreigners in Austria, and they simplistically allege that these immigrants are solely to blame for many social and economic problems in contemporary Austrian society. But, as the twelve finalists show us, at least Strache’s musical distortion has been properly dissed. Notes 1 HC Strache’s website. «Home.» n.d. 4 Nov. 2006 <http: / / www.hcstrache.at/ index. php? style=12>. 2 Superman™© 2006. DC Comics. 3 Hcstrache.at «Vita.» n.d. 25 Jan. 2007 <http: / / www.hcstrache.at/ index.php>. 4 HC Strache’s website «Kampagne.» n.d. 9 Oct. 2007 <http: / / www.hcstrache.at/ index. php>. 5 FPÖ website. n.d. 25 Jan. 2007<http: / / www.fpoe.at/ index.php? id=407>. 6 Die Grünen also have twenty-one seats in the National Council. 7 The BZÖ’s website maintains a link to the podcast for this song, which was first aired 28 August 2006: <http: / / bzoe-podcast.podspot.de/ post/ westenthaler-song-wir-haltenzamm/ > 9 Oct 2007. 8 See footnote 9 about the BAWAG scandal, as an example. 9 This scandal centered on BAWAG’s speculation deals and high risk financial transactions in the Caribbean and its involvement in a bankrupt U.S. brokerage house, Refco, in which many millions of employees’ dollars were lost (Lomas). 10 This poster, «Gusenbauer und Verzetnitsch sind Arbeiterverräter,» can be seen on HC Strache’s website, under «Kampagne.» <http: / / www.hcstrache.at/ index.php? style=7#>. There are no dates provided for any campaign posters on the website, but due to the content, the poster follows the BAWAG scandal revelations and thus would have been created after March or April 2006. 11 HC Strache’s website. «Themen.» n.d. 8 Mar. 2007 <http: / / www.hcstrache.at/ index. php? style=12&ID=7>. 12 The participants in the HC Diss Contest provided limited biographical information and were not required to submit written lyrics or texts to accompany the MP3 files that placed them in the running for the contest <http: / / www.hiphop.at/ hc_voting.php>. The Politics of Austrian Hip-Hop 225 13 The tradition of a battle in hip-hop, in which one puts another down by pointing out the weaknesses and by performing the skill better, can be done in any of the four areas of hip-hop: breakdancing, graffiti, DJing and MCing. See Gächter 53. 14 See also the Oxford University Press «Word of the month» definition for «glocalization: AmE […] the fact of adapting products or services that are available all over the world to make them suitable for local needs. […]» and «glocalize , -ise verb: [v] We need to find ways to glocalize, to do it our own way.» 15 The names of individuals and groups are listed from first to last place in Appendix B. 16 «HC Diss Contest Voting.» 17 Only one MC, Roman Ticker in his song «Abgeschoben,» does not cite Strache’s deficits because the entire song is in the form of a love letter written by a fan of Strache’s. 18 Only limited biographical information was submitted by the rappers. Three rappers make up Fat Poets Society: Chef Koch, Junes and Vin Gogh. The band submitted the following information about themselves: «Die Band kommt aus Wien» («HC Diss Contest Voting»). 19 LA Splisz, from Tirol, consists of two DJs, Testa and Chrisfader, and two MCs, Staffolo and Dirty Sanchez («HC Diss Contest Voting»). 20 «Aus dem 2. Bezirk», Rap Addicted has four MCs and one DJ: Scoddy Flippin, L.A.R., SCT, Evade and DJ Dickes («HC Diss Contest Voting»). 21 Only Krizzfader has this label of «Frankreich Export» on the artists’ information page. Appletree provided no information («HC Diss Contest Voting»). 22 «HC Diss Contest Voting.» 23 «HC Diss Contest Voting.» 24 This comment is perhaps meant metaphorically, as the picture he provides shows him standing not in a prison but in a public street or store with his face concealed under a bag («And the nominees are …»). 25 Ticker’s song begs the question of homophobia in hip-hop, i.e., if that would make this song more disrespectful. A U.S. filmmaker, Byron Hurt, recently aired a documentary about the issue of manhood in [U.S.] hip-hop called «Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes» (aired on PBS in February 2007), in which Hurt makes clear how misogyny and homophobia are part of the extreme masculine projection of many male rappers. Although it is interesting, this topic goes beyond the framework of this paper. 26 Roman Ticker did submit a photograph of himself, but in it a brown bag covers his face. Thus his identity remains masked. Roman Ticker «Image.» HC Diss-Contest Voting. Hiphop.at <http: / / www.hiphop.at/ hc_voting.php>. 27 The image on the CD cover is seen at these two FPÖ sites: n.d. 9 Oct. 2007 <http: / / www.fpoe.at/ index.php? id=477&backPID=1741&tt_news=7843> and n.d. 9 Oct. 2007 <http: / / www.fpoe.at/ index.php? id=477&backPID=1741&tt_news=10673>. Here the «new» articles state that HC Strache’s rap song has been downloaded up to 65,000 times as of 1 Sept 2006. 28 HC-Man cartoon: «Wien ist anders» n.d. 25 Jan. 2007 <http: / / www.hcstrache.at/ index. php? style=13&pageNum_RS_hcman=5>. 29 HC-Man cartoon. «Schüssels Gesetzlosigkeit». On the web as: «Wie sich Schüssel & Co. ganz ungeniert über Gesetze hinwegsetzen.» n.d. 25 Jan. 2007 <http: / / www.hcstrache.at/ index.php? style=13&pageNum_RS_hcman=0>. 30 HC-Man cartoon: «Inländer raus - Ausländer rein? Nicht mit HC-Man! » n.d. 25. Jan 2007. <http: / / www.hcstrache.at/ index.php? style=13&pageNum_RS_hcman=4 >. 31 ÖRF Radio report. 19 Jan. 2007. 21 Jan. 2007 <http: / / oe1.orf.at/ inforadio/ 72237.html >. 226 Beret Norman Works Cited Primary Sources: Songs Appletree und Krizzfader. «Abgeschoben.» Hiphop.at <http: / / www.hiphop.at/ hc_ voting.php>. Der Diener. «HC Strache Diss.» Hiphop.at <http: / / www.hiphop.at/ hc_voting.php>. Fat Poets Society. «HC Rache.» Hiphop.at <http: / / www.hiphop.at/ hc_voting.php>. LA Splisz. «Heinz-Christian.» Hiphop.at <http: / / www.hiphop.at/ hc_voting.php>. Johvi. «Johvi-Strache.» Hiphop.at <http: / / www.hiphop.at/ hc_voting.php>. Javar (Lexis). «0-8-15 v. Javar» Hiphop.at <http: / / www.hiphop.at/ hc_voting.php>. Koryphaios. «Ich muss gestehen.» Hiphop.at <http: / / www.hiphop.at/ hc_voting. php>. Kugelblitz. «H.C. Strache.» Hiphop.at <http: / / www.hiphop.at/ hc_voting.php>. RapAddicted. «HC.» Hiphop.at <http: / / www.hiphop.at/ hc_voting.php>. Shakadelix. «Strache Liad.» Hiphop.at <http: / / www.hiphop.at/ hc_voting.php>. Strache, Heinz-Christian. «HC-RAP. Österreich Zuerst.» hcstrache.at 20 Aug. 2006, 4 Nov. 2006 <http: / / wirgebendentonan.fpoe.at/ index.php? style=21>. Topoke & Anais. «Dass ich nicht lache.» Hiphop.at <http: / / www.hiphop.at/ hc_voting.php>. Ticker, Roman. «Lieber Heinz.» Hiphop.at <http: / / www.hiphop.at/ hc_voting.php>. Westenthaler, Peter. «Wir halten ’zam.» By Clark Kent and Lisa Simpson. BZOE- Podcast 28 Aug. 2006. 19 Feb. 2007 <http: / / bzoe-podcast.podspot.de/ post/ westenthaler-song-wir-halten-zamm/ >. Secondary Sources «‹And the nominees were…› HC Strache hat gerappt und sich damit den Unmut einer ganzen Jugendkultur zugezogen - zwölf Finalisten und ihre Tracks im Überblick.» derStandard.at 23 Sep. 2006. 14 April 2007 <http: / / derstandard.at/ Kultur/ Musik/ HC-Diss-Contest>. «And the winner is … Koryphaios.» hiphop.at 24 Sep. 2006. 3 Oct. 2006 <http: / / www. hiphop.at/ artikel/ news/ and-the-winner-is-koryphaios/ 261.htm>. Bennett, Andy. «Hip-Hop am Main, Rappin’ on the Tyne: Hip-Hop Culture as a Local Construct in Two European Cities.» Eds. Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal. That’s the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader. New York: Routledge, 2004. 177-200. «‹Bleiben nicht mehr viele übrig.› Zu den fünf Sommergespächen.» ÖRF. Summer 2006. 17 March 2007 <http: / / news.orf.at/ 060901-3439/ ? href=http%3A%2F%2F news.orf.at%2F060901-3439%2F3092txt_story.html>. Cheeseman, Tom. «Polyglott Politics: Hip Hop in Germany.» Debatte 6.2 (1998): 191-214. Dyson, Michael Eric. Foreword. That’s the Joint! : The Hip-Hop Studies Reader. Eds. Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal. New York: Routledge, 2004. xi-xiv. Gächter, Martin. «Rap und Hip-Hop: Geschichte und Entwicklung eines afrikanischen amerikanischen Widerstandsmediums unter besonderer Berücksichtigung seiner Rezeptionsformen in Österreich.» Diplomarbeit. U Wien. 2000. The Politics of Austrian Hip-Hop 227 «HC Diss Contest Voting.» hiphop.at n.d. 12 Dec. 2006 <http: / / www.hiphop.at/ hc_ voting.php.>. «HC Diss Contest: Der Rap ging nach hinten los.» hiphop.at 18 Sep. 2006. 4 Nov 2006 <http: / / www.hiphop.at/ artikel/ news/ hc-diss-contest-der-rap-ging-nach-hintenlos/ 260.htm>. HC-Man.Cartoons.n.d. 25 Jan. 2007<http: / / www.hcstrache.at/ index.php? style=13>. -. «Schüssels Großenwahn» n.d. 4 Nov. 2006 <http: / / www.hcstrache.at/ index. php? style=13&PHPSESSID=3f79f1047e11d5ad655aee3a957a0298#>. John, Michael. «Mosaik, Schmelztiegel, Weltstadt Wien? Migration und multikulturelle Gesellschaft im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert.» Wir. Zur Geschichte und Gegenwart der Zuwanderung nach Wien. Wien: Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien, 1996. 137-44. Keyes, Cheryl L. Rap Music and Street Consciousness. Chicago: U of Illinois P, 2004. Klenk, Florian. «Wie kriminell sind Asylwerber wirklich? Wo der Möchtegern-Innenminister Peter Westenthaler irrt - und wo nicht.» DIE ZEIT. 28 Sep. 2006. Nr. 40. 17 Mar. 2007 <http: / / www.zeit.de/ 2006/ 40/ 514-Klenk.>. Lomas, Ulrika. «Rumours Swirl Around Bawag In Refco Affair.» Investorsoffshore. com 23 Mar. 2006. 6 Mar. 2007 <http: / / www.investorsoffshore.com/ asp/ story/ storyinv.asp? storyname=23071.>. Oxford University Press. «Word of the Month.» 8 May 2007 <http: / / www.oup.com/ elt/ catalogue/ teachersites/ oald7/ wotm/ wotm_archive/ glocal? cc=global.>. Putnam, Michael. T. «Teaching Controversial Topics in Contemporary German Culture through Hip-Hop.» Die Unterrichtspraxis/ Teaching German 39.1-2 (2006): 69-75. «RapperInnen wehrt euch! [HC Diss Contest ]» 23 Aug. 2006. 4 Nov. 2006 <http: / / www.hiphop.at/ artikel/ news/ hc-diss-contest-rapperinnen-wehrt-euch/ 257.htm>. Rauschal, Andreas. «Tanz den HC Strache! Sowohl HC Strache als auch Peter Westenthaler bestreiten ihren Nationalratswahlkampf mit politischen Songs.» Wiener Zeitung 20 Sep. 2006. 19 Feb. 2007 <http: / / www.wienerzeitung.at/ DesktopDefault. aspx? TabID=3949&Alias=wzo&cob=248879&currentpage=7>. Reclaim the Streets! «Propaganda.» reclaimthestreets 20 Feb. 2002. 1 May 2007 <http: / / rts.gn.apc.org/ prop01.htm>. Schulz, Georg. «Das Blau-Orange Wahlkampfsong-Battle. ‹MC Strache› vs. Peter ‹Goldkehlchen› Westenthaler» musicchannel.cc 8 Sep. 2006. 19 Feb. 2007 <http: / / www.musicchannel.cc/ index.php? page=http: / / www.musicchannel.cc/ artist_stories/ 1/ 85237> Strache, Heinz-Christian. «HC-RAP. Österreich Zuerst.» hcstrache.at 20 Aug. 2006, 4 Nov. 2006 <http: / / wirgebendentonan.fpoe.at/ index.php? style=21>. Superman™© 2006. DC Comics. 4 Nov. 2006 <http: / / www.supermanhomepage. com/ information.php.>. «Wahlkarten: Grüne überholen FPÖ». Wiener Zeitung. 9. Oct. 2006. 25 Jan. 2007 <http: / / www.wienerzeitung.at/ DesktopDefault.aspx? TabID=4701&Alias=wahle n&cob=251785&currentpage=0>. «Wie wurde der Sieger bestimmt? » derStandard.de 23 Sep. 2006. 3 Oct. 2006 <http: / / derstandard.at> (Kultur/ Musik/ HC-Diss-Contest). Zimmermann, Maria. «Strache erklärt seine Welt.» Salzburger Nachrichten. 30. Jan. 2007. 14 Apr. 2007 <http: / / www.salzburg.com/ sn/ 07/ 01/ 30/ artikel/ 2959198.html>. 228 Beret Norman Appendix A. Heinz-Christian Strache’s «HC-RAP: Österreich zuerst» Wir schreiben das Jahr 2006. Alle Politiker haben sich mit der herrschenden Regierung abgefunden oder sind bereit, die ÖVP in ihrem Machtrausch zu unterstützen. Alle Politiker? Nein, ein von einer unbeugsamen Partei, der FPÖ, aufgestellter Mann hört nicht auf, Widerstand zu leisten. Ich bin HC, ein Volksvertreter, vielleicht sogar Überzeugungstäter. Hier traut sich keiner, die Wahrheit zu sagen, darum tu’s ich, bitte darf ich’s wagen? Was viele schon wissen, bringe ich zu Papier und diesmal ist der Text bestimmt von mir. Skandale, Bestechung, Korruption und Verrat, das sind die Eckpfeiler in unsrem Staat. So sehen das die Herrschaften im Parlament. Es wird Zeit, dass da jemand dagegen anrennt, der aufpasst, der aufschreit, Missstände aufzeigt und nicht wie gewohnt heile Welt vorgeigt, der Dinge anspricht, die die Menschen betreffen! Dafür sind wir da, ich und meine Effen. Ich weiss, das gefällt den Mächtigen nicht, dass ein Rebell die Dinge ausspricht. Am Liebsten sähen sie mich stumm mit Knebel. Aber aufgepasst, ich habe mehr als meinen Säbel! Es geht um die Zukunft, um Österreichs Sache. Ich bin dabei, Dein HC Strache! HC - das ist unser Mann! HC - der Österreich retten kann! HC Ihr alle habt jetzt bald die Wahl, wer macht Schluss mit diesem Jammertal? HC - er ist unser Mann. HC - der uns noch retten kann! HC - einer der sich nicht versteckt sondern Klartext spricht und Missstände aufdeckt! Ich lass’mir den Mund nicht gern verbieten, auch wenn die Gutmenschen noch so wüten. The Politics of Austrian Hip-Hop 229 Die Wahrheit kommt irgendwann ans Licht, da nutzt es nichts, wenn der Kanzler spricht: «Böse Menschen, rechte Recken! » Gibt’s hier vielleicht etwas zum Verstekken [sic]? Statistiken schönen, Berater einkaufen und dann die Leute für blöd verkaufen! Ich sag nur das, was sich alle denken: Wir wollen unser Land nicht mehr verschenken, an Menschen, die unsre Kultur nicht schätzen, sich über unsre Gesetze wegsetzen! Wer sich nicht integrieren will, für den hab’ ich ein Reiseziel: Ab in die Heimat, guten Flug! Arbeitslose haben wir hier selbst genug. Einbruch, Raub und Überfall, Verbrechen steigt schnell und überall. Die Ostöffnung ist eine «tolle» Sache. Es grüßt Dich herzlich Dein HC Strache. Die Wahrheit kommt irgendwann ans Licht. Eure Lügen, die brauchen wir hier nicht. Keiner fragt, und man zweifelt nie. Ich frage mich, ist das Demokratie? Ich bin fürs Volk, bin für Solidarität. Ich bin der eine, der beim kleinen Mann steht. Das und sonst nichts ist unsere Sache. Das sagt nur Euer HC Strache. HC Strache kämpft dafür, dass wir Österreicher Herren im eigenen Haus bleiben. Deshalb ist er unsere Wahl. Source: Hcstrache.at 20 Aug. 2006. 4 Nov. 2006 <http: / / wirgebendentonan.fpoe.at/ index.php? style=21>. Appendix B: List of HC-Diss Contest Finalists The finalists are listed in order, starting with the winner. The limited biographical information is drawn from two sources: «And the nominees were …» 23 Sep. 2006. 14. Apr. 2007 <http: / / derstandard.at/ Kultur/ Musik/ HC-Diss-Contest> and «HC Diss-Contest Voting» 23 Aug. 2006. 12 Dec. 2006 <http: / / www.hiphop.at/ hc_voting.php>. 1. Koryphaios, 20 year old winner from Vienna. 2. Roman Ticker, lives as a foreigner in Austria; he did not perform live at the finale. Beat by toysRfuct and recording by Scheibsta. 3. 17-year-old from Vienna, MC Appletree, and his DJ, Krizzfader, is French but lives in Vienna. Beat produced by DJ Dickes & Select. 230 Beret Norman 4. Fat Poets Society, three rappers from Vienna: Chefkoch, Junes and Vin Gogh. 5. LA Splisz, two DJs, Testa and Chrisfader, and two MCs, Staffolo and Dirty Sanchez, from Tirol. 6. Johvi, from Upper Austria. Beat by Whizz Vienna. 7. RapAddicted, consists of five men from Vienna’s Second District: Scoddy Flippin, L.A.R., SCT, Erade and DJ Dickes. 8. Kugelblitz, from Lower Austria. 9. Javar (no details given of where he lives). Beat by Koryphaios. 10. Shakadelix, a group of four men from both Upper and Lower Austria. 11. Der Diener, Nikolaus Königsberger from Lower Austria (tied with Topoke & Anais). 11. Topoke & Anais. Topoke «comes from the Congo as well as from France and Austria.» Anais is his eight-year-old daughter (tied with Der Diener). Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG Postfach 25 60 · D-72015 Tübingen · Fax (0 7071) 97 97-11 Internet: www.francke.de · E-Mail: info@francke.de Als im Januar 1927 in Köln Harry Domela verhaftet wird, der als vermeintlicher Prinz von Preußen zwei Jahre lang durch verschiedene deutsche Städte gereist war, stand der immer noch jungen Republik schlaglichtartig vor Augen, wie groß die Sehnsucht nach der verloren gegangenen Monarchie in fast allen gesellschaftlichen Schichten noch war. In der Maske des Hochstaplers aber wurden auch die Züge bürgerlicher Selbstinszenierung deutlich: Im Gefüge einer Gesellschaft, die sich durch Binnenmigration und sprunghafte Urbanisierung in ihren Grundfesten änderte, nahmen symbolische Selbstdarstellungen auf der Bühne, aber auch im ‚wirklichen Leben‘ einen zentralen Platz ein. Die vorliegende Arbeit untersucht die unterschiedlichen Formen dieser Selbstinszenierungen, die schwanken zwischen der Sehnsucht nach ländlicher Ursprünglichkeit und weltstädtischer Weitläufigkeit. Vom „Weissen Rössel“ über „Wilhelm Tell“ bis hin zu Phänomenen wie der Revue und dem Warenhaus als sozialer Bühne wird so die kulturelle Ökonomie des Spektakels als Mittel der Selbstdarstellung und Selbsterfindung erkennbar. Peter W. Marx Ein theatralisches Zeitalter Bürgerliche Selbstinszenierungen um 1900 2008, 420 Seiten, €[D] 29,90/ SFr 48,50 ISBN 978-3-7720-8220-7 Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG Postfach 25 60 · D-72015 Tübingen · Fax (0 7071) 97 97-11 Internet: www.francke.de · E-Mail: info@francke.de Ferdinand von Saar. Por traitist der alten Donaumonarchie • Richard Beer-Hofmann und der jüdische Mythos • Otto Stoessl. Ein vergessener, großer Humorist • Hermann Broch und sein Tod des Vergil • Der Gnostiker Hermann Broch • Rose Ausländer und der Geist von Czernowitz • Ernst Schönwiese und Amerika. Eine Erinnerung • Arthur Koestler und die Parapsychologie • Henry William Katz. Ein Exilautor aus Galizien • Erich Pogats. Erzähler der Menschlichkeit und der Freiheit • Reinhard Federmann und sein Roman Die Chinesen kommen • Kurt Klinger als Lyriker • Karl Lubomirski oder die dichterische Macht der Kürze • Erich Wolfgang Skwara und Die Toten der Place Baudoyer. Joseph P. Strelka Vergessene und verkannte österreichische Autoren Edition Patmos, Band 12 2008, XII, 209 Seiten, ca. EUR[D] 38,00/ sfr 64,00 ISBN 978-3-7720-8287-0