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«Ich bin ein Wanderer und ein Bergsteiger» - Nietzsche and Zarathustra in the Mountains SEAN IRETON U NIVERSITY OF M IS SOURI The conjunction of Nietzsche and mountains is fraught with complexities and interpretive entanglements - in part because Nietzsche himself displays an ambivalent attitude toward mountainous heights. On the one hand, he liked to stylize himself as a solitary mountain dweller if not intrepid mountain climber, and he generally considered his philosophy inseparable from the Alpine environment in which some of it was conceived. As he has, for instance, stated in Ecce homo: «Philosophie, wie ich sie bisher verstanden und gelebt habe, ist das freiwillige Leben in Eis und Hochgebirge» (KSA 6, 258); and in a letter from 2 August 1875 he boasts: «Es kommt mir so vor als ob ich ein geborner Bergsteiger sei» (KSB 5, 95). 1 On the other hand, even though Nietzsche spent a great deal of time in the Swiss Alps and by all accounts was physically robust and well-tanned from his long walks, he never climbed a major peak or set foot on a glacier. 2 Nor was he inclined to venture above tree line, since his ophthalmic afflictions and susceptibility for migraines compelled him to avoid too much sun exposure, especially at higher altitudes. Moreover, because of his myopia and sensitive optic nerves he preferred forest paths that were not only deeply shaded but also well groomed and clearly marked. In a letter to his mother describing his first summer in St. Moritz, he offers a more realistic glimpse into his ideal outdoor surroundings: «Wälder, Seen, die besten Spazierwege, wie sie für mich Fast-Blinden hergerichtet sein müssen […]» (KSB 5, 424). A few years later, he would praise the Verschönerungsverein of Sils-Maria for creating such a fine network of comfortable walking trails (see Gilman 555) - not exactly the kind of remark one would expect from a dauntless mountaineer. In sum, one might say that Nietzsche suffered from wistful mountain fervor, accompanied by sporadic spells of delusional summit fever. He can best be regarded as an enthusiastic Spaziergänger, perhaps a hardy Wanderer, since he often rambled around the Upper Engadine Valley for up to eight hours a day on his so-called «Gebirgsmärsche» (KSB 8, 67). 3 Yet throughout the twentieth century he tended to enjoy the reputation of a staunch Bergsteiger, a dubious image promoted by early intellectual devotees, occasional Alpine club articles, National Socialism, and even by Reinhold Messner himself. 4 In CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 193 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 193 28.06.12 16: 17 28.06.12 16: 17 194 Sean Ireton his study Scholar Mountaineers: Pioneers of Parnassus (1950), Wilfrid Noyce goes so far as to identify a post-Nietzschean shift in mountaineering practices, particularly among German-speaking Alpinists during the interwar years: British climbers still [i.e., after the infamous Matterhorn calamity in 1865] accepted the principle of caution and the sanctity of human life, even when they began to climb without guides. The voice of Nietzsche struck a new note, that of dangerous living sought expressly for its contribution to the attainment of Superman. This voice called towards the pessimism and habit of self-immolation of some of the Continental climbers between the wars, the «pitoneers» who went cheerfully to their death on the north faces of the Eiger or Watzmann. (19) The irony here, of course, lies in the fact that Nietzsche’s relationship with mountains was mainly rhetorical in nature, full of literary devices, vicarious encounters, and his patented technique of hyperbole. To rely on the thesis of Robert Macfarlane’s Mountains of the Mind (2003), one might say that Nietzsche «imagined» his mountains into existence. As Macfarlane illustrates through both personal biography and a cultural history of Alpinism, mountains transcend their brute existence as geophysical formations that have arisen in the wake of diverse tectonic forces; they are also products of human perception and invention. And as he further notes: «A disjunction between the imagined and the real is a characteristic of all human activities, but it finds one of its sharpest expressions in the mountains» (19). Numerous foolhardy and often fatal mountaineering enterprises have attested to this disjunction, perhaps none more famously than George Mallory’s pathological obsession with Mount Everest, to which Macfarlane devotes an entire chapter. Everest, a mountain that was not even known to exist by outsiders until the mid- 1800s, when it became triangulated as the abstract Peak H and then Peak XV, became a construct - somewhere between reality and illusion, or delusion - of the British imperial mind. And as Mallory himself realizes on the first of his three expeditions between 1921 and 1924, what previous explorers had visualized regarding Everest’s north face did not conform to the existing terrain: the imagined low-gradient slopes «turn out to be the most appalling precipice nearly 10,000 ft high.» 5 A similar fascination and ambition obtains vis-à-vis Nietzsche and the mountains upon which his philosophy is ostensibly predicated. And here, too, conjunction is perhaps at bottom disjunction. Despite these preliminary qualifications and disclaimers, there can be no doubt that mountainous environs constitute an integral landscape in Nietzsche’s life and mind. Between 1869 and 1888 he visited the Swiss Alps nearly every summer; indeed, during most of the 1880s he spent intervals of three to four months in the Oberengadin village of Sils-Maria, walking the local pathways, savoring the curative air, scribbling ideas into a pocket notepad, and CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 194 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 194 28.06.12 16: 17 28.06.12 16: 17 «Ich bin ein Wanderer und ein Bergsteiger» 195 thus elaborating his philosophy in true peripatetic fashion. Not surprisingly, then, images and tropes of mountains abound in his writings, whether letters, notebooks, scattered poems, or the better-known books of philosophy that he released for publication. Even his juvenilia - poems, stories, and fantasies largely written in the tradition of Romanticism - contain numerous and detailed evocations of lofty peaks, most of them in what would appear to be the Alps though he also describes an ascent of El Mulhacén, the highest summit in mainland Spain (see Frühe Schriften 1, 390). 6 Mountain metaphors dominate his philosophical works, especially from the first volume of Menschliches, Allzumenschliches (1878) onward. Yet already in Schopenhauer als Erzieher (1874), one finds an illuminating example of what will become a common thread in his thought, namely the connection between the mountain climber and the freethinking individual: «So hoch zu steigen, wie je ein Denker stieg, in die reine Alpen- und Eisluft hinein, dorthin wo es kein Vernebeln und Verschleiern mehr giebt und wo die Grundbeschaffenheit der Dinge sich rauh und starr, aber mit unvermeidlicher Verständlichkeit ausdrückt! » (KSA 1, 381). 7 The most sustained thematization of mountains in Nietzsche’s oeuvre can be found in Also sprach Zarathustra, which its author, true to his proclivity for metaphors involving Alpine heights, once characterized as «das höchste Buch, das es giebt, das eigentliche Höhenluft-Buch» (Ecce homo, KSA 6, 259). This work, written in four parts from 1883 to 1885 and featuring a narrative blend of philosophy, poetry, and prophecy, can also be considered Nietzsche’s «symbolic autobiography, one that requires explication and interpretation to fully disclose how intimately it relates to his life» (Brobjer 31). But Zarathustra is more than just Nietzsche’s «alter ego» (Himmelmann 17; Hüser 54); he is «the sublimated Nietzsche» (Brobjer 30), that is, the valley wanderer elevated to new heights. In accordance with this upgrade in elevation, montane topographies form a crucial backdrop in the work’s setting and plot. More significantly, the central idea of upward movement, as embodied by the Übermensch and its defining attribute of self-overcoming, rests on a fundamental vector of verticality. As Zarathustra declares, his principal nemesis is «der Geist der Schwere,» an inevitable law of physics that any climber must contend with. In his conception of the Übermensch and its mountaindwelling prophet Zarathustra, Nietzsche outlines two ascendant trajectories: the implicit verticalized axis of human evolution from apes to homo erectus to the Übermensch; and the inherent risk-taking enterprise of scaling a peak. In the following, I will examine the mountain-related subtexts of Also sprach Zarathustra, which, granted, is a product of the imagination but also of an historical era when Alpinism and its real-life narratives flourished. Although it is doubtful that Nietzsche was familiar with the burgeoning Alpinist litera- CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 195 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 195 28.06.12 16: 17 28.06.12 16: 17 196 Sean Ireton ture or had contact with the emerging climbing scene in Sils-Maria during the latter half of the nineteenth century, 8 one would be remiss to dismiss, at least not without sufficient exploration, the role that mountains and mountaineering play in the book. I will therefore contextualize Zarathustra within the discourse of Alpinism and interpret its major ideas - the Übermensch, eternal recurrence, and the basic imperative of ascension - from the standpoint of climbing. The real question then remains whether the mountains depicted in Zarathustra are mere accretions of the mind or have a more solid, material basis in reality. Or, as often the case with Nietzsche, for whom truth is not an absolute: to what extent they perhaps occupy a middle ground, somewhere between Zarathustra’s idealized existence on remote mountaintops and Nietzsche’s more routine sojourns in the Alps. It is misleading to think that Zarathustra only inhabits high mountainous territory. Many of his journeys take place at or near sea level, along rocky coastlines and on craggy islands, including one with an active volcano that could well be an allusion to Mount Etna. This unmistakably Mediterranean landscape reflects Nietzsche’s own preferred places of residence (and convalescence) during the winter months: the French and Italian Riviera. Nevertheless, it is important to bear in mind that the physical scenery in Also sprach Zarathustra remains consistently rugged and that Zarathustra always seems to be moving either up or down geological folds. Nietzsche himself eschewed the beachside bustle of the resorts, gravitating instead toward the steep hills along the Ligurian coast of Italy or the Côte d’Azur of southern France. Here he conceived and composed major portions of Zarathustra. While the inspiration for the idea of eternal recurrence overcame him at 6,000 feet above sea level during one of his regular walks along Lake Silvaplana at a pyramidal boulder now known as the «Zarathustra-Stein,» he envisioned the entire first part of the work in the heights above Rapallo (see Ecce homo, KSA 6, 335-37). In fact, three-quarters of Zarathustra was written on the Mediterranean: part I in Rapallo; part II in Sils-Maria; parts III and IV in Nice. It is perhaps symptomatic of these geographically diverse work sites that Zarathustra’s cave, which for well over half of the book seems to be located high in the mountains, is revealed to lie near the sea by the beginning of part IV: «[M]an schaut aber dort auf das Meer hinaus, und hinweg über gewundene Abgründe» (KSA 4, 295). In his classic commentary on Also sprach Zarathustra, Gustav Naumann speculates that this cave topographically corresponds to Montefino, a 600 meter crest between Genoa and Rapallo (see vol. 1, 31, 35). This theory deflates, if not outright debunks, the myth of high elevation insinuated by Nietzsche’s occasional references to his rented room in Sils-Maria as a Zarathustrian CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 196 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 196 28.06.12 16: 17 28.06.12 16: 17 «Ich bin ein Wanderer und ein Bergsteiger» 197 «Höhle.» Zarathustra’s mythical mountain grotto seems situated in far greater proximity to the Mediterranean Sea than to the Swiss Alps. Zarathustra thus wanders through hybrid ground. One should also not ignore the Middle Eastern embellishments in the backdrops that Nietzsche paints, some of which are meant to invoke the desert locale of ancient Persia through which the historical Zarathustra/ Zoroaster roamed, while others are satirically suggestive of biblical scenes and scenarios associated with Moses and Jesus. As one scholar has explained this complex of land features: «Was Zarathustra in der Zwiesprache mit seinem Land im Land wahrnimmt, ist, konkret gesagt, das in eine Vertikale gebrachte und in die Bergwelt eingeschriebene biblische Ineinander von Wüste und Gelobtem Land» (Kreis 148). Verticality is a key aspect of the book, one that transcends its literary trappings of plot, setting, and action and that informs its deeper philosophical themes. As already mentioned, irrespective of the specific environment in which Zarathustra happens to travel, he tends to move in either an upward or downward direction. In more concrete terms, he is continually engaged in acts of ascent or descent with regard to mountains, hills, cliffs, canyons, and divides. Summit elevation is not a critical factor in these pursuits. As any experienced climber knows, the objectively measured height of a mountain means little; a 7,000 foot peak in the Olympics or North Cascades can be as arduous to climb as a Colorado 14,000er or an Andean 20,000er. Altitude is relative and much depends on the physical relief and terrain as well as on one’s own physiological acclimation. In the end, it does not greatly matter whether Zarathustra operates in an Alpine or maritime milieu; the essential issue is that he seeks new acmes of existence. In the grand scheme of geohistory, there is, after all, no definitive difference between mountains and oceans: the former have arisen, and indeed continue to rise, out of the latter. As Nietzsche well knew, whether through the influential works of Thomas Burnet (The Sacred Theory of the Earth, 1681), James Hutton (Theory of the Earth, 1785- 99), Charles Lyell (The Principles of Geology, 1830-33), or their reception in some of his favorite authors like Goethe and Stifter, many of the most massive mountain ranges of the world are the result of tectonic shifts - powerful continental collisions and ensuing geological uplifts - that occurred hundreds of millions of years ago. Even the upper reaches of Everest are riddled with rock bands containing the fossilized remains of creatures that inhabited the Tethys Sea some 180 million years in the past (see Macfarlane 228). As Zarathustra alternatively puts it: «Woher kommen die höchsten Berge? so fragte ich einst. Da lernte ich, dass sie aus dem Meer kommen. Diess Zeugniss ist in ihr Gestein geschrieben und in die Wände ihrer Gipfel. Aus dem Tiefsten muss das Höchste zu seiner Höhe kommen» (KSA 4, 195). CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 197 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 197 28.06.12 16: 17 28.06.12 16: 17 198 Sean Ireton Also sprach Zarathustra is abundant with such metaphors of verticality. As the philosopher Gaston Bachelard claims, although «Nietzsche was not a mountaineer [alpiniste in original]» (159; 184 in French edition), he nonetheless exemplifies «the prototype of the vertical poet, the poet of the summits, the ascensional poet» (127). For Bachelard, who has philosophized about the traditional four elements in a series of books, Nietzsche embraces the primal stuff of air over the other substances of earth, fire, and water. Aerial tropes pervade Nietzsche’s poetic texts as a reflection of the vertical linearity implied by his life-affirming ethics of existence. In an article on the same subject, F.D. Luke explores Nietzsche’s literary «height imagery» and psychological «height complex,» finding fault with a «rhetorical debauch of images» (107) that saturate Zarathustra and dilute its philosophical content. In the course of Zarathustra’s poeticized orations, Luke maintains, the idea becomes subservient to the image. While I tend to agree with Luke’s argument, it does not affect my own, which is thematic in focus and not overly concerned with the discursive differences between philosophy and literature. In this sense, I am more interested in his observation: «[W]e find that Zarathustra himself, when he is not speaking, spends most of the time mountaineering» (106). And he primarily does so, according to both Bachelard and Luke, out of an ascensionist motivation to reach the sky. 9 In Zarathustra’s own words: Oh Himmel über mir, du Reiner! Tiefer! Du Licht-Abgrund! Dich schauend schaudere ich vor göttlichen Begierden. […] Und wanderte ich allein: wes hungerte meine Seele in Nächten und Irr-Pfaden? Und stieg ich Berge, wen suchte ich je, wenn nicht dich, auf Bergen? Und all mein Wandern und Bergsteigen: eine Noth war’s nur und ein Behelf des Unbeholfenen: - fliegen allein will mein ganzer Wille, in dich hinein fliegen! Und wen hasste ich mehr, als ziehende Wolken und Alles, was dich befleckt? (KSA 4, 207-8) Yet Zarathustra not only climbs skyward; he also descends to the lowlands, thereby risking his literal and figurative downfall. Nietzsche linguistically conveys these two directions of movement through the incessant use of the prefixes über and unter, the main variants of which include Übermensch, Überwindung, (sich) überwinden, Übergang, hinübergehen, über sich hinausschaffen, Untergang, and untergehen. But numerous other constructions, many of them neologisms, bolster this lexical network, one so dense that it has led Ludwig Klages to comment: Alles in allem ist der Zarathustra eine schwärmerisch unheimliche Exegese des Bezugswortes «Über». Überfülle, Übergüte, Überzeit, Überart, Überreichtum, Überheld, sich übertrinken, das sind einige aus der großen Zahl teils neugebildeter, CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 198 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 198 28.06.12 16: 17 28.06.12 16: 17 «Ich bin ein Wanderer und ein Bergsteiger» 199 teils immer wieder verwendeter Überworte und ebensoviele Lesarten des einen ausschließlich gemeinten: der Überwindung. (204) The major operative concept in Zarathustra’s prophetic proclamations to humanity is thus Überwindung. He first presents this notion and its implications near the beginning of the preface, shortly after his descent (Untergang) from his cave up in the mountains: «Ich lehre euch den Übermenschen. Der Mensch ist Etwas, das überwunden werden soll. Was habt ihr gethan, ihn zu überwinden? » (KSA 4, 14). The human being in its present condition must be overcome, transcended. Despite the various reductionist interpretations of this idea along Darwinian evolutionary lines, most notoriously as a National Socialist biologistic paradigm, most postwar scholars of Nietzsche agree that the Übermensch has a principally existential or individual application. 10 In an era that has experienced the death of God and a concomitant loss of transcendent metaphysical hopes, Nietzsche issues a challenge, rhetorically couched in lexical variations on the morpheme über, urging us to outstrip our previously attained states of being and achieve perfection right here in our terrestrial existence. Divine transcendence, in other words, becomes supplanted by self-transcendence, which is itself but a form of immanence and the upshot of Zarathustra’s chthonic maxim: «bleibt der Erde treu» (KSA 4, 15). Annemarie Pieper has expounded on the central meaning of über in Zarathustra, arguing that it has both vertical and horizontal connotations. Whereas the über in Übermensch denotes verticality, the über in überwinden suggests horizontality, «eine Bewegung von etwas weg auf etwas hin, die Dynamik eines Hinüber, mit welcher die Vorstellung eines Zwischenraums, einer Kluft suggeriert wird, die es zu überbrücken gilt» (94). This latter directionality becomes most apparent in the tightrope walker’s attempt to traverse the «Seil, geknüpft zwischen Thier und Übermensch, - ein Seil über einem Abgrunde»; indeed, his endeavor as a whole represents «[e]in gefährliches Hinüber» (KSA 4, 16; my italics). My highlights here indicate the difficulty of separating the two distinct dimensions embedded in the linguistic unit über. Nevertheless, Pieper’s point is well taken, and English has inherited an analogous duality of signification from the Latin trans. The tightrope walker acts as a kind of horizontal climber, a figure that does not actually move upward yet that still pushes the limits of gravity and risks plummeting into the abyss. In the context of this segment from the prologue, his transgressive stunt illustrates an attempt to surpass his present human condition and realize the ideal of the Übermensch. His traverse therefore can be viewed as a form of transcendence, especially in the further nonphysical sense of trans as meta. Though his goal lies before him in the literal spatial dimensions of the scene (a horizontal rope stretched between two towers, high above a crowd gath- CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 199 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 199 28.06.12 16: 17 28.06.12 16: 17 200 Sean Ireton ered at the marketplace), he pursues a noble, indeed lofty objective, one that looms somewhere beyond him. Zarathustra’s words later in the book point to the multidirectional paths that lead to this supreme objective: «hinauf, hinaus, hinweg zu dem Übermenschen! » (KSA 4, 186). Yet the tightrope walker fails, that is, falls. His Übergang results in an Untergang, which graphically demonstrates the risk involved in self-overcoming: the individual walks a fine line between existential complacency and transformation. The vertical and horizontal tendencies of über, along with its corresponding compounds, can also be applied to the respective activities of hiking and climbing; that is, to traversal and transcendent motion. As foreshadowed by the example of the tightrope walker, Zarathustra moves through the varied landscapes of the book - mountains, foothills, valleys, shorelines, the open sea - both horizontally and vertically in his capacity as wanderer and climber. In the first chapter of part III, entitled no less «Der Wanderer,» he defines himself in precisely these terms: Ich bin ein Wanderer und ein Bergsteiger, sagte er zu seinem Herzen, ich liebe die Ebenen nicht und es scheint, ich kann nicht lange still sitzen. Und was mir nun auch noch als Schicksal und Erlebniss komme, - ein Wandern wird darin sein und ein Bergsteigen: man erlebt endlich nur noch sich selber. (KSA 4, 193) This chapter traces Zarathustra’s traverse of a mountainous island and is rich in topographical detail. Like the dual trajectories discussed above, his nocturnal cross-country trek combines a horizontal passage from one side of the island to the other with a vertical scramble over a summit that forms the geophysical backbone of this landmass. Along the way, he recalls «des vielen einsamen Wanderns von Jugend an, und wie viele Berge und Rücken und Gipfel er schon gestiegen sei» (KSA 4, 193), thereby reiterating his translocomotive existence. As is often the case with the physical settings that Nietzsche presents, a more profound metaphorical level of meaning soon emerges. Here Zarathustra reflects, transcendentally, on the ultimate purpose of his mission, and the literal denotations of Wanderung, Berg, Gipfel, and Höhe quickly cede to the traditional tropes of inner journey, impediment, trial, and triumph. To defer to Macfarlane here: «When we walk or climb up a mountain we traverse not only the actual terrain of the hillside but also the metaphysical territories of struggle and achievement. To reach a summit is very palpably to have triumphed over adversity […]» (142). This sense of victory in the face of hardship is evident in several images pertaining to height and depth, for instance: «Vor meinem höchsten Berge stehe ich und vor meiner längsten Wanderung, darum muss ich erst tiefer hinab als ich jemals stieg» (KSA 4, 195). And to cite an even more symbolically charged testimony of Zarathustra’s CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 200 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 200 28.06.12 16: 17 28.06.12 16: 17 «Ich bin ein Wanderer und ein Bergsteiger» 201 geographical crossing and simultaneous spiritual crossroads here midway through the book: Von sich absehn lernen ist nöthig, um Viel zu sehn: - diese Härte thut jedem Berge-Steigenden Noth. Wer aber mit den Augen zudringlich ist als Erkennender, wie sollte der von allen Dingen mehr als ihre vorderen Gründe sehn! Du aber, oh Zarathustra, wolltest aller Dinge Grund schaun und Hintergrund: so musst du schon über dich selber steigen, - hinan, hinauf, bis du auch deine Sterne noch unter dir hast! Ja! Hinab auf mich selber sehn und noch auf meine Sterne: das erst hiesse mir mein Gipfel, das blieb mir noch zurück als mein letzter Gipfel! - (KSA 4, 194) The somatic progression of ascending a mountain thus merges with the inner process of transcending one’s self: Zarathustra rises to new heights of selfawareness and self-fulfillment. He sets foot on the «Spitze des Berges, wo es kalt war» (KSA 4, 195) and then promptly wanders back down to the sea, having overcome what would appear to be a relatively low-lying Mediterranean summit but an all the more formidable mountain of the mind. In the next chapter, «Vom Gesicht und Räthsel,» Zarathustra narrates his ascent of another decisive mountain, one on which he gains insight into the prospect of eternal recurrence. Whereas his previous climb was a test of conviction and commitment, this one challenges the very meaning of his existence within the greater flux of being. Once again, his foray begins in a materially descriptive setting, one in which Nietzsche also appeals to the reader’s aural faculties: Ein Pfad, der trotzig durch Geröll stieg, ein boshafter, einsamer, dem nicht Kraut, nicht Strauch mehr zuprach: ein Berg-Pfad knirschte unter dem Trotz meines Fusses. Stumm über höhnischem Geklirr von Kieseln schreitend, den Stein zertretend, der ihn gleiten liess: also zwang mein Fuss sich aufwärts. (KSA 4, 198) The allegorical function of this ascent is underscored by its intertextual nod to Dante, who evokes a similar image of the upward-striving foot in the first canto of the Inferno. 11 And of course Dante’s further ascension - after a lengthy detour through the circles of Hell - from Mount Purgatory to Paradise only reinforces the transcendental if not metaphysical aspect of climbing. To mention another prominent example from Dante’s era, one could also argue that Petrarch’s celebrated (and not undisputed) ascent of Mont Ventoux in 1336 is more a religious allegory than a credible climbing narrative. Petrarch’s entire account may have been «simply a convenient fictional framework over which to drape [his] metaphysical musings, and an opportunity to draw a pious moral» (Macfarlane 147). On his analogous albeit nonreligious quest for en- CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 201 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 201 28.06.12 16: 17 28.06.12 16: 17 202 Sean Ireton lightenment, Zarathustra experiences a vision of self-transcendence. He sees a gateway above which stands the word «Augenblick» and beneath which two interminable paths converge, one extending backward into the past, the other forward into the future. This apparition expresses Nietzsche’s concept of «die ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichen.» True to its metaphorical presentation, eternal recurrence should not be interpreted as an historical cycle of perpetual repetition (though there are indications in Nietzsche’s notebooks that he may have, for a time at least, half-believed in this pre-Socratic and Stoic cosmological principle). In Ecce homo, he famously described this hypothetical proposition and existential provocation as «diese höchste Formel der Bejahung, die überhaupt erreicht werden kann» (KSA 6, 335). Like his Übermensch prototype, eternal recurrence is not a universal doctrine meant to reflect reality but a propositional truth aimed straight at the individual. In this case, Nietzsche, through his mouthpiece Zarathustra, urges us to live in such a manner that we would joyfully embrace each «moment» of our existence as if it were to recur eternally. Put in more negative terms: Could we stand in the crucible of the «Augenblick» and accept our current state of being if it were to repeat itself for all eternity? If not, then it is time to make a change and convert the radical possibility of eternal recurrence into the actuality of a consummate life. Much more could be said about eternal recurrence, especially in light of its vibrant reception in Nietzsche scholarship. Numerous interpreters have also grappled with the apparent conceptual incompatibility between eternal recurrence and the Übermensch. Whereas the latter theory entails an upward trajectory toward self-perfection, the former involves a cyclical structure within which the individual is expected to affirm his existence in all its plenitude. In other words, the Übermensch is a developmental notion that presupposes a greater, perhaps infinite, continuum of time; eternal recurrence, on the contrary, implies a completed infinity, a cycle that is self-enclosed and perfected (i.e., finished) from the start. These two models - one linear and dynamic, the other circular and normative - would seem to be contradictory. How does the self-overcoming individual, rising to ever higher tiers of existence, break out of the vicious circle of eternal recurrence and find the supreme moment - the Faustian «höchsten Augenblick» - in which to abide? A number of scholars (for example Kaufmann 307-33, Müller-Lauter 135-88, Magnus 111-54, and Pieper) have offered interpretive solutions to this dilemma. My more restricted aim here is to embed these ideas within the discursive field of mountains, which is precisely where the transcendental movement of Zarathustra, a forerunner of the Übermensch, and the eternal moment of a superlative existence coincide. CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 202 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 202 28.06.12 16: 17 28.06.12 16: 17 «Ich bin ein Wanderer und ein Bergsteiger» 203 As mentioned earlier, Nietzsche reportedly conceived of eternal recurrence during one of his «high»-elevation walks along the rocky and wooded shores of Lake Silvaplana. He reminisces on this incident in Ecce homo (see KSA 6, 335), yet originally recorded it in a notebook with the concluding lines: «6000 Fuss über dem Meere und viel höher über allen menschlichen Dingen» (KSA 9, 494). This comment typifies his fascination with altitude and its numerical expression. As Andreas Hüser has observed (see 95), the many letters and postcards that Nietzsche sent from his annual excursions to the Alps never fail to mention the elevation of his lodgings. «Höhe des Hotels gegen 7000 Fuß, ich bin der erste und höchste Pensionär [i.e., Pensionsgast] der ganzen Schweiz, unbestreitbar» (KSB 5, 346) - so he quips in one of his more extreme missives, extreme in terms of both its overstated claim and the statistically given altitude itself, which roughly corresponds to the geographical highpoint in Nietzsche’s life. As for the existential highpoint that Zarathustra envisages in the portal inscribed «Augenblick,» it occurs on a mountain, presumably on a mountaintop. Although the text never specifies whether Zarathustra has arrived at the summit of this nondescript peak (as it does with regard to the island crest in the previous chapter, «Der Wanderer»), his repeated exhortations of «Aufwärts […] Aufwärts» and «Ich stieg, ich stieg» (KSA 4, 198) testify that he is making definite headway toward the top. And it is here that the vertical path of the Übermensch and the cyclical pattern of eternal recurrence intersect, where the aperture of infinite possibility opens up and one can shout, at the pinnacle of one’s existence: «‹War das das Leben? Wohlan! Noch Ein Mal! ›» (KSA 4, 199). Annemarie Pieper has convincingly argued that this affirmation of existence through the act of climbing has a precedent in the myth of Sisyphus, at least as interpreted by Camus in his existentialist essay from 1942. Sisyphus, eternally condemned to push a boulder up a mountain only to have it roll back down and begin his task anew, can be said to personify the coexisting paradox of the Übermensch and eternal recurrence. Like Zarathustra, he must learn to create meaning within this never-ending cycle and make the most of its absurdity. He does so by rejecting the gods (transcendence) and focusing on the mountain (immanence) that constitutes the only reality he knows. His interminable striving up its slopes and illusory arrival at its apex can be summed up as follows: «Es gibt keine Zäsur mehr zwischen dem Weg hinauf und dem Weg hinab. Für Sisyphos hat sich der Kreis geschlossen, in welchem sich der Übermensch als der Sinn seines Lebens zeigt» (Pieper 117). Sisyphus has thus managed to construct his existence around the existentially paralyzing prospect of eternal recurrence; indeed, his very being consists of an endless routine defined by ascent and descent. But he learns to infuse it CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 203 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 203 28.06.12 16: 17 28.06.12 16: 17 204 Sean Ireton with meaning, perhaps even joy, as hinted in the final sentence of Camus’s text: «One must imagine Sisyphus happy» (91). Sisyphus has superhumanly risen above (über) his lot, and toward the end of part III Zarathustra does the same, creating his own rings of fate and thereby soaring to sublime heights of existence: «Ich schliesse Kreise um mich und heilige Grenzen; immer Wenigere steigen mit mir auf immer höhere Berge, - ich baue ein Gebirge aus immer heiligeren Bergen -» (KSA 4, 260). Like Sisyphus, Zarathustra may have conquered his own personal «höchsten Berg» (KSA 4, 195) and maximized the promise of eternal recurrence, but what about the rest of humanity that he seeks to enlighten? How are they to transcend themselves through self-overcoming and meet the challenge of an infinitely perpetuated existence? In the course of the first three parts, Zarathustra has adopted a variety of approaches to convince humankind of his message and he has experienced a number of literal as well as figurative ups and downs in the process. In addition to his ascents and descents through diverse terrains, he has battled bouts of melancholy, illness, and the worst affliction of all: pity. At the beginning of part IV, now aged and gray, he decides that he will no longer «go down» (untergehen) to the people and suffer their flatland mentality; he will instead elevate them to his level, namely to the top of a high mountain, where they can better grasp the import of eternal recurrence and rise to the task of becoming Übermenschen. Zarathustra’s first action in part IV is to climb «einen hohen Berg» (KSA 4, 296), one that appears to lie near his cave and hence not far from the sea. As discussed earlier, his refuge is situated in a topographical amalgam of Alpine highlands and coastal hillsides, which are based on Nietzsche’s seasonal abodes of Sils-Maria, Rapallo, and Nice. Here readers are given further details regarding Zarathustra’s domain, including «Wälder,» «moorig[e] Gründe,» and «Felsen» (see KSA 4, 309, 313, 327). Furthermore, the mountain upon whose summit he stands is a solid geological formation, one that mirrors his own steadfastness and unwavering search for «superior» - this word taken literally as the comparative of superus - individuals: «auf einem ewigen Grunde, auf hartem Urgesteine, auf diesem höchsten härtesten Urgebirge, zu dem alle Winde kommen als zur Wetterscheide, fragend nach Wo? und Woher? und Wohinaus? » (KSA 4, 298). Here he engages in a symbolic act of fishing in order to lure potential self-overcomers «hinauf […] in meine Höhe» (KSA 4, 297). As Nietzsche already declares in Schopenhauer als Erzieher, anticipating this vertical thrust of the Übermensch, one has to climb up («hinklettern») to one’s genuine self, «denn dein wahres Wesen liegt nicht tief verborgen in dir, sondern unermesslich hoch über dir oder wenigstens über dem, was du gewöhnlich als dein Ich nimmst» (KSA 1, 340-41). And much like CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 204 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 204 28.06.12 16: 17 28.06.12 16: 17 «Ich bin ein Wanderer und ein Bergsteiger» 205 Schopenhauer served Nietzsche as an instrumental educator (Erzieher) on his path toward becoming a free-thinking individual, Zarathustra intends to teach people down below, in the «Menschen-Abgrund» (KSA 4, 297), how to rise above the common crowd - even if this means drawing them upward by force, as connoted in the following variations on the verb ziehen: Der nämlich bin ich von Grund und Anbeginn, ziehend, heranziehend, hinaufziehend, aufziehend, ein Zieher, Züchter und Zuchtmeister, der sich nicht umsonst einstmals zusprach: «Werde, der du bist! » Also mögen nunmehr die Menschen zu mir hinauf kommen […] (KSA 4, 297) Like Jesus, Zarathustra is a fisher of men, which is but one of many parodistic parallels that Nietzsche creates linking these two redeemers of mankind who preach opposite values. One should not forget, however, that Jesus also spent pivotal moments on mountaintops, or at least hilltops, where he overcame temptation by the devil; delivered a lengthy sermon that encapsulates the essence of Christianity; was transfigured as a sign of his divine nature; despaired of his cause in true human fashion (in the Garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives); and was crucified upon the mound/ mount of skulls known as Golgotha. All of these stations, or at least their transvalued analogies, play a part in Zarathustra’s own teachings and wanderings. And like Jesus, Zarathustra has mixed success in conveying the good word to humanity. Zarathustra’s high-altitude «Fischfang[.]» (KSA 4, 297) yields a mixed catch of so-called «höhere Menschen.» This strange assemblage of characters represents a wide range of positive (read: anti-Christian) cultural values, yet they all have one common failing: while they transcend the current human norm, they have not yet ascended to the status of Übermenschen. There is no room in my analysis to devote adequate attention to these assorted figures that appear in what many critics regard as a flawed finale to the more organically constructed first three sections of Also sprach Zarathustra. Nietzsche himself was wary of public reaction toward this fourth part and had it published in a limited private edition. Suffice it to say that these higher beings are also limited; they are but stepping stones toward the Übermensch. Or to invoke Nietzsche’s profuse imagery: Ihr seid nur Brücken; mögen Höhere auf euch hinüber schreiten. Ihr bedeutet Stufen: so zürnt Dem nicht, der über euch hinweg in seine Höhe steigt! […] Als Vorzeichen kamt ihr mir nur, dass schon Höhere zu mir unterwegs sind, - (KSA 4, 351) In the end, Zarathustra remains alone in his mountains, since no one has yet proved himself worthy of these transcendent heights. Yet here, up high, he CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 205 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 205 28.06.12 16: 17 28.06.12 16: 17 206 Sean Ireton awaits his true companions, «glühend und stark, wie eine Morgensonne, die aus dunklen Bergen kommt» (KSA 4, 408). As indicated earlier, Wilfrid Noyce would later associate these companions with Germanic or at least Continental mountaineers, who, under the auspices of Hitler and Mussolini, sought new and dangerous routes on such legendary peaks as the Watzmann, Eiger, Drei Zinnen/ Tre Cime di Lavaredo, and Grandes Jorasses (see 133). Noyce characterizes Also sprach Zarathustra as «a difficult, a rambling and poetical outpouring» that «gives in its oracular utterances the clue to much of the Continental mountain philosophy in the period between the wars» (132). He goes on to claim that «[t]he element of risk was of course a ‹sine qua non› of German climbing between the wars, and linked curiously with the Nietzschean theory of the perfect man» (134). While these assertions come across as somewhat facile or at least smack of a mid-century British bias toward the recent wartime enemy, there can be doubt that the notions of danger and risk are vital to Nietzsche’s philosophy. In an oftquoted dictum from Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, he beseeches us to overcome ourselves by living dangerously - «gefährlich leben! » (KSA 3, 526) - and thereby prepare the way for a higher rank of human being. Two aphorisms later he continues this train of thought, suggesting where this perilous path of self-overcoming may ultimately lead: «[V]ielleicht wird der Mensch von da an immer höher steigen, wo er nicht mehr in einen Gott ausfliesst» (KSA 3, 528). This aphorism significantly bears the heading «Excelsior! » and thus emphasizes the deeper connection between elevation and inner excellence (ex = «beyond,» celsus = «lofty»). By way of conclusion, I will pursue these Nietzschean imperatives of danger, ascension, and super-humanness within the discourse of what Mikel Vause calls «the philosophy of mountaineering.» Nietzsche’s trans-Darwinian model of human development, based on the scale Affe - Mensch - Übermensch, has its correspondence in certain theories concerning the role of mountains in anthropological history. Just as the physical evolution of humankind from hominoids to homo erectus entailed a shift of the body axis from a horizontal propensity (left/ right and forward/ backward mobility) to a carriage of verticality, mountainous heights have further spurred the intellectual and spiritual advancement of the erect-standing human. In classical as well as Christian terminology, man is both a horizontally articulated cultivator terrae and a vertically oriented contemplator coeli (see Böhme 47). These spatial dimensions define the telluric and transcendent extremes of human existence. The surging sweep of the Andes, the colossal massif of Kilimanjaro, the conical symmetry of Mt. Fuji - these and countless other geological landmarks have attracted the ascendant gaze of upright humans for millennia. Hartmut Böhme summarizes the cultural-anthropo- CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 206 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 206 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 «Ich bin ein Wanderer und ein Bergsteiger» 207 logical significance of mountains as follows: «Berge führen also zur Transzendenz, sie sind - schon visuell - Medium des Aufstiegs, des Überstiegs und der Transgression» (48). The renowned British mountaineer Geoffrey Winthrop Young, who was a mentor and climbing partner of George Mallory before the latter’s death in 1924, expands on these correlations between topography and anthropology. In his published speech, «The Influence of Mountains upon the Development of Human Intelligence,» he contends that the presence of mountains has helped contribute new mental dimensions to human existence and thus promote the civilizing process. Mountains created an added dimension of height and depth to those of length and breadth that had long constituted the horizons of many traditional peoples. The Alps, in their steepness and vastness are, for instance, partially responsible for stimulating the Italian mind. According to Young, the real «break-through […] in the evolution of mankind» (22) occurred, however, in ancient Greece, where the mountains that rise from the sea «are set like upright rulers, to mark the scale, against the perspectives of plain and sea and sky» (24). The varied relief of this rugged landscape fostered the human ability to compare, to assess, and, eventually, to reason. It also enlivened the imagination and intimated a sense of spirituality and divinity, as is visually manifest at Delphi, which, like Zarathustra’s cave, lies amidst desolate crags that overlook valley and sea. Whether in Italy, Greece, or other parts of the world, «mountains became the first forces to lift the eyes and thoughts of our branch of animal life above the levels of difficult existence to the perception of a region of spirit, located […] in the sky above» (14). In an argument that brings to mind the über-motif and the broader theme of ascension in Zarathustra, Young further holds that this aspect of spirit belongs to an even higher, non-perceptible realm, for it transcends the limits of human intelligence and uplifts us in other ways and toward other goals. Mountains, in sum, instill in humans the «principles of measure, proportion, order, and of an uprightness that points a way beyond clouds and, at least, towards the stars» (30). Climbers of course represent an extreme example of human-mountain interaction. In his essay «Knights of Nothingness: The Transcendental Nature of Mountaineering and Mountain Literature,» Mikel Vause not only stresses the idea of transcendence that I have discussed in Nietzsche and briefly sketched by way of Böhme and Young; he also grounds this vertical aspiration of climbing in the sensory experience of high-risk sports. Drawing on an article published in Outside magazine (see Furlons), Vause distinguishes between the common perception of risk-taking activities and the theory of risk exercise espoused by the physician Sol Ray Rosenthal. According to Rosenthal, CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 207 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 207 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 208 Sean Ireton «there is something in risk that enhances the life of the individual - something so real, something with such impact that people who have experienced it need to experience it again and again» (441). On the surface, this statement seems to echo the usual clichés associated with adventure-seeking activities, namely that they produce an addictive adrenaline rush and a joy of success let alone survival. Yet risk exercise differs from reckless stunts or death-defying exploits in several respects. First of all, it is a measured and disciplined pursuit, one that assumes «that the risk taker has the skills to match or overcome the risk» (441). Secondly, it generates a sustained form of exhilaration outlasting adrenaline highs and quick kicks. The individual attains a heightened, indeed «transcendent» state of consciousness that can be compared to the transcendental experiences described by Emerson, Thoreau, and John Muir (see 441). One ascends to a whole new plane of mindfulness in which one is completely focused on the «moment» (441), but a moment that perdures throughout the venture rather than transpires as a fleeting thrill. This condition of euphoric well-being, I would add, resembles the «Augenblick» of an eternal present that Zarathustra comes to realize on his own risk-imbued climb toward ever greater altitudes of insight. The fact that Nietzsche was most likely inspired by Emerson, the quintessential transcendentalist, for the original conception of Zarathustra and perhaps even the Übermensch 12 further underscores the transcendental implications of the many mountain-climbing escapades found in Also sprach Zarathustra, whose titular hero programmatically proclaims: «Ich bin ein Wanderer und ein Bergsteiger […] ich liebe die Ebenen nicht und es scheint, ich kann nicht lange still sitzen» (KSA 4, 193). Notes 1 Throughout this article I refer to the Kritische Studienausgabe of Nietzsche’s Sämtliche Werke and Sämtliche Briefe, using the standard abbreviations KSA and KSB, respectively, along with appropriate volume and page number. 2 Though he had aspirations of climbing the popular Mount Pilatus (6,982 ft/ 2,128 m) outside of Lucerne, he was most likely thwarted by bad weather and hence never reached the summit (his philosophical predecessor, Schopenhauer, did). Pilatus occupies a prominent place in the history of European attitudes toward mountains, ranging from medieval superstition to modern technological domination. First attempted in 1387 but not successfully climbed until 1518, Pilatus is now accessible by cog railway and cable car. In Nietzsche’s day it was no more than a mildly strenuous jaunt. Nietzsche did, however, hike up to a number of mountain passes that top out over 2,000 meters. The highest elevation that he probably attained, based on his own documentation and also according to Hüser, is the Männlichen (7,687 ft/ 2,343 m), a relatively low mountain in the Berner Oberland that stands in the shadow of the iconic triumvirate Eiger, Jungfrau, and Mönch. He wrote a handful of letters from the Männlichen lodge, variously refer- CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 208 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 208 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 «Ich bin ein Wanderer und ein Bergsteiger» 209 ring to the altitude as somewhere between 6,000 to 7,000 feet (see KSB 5, 344-46). The only semi-steep mountain that Nietzsche appears to have climbed is a peak outside of Rosenlaui, also in the Bernese Alps, that he dubbed «Druidenaltar» and upon whose summit he often lounged after scrambling up its 20 foot «Grat» (see KSB 5, 280). For biographical details of this nature, I draw not only on his letters but also on the classic three-volume biography by Janz; the documents assembled by Gilman; the narrative photo album by Krell and Bates; and the recreated accounts by Hüser. 3 For an informative account of Nietzsche’s walks in the region see Raabe’s Spaziergänge durch Nietzsches Sils-Maria. This practical guidebook traces all of his routes and further comments on other cultural figures associated with the area (Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, Hermann Hesse, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, et al.). See also Krell and Bates, The Good European: Nietzsche’s Work Sites in Word and Image, for details regarding the philosopher’s travels in the Upper Engadine Valley as well as Italy and France. Both books also feature numerous photos of the landscapes that figure prominently in Nietzsche’s life and work. In his «philosophischer Wanderführer,» Wo selbst die Wege nachdenklich werden: Friedrich Nietzsche und der Berg, Hüser intimately describes and reflects on Nietzsche’s experiences in the Alps, especially the Oberengadin. 4 See, for instance, in chronological order: Bertram, «Nietzsche und die Berge»; Walcher, «Nietzsche als Bergsteiger»; and Messner, «High Mountains of Mathematics, Measurement, and Morality.» For these references I am indebted to Noyce and Bolland. Thomas Mann, perhaps Nietzsche’s most prominent and long-standing literary admirer, is also not immune to the pathos of the Nietzschean mountain climber. Compare, for instance, his remark regarding the philosopher’s intellectual path of peril: «Welch ein Sich-Versteigen in tödliche Höhen! Das Wort ‹verstiegen›, zum moralischen und geistigen Urteil geworden, stammt aus der Alpinistensprache und bezeichnet die Situation, wo es im Hochgestein weder vorwärts noch rückwärts mehr geht und der Bergsteiger verloren ist» (677). 5 Cited in Macfarlane 248. 6 Nietzsche mistakenly imagines El Mulhacén in the Pyrenees of northern Spain rather than in the Sierra Nevada range located in the extreme southern part of the country. Nevertheless, he is astoundingly accurate in naming nearby localities and in describing the expansive summit view: «Wir waren kaum eine Stunde emporgestiegen als bereits der blaue Spiegel des Meeres über den duftigen Bergen von Orchiva, die das Thal von Trevelei nach Süden schliesen [sic], auftauchte und bald den ganzen südlichen Horizont zu umsäumen begann. Nach 12 Uhr erreichten wir die höchsten Felsenmassen des Gipfels. Ein Meer von Gebirgen lag gen Osten» (Frühe Schriften 1, 390). 7 Like Nietzsche, Schopenhauer was fond of mountains and mountain metaphors, as is evident, for example, in the following extended comparison between philosophy and Alpinism: «Die Philosophie ist eine hohe Alpenstraße, zu ihr führt nur ein steiler Pfad über spitze Steine und stechende Dornen: er ist einsam und wird immer öder, je höher man kommt, und wer ihn geht, darf kein Grausen kennen, sondern muß alles hinter sich lassen und sich getrost im kalten Schnee seinen Weg selbst bahnen. Oft steht er plötzlich am Abgrund und sieht unten das grüne Thal: dahin zieht ihn der Schwindel gewaltsam hinab; aber er muß sich halten und sollte er mit dem eigenen Blut die Sohlen an den Felsen kleben. Dafür sieht er bald die Welt unter sich, ihre Sandwüsten und Moräste verschwinden, ihre Unebenheiten gleichen sich aus, ihre Mißtöne dringen nicht hinauf, ihre Rundung offenbart sich. Er selbst steht immer in reiner, kühler Alpenluft und sieht schon die Sonne, wenn unten noch schwarze Nacht liegt» (vol. 1, 14). CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 209 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 209 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 210 Sean Ireton 8 See, for instance, the second appendix, «Nietzsche and alpinism,» in Bolland 193-207. Bolland’s central claim is that Nietzsche remained aloof from if not blissfully ignorant of Alpinism as a sport - and this despite the increasing attraction of the still largely unexplored peaks of the Oberengadin, particularly the Bernina massif. The most famous Alpinist to emerge from Sils-Maria, Christian Klucker, worked at the Hotel Alpenrose, where Nietzsche habitually lunched. Whereas Janz speculates that Klucker may have influenced Nietzsche with respect to the latter’s «Hochgebirgsmetaphern» (vol. 2, 310), Bolland and Hüser reject this idea. Their point is well taken, as Klucker’s memoire, Erinnerungen eines Bergführers (1930), makes absolutely no mention of Nietzsche despite the philosopher’s unprecedented (albeit posthumous) fame at this point in history, a fame that would have been palpable even in the culturally remote Sils-Maria due to the flocks of Nietzscheans that made pilgrimages to the region. 9 For other attempts to interpret Also sprach Zarathustra within the context of mountains, see Monneyron and Kowal. Both of these articles are, however, severely limited, both in length and depth. The chief merit of Monneyron’s study lies in its intertextual approach. After a brief, indeed barely existent, discussion of Zarathustra, he outlines some interesting connections to Hermann Hesse’s Peter Camenzind, Thomas Mann’s Der Zauberberg, and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (although the Zauberberg discussion comes up short and has received much better coverage by others, for instance Nehamas). Kowal’s piece starts out promising but soon devolves into a litany of citations and a series of digressions. The less academic study by Noyce flirts with interpretations of Zarathustra, but does not cut very deep. Still, despite its inadequacies with respect to literary analysis, it at least attempts to place Nietzsche’s book within the historical context of Alpinism. 10 The list of these scholars is long, but some representative voices from 1950-2000 include, in chronological order: Kaufmann 307-33, Müller-Lauter 116-88, Pieper, and Safranksi 266-85. 11 For further details regarding Nietzsche’s shrewd intertextual allusions to the Commedia and other classical texts (the Odyssey, the Aeneid, and Augustine’s Confessions) in this chapter, see Verdicchio. 12 In the essay «Character,» Emerson discusses «Zertusht or Zoroaster» as an example of a great individual (see 376). In his German edition of Emerson’s essays, published in 1856 as Versuche, Nietzsche noted in the margin next to this passage: «Das ist es! » (see Stack 291). In fact, his entire copy of Emerson is heavily underlined, which attests to his deep preoccupation with the American transcendentalist, to whom he refers on occasion in his published writings. For an exhaustive investigation of Emerson’s influence on Nietzsche, especially concerning the idea of the Übermensch, see Stack, esp. 309-61. Works Cited Bachelard, Gaston. «Nietzsche et le psychisme ascensionnel.» L’air et les songes: Essai sur l’imagination du mouvement. 3 rd ed. Paris: Librairie José Corti, 1959. 146-85. In English: «Nietzsche and the Asensional Pysche.» Air and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Movement. Trans. Edith R. Farrall and C. Frederick Farrall. Dallas: The Dallas Institute Publications, 1988. 127-60. Bertram, Ernst. «Nietzsche und die Berge.» Deutsche Alpenzeitung 11 (1911): 279-82. Böhme, Hartmut. «Berg.» Wörterbuch der philosophischen Metaphern. Ed. Ralf Konersmann. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2007. 46-61. CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 210 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 210 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 «Ich bin ein Wanderer und ein Bergsteiger» 211 Bolland, Mark Edmund. «Nietzsche and Mountains.» Diss. Durham University, 1996. Brobjer, Thomas. «Thus Spoke Zarathustra as Nietzsche’s Autobiography.» Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Before Sunrise. Ed. James Luchte. London/ New York: Continuum, 2008. 29-46. Camus, Albert. «The Myth of Sisyphus.» The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays. Trans. Justin O’Brien. New York: Vintage, 1955. 88-91. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. The Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ed. Brooks Atkinson. New York: The Modern Library, 1950. Furlons, William Berry. «Doctor Danger.» Outside Jan. 1981: 40-42, 92-95. Gerhardt, Volker, ed. Friedrich Nietzsche: Also sprach Zarathustra. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2000. Klassiker Auslegen 14. Gilman, Sander, ed. Begegnungen mit Nietzsche. Bonn: Bouvier, 1981. Himmelmann, Beatrix. «Zarathustras Weg.» Friedrich Nietzsche: Also sprach Zarathustra. Ed. Volker Gerhardt. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2000. Klassiker Auslegen 14. 17-45. Hüser, Andreas. Wo selbst die Wege nachdenklich werden: Friedrich Nietzsche und der Berg. Zürich: Rotpunktverlag, 2003. Janz, Curt Paul. Friedrich Nietzsche: Biographie. 3 vols. München: Hanser, 1978. Kaufmann, Walter. Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist. 4 th ed. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1974. Klages, Ludwig. Die psychologischen Errungenschaften Nietzsches. 3 rd ed. Bonn: H. Bouvier, 1958. Klucker, Christian. Erinnerungen eines Bergführers. Ed. Ernst Jenny. 3 rd ed. Zürich: Rentsch, 1931. Kowal, Grzegorz. «Bergauf sprach Zarathustra.» «Über allen Gipfeln …»: Bergmotive in der deutschsprachigen Literatur des 18. bis 21. Jahrhunderts. Ed. Edward Bialek and Jan Pacholski. Dresden: Neisse Verlag, 2008. 101-13. Kreis, Rudolf. Nietzsche, Wagner und die Juden. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1995. 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André Siganos and Simone Vierne. Grenoble: Université Stendhal, 2000. 277-91. Müller-Lauter, Wolfgang. Nietzsche: Seine Philosophie der Gegensätze und die Gegensätze seiner Philosophie. Berlin/ New York: de Gruyter, 1971. CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 211 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 211 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 212 Sean Ireton Naumann, Gustav. Zarathustra-Commentar. 4 vols. Leipzig: H. Haessel, 1899-1901. Nehamas, Alexander. «Getting Used to Not Getting Used to It: Nietzsche in The Magic Mountain.» Philosophy and Literature 5 (1981): 73-90. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Frühe Schriften. 5 vols. Ed. Hans Joachim Mette. München: C.H. Beck, 1994. -. Sämtliche Briefe, Kritische Studienausgabe in 8 Bänden. Ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari. 2 nd ed. Berlin and München: Walter de Gruyter and Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2003. -. Sämtliche Werke, Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Bänden. Ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari. 3 rd ed. Berlin and München: Walter de Gruyter and Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2000. Noyce, Wilfrid. Scholar Mountaineers: Pioneers of Parnassus. London: Dennis Dobson, 1950. Pieper, Annemarie. «Zarathustra als Verkünder des Übermenschen und als Fürsprecher des Kreises.» Friedrich Nietzsche: Also sprach Zarathustra. Ed. Volker Gerhardt. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2000. Klassiker Auslegen 14. 93-122. Raabe, Paul. Spaziergänge durch Nietzsches Sils-Maria. Zürich/ Hamburg: Arche, 1994. Safranski, Rüdiger. Nietzsche: Biographie seines Denkens. München: Hanser, 2000. Schopenhauer, Arthur. Der handschriftliche Nachlaß. 5 vols. München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1985. Stack, George J. Nietzsche and Emerson: An Elective Affinity. Athens, OH: Ohio UP, 1992. Vause, Mikel. «Knights of Nothingness: The Transcendental Nature of Mountaineering and Mountain Literature.» Peering over the Edge: The Philosophy of Mountaineering. Ed. Mikel Vause. La Crescenta, CA: Mountain N’ Air Books, 2005. 437-48. Verdicchio, Massimo. «Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: A Vision of the Riddle.» Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 38 (2002): 19-31. Walcher, Sepp. «Nietzsche als Bergsteiger.» Jahrbuch des Schweizer Alpenclubs (1948): 73-142. Young, Geoffrey Winthrop. The Influence of Mountains upon the Development of Human Intelligence. Glasgow: Jackson, Son & Company, 1957. Reprinted in Vause, Peering over the Edge: The Philosophy of Mountaineering. Ed. Mikel Vause. La Crescenta, CA: Mountain N’ Air Books, 2005. 353-68. CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 212 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 212 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 «In the Alps There Is No Sin»: Passion and Purity in Erich von Stroheim’s Blind Husbands CAROLINE SCHAUMANN E MORY U NIVERSITY Arnold Fanck, most often seen as the pioneer of the Bergfilm genre, transformed the Alps into a symbolic, mythical world where sacrifice, destiny, and victory fuse in a collision of epic and existential proportions. By highlighting authentic, bold climbing and skiing feats, the mountain film presents protagonists who flee from the hustle and bustle of Alpine resort villages to seek solitude and higher purpose in the mountains above. Mountains thus demarcate a sacred space detached from conventional expectations and social bonds, as Christian Rapp elaborates: Fancks Filme befestigen damit die seit dem 19. Jahrhundert vor allem im deutschen und österreichischen Alpinismus gepflegte Vorstellung vom Gebirge als einem zeit- und zivilisationsgelösten Territorium, in dem sich das als fragmentiert empfindende Individuum geistig und körperlich wiederherstellen kann. (8) With Leni Riefenstahl as the female lead, Fanck’s typical plots in Der heilige Berg (1926), Die weiße Hölle vom Piz Palü (1929), and Stürme über dem Mont Blanc (1930) evolved to include a love triangle with women intruding on men’s terrain. It is only by withstanding the temptation, by recuperating the male bonding, and by self-sacrifice that the hero can reconstitute his authority. In view of the fact that the climax of the Bergfilm in the 1930s coincided with the rise of National Socialism, Siegfried Kracauer interpreted mountain films as mirroring collective sentiments and contemporary ideals. To Kracauer, the Bergfilm’s melodramatic plot, anti-modern emphasis, and overwrought, sentimental messages embodied pre-fascist tendencies that anticipated the ensuing propaganda films by Riefenstahl. Recent scholarship has made significant contributions to the reevaluation of the German Bergfilm genre. Since Eric Rentschler’s decisive article «Mountains and Modernity: Relocating the Bergfilm» (1990), scholars have begun to reexamine the mountain film and revise Kracauer’s disparaging and damaging critique. In North American scholarship, Carsten Strathausen (2001), Nancy Nenno (2003), Rebecca Prime (2007), Ingeborg Majer O’Sickey (2010), and Wilfried Wilms (2012) have taken Rentschler’s work as point of departure to expand the critical analysis of the Bergfilm in new directions, focusing on the context of Weimar rather than Nazi culture and elaborating on tropes of the cinematic sublime (Strathausen), tourism (Nenno), and the cool aesthetics of CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 213 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 213 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 214 Caroline Schaumann New Objectivity (Majer O’Sickey). Prime has focused on dimensions of the documentary and the ethnographic, while Wilms interprets mountain films in the aftermath of World War I. Concurrently with the critical scholarly reconsideration in the U.S., recent commercial efforts in Germany have focused on «normalizing» the Bergfilm along with its disputed ties. In 1997, Berge, Licht und Traum: Dr. Arnold Fanck und der deutsche Bergfilm was published, containing a dedication by Arnold Fanck’s grandson, Matthias Fanck; a detailed bibliography of Fanck’s films; a German version of Rentschler’s article; as well as published and unpublished essays, letters, and speeches from Fanck’s literary estate. Between 1999 and 2004, Fanck’s most popular films were re-released in new DVD editions. Finally, in 2009, Matthias Fanck followed with the lavish coffee-table biography, Weisse Hölle - Weisser Rausch: Arnold Fanck. Bergfilme und Bergbilder 1909-1939, reintroducing Fanck’s films to a greater German-speaking public. Luis Trenker experienced a similar revival. All of his films were released on DVD in 2004 in the comprehensive «Luis Trenker Edition,» which appeared in tandem with two biographies: Bera Luis: Das Phänomen Luis Trenker, co-written by the Trenker son Florian Trenker and Stefan König and republished in 2007, and Luis Trenker ungeschminkt: Bilder, Stationen und Begegnungen (2009) by Hans-Jürgen Panitz. Matthias Fanck and Panitz also collaborated on the television documentary Faszination Bergfilm: Himmelhoch und abgrundtief (2008) that screened at numerous mountain film festivals throughout Germany. These profitable products, produced by a close-knit group of heirs, authors, screenwriters, and directors, tend to focus on Fanck’s and Trenker’s artistic talents and innovative style and carefully divorce both directors from Riefenstahl’s questionable legacy, thereby rehabilitating the Bergfilm. The interest in Riefenstahl’s career, however, also intensified after her death in 2003. Rather than reproaching or defending the Bergfilm, this essay investigates a less-known, early example of a mountain film that manages to evade the familiar argument altogether. Before directing his first feature in 1923, Fanck likely watched another picture playing in German and Austrian theaters in 1921, Blind Husbands (in the German version released as Die Rache der Berge) 1 by the Austrian-born writer, actor, and director Erich von Stroheim, that similarly uses a mountain setting, daring climbing scenes, and the standard love triangle to reinforce character and plot development. An in-depth analysis of Stroheim’s film by German film scholars remains outstanding. Nonetheless, North American Stroheim biographer Joel Finler maintains that «possibly Blind Husbands foreshadows the whole mid-twenties genre of German mountain films like Der heilige Berg» (10), and indeed the parallels between the films are striking. Blind Husbands brings into play the traits that later became typical for the genre: spec- CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 214 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 214 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 «In the Alps There Is No Sin» 215 tacular climbing scenes filmed on location in the mountains, and a plot that revolves around a tragic love triangle and culminates in a confrontation between two male competitors perched high on a cliff. However, Stroheim uses wit and irony rather than melodrama to typecast his characters in easily discernable stereotypes - the neglected, flirtatious wife, the aloof American husband, the glib cavalry officer, the morally upright mountain guide - characters that lay bare the tenuous and unstable gender and national relationships in the wake of the Great War. Like the Bergfilm, Blind Husbands culminates in an overarching, symbolic message, but instead of celebrating über-human values such as sacrifice, loyalty, and faith, the film concludes with the couple reunited and Lieutenant von Steuben meeting his demise by falling from the mountain. In contrast to the German mountain film, the emphasis lies on ambiguity and ambivalence. These different approaches are rooted in the directors’ distinctive ethnic, religious, national, and class background. Stroheim was born in Vienna in 1885 as Erich Oswald Stroheim, to Benno Stroheim, a merchant from Gleiwitz, Silesia, and Johanna Bondy from Prague, both practicing Jews. He grew up in Vienna, witnessing the decadence, hypocrisy, and highly charged sexuality so aptly described by his contemporaries Freud and Schnitzler at the turn of the century. The family often vacationed in Tyrol, allowing Stroheim to draw on his intimate knowledge of the region when directing Blind Husbands. In 1901, he was sent to a business school in Graz with the intention of taking over the family’s hat manufacturing business; Stroheim, however, aspired to a career in the military. His ambitions remained unfulfilled: after being evaluated as unfit to serve, Stroheim reapplied and was commissioned as a voluntary soldier in training, at his own expense, but dismissed after only four months. With his own career in shambles and the family business in bankruptcy, Stroheim, at the spur of the moment, made the decision to emigrate. He arrived at Ellis Island in November 1909 as «Erich Oswald Hans Carl Maria von Stroheim,» reinventing himself at once as an aristocrat, an army officer, and a Catholic. Indeed, Stroheim circulated fierce rumors that his ancestors were Viennese nobility, that his forefathers had a long history in the Austrian Dragoons, and that he had subsequently worked as an equestrian advisor in the U.S. Army. The facts about Stroheim’s life in Europe that he so carefully sought to mythologize became known only after his death when a journalist printed a copy of his birth records in 1961, 2 and remain nebulous to this day. Stroheim’s background is still difficult to trace to the extent that several Stroheim biographies in use today cannot be trusted. 3 Despite the fanciful name change, though, Stroheim’s first years in the U.S. were tough. He took an odd variety of low-paying jobs and tried to enlist in the U.S. Army, but was discharged after two months. In 1912, Stroheim moved to San Francisco, climbed to the top of Mount Tamalpais across the Bay, and found CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 215 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 215 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 216 Caroline Schaumann work by helping the Austrian innkeeper living at its base. At the mountain inn, Stroheim also met Margaret Knox, his future wife; all events which likely inspired his story The Pinnacle. The couple soon had marital problems, and after a little over a year, they were divorced. Stroheim moved to Hollywood, finding work as an extra and an assistant in D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (1914), and later as an assistant director and military advisor on a variety of films all the while taking on larger acting roles. Playing the part of a villainous Prussian cavalry officer in several films, among them D.W. Griffith’s Hearts of the World (1918), he became known to audiences as «the man you love to hate.» Ironically, the Austrian rose to fame by impersonating a Prussian, 4 and the implication that he was German incensed Stroheim who wrote: «We on the Danube loved the Germans as the Irish love the English.» 5 Recently, Elliot Einzig Porter unearthed previously unknown military files from this time showing that Stroheim was subject to surveillance because Military Intelligence suspected he was conducting espionage activities for Germany. Stroheim, for his part, seems to have played a game of hide and seek with Intelligence, handing out business cards with the title «Lieutenant Royal and Imperial Austrian Army,» cursing both the Austrian and the U.S. Army, and giving his landlord the impression that he was «degenerate.» 6 Perhaps this is part of the reason why Stroheim, who applied for American citizenship as early as 1910, had to wait until 1926 to become naturalized. The studio, meanwhile, advertised that he was American. 7 In 1918, after the war had ended, Stroheim’s career took an incredible turn when Carl Laemmle, a fellow German-Jewish émigré and the founder of Universal Film studios, financed and produced Stroheim’s story The Pinnacle. Blind Husbands, as the film was renamed much to Stroheim’s chagrin, 8 premiered in October 1919, marking Stroheim’s successful directorial debut. Stroheim’s contemporary Arnold Fanck was born in 1889 into an influential and wealthy family residing in Frankenthal, Palatinate. When the child fell ill of asthma, the family physician advised a stay at Davos. Indeed, as a student at the Fridericianum, a school for pulmonary patients mentioned repeatedly in Thomas Mann’s Der Zauberberg, Fanck not only recovered but discovered his life-long passion for mountains and mountain sports. After finishing school, he studied geology in Munich, Berlin, and Zurich, all the while taking extensive climbing excursions. He received his doctorate in geology in 1915, and from now on consistently added the title to his name. During World War I, Fanck served as an aide in a military hospital and later worked for German counterespionage. Like Stroheim, he launched his career only after the war when he bought two cameras, a tripod, film, and a projector, and founded the Freiburger Berg- und Sportfilm GmbH. Though short films documenting mountain ascents or traverses had been produced by the military as early as 1898, 9 Fanck broke new ground with a twelve-minute short film featuring spectacular skiing CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 216 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 216 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 «In the Alps There Is No Sin» 217 scenes, 4628 Meter hoch auf Skiern. Besteigung des Monte Rosa (1913). With the two-part documentary Das Wunder des Schneeschuhs (1920 and 1922) and Im Kampf mit dem Berge (1921) he advanced to longer pictures, still without proper plot but including the highly talented cameraman Sepp Allgeier and legendary Austrian skier Hannes Schneider. Fanck’s first mountain film with dramatic plot was produced in 1923/ 24, involving five cameramen, Luis Trenker in his first starring role, and a new Lytax reflex camera. Der Berg des Schicksals, fictionalizing the first ascent of the Guglia di Brenta (Campanile Basso, 2,872 m), introduced the daring yet stoic mountain hero, an overdramatic story, and conflicted relationships between men and women so typical of Fanck’s later mountain films. The film also famously inspired Riefenstahl to introduce herself to Fanck and launch her own mountain film career. World War I and all it entailed - from the initial enthrallment with the military to fervent nationalism to Germany’s shameful defeat - affected both directors in different ways. Fanck picks up on notions that made emasculated men and Weimar modernity responsible for military defeat, providing strong role models and clear symbolic messages to future generations. 10 Stroheim also engenders the crisis of male virility. With his European background and status as an outsider, he is able to tackle sensitive issues in a provocative yet nontoxic fashion. Though thinly veiled in comedy, Stroheim addresses otherness and xenophobia along with the high divorce rate in modern marriages, calling into question the underpinnings of American society in the wake of the war. For the purpose of this essay, I compare Fanck’s Der heilige Berg and Stroheim’s Blind Husbands, both of which revolve around questions of masculinity after the Great War and seemingly confirm manhood in the mountains. Since Fanck’s film has garnered much recent scholarship, I refrain here from a distinct plot summary or comprehensive analysis, drawing instead on select scenes from the film for the sake of contrast and comparison. In both films, World War I is ever-present even before the actual feature begins. Der heilige Berg commences with a dedication to Hans Rohde, Fanck’s collaborator on his first film, 4628 Meter hoch auf Skiern: «Dedicated to my friend who was killed in the war, the mountain climber, Dr. Hans Rohde.» 11 Blind Husbands likewise begins with a dedication in its first title: «Dedicated to Sepp Innerkofler, world-famous mountain guide who risked his life again and again to save others, finally sacrificing it on the Monte Cristallo. Let us remember him through the years for his pure and mighty heart.» At first sight, this title card credits the character of the mountain guide in the film, albeit in slightly ironic fashion. We are supposed to remember Sepp’s «heart» but his mountaineering skills go unmentioned, which seems an odd tribute to a mountain guide. Even though the film introduces the notion of self-sacrifice, the viewer never finds out how Sepp meets his end, rendering the eulogy more idiosyncratic than CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 217 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 217 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 218 Caroline Schaumann moving. What goes unmentioned in the film, however, is the fact that Sepp Innerkofler was also a historical figure, namely an accomplished South Tyrolean mountain climber, guide, and innkeeper. Sepp’s uncle, Michel Innerkofler, climbed Monte Cristallo more than 300 times and died in its vicinity in 1888 when he fell into a crevasse. Sepp, conversely, became a member of the Standschützen, the Austrian militia that formed in defense of Tyrol when Italy declared war on Austria. He fought for the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the Tyrolean Dolomites but was fatally wounded by the Italians during an attempt to reconquer an Italian-occupied Alpine peak in August 1915. This veiled reference hints at the highly politicized background of the film, rendering a reading in purely romantic terms impossible. Blind Husbands is set in Cortina, which was formerly part of the Habsburg Empire and the site of fierce battle during the First World War. Invaded by Italian troops, occupied by the Tyrolean Standschützen, the town was given to Italy after the end of the war and renamed Cortina d’Ampezzo. Even though Blind Husbands takes place after the war, 12 Stroheim obscures these new realities: the title card introducing the locale reads «Cortina D’Ampezzo, on the Austro-Italian Frontier - the Mecca of American tourists.» While Stroheim uses the appropriate postwar name, he avoids a particular national affiliation (to avoid political blunder, the translated version omits the geographical designation altogether). Stroheim furthermore furnishes all signs in his film in German, has an Austrian stage coach arrive in town, and even a platoon of Austrian Alpine soldiers on a «mapping expedition» come to aid the climbers, all giving the impression that Cortina still belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire (the Austrian soldiers are likewise renamed in the German version). These patriotic fancies are, in turn, complicated by the arrival of the Americans. With the reference to American tourists (not only the film’s hero and his wife but three other fellows) who can afford a vacation in the quaint Alpine town to go mountain climbing, Stroheim confirms that Americans rule the postwar world even in their leisure time. Yet this touristic boom, which truly descended upon Cortina (apart from being the site of the 1956 Winter Olympics, portions of The Pink Panther (1963), James Bond’s For Your Eyes Only (1981), and Cliffhanger (1997) were filmed here), is immediately ridiculed: another title card characterizes Cortina as «set like a gem … almost chocked by the nearness of this Alpine magnitude.» Stroheim’s talent of employing the paradigmatic vocabulary of the mountain sublime yet stripping the words from a greater context and moreover combining them in a rather nonsensical way - frequently through the use of ellipses - also comes to the fore when introducing the film’s hero: «Into the solitude of the immortal mountains - where man is little and God is great - comes Doctor Robert Armstrong, America’s famous surgeon, seeking rest and relaxation.» CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 218 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 218 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 «In the Alps There Is No Sin» 219 If Blind Husbands hints at a different world order after World War I, the same could be said of Der heilige Berg, which in its repeated references to the «fallen» climber at the end draws a parallel to fallen soldiers in 1918 and calls attention to the deep impact of the Great War. In Der heilige Berg, «The Friend» offers a new model of masculinity that mirrors his environment of rock and ice: his poise is measured, his demeanor cool, his face literally frozen. «The Friend» only feels at home on «his mountain,» seeking the «tallest peaks» to find authenticity, strength, and faithfulness. This heroic ideal loftily puts on display what early twentieth-century German and Austrian theorists on the Alps (Georg Freiherr von Ompteda, Eugen Guido Lammer, Gustav Müller) preached when touting the regions of snow and ice as an opportunity for toughening and purification. According to such ideology, the mountaineer leaves behind an effeminate and weakened civilization of the cities, testing his limits and freeing his strength to become the embodiment of the new man. With an openly militaristic undertone, these theories fashioned mountains into a country’s natural protective barriers and Alpinists into soldiers. After the war, mountaineering turned into an effective remedy for military frustrations, and membership surged to record heights in the German and Austrian Alpine Club. In Germany as well as in Austria, mountaineering became swept up in the nationalistic and anti-Semitic tide. German mountaineers were hailed as superior, their climbing skills connected with a military spirit and national character. The Alpine Club also took a patriotic turn, as chapters began to systematically bar Jewish members and adopted nationalistic flags and pennons. In Blind Husbands, Armstrong, too, seeks out the mountains to recuperate both physically and spiritually. He is not only wealthier than his European counterparts but also arrives in the defeated territory as the winner of the war, cool and confident. Even while on vacation, on his former enemy’s turf, Armstrong is able to prove his superiority: In an atypical reversal of the guide-client relationship, Armstrong saved the life of his Austrian mountain guide Sepp, remembered by Sepp at the beginning of the film in flashback. In return, Sepp, introduced in the film in ambivalent if not comical fashion as «A Son of the eternal mountains … strong and mute … as they … Silent Sepp,» vows eternal devotion and friendship to Armstrong. Not unlike Der heilige Berg, Blind Husbands stages the mountain climber as the role model of a robust and stalwart character. In contrast to «The Friend’s» demise in Fanck’s film, Armstrong proves adept in the mountains as well as in the postwar world and successfully defeats his rival, the vacationing Austrian cavalry officer, Eric von Steuben. Dressed in full military attire, von Steuben directly evokes the Great War, yet the small man stuffed in an all-too-small uniform seems comically out of place. Indeed, the keen observer may notice that von Steuben sports a Dragoon uniform CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 219 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 219 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 220 Caroline Schaumann in use before 1910, and that his medals - the 1908 Jubilee Cross, the Annexation Medal, and the Marianer Cross - are all distinctions Stroheim claimed he earned himself. 13 The film immediately renders von Steuben’s impeccable attire useless, introducing him in the intertitle as «Lieutenant Von Steuben, an Austrian cavalry officer, with a keen appreciation of three things: Wine, WOMEN, Song.» In the film’s original release, this was followed by an addendum: «NOTE: Shell shock, trench fever, and mustard gas necessitated his sick leave (so von Steuben said),» an explanation that not only strengthens the references to World War I but also clarified the Austrian lieutenant’s presence in Italy. The uniform thus masks von Steuben’s incompetence, including his philandering tendencies, petite bourgeois prejudice, and lack of mountain skills. With the reference to August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben’s Lied der Deutschen, the soon-to-become German national anthem, Stroheim furthermore mocks the so-called German qualities lauded in the song. 14 The first shots of the protagonists strengthen these associations while establishing the tensions among the protagonists. As the camera, in Armstrong’s point of view, first gazes at von Steuben’s gloved hands clutching his sword, and Armstrong, in countershot, smirks just slightly, forming his opinion of the Austrian, von Steuben is solely occupied with staring through a monocle at Margaret’s slender ankles, 15 filmed again in a point-of-view shot in close-up. In a mirroring scene just a bit later, it is von Steuben who, in a point-of-view shot, disapprovingly musters Sepp’s mountain outfit from toe to head, grimacing at the torn trousers, and Sepp, in countershot, repeats the visual examination from head to toe, sneering at the uniform. As the plot soon confirms, the uniform von Steuben uses to impress women cannot fool mountain men such as Sepp. Von Steuben, who is assigned to Room No. 13 at the Hotel Croce Bianca, proceeds to seduce first «The ‹Vamp› Waitress,» a woman most receptive to his advances, and then «A Village Blossom,» a local woman he meets at the «Festival of the Transfiguration.» 16 But these romantic interludes only occupy his time as he pursues his true conquest, Armstrong’s wife, Margaret. And indeed, as Armstrong ignores his wife over and over again, she willingly gives in to von Steuben’s wooing. The national stereotyping, however, is too obvious and thick to be entirely believable. In this way, the elaborate sets (an entire Tyrolean village reconstructed in the mountains of Southern California where the film was shot) mirror and lampoon an American gaze onto Europe. Accordingly, Cortina d’Ampezzo is a village free of cars and any other signs of modernity. Tourists arrive in carriages, the village folk wear traditional garb, and the mountain hut abounds - in symbolic reference to von Steuben’s advances - with hunting trophies. Yet the decidedly un-Alpine landscape near Idlewild unmistakably smacks of the desert climate of Southern California rather than the formidable, cold Alpine world of rock and snow. This peculiar mismatch extends to the film’s characters: Eric von Steuben, CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 220 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 220 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 «In the Alps There Is No Sin» 221 played by the director whose name so noticeably resembles the character, is not entirely believable as the despicable «Other Man,» as he is called in the credits. At the film’s premiere in New York, Stroheim characterized the lieutenant as the swanking, swaggering scion of militarism, an officer in the Austrian army with all the absurd vanities, the ugly hypocrisies, the silly affectations of the kulturist. He is so obvious it seems a child could read him, yet he succeeds in entangling a high bred wife who loves her husband. I have tried to make the Austrian interloper just as hateful as possible. […] I have played this role myself to be sure it would draw out the maximum amount of hate. 17 Despite Stroheim’s overblown assertions, von Steuben possesses some undeniable charms. Von Steuben knows how to please women, showering them all with compliments, gifts, and affection, and he also knows how to enjoy life, taking great pleasure in getting dressed and groomed, and constantly smoking and licking his lips. Thus, the bon vivant comes in where the modern American man - the successful physician who is either immersed in his job or in his reading materials - fails. Stroheim toys with fiction and reality, merging in his character his own life-long fascination with the European aristocracy, the military, and womanizing, and simultaneously mocking it as, for instance, when the children imitate von Steuben’s stilted, militaristic way of walking. In this fashion, the European suitor repels his audience in predictable ways but at the same time creates thrills with his luring otherness. To contemporary audiences, the character must have also called to mind the Italian actor Rudolph Valentino (1895-1926) who acted as the dark Italian lover in several silent films of the 1920s, charming American women while threatening conventional ideals of All-American masculinity. 18 Von Steuben similarly dismantles the American reign of superiority, despite the film’s overt claim of an American victory. Hence Armstrong’s unresponsiveness to his wife and Margaret’s unfulfilled desire remain the larger, unsolved issues in Blind Husbands. The freshly divorced and remarried director of the film (who later married one of the actresses on the set) offers no long-term productive solution to the dilemma of «blind husbands,» but rather leaves open the question raised in the film’s opening title: One of the most frequent reasons for divorce is «alienation of affection» … And the reason within the reason is the fact that «the other man» steps in with his sincere (or insincere) attentions just when the husband in his self-complacency forgets the wooing wiles of his pre-nuptial days … Guilty! says the world condemning «the other man» … But what of the husband? It could be argued that the entire film - in the vein of Ernst Lubitsch’s early comedies - is about women’s wants and needs, contrasted here with men’s ambitions on snow and rock. Stroheim’s camerawork supports this reading: While the men advance on the glacier, intercut shots show Margaret waiting for her CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 221 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 221 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 222 Caroline Schaumann husband, imprisoned in enclosed spaces with the windows shut. In Der heilige Berg, scenes with Diotima are similarly intercut with the male drama unfolding on the mountain, but her role seems limited to that of a helpless bystander who goes empty-handed at the end. Stroheim conversely lends Margaret’s yearning as much detail and screen time as the climbing scenes on the mountain, depicting the psychology of female desire by using inventive camerawork and editing. The film is dominated by medium and close-up shots, revealing emotional intensity and the female gaze. Numerous eyeline cuts illustrate Margaret’s yearning, her husband’s coldness, and von Steuben’s transgression. In one scene reflecting Margaret’s fantasies, she looks at herself in the mirror where she sees a reflection of her sleeping husband morphing into a passionate couple. In another scene, von Steuben appears in her nightmare sporting an evil grin and smoking his trademark cigarette while pointing his index finger at Margaret in accusation (and, in extension, the husbands and wives in the audience). And Margaret seems no exception. Women in general are the willing partakers in the seduction process and seem more intuitive and knowledgeable, even though their sexual and sensual needs are locked away. When Stroheim intercuts the doting between the «Honeymooners» with Margaret staring at the affectionate couple, the freshly married woman is keenly aware of unfulfilled desire, asking her husband while watching Margaret, «You’ll never neglect me like that? » The «Honeymooners» cannot take their hands off each other, with her, in a provocative shot, putting her hand in his crotch before they leave for the night. «The ‹Vamp› Waitress» happily concedes with von Steuben’s advances and shows jealousy once he turns his attention to Margaret. And the «Village Blossom» at the festival does not require much convincing to agree to the amorous affair. Von Steuben benefits from what appears to be a general dilemma when, in a cut scene from a surviving print, he comforts Margaret with the words «A husband that leaves a woman like you, to ramble around in the mountains, deserves to be betrayed. … I love you.» 19 Margaret and other love-lusting women in the film surely run counter to Victorian ideals, and by laying bare the frustrations of American womanhood, Blind Husbands quietly points to male anxieties of changing gender roles in the wake of the war. In fact, von Steuben’s sexual prowess can only be contained with the help of Sepp, the mountain guide, who as deus ex machina magically appears whenever von Steuben makes an advance toward Margaret. In this way, Sepp not only prevents a kiss between the two at the Pass of the Three Crosses but also moves Margaret from Room No. 1 to No. 3 to trick and wait for von Steuben at night himself. While Sepp’s St. Bernard dog is guarding Margaret’s room, von Steuben makes his predictable move. After readying himself for the seductive effort - he brushes his hair, puts on cologne, and dresses in a silky night robe - his efforts are embarrassingly thwarted by Sepp. Whereas in Der heilige CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 222 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 222 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 «In the Alps There Is No Sin» 223 Berg, Diotima goes punished because she demanded too much («Was one man not enough for you? », cries her future mother-in-law), Blind Husbands’s happy ending remains in odd tension with its opening title and the unanswered question of whether the couple will successfully reunite and have children. In the mountains, these differences in attitude come to the fore. Blind Husbands opens with an image of Monte Cristallo (a mountain also featured in Leni Riefenstahl’s Das blaue Licht), with the title announcing in typical ironic fashion: «beneath the blue sky … as old … as the world itself … the Monte Cristallo …» Here as in Der heilige Berg, mountains become the stage for conflicts that seem timeless and universal. Even though in both films mountain climbing is an activity reserved exclusively for men, and the environment of rock and ice the designated territory to test their skills, women figure in this eroticized realm where male passions dangerously heat up. In Fanck’s Der heilige Berg «The Friend» flees to the mountains, combating his raging emotions by swinging his axe into frozen cliffs. In Blind Husbands, the hero also invites his competitor on a perilous mountain excursion. Stroheim, however, precedes this climactic mission by several scenes poking fun at the desire to conquer summits in general. When the three other American tourists declare their intention to scale the north face of Monte Cristallo, Armstrong objects: «But why from the north side? No one ever made it before.» The three respond, oblivious to the nonsensicalness of their endeavor: «That’s just the reason! » Armstrong resigns with a helpless protestation, «Don’t try to break records. The mountains have no patience with such worldly motives,» to which von Steuben replies, in typical sexualized manner, «To me mountains are life-less rocks. My pleasure has always been to master them.» The fictitious «Pinnacle» 20 also epitomizes fight and fulfillment, but von Steuben, apparently blind to a larger mountain sublime, seeks more immediate, material satisfaction, in the sense of what the embroidered sign in his room at the mountain hut promises: «In the Alps there is no sin.» Later, von Steuben tells Margaret a keen and dead-on revelation, «Your husband does not think of you - he climbs the mountains.» Thus, male conquest takes on a different meaning, and the plot quickly advances. Armstrong is not willing to depart for Rome before climbing «his Pinnacle,» and when suspecting von Steuben’s advancements, plots revenge. On top of the Pinnacle that Armstrong sets out to climb, dragging with him a scared and unwilling von Steuben, he discovers a letter from his wife to his rival that, in the struggle between the two men, promptly floats off the cliff in the wind. When Armstrong presses von Steuben to confess its content, the latter serves him a lie by implying that Margaret was unfaithful. Armstrong cuts the rope and leaves von Steuben to his fate: disoriented and scared, he falls off the mountain to his death. Armstrong, conversely, masters the descent to find the letter in which his wife rebuts von CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 223 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 223 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 224 Caroline Schaumann Steuben’s propositions and declares love only for her husband. As his name implies, Armstrong leaves the continent as a victorious man, confident in his muscle and manhood, and ostensibly showing more affection toward his wife. In marked contrast to Der heilige Berg, Blind Husbands concludes with the bond restored between husband and wife. This happy ending to the triangular dilemma requires the rope between the mountain comrades to be cut, and mistrust and misunderstanding remedied. By diverting the values touted at the conclusion of Der heilige Berg and by reuniting the sexes, Stroheim altogether evades the central, melodramatic conflict of the German Bergfilm. Moreover, the film symbolically reenacts the American victory: in cool confidence, the American arrives, sees, conquers, and leaves. Yet Stroheim lends his film an undercurrent which consistently puts into question such straightforward interpretation. Though the prologue raises questions about the husband’s responsibility in the unfolding of events, this matter is not resolved, as the husband does not undergo any change in the film and it remains open whether he has learned anything from the experience. As a physician, Armstrong supposedly heals people, yet he seems utterly out of touch with his wife and his environment: While his wife visibly craves attention, he plays with a villager’s baby, showing his affection (and arguably, his own wish for offspring) until he promptly returns the baby to the mother once he smells its bodily functions. Later, he schemes an elaborate plot to test his wife. This maneuver that begins with Armstrong’s insistence on separate rooms at the Pinnacle hut and ends with von Steuben’s death on August 13 ultimately proves unnecessary, doing more harm than good. Indeed, Armstrong is apparently blind in more than one aspect: When he demands to know what was written in Margaret’s letter to von Steuben, threatening the latter to tell the truth because he «shall know it,» von Steuben serves him a lie, claiming that he has had an affair with Margaret. Contrary to his claim, Armstrong does not recognize the truth and only learns of Margaret’s fidelity when he finds the letter upon his descent. In the end, even Sepp seems to know more about women than the «blind husband,» advising Armstrong: «Be good to her. Little I know of the world - but one thing she needs: love.» The muted questioning of Der heilige Berg ideals such as fidelity, faith, and loyalty is also evident in Stroheim’s pervasive use of religious symbols in his mise-en-scène. Crosses and other reminders of Christian values are found everywhere in the film but do not seem to prevent illicit longings. The film begins with church bells ringing at the village’s service on «The Seventh Day» but cuts immediately to the wine room at the Hotel Croce Bianca, symbolically anticipating the fact that the protagonists tend to get easily distracted. At the Croce Bianca’s hallway, a giant cross admonishes von Steuben on his way to Margaret’s room; he seduces Margaret to a kiss below three giant crosses at the Passo Tre Croci; and CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 224 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 224 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 «In the Alps There Is No Sin» 225 in Margaret’s room at the Pinnacle Hut a crucified Jesus next to her bed radiates a Christian message. Yet these reminders of faith are apparently unable to steer the protagonists away from their worldly concerns, failing to deliver devotion and redemption. Perhaps Stroheim’s pervasive juxtaposition of religious symbolism and profane reality mirrors his own belief systems: born Jewish, he claimed to be Protestant, and in the United States assumed the Catholic faith, though without conversion or a firm commitment to the Church. Although Stroheim married his third wife in a Catholic church and frequently resorted to religious phrases, his lifestyle (two divorces and the fact that he was living with a mistress during part of his second marriage) and overall cynical attitude hardly qualify him as a devout Catholic. Lennig concludes, «in short, his religious beliefs were a host of contradictions, as simple and complex as the man himself.» (10) Der heilige Berg also makes use of religious symbolism, as for instance in «The Friend’s» and Diotima’s imagined wedding in a cathedral made of ice, but the film generally prefers a spiritual Stimmung over concrete Christian references. As Rentschler remarks, Fanck’s mise-en-scène brings to mind a premodern, Romantic world of «wonder and enchantment»: The visual impact of the mountain films rested in an overwhelming mix of aura and abstraction. Fanck’s images drew heavily on the iconography of romantic painters, evoking the impetus of artists like Caspar David Friedrich, Philipp Otto Runge, and Joseph Anton Koch to imbue landscapes with transcendent and mystical powers. (147) Even though Stroheim takes an altogether more sardonic approach to sublime transformation, he does not relinquish Romantic Stimmung, either. In particular the scene when the protagonists ascend to the Pinnacle Hut, their silhouettes in capes and hats barely discernible in the swirling fog and mist, harkens back to nineteenth-century Romantic painting. Adding to the somber atmosphere, Armstrong, von Steuben, and Margaret come across a memorial for an adulterous sinner that reads: On Sept. 16 1879 Franz Huber was caught by Alexis Bauer holding a secret meeting with the latters [sic] wife. In the ensuing fight the former was thrown by the betrayed husband down this precipice and killed. Passerby pray for the condemned soul of the poor sinner. A graphic image of a figure falling from the mountains into the flames of hell below complements the signpost and causes Armstrong, von Steuben, and Margaret a moment of pause. The admonition is complete when, at the Pinnacle Hut, von Steuben readies himself for his nightly maneuver to the piano tunes of Schubert’s song «Der Erlkönig» (1815), the song’s famous final cadence corresponding to a screen fadeout. Despite the dramatic foreshadowing, the film’s climax sways between melodramatic tension and ironic disenchantment. On CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 225 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 225 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 226 Caroline Schaumann top of the Pinnacle, the intertitle proclaims «At the very feet of God - where man forgets his baser self and the soul beneath his mind grows clean,» while Armstrong and von Steuben struggle for life and death. A deceived Armstrong cuts the umbilical rope, leaving von Steuben to his fate. The latter clutches his hands in desperate prayer, the shadow of a vulture encroaches and encircles him, and predictably, he falls to his death. However, Stroheim’s clever cinematography also anticipates the dark, psychological drama of German Expressionist cinema. In particular, the film’s beginning (including the establishing shots of the town square from above, followed by church bells) call to mind F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922), and in both films, the «simple and faithful» town folk become tormented by an outsider who has to be extorted from society. Stroheim’s excessive use of crosses and other symbols such as signs, windows, mirrors, and hallways, as well as narrative devices such as flashback, premonition, hallucination, and dreams also points ahead to Expressionist cinema. Stroheim combines studio and onlocation shooting, and following Griffith, he outfits his mise-en-scène with an abundance of (symbolic) animals including dogs, cows, horses, geese, chickens, and pigeons. With multiple dimensions in setting (enclosed rooms versus mountainscapes), character set-up (American bourgeoisie versus European officer), and dramatic plot (moral transgression versus mountain conquest), Stroheim playfully engages issues of militarism, nationalism, class, modernity, and gender. But beyond an American screwball comedy, Blind Husbands toys with shifting, multi-national points of view, mirroring the changing identities of its director. Ultimately, Stroheim undercuts any final genre definition as well as the overdramatic proportions so typically attributed to the mountain film. With its emphasis on anticlimax, contradiction, and irony, Blind Husbands thus helps to open up the established tropes in which we tend to read the German Bergfilm. Notes 1 The translated German version, which was accidentally found in the 1980s, is a good seven minutes longer than the 92-minute English original, containing some slight changes in reference to nationality and some slightly longer character shots. 2 For further detail see Lennig 4. 3 As late as 1971, Thomas Quinn Curtiss, a good friend of Stroheim, published a biography titled Von Stroheim perpetuating the myths that Stroheim sowed. In his biography that appeared thirty years later, Lennig claims that Curtiss’s book «reads entertainingly, but it is almost entirely fiction» (Lennig 4). Peter Noble claims in Hollywood Scapegoat: The Biography of Erich von Stroheim that Stroheim’s «father was a Colonel in the 6 th Regiment of Dragoons, and his mother a lady-in-waiting to Elizabeth, Empress of Austria,» and that CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 226 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 226 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 «In the Alps There Is No Sin» 227 Stroheim himself was a member of the Palace Guard at the Imperial Palace (Noble 4-5). Richard Koszarski rewrote his own 1983 book The Man You Loved to Hate into Von: The Life and Films of Erich von Stroheim, published in 2001. As Koszarski acknowledges, «I take into account information overlooked by other English-language writers. And I also make use of documents uncovered by the von Stroheim family only recently and not available when I interviewed Valerie von Stroheim and her son, Josef Erich, in 1978» (Koszarski xiv). 4 As Lennig notes, Variety’s review of The Unbeliever (1918) read: «German cruelty is driven home forcibly by Karl [sic] von Stroheim in the role of a lieutenant of the Prussians. It is true to life in its military bearing. He is the German officer to perfection.» Quoted in Lennig 47. 5 Quoted in Koszarski, Von 28. 6 These surprising findings, surely worth of further inquiry that cannot be accomplished in the scope of this article, are compiled by Elliot Einzig Porter in his article «The Two Vons: The World War I Secret Government Investigation of Erich von Stroheim» (Film History 22 [2010]: 329-46). 7 See Koszarski, Von 45. 8 By changing the original title to Blind Husbands, the film was immediately reduced to an illicit affair rather than a far-reaching, merely implied provocation. This might have been the reason why Stroheim so vehemently resisted the title change, writing in a full-page ad in the Motion Picture News: «He [Laemmle] is going to change it to ‹Blind Husbands.› ‹Blind Husbands! › Can you imagine it to yourself? A beautiful title, a meaningful title, a title that meant everything to the man who created it, a title that represented months and years of creative effort in producing this picture - all tossed away in a moment for a name which is the absolute essence of commercialism. A name in which there is no beauty - no sense of the artistic.» Quoted in Koszarski, Von 47. 9 See Audisio 23-27. 10 Recent scholarship (Wilms), however, has questioned such a straightforward reading. 11 This title card has since been modified and omits any mentioning of the war. See Rentschler 153-54. 12 Studio publicity materials placed the action three years after the war, which, at the time of production and release, was a date still in the future. See Koszarski, Von 49. 13 See Koszarski, Von 52. 14 In the German version, the provocation apparently proved too much, and the title was changed into «Eric Steuben, ein Hochstapler, der die Offiziersuniform benützt, um so leichter seine Gaunereien ausführen zu können (Erich Stroheim).» See Die Rache der Berge, Austrian version. 15 Apparently, Stroheim had somewhat of a foot fetish, featuring feet in most of his films. Billy Wilder commented: «This obsession with foot fetishism, underwear fetishism, other sexual perversions which his pictures are filled with, was the real Stroheim.» Quoted in Lennig 90. 16 Quotations are from the credits and intertitles of the film. The Festival of the Transfiguration is a church holiday to commemorate Christ’s ascent of Mount Tabor. 17 Quoted in Lennig 107. 18 On Valentino’s life and career see Leider. 19 Quoted in Lennig 114. 20 According to Koszarski, one of the promotional posters for the film showed a mountain in the form of a woman’s face being scaled by a climber. See Koszarski, Von 50. CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 227 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 227 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 228 Caroline Schaumann Works Cited Audisio, Aldo. «Berge aus der Kurbelkiste: Notizen über die ersten zwanzig Jahre des Films.» 100 Jahre Bergfilm: Dramen, Trick und Abenteuer. Ed. Stefan König, Hans- Jürgen Panitz, and Michael Wachtler. Munich: Herbig, 2001. 23-27. Curtiss, Thomas Quinn. Von Stroheim. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971. Fanck, Matthias. Weisse Hölle - Weisser Rausch. Arnold Fanck. Bergfilme und Bergbilder 1909-1939. Zurich: AS Verlag, 2009. Finler, Joel W. Stroheim. London: Movie Magazine Limited, 1967. Horak, Jan-Christopher, ed. Berge, Licht und Traum: Dr. Arnold Fanck und der deutsche Bergfilm. Munich: Bruckmann, 1997. König, Stefan, and Florian Trenker. Bera Luis - Das Phänomen Luis Trenker. Munich: J. Berg, 1992. Koszarski, Richard. Von: The Life and Films of Erich von Stroheim. New York: Limelight, 2001. Leider, Emily W. Dark Lover: The Life and Death of Rudolph Valentino. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003. Lennig, Arthur. Stroheim. Lexington: U of Kentucky P, 2000. Majer-O’Sickey, Ingeborg. «The Cult of the Cold and the Gendered Body in Mountain Films.» Spatial Turns: Space, Place, and Mobility in German Literary and Visual Culture. Ed. Jaimey Fisher and Barbara Mennel. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010. 363-80. Nenno, Nancy. «‹Postcards from the Edge›: Education to Tourism in the German Mountain Film.» Light Motives: German Popular Cinema. Ed. Margaret McCarthy and Randall Halle. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2003. 61-83. Noble, Peter. Hollywood Scapegoat: The Biography of Erich von Stroheim. New York: Arno Press, 1972. Panitz, Hans-Jürgen. Luis Trenker ungeschminkt: Bilder, Stationen und Begegnungen. Innsbruck: Tyrolia, 2009. Porter, Elliot Einzig. «The Two Vons: The World War I Secret Government Investigation of Erich von Stroheim.» Film History 22 (2010): 329-46. Prime, Rebecca. «‹A Strange and Foreign World›: Documentary, Ethnography, and the Mountain Films of Arnold Fanck and Leni Riefenstahl.» Folklore/ Cinema: Popular Film as Vernacular Culture. Ed. Sharon Sherman and Mikel Koven. Logan: Utah State UP, 2007. 54-73. Rapp, Christian. Höhenrausch: Der deutsche Bergfilm. Vienna: Sonderzahl, 1997. Rentschler, Eric. «Mountains and Modernity: Relocating the Bergfilm.» New German Critique 51 (1990): 137-61. Strathausen, Carsten. «The Image as Abyss: The Cinematic Sublime in the Mountain Film.» Peripheral Visions. The Hidden Stages of Weimar Cinema. Ed. Kenneth S. Calhoon. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2001. 171-89. Wilms, Wilfried. «‹The Essence of the Alpine World is Struggle› - Strategies of Gesundung in Arnold Fanck’s Early Mountain Films.» Heights of Reflection: Mountains in the German Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Twenty-First Century. Ed. Sean Ireton and Caroline Schaumann. Rochester: Camden House, 2012. 267-84. CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 228 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 228 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 From Bergsteiger to Bergkrieger: Gustav Renker, Luis Trenker, and the Rebirth of the German Nation in Rock and Ice WILFRIED WILMS U NIVERSITY OF D ENVER This essay examines reflections on and representations of the changed nature and meaning of the Alps during World War I and the Weimar years as well as the closely related emergence of a new type of soldier in the films and fiction of the later years of the Republic: the «Bergkrieger» (Renker, «Bergtage» 179). While the discovery and adulation of the mountain warrior in the late 1920s and early 1930s of course coincides with the rise of National Socialist ideology, such pre-fascist emphasis obscures that the emergence of this interest in the Alpine battles of World War I also reflects post-traumatic aspects that permeated German society after 1918. In this discursive context, the Weimar mountain film of the midto late-1920s acts as a key ingredient in the cultural transfer of wartime ideas and ideals. While at least initially not explicitly concerned with war, the mountain film responds nonetheless to Germany’s loss of World War I. The films are centered on a remarkably coherent set of themes: exploration and triumph, survival and perseverance, loss and defeat, purification and renewal, death and sacrifice, fraternal masculinity and camaraderie - all notions that determined the front experience of the modern soldier fighting in the Great War. Not only Weimar Germany’s modernity in general, but postwar Germany’s culture and affect of defeat in particular, provide the perfect breeding ground for a discursive confrontation of Germany’s recent past and present. In my understanding of the genre, therefore, mountain films exhibit psychological mechanisms for coming to terms with defeat. Aside from a few exceptions, however, accounts of the Alpine conflict itself appeared in the public sphere only from around 1930 onwards. 1 In the following, I will demonstrate how Luis Trenker’s mountain war film Berge in Flammen (The Doomed Battalion, 1931) not only intensified, even radicalized the themes of the classical mountain film of previous years, but also played a crucial role in generating a broader engagement with the war in the Alps in the years after its release. In fact, it might not be hyperbole to claim that for several generations prior to, during and after World War II, it was Trenker who personified the Alps for the average consumer in Germany and Austria. CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 229 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 229 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 230 Wilfried Wilms Generally speaking, the mountain warrior figure still receives comparatively little interest today. In scale, impact, and attention the war in southern or southwestern Europe simply pales in comparison with the gargantuan battles on the Western Front. 2 And yet, the memoirs of the war in the Alps provide plenty of substance for interdisciplinary investigations. In one of the earliest reports from the Alpine front, which between 1915 and 1918 stretched from the Swiss border in the West to the Adriatic Sea in the East, mountain enthusiast and climber Dr. Gustav Renker, sent to the mountains as a consultant for the military, shared with fellow members of the Deutscher und Österreichischer Alpenverein impressions of permanent change brought to the peaks of the Alps by the conflict between Austria and Italy. In a 1917 essay for the Alpine club’s journal entitled «Bergtage im Felde,» Renker reports: Die Berge im Felde […] haben ihr wahres Antliz verloren […]. Was wir dereinst dort suchten, Menschenfernheit und Natur, werden wir nicht mehr wiederfinden […]. Wir werden auf ausgesprengten Wegen wandeln, werden alte Kavernen und Hütten finden, werden verlassene Geschützstände sehen und zeitweilig […] grüßt uns wohl ein schlichtes Kreuz, darunter einer der Männer in die Ewigkeit hinüberträumt, einer jener, die einst hier mit ihrem Leibe die Heimat vor Not und Kriegsgrauen schützten. (185) Reporting current events from the Alpine battlefield while, at the same time, anticipating a distant future, Renker bemoans the loss of the mountains’ purity and wholesomeness, in particular their significant existence as an alternative to life in the modern metropolis that he characterizes on a number of occasions as degenerate, artificial, and «überhitzt» (180). What was true and uncontaminated is now perpetually spoiled. But amidst his somber reflection on that loss, Renker also points to a salvation woven into the tainted grandiose nature that surrounds him. The salvation is signified in the cross that will extol the deeds of men who sacrificed their life in defense of their homeland to a degree that their bodies, hardened by an unbelievably difficult war, have become one with the rock itself: Aber haben diese Berge auch ihre Reinheit, ihr alpines Ideal verloren, so sind sie uns etwas anderes geworden, das ich zumindest ebenso hoch einschätzen möchte: gewaltige Denkmäler einer heroischen Zeit, Künder von Treue und Opfermut sondergleichen. Die Helden, die in Winterstürmen und sommerlichem Blitzgefunkel da oben lebten, kämpften und starben, haben sich in diesen Bergen, denen sie machtvoll Züge ihres eigenen Wesens eingruben […], Denkmäler gesetzt. (185) Kindred in their fundamental nature, the mountain warriors and the mountains themselves have fused their energies and spirits. The more primitive and challenging the surroundings for these men, the closer they have come to surmounting the barrier that separates man from the powers of nature. «Geht er CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 230 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 230 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 From Bergsteiger to Bergkrieger 231 dann zugrunde, der Troglodyt […], stürzt er im Bogen über die Wand, scharrt ihn eine Lawine ein oder reißt ihm ein Granatsplitter den Leib auf, so ist es, als stürze ein hangender Block aus des Grates Zackenkrone zur Tiefe» (180). Through this fusion of men and mountains the former have become heroes, the latter monuments. The memorials resulting from this amalgamation of men and rock, Renker claims, will outlast and outshine all those synthetic monuments that will be thought up and erected on the cheap in the cities. «In den Felsbergen eurer Heimat, die ihr zu Festungen gewandelt habt, lebt ihr Männer des Alpenkrieges zur Ewigkeit» (185). 3 Renker’s new ideal of masculinity, of course, closely resembled the desires of the ultra-nationalistic forces of Germany’s shaky democracy, in particular those of Ernst Jünger’s early malodorous reflections on renewal through war - reflections that stemmed from his own experiences in the West but were certainly not limited to men fighting on these fronts. 4 And it was one of these fighting men, Luis Trenker (1892-1990), a Tyrolean climber who became an Alpine soldier before transforming through the mountain film genre into one of Weimar’s biggest movie stars, who would embody Renker’s and Jünger’s unspoiled ideal of manhood that connected toughness, closeness to the homeland, and renewal through war. In what follows, I will explore their respective visions for the rebirth of the German nation in detail. Already in his first report from the Alpine front, «Der Krieg in den Bergen,» published one year prior to his monumentalization of the new mountain warrior, Renker praises the courage and tenacity with which the Austrian and German troops defended their home against a «italienische Überschwemmung» (219). To his astonishment and distress, the mountains and their peaks have become a battle ground and are no longer the reward solely of the Alpinist who yearned for their peaks in order to refresh his «ausgepumpte Nerven» (219) and to find himself closer to eternity. 5 The Alps - in his case the Julian Alps - are faced with inevitable change. «Doch die gleichen Alpen, die gleichen Berge […] sind es nicht mehr, die wir nach Kriegsende vorfinden werden» (219-20), he writes, anticipating repercussions for those who sought rejuvenation and inspiration away from their modern lives in an environment that has been drastically altered by the hand of war. It is Renker’s stated goal to narrate this transformation, and to share it with his mountaineering readership at home. Renker’s report centers almost exclusively on the changes brought to the mountains. Actual combat is of little importance in this initial reportage from the front. Man, Renker stresses, has wounded the mountain. In his desire to make the mountains habitable, modern man has subordinated the rock and, in the process, harmed the mountains as much as the region’s flora and fauna. By blow- CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 231 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 231 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 232 Wilfried Wilms ing trails into the rock and by building caverns, magazines, shelters, and lines of support, the modern troglodyte has changed the mountain forever. The craftiness and tenacity of the initial «Guerillakrieg, der seine Krieger hinter Felsblöcken und Graten sitzen läßt» (223), executed initially by a handful of local militia men, was soon buttressed by modern technology and by the arrival of regular troops. While the Italian Alpini made the mountain look like «eine von Maulwürfen durchscharrte Wiese» and developed «in seinem Innern ganze Systeme von Kavernen, Höhlenmagazinen und Gängen» (223), including a shaft inside the mountain leading to the summit, the Austrians turned Mittagskofel and Köpfach into «Festungsberge» (224), equipped with electricity, telephone, radio, and even music. «Der Krieg hat für die Erschließung unserer Berge mehr getan, als es jahrzehntelange Friedensarbeit hätte leisten können» (225). 6 Expressed here is Renker’s appreciation for the rapid changes introduced to the Empire’s backwater. But articulated is also a measure of doubt regarding the enduring effects on the mountains and the exclusive mountaineering community - a community that seems to carry within itself a propinquity to those men fighting, and for whom climbing skills, knowledge of the terrain, and «Berggewandheit» («Bergtage» 186) are as important as operating the war machinery. «Die Urkraft des Krieges aber ist […] der Mensch selbst. Und mehr als irgendwo anders gilt dies vom Kampf im Hochgebirge.» That our splendid «Alpenländler» fully hold their own is absolutely clear to all who know these «Volksstämme» («Krieg» 230). What Renker effectively establishes is this: the mountaineer, due to his acquaintance with the mountains, is always two steps closer to that new, admirable generation of mountain warriors. In fact, the mountaineer’s climbing experience has lifted him into a semi-militarized realm of hardship and risk, courage and tenacity, camaraderie and destiny; elements and qualities that the individualistic modern «Großstadtmensch» lacks altogether (227). What stands before the mountaineering community is a new race through which dawns a new postwar era led by unsere schneidigen, jungen Bergkrieger. […] Wo unsereiner pickelschlagend und vorsichtig geht, setzen sie sich auf der Natur diskretesten Körperteil und rutschen; wo wir Griffe suchen, fassen sie Unebenheiten; wo wir lawinenängstlich über den Firn huschen, stapfen sie singend und lachend dahin. («Bergtage» 179-80) These soldiers, Renker asserts, represent a new and incredibly cheeky generation. Death means little to these men for whom only deed and creation matters. War in the Alpine regions has transformed these men by reactivating within them a fine, instinctual sense of the animal - an instinct that the highlydeveloped homo sapiens had lost when he no longer needed to adapt himself to nature but rather adapted nature to himself. War is portrayed as transform- CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 232 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 232 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 From Bergsteiger to Bergkrieger 233 ing the essence of mankind itself. The effect of war on pre-war Alpinism is one of reciprocity: Ich möchte die Ausübung der Alpinistik, die der Krieg gebracht hat, eine gedankenlose, mechanische nennen. Das Bewußtsein der Gefahr, das als mächtiges Stimulans auf unser Tun wirkte, das uns für das Talleben neue, tiefe Werte gab, ist […] abgetötet worden. […] Wird das Spielen mit der Gefahr nicht vielmehr das Selbstverständliche, der Beruf? (180) While often drastically altered through war, the mountains also fought back and became actors in this titanic clash. Though the high Alpine region could offer images and experiences of unrivaled beauty even in wartime, it could (and did) also deliver death on a massive scale. Aside from bullets, grenades, and even mined tunnels drilled into the rocks to blow up strongholds on mountaintops along with the peaks, 7 the equally grim forces of nature confronted the soldiers, at times claiming more lives than the fighting itself. The soldier found himself fighting what Tait Keller calls the «dual struggle with the weather and war» (266). Avalanches, followed by rescue attempts undertaken with vigor and a sense of comradely duty in the face of death (see Renker, «Krieg» 232), rockslides, cold, and lightning were a constant threat and reality. The winter of 1916-17, the years in which Renker is active as a consultant, proved especially disastrous, with record snowfalls and brutally cold temperatures. Renker contemplates the dual nature of the mountains, which both protect and devour men and country, when he recalls how an avalanche buried a great number of his comrades. Das ist die Natur unserer Berge: furchtbar und erbarmungslos in ihrer Gewalt. Und ihr Sterben, ihr Morden ist nicht der Soldatentod, der sich in den großen Gedanken des Vaterlandes dem Feinde opfert, sondern es ist die Grausamkeit des wehrlosen jähen Endes, die dem Tod die Größe und Weihe nimmt. («Bergtage» 195-96) Renker refers to these challenges, but writing for the mountaineering community he is in the end concerned with the future of Alpinism itself. While this war has changed the face of the Alps for good, it will also give birth to a generation purified and empowered by this epic struggle. «[N]eue Menschen, ein kraftvolles, sieggestärktes Geschlecht» will ascend these peaks in the future: [W]o einst der Kampf tobte, wird der lebensfrohe Gott Alpinismus zweierlei suchen: Kraft und geistige Gesundung aus der Tretmühle des täglichen Lebens und tiefe, dankbare Erinnerung an ein Heldentum, das auf jenen wilden Höhen mit unvergleichlicher Heimatsliebe seine Scholle verteidigte. («Krieg» 235-36) In Male Fantasies, Klaus Theweleit investigated the language, narrative structure, and metaphors of a vast body of Freikorps novels and memoirs, produc- CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 233 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 233 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 234 Wilfried Wilms ing what might very well be the best analysis of the construction of a mythical masculine identity in the 1920s. Hostile to the Weimar Republic, the Freikorps members desired to restore Germany’s lost military grandeur and to refurbish the nation with a masculine ideal that longed to fuse not with the dreaded (and disintegrating) female «liquid» counterpart, but rather sought fusion of its «hard» body with the military machinery. Albeit not a member of the Freikorps proper, the young Ernst Jünger, probably more than anyone else, produced literature that united a desire for renewal through war with cogitations of masculine prowess - deliberations that will help us understand how a man like Luis Trenker could eventually be perceived as a masculine ideal by broader bands of Weimar society. In the following, let us analyze for a moment Jünger’s attempt to theorize the experience of war in one of his most notorious essays, «Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis» (1922). If initially attracted to the ideology and hiking excursions of the Wandervogel movement, it was the Great War - and its now militarized, armed, and marching youth - that provided Jünger with the new religion he needed: it was headed by a divinity of power, a formative force that begot, in his words, an old and comfortable and over-cultivated society with new values, one that was willing and able to tear down «das graue Gemäuer der Städte» (38). Jünger’s sublime deity was war itself. What made war for Jünger an inner experience instead of a mere outer one was the recognition of war not as a negation of life, but rather as its magnificent affirmation on a higher plane. For him, behind the experience of war pulses nothing less than Hegel’s «Weltgeist» (89, 106). All of Jünger’s writings of the Weimar period, from the breakthrough literary success In Stahlgewittern (1920) to the political agitation he published throughout the 1920s, bespeak the centrality of the war experience in his conceptualization of nationhood and self, and identify him as a key figure of the new nationalism. 8 For Bernd Weisbrod, In Stahlgewittern can thus best be read as an «ego-document, a testimony to the author’s search for his identity» (Weisbrod 71). Infatuated by a desired intensification and radicalization of life, Jünger’s imagined masculinity puts forward what Weisbrod calls a «male fundamentalism» as the mythic core of a national hope of revival. The costs of a moral self-realization rooted in battle, so Weisbrod, become noticeable quickly. «His ego-documents are aesthetic and political confessions for a historical model of masculinity that reveals its final, fundamentalist basis: in the ‹will to sacrifice› lies the ‹saving deed.› In the ‹obsession with sacrifice› the ‹will to power›» (87). Not unlike Renker’s romanticized bourgeois notion of life on the edge a few years earlier, Jünger describes life in the big cities as decadent, as devoid of manliness and heroes, as guided by the false gods of the «donnernde Masse» CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 234 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 234 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 From Bergsteiger to Bergkrieger 235 and «Gleichheit.» Life in the democratic modern metropolis, Jünger asserts, is a mere «Opiumtraum» that covers up any sign of the warrior’s singularity, masculinity, and deed with the «dünnen Tünche einer sogenannten Kultur» («Erlebnis» 58). The city hosts the tamed modern man, surrounding him with «tausend Überflüssigkeiten» (26). But no matter what codes of conduct mankind may have developed over thousands of years, in Jünger’s anthropology homo sapiens is ultimately defined and guided by his blood. Already the scarcely controlled conditions of the modern city dweller in the «aufgepeitschte Städte» (19) indicates, according to Jünger, that man’s animalistic nature has never come to rest and is today at best «gedämpft» and masked (17), but not altered. Deep down reigns what he calls the «Wollust des Blutes» (19), and we can safely assume that his notion entails the affirmative lust for blood as well. It is the experience of battle that tears the veil away; and it is in battle that the individual can reach the «Gipfel der Persönlichkeit,» expressed in the form of courage and experienced as «etwas Heiliges» (51-52). According to Jünger, the spirit of war has permanently entered those who found it on the battle fields between 1914 and 1918, holding them in its edifying grip for all times. Nicht nur unser Vater ist der Krieg, auch unser Sohn. Wir haben ihn gezeugt und er uns. Gehämmerte und Gemeißelte sind wir, aber auch solche, die den Hammer schwingen, den Meißel führen, Schmiede und sprühender Stahl zugleich, Märtyrer eigener Tat, von Trieben Getriebene. (14) Jünger eulogizes the ideal of the professional soldier as the direct opposite to an effeminate, bourgeois hodgepodge of city, peace, and democracy, identifying the universal mercenary of the renaissance, the lansquenet, as the historical forerunner of the modern trench soldier. In him Jünger sees the expression of a vigorous, strapping race that loved combat for combat’s sake. Through the lansquenet (and, by extension, his modern descendant) pulsates Hegel’s world-spirit most powerfully, surrounding him with a «männlichste [Umgebung]» expressed in «Gesichtern wie geschliffene Klingen, voll Sprung, Rasse und Energie» (60-61), and altogether lacking the soft and superfluous, the sentimental and paltry. The man reborn in storms of steel and on the freezing peaks of the mountains carries the experience on his face. It is, we are expected to believe, a chiseled or hammered face, sharp and clear. The visibility of this new countenance and age will prove to be of importance when we turn our attention to Luis Trenker as the most prominent representative of a film genre that owes much to the experiences of this war, whether it was fought on the fields of Flanders, or whether it was endured on the Alpine peaks. 9 Jünger lingers on the public CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 235 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 235 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 236 Wilfried Wilms prominence of this supposedly inner experience to a surprising degree, using the metaphor of the face as a point of reference that alludes to a decipherable underlying character. If we believe him, this war created a holy community of men that has «das neue Gesicht der Erde gemeißelt» (53). The soldiers’ faces «die im Schatten des Stahlhelms liegen, sind scharf, kühn und klug.» Repeatedly, Jünger refers to the «Antlitz» of this new race, breed, and humanity. «Ich weiss,» Jünger writes, «sie zaudern vor der Gefahr nicht einen Augenblick; sie springen sie an, schnell, sehnig und gewandt.» And summarily: «Der Starke […] steht mit versteinertem Gesicht» (76-79) amidst the fire. During years of professional, craft-like fighting, this new man established a hard and European morality (54) oriented solely along a shared goal, irrespective of the means necessary to reach it. The torrential flood and bombast of Jünger’s ruminations finally conclude with an assurance: «[Ü]bermorgen wird von der besten Mannschaft eines großen, kriegerischen Volkes der Meißel an das neue Gesicht der Erde gelegt» (104). We are encouraged to expect that their communal work at home will be done in the same way it was done during the war: professionally and in lockstep. «Der Graben […] machte den Krieg zum Handwerk» (33) and it has molded these soldiers into one body and one will «durch Tat, Blut und Gesinnung» (103). Film soon discovered the potential of the Alpine war. Luis Trenker, himself a veteran of the war in the Dolomites, turned the conflict in the Alps into a cinematic spectacle that fascinated Weimar audiences due to its portrayal of soldierly courage, duty, and heroism, embedded in an Alpine landscape which few at the time had seen for themselves. 10 Berge in Flammen, Trenker’s account of his war experiences in the Dolomites, reached cinemas in the autumn of 1931. 11 In a society that had yet to digest two major anti-war films, Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s Westfront 1918. Vier von der Infanterie (1930) and, above all, Im Westen nichts Neues (1930) by Lewis Milestone, Trenker’s film was met with reverberating enthusiasm. F. Dammann’s review in the paper Lichtbildbühne on 29 September 1931 could barely contain his excitement: Zwei Stunden äußerster Spannung, Erregung, Aufgepeitschtheit lösen sich nach Sekunden schweigender Ergriffenheit in tosendem Beifall. […] Jeder Moment voller Spannung, Kraft, von einer Wirklichkeit, die man zu greifen meint. Schlechthin vorbildlich alles, was die «Stimmung der Mannschaft» anbelangt. There is neither histrionic heroism nor shrill mutiny against the war. It is not fun to be in this mess, we are assured, but one does one’s duty. On the same day, Hans Feld in the Filmkurier writes of a masterpiece and recalls the general «Ergriffenheit» of an audience affected by images of a deeply impressive nature. Feld’s esteem for the film is closely linked to, perhaps exceeded by, his CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 236 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 236 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 From Bergsteiger to Bergkrieger 237 admiration for Trenker the man, when he points out how much more comfortable the actor’s life could be if only he had decided to become what Feld calls a «Ski-Fairbanks,» a swashbuckling movie star celebrating his own good looks and athleticism. To Feld, Trenker seems to possess qualities of a different nature from those of the American filmstar. He is characterized by a sober «Herbheit,» playing his part with what Feld calls «männlicher Selbstverständlichkeit.» «Luis Trenker, Bergsteiger, Bergmensch, Architekt, Schauspieler und Produzent: ein Filmkerl.» Before Trenker was even permitted to make this film he had to defend himself against charges of plagiarism coming from - of all people - his former mentor Arnold Fanck. 12 By 1930 he had begun working on the script for the film with a former wartime comrade and fellow Alpinist, Walter Schmidkunz. Though pretty much forgotten today, Schmidkunz was a highly respected writer in mountaineering circles at the time. He had published his own recollections of the war in the mountains as early as 1917, followed by a lecture tour addressing the mountaineering community. These lectures were meant to raise interest in the fates and fortunes of the forgotten soldiers of the Alps, amongst whom he could certainly count himself. 13 As Trenker’s ghostwriter for several years, he helped produce not only the script (and book version) of Berge in Flammen, but was also behind other triumphs that were publicly associated with Trenker alone. Cinematic examples of their fertile collaborations are Der Sohn der weissen Berge (also known as Das Geheimnis von Zermatt, 1930) and Der Rebell (1932). Following in the wake of these cinematic successes, Schmidkunz co-wrote the novel for Der verlorene Sohn and actively supported the rapid publication of what are known as the «Luis- Trenker-Bücher.» Aside from the above-mentioned book version of Berge in Flammen, which appeared almost simultaneously with the film, these books are Meine Berge (1931), Berge und Heimat (1933), and Bergwelt - Wunderwelt (1935). That from around 1930 onwards it was more and more en vogue to associate mountain climbing with struggle and even war, that it had become increasingly militarized, we can deduce, for example, from Trenker’s brief introduction to Meine Berge. The significance of Alpinism, Trenker claims, lies in experiencing nature where nature has created for itself its great symbol out of rock and ice: the mountain. «Und es ist wohl eine Bestätigung tiefer Gemeinsamkeit, wenn ein Mensch, der Berge umkämpfte, in mancher alltäglichen Stunde des Flachlandes an sie als seine Berge zurückdenkt. […] Der Kämpfer findet in der Vielheit der Berggefahren den Sieg.» 14 Der Rebell had its premiere in December 1932 in Stuttgart and Berlin and was met with fervent approval. The film caught the attention of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and opened political doors for the ambitious CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 237 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 237 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 238 Wilfried Wilms Tyrolean filmmaker. 15 Embraced by the National Socialists as exemplary for the desired new cinema, it ensured Trenker party support and inclusion in the Nazi pantheon. In a time ripe with nationalistic prattle of the shame of Versailles and a desired national uprising, the story of Tyrol’s valiant albeit unsuccessful resistance to Napoleonic suppression seemed opportune. Trenker plays the student Severin Anderlan, a dauntless protagonist who resists subjugation but is ultimately captured and executed by the French soldiers. In the final scenes of the film he is shown to rise from the dead along with his fellow martyrs, clenching the banner of freedom in his fist while ascending to heaven. The close-up of flags throughout the film, the use of patriotic songs, and a promised resurrection at the end of the movie all point ahead to the looming Nazi film industry. «Idealized Alpine panoramas and village celebrations,» observes Rentschler, «thus took their place in a Nazi Kulturkampf (culture war) in which homeland militated against the New World, undergoing political instrumentation to rise up as pastorale militans» (43). That Trenker corresponded well with the image of a vigorous masculinity prescribed in such films (as well as with models set out in texts like Jünger’s «Erlebnis») can easily be discerned if one takes a closer look at the stir his Alpine war film Berge in Flammen caused at the time. Hermann Sinsheimer sees in Trenker a man who can knuckle down when he writes in the Berliner Tageblatt: «Was er uns da vormacht, das können ihm wenige nachmachen. Denn selten ist eine solche Leidenschaft in einen solchen Körper gepflanzt, und nochmals selten spiegelt sich soviel Kraft und Wille in einem solchen Gesicht.» Where Trenker’s face and body mirror the triumph of his will and power, it is his colloquial language of the mountains that reflects the integral moral fiber of this admirably different character from the countryside. An anonymous review on 26 September 1931 in the Filmkurier titled «Filmkrieg in den Bergen» tellingly highlights Trenker’s «Heimatverbundenheit» by pointing out that his career took off outside the established bourgeois artistic circles of the metropolis. «Luis Trenker ist nie bei Reinhardt gewesen,» we can read, referring to Max Reinhardt, the Austrian (and later naturalized American) theater director of Jewish descent, as the direct opposite of this «German» phenomenon. «Seine Karriere begann er als Viehhirt […] und Bauernbursche in Tirols Bergen,» a difference that also shows linguistically when Trenker recalls the hardships of war and of filming in the mountains: «Trenker erzählt von diesen Dingen in der Sprache seiner Heimat.» A similar focus on Trenker’s masculinity can be found in an interview (Anon., «Krieg in Süd-Tirol») published in the Lichtbildbühne months prior to the actual film: «Ein faszinierender, sympathischer Bursche» who is «[überrumpelt] von den Erinnerungen an seine Kriegserlebnisse» and who remembers his war days as «eine Art Sport. CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 238 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 238 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 From Bergsteiger to Bergkrieger 239 Ein verteufelter Sport allerdings! » As one of these «famosen, stämmigen, sonnenverbrannten Gestalten,» these «Naturburschen» (Anon., «Vom Film»), Trenker’s presence ensured that the audience was guaranteed to see cinematic fare different from what they might only recently have viewed in Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. Instead of a pale, malnourished, and doubtful youth stumbling into the meaningless meat grinder of the Western Front, Berge in Flammen promised the Weimar spectators an uplifting tale of heroic homeland defense, executed by gallant German-speaking men. Trenker himself was fully aware of what he was producing. In his autobiography Alles gut gegangen, published in 1965, he recounts his own experience of having watched Milestone’s anti-war blockbuster. He writes: «Im Westen Nichts Neues zeigte die gottlose Sinnlosigkeit des Krieges und Selbstaufopferung einer militärisch gedrillten Jugend. Keine Liebe zum Vaterland, keine Tugend, nichts gab es da, und was blieb war eine gähnende, trostlose Leere» (260). Trenker contrasted what he had seen with a set of martial virtues like devotion to duty and honorable defense of the native soil. 16 The Berliner Börsenzeitung reveals the close proximity of Trenker’s film with the blood-and-soil propaganda of an ever-stronger Right in Weimar Germany. «An die Darstellung des Gebirgskrieges hat sich bis bisher noch niemand herangemacht […]. Man erhält ganz starke Eindrücke von den Leiden und dem Heldentum der einfachen Soldaten […]. Es sind echte Söhne der Berge […], die sich Trenker hier für den Film ausgewählt hat, knorrige, wetterfeste Gesalten,» we read. Others, we are assured, could not have stood up even to the demands of such filmmaking, never mind the war itself. The article closes by praising the «Herrlichkeit dieses echt vaterländischen Filmwerkes» (Anon., «Berge in Flammen»). What these depictions have in common is their adulation of Trenker as an antidote to an implicitly effeminate and ailing Weimar modernity. Raised outside the infected metropolis, and educated far away by the Alps as much as by war, Trenker was able to preserve and/ or bring into being a masculinity that was held up as exemplary in its physical athleticism, moral integrity, and patriotic dedication. The process of filmmaking in the mountains is ultimately discussed as one that resembles the experience of war itself: a grueling and perilous endeavor that only the fittest can tackle (as is highlighted admiringly in the Filmkurier), undertaken by former soldiers who were hardened by war and molded into a community of fellow sufferers. Trenker and his main cameraman, Hans Schneeberger, the Filmkurier informs us, were former wartime comrades. Furthermore, the desire to produce an authentic impression of the Alpine war necessitated the use of live ammunition and explosives during the filming, which resulted in co-director Karl Hartl losing an eye during an ex- CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 239 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 239 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 240 Wilfried Wilms plosion. As if wearing these mishaps as badges of honor, the piece concludes in the manner of a battle report: «Einige dreißig Verletzte hat es während der Aufnahmen gegeben» (Anon., «Filmkrieg»). Only one reviewer, Herbert Ihering, saw the film for what it really was: «Ein sehr guter, peinlicher Film. Ein glänzend gemachter Anachronismus,» because war is presented as one mountain adventure among others. Berge in Flammen was only the cinematic conclusion and climax of a development that from 1918 onwards increasingly looked to the Alps for renewal. 17 During the Weimar years, amidst pessimistic cultural diagnoses of decline and degeneration, there stood the promise of rejuvenation and salvation in the form of the challenges created by the mountains, whether pristine or, as Renker imagined, altered but nevertheless sanctified by war. The enthrallment of Weimar audiences vis-à-vis cinematic Alpine adventures played out in the supreme beauty of the Alps is thus hardly surprising. Their thunderous applause for the deeds of heroic men bound by comradeship and sacrifice, Jüngerian apostles of a stronger future race of warriors hardened by the experience of war, could already be heard in the years before Trenker’s war film. While it was no doubt the cinematic production of 1931 that generated an avalanche of publications promoting above all a militarized version of the mountains into the public imagination of Weimar Germany and beyond, Weimar’s fascination with the Alps began with the mountain film genre of the 1920s. 18 In the handsomely carved Trenker, the mountain warrior’s appearance in the German public sphere already had a recognizable face in the mountain climber. For a number of years prior to his appearance as Florian Dimai in Berge in Flammen, Trenker had made a name for himself as a bold mountaineer and male role model, initially acting in successful mountain films directed by Arnold Fanck, such as Der Berg des Schicksals (1923/ 24), Der Heilige Berg (1925/ 26), and Der grosse Sprung (1927). Following his success with Der Kampf ums Matterhorn (1928), Trenker began to direct more frequently. In 1931, for Berge in Flammen, he replaced his hat with a helmet, and his ice pick or ski poles with a rifle. Part of the attraction of mountain films in the 1920s was their response to a perceived crisis of identity and a longing for power and rejuvenation, if not salvation. Operating with a standard set of types and conflicts, both mountain films and the literature of the Alpine war generally juxtaposed the effeminate, greedy, and materialistic bourgeois of the city with the idealistic and virile man of the mountains. The latter’s triumph is rooted in his existence away from the masses of the metropolis. In these projections of modern angst the Alps enabled the men of the mountains to remain in close contact with an incorruptibly primordial and elemental manhood that was increasingly CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 240 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 240 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 From Bergsteiger to Bergkrieger 241 deemed capable of rescuing all of Germany. Men like Trenker offered models for identity in their idealization of an alternative masculinity, one that was decidedly anti-bourgeois, anti-modern, and by implication anti-democratic and thus capable of the heroic deed. 19 What characterized the mountain climber (and later the mountain warrior) was his ability to act, to endure, to persevere and overcome, and to be heroic to the point of self-sacrifice. For a society plagued by the bitter wounds of war, the Alps and its suntanned idols provided a much-needed tonic. In a society weighed down by the remnants of defeat in the Great War, the heroic new man coming out of the rock and ice of the Alps had to be a hit. 20 He provided codes of conduct for a society in poor health; he afforded an emotional economy that depicted the mountains and Alpinism as a pugnacious activity for the fittest of the nation. By linking the mountain climber with the mountain warrior, and by linking Alpinism with Alpine war, the new man of rock and ice did his part in the militarization of German society in the 1920s and 1930s. Notes 1 See, for instance, monographs by von Ompteda, Weber, and Röck in the 1930s; in 1941 the contribution by Kabisch. See also Trenker’s illustrated edition of Berge in Flammen entitled Kampf in den Bergen. Das unvergängliche Denkmal der Alpenfront (1931) and Helden der Berge (1936). 2 Rare exceptions only confirm this rule. See, for instance, Keller’s «The Mountains Roar.» See also Thompson, The White War; Hentzschel, Festungskrieg; Kuprian and Überegger (eds.), Der Erste Weltkrieg im Alpenraum; Wachtler, The First World War in the Alps. The Alpine war has recently been made available on film. See, for instance, Gesprengte Berge. Der Krieg in den Alpen 1915-1918 (ZDF production, 2007) and Der Alpenkrieg. Front in Eis und Fels (originally a production of Bayerischer Rundfunk, 1981-82; made available on DVD in 2004). The German weekly Der Spiegel published a brief piece in 2004 entitled «Die toten Augen im Berg» (Spiegel Special 1/ 2004: 84-87). 3 In 1918, Renker published the monograph Als Bergsteiger gegen Italien, detailing his exploits. 4 Wohl’s The Generation of 1914 (especially chapter 2) provides a compelling account of the extensive investments in youth (and war) for a desired rejuvenation of Wilhelmine German society. 5 See also Handl’s contribution to the Alpine club’s publication entitled «Von der Marmolata-Front II.» 6 While anticipating the touristic exploitation of the Alps, Renker certainly could not foresee that remnants of the war would become attractions for travelers in a distant future. See books by Hüsler and Dumler. 7 The Italians introduced mine warfare. One famous example is the explosion of the Col di Lana in the Dolomites. The Alpini drilled a tunnel underneath the enemy troops who occupied the peak, filled the chamber with high explosives, and blew up the mountaintop along with the German Alpenkorps on top of it on 17 April 1916. CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 241 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 241 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 242 Wilfried Wilms 8 See examples in Jünger’s Politische Publizistik 1919-1933. 9 On the desired visibility of the front experience in general, and the «visual turn» of the 1920s in particular, see Jünger’s Das Antlitz des Weltkrieges; in this context see also Uecker, «The Face of the Weimar Republic.» 10 On Trenker’s life in general see König and Florian Trenker’s at times uncritical biography Bera Luis. Also of interest are Nottebohm and Panitz, Fast ein Jahrhundert; Panitz, Luis Trenker ungeschminkt; and Luis Trenker’s autobiography entitled Alles gut gegangen. 11 An English-language version of the film, The Doomed Battalion, was made in Hollywood and premiered in New York’s Rivoli Theater on 16 June 1932. «You never saw anything like it before! », promised large advertisements outside the building. Trenker’s film (co-directed by Cyril Gardner) became a major success, paving the way for Trenker’s «American» career that included films like Der verlorene Sohn (1933/ 34) and Der Kaiser von Kalifornien (1935/ 36). 12 See König and Trenker 152-64. 13 Schmidkunz’ 1917 publication is entitled Der Kampf über den Gletschern. On his past and present status within the mountaineering circles see the collection by Peter Grimm for the German Alpine Club. 14 While a detailed analysis of these coffee-table books is desirable, in particular to understand if and how the photographic images therein are overpowered by a restrictive ideological dis-course, it cannot be done in the context of this essay. 15 See, for instance, Goebbels’s first speech to representatives of the German film industry on 28 March 1933, in which he mentions Der Rebell as exemplifying the new Weltanschauung (see Leiser, Deutschland erwache! 10). On Trenker’s association with the National Socialist regime and his identification as an opportunistic political chameleon see, for instance, Leimgruber, Luis Trenker, Regisseur und Schriftststeller. See also Mehring’s «Mein Freund Hitler» who sees in Trenker the perfect example of a collaborator. Rentschler characterizes Trenker as «a calculating, resourceful, and compulsive self-promoter, a man of undeniably ruthless ambition» (41). 16 On the overlaps between mountain films and «national films» see Kracauer 259-72. 17 This process had, evidently, its uncanny parallel in post-World War II Germany, a time when Germans in bombed-out cities craved the wholesomeness and peace of an idealized countryside and Alpine meadows untouched by destruction. 18 On the Bergfilm and Weimar culture see my forthcoming essay «The Essence of the Alpine World is Struggle.» 19 See here also Hämmerle’s study of Fritz Weber, a well-known Austrian officer in the Alpine war, «Es ist immer der Mann, der den Kampf entscheidet, und nicht die Waffe…» On the crisis of masculinity in Austria see Hämmerle, «Vor vierzig Monaten waren wir Soldaten, vor einem halben Jahr noch Männer…» 20 On the memory of mass violence in post-World War I Germany see Whalen, Bitter Wounds. Works Cited Anon. «Berge in Flammen. Ufa-Palast am Zoo.» Berliner Börsenzeitung 29 September 1931. Anon. «Filmkrieg in den Bergen. Luis Trenkers letzte Filmarbeit.» Filmkurier 26 September 1931. CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 242 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 242 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 From Bergsteiger to Bergkrieger 243 Anon. «Krieg in Süd-Tirol. Interview mit Trenker und Junghans.» Lichtbildbühne 4 September 1930. Anon. «Vom Film. Verfilmter Bergkrieg.» Berliner Börsenzeitung 30 June 1931. Dammann, F. «Berge in Flammen. Luis Trenker-Film der Vandal und Delac Produktion.» Lichtbildbühne 29 September 1931. Dumler, Helmut. Höhenwege in den Dolomiten. Panoramawege, Hüttenwege, Klettersteige, Gipfel. Munich: Bruckmann, 2003. Feld, Hans. «Luis Trenker: Berge in Flammen.» Filmkurier 29 September 1931. Grimm, Peter. Walter Schmidkunz. Ein Klassiker im Hintergrund. Munich: Bruckmann, 1989. Hämmerle, Christa. «Es ist immer der Mann, der den Kampf entscheidet, und nicht die Waffe…». Der Erste Weltkrieg im Alpenraum. Erfahrung, Deutung, Erinnerung. Ed. Hermann J.W. Kuprian and Oswald Überegger. Innsbruck: Athesia, 2006. 35-59. -. «Vor vierzig Monaten waren wir Soldaten, vor einem halben Jahr noch Männer…» L’Homme. Europäische Zeitschrift für Feministische Geschichtswissenschaft 19/ ii (2008): 51-73. Handl, Leo. «Von der Marmolata-Front II.» Zeitschrift des Deutschen und Österreichischen Alpenvereins 47 (1916): 112-18. Hentzschel, Rolf. Festungskrieg im Hochgebirge. Bolzano: Athesia, 2008. Hüsler, Eugen E. Auf alten Kriegspfaden durch die Dolomiten. 35 spektakuläre Wanderungen auf historischen Militärpfaden. Munich: Bruckmann, 2008. Ihering, Herbert. «Berge in Flammen.» Berliner Börsen-Courier 29 September 1931. Jünger, Ernst. «Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis.» Essays I. Betrachtungen zur Zeit. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1960. 13-108. Vol. 5 of Werke. -. Politische Publizistik 1919-1933, Ed. Sven Olaf Berggötz. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2001. -. Das Antlitz des Weltkrieges. Fronterlebnisse deutscher Soldaten. Berlin: Neufeld & Henius, 1930. Kabisch, Ernst. Helden in Fels und Eis. Bergkrieg in Tirol und Kärnten. Stuttgart: Loewis, 1941. Keller, Tait. «The Mountains Roar: The Alps during the Great War.» Environmental History 14 (2009): 253-74. König, Stefan, and Florian Trenker. Bera Luis. Das Phänomen Luis Trenker. Eine Biographie. Munich: Berg, 1992. Kracauer, Siegfried. From Caligari to Hitler. A Psychological History of the German Film. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1947. Kuprian, Hermann J.W., and Oswald Überegger, eds. Der Erste Weltkrieg im Alpenraum: Erfahrung, Deutung, Erinnerung. Innsbruck: Wagner, 2006. Leimgruber, Florian, ed. Luis Trenker, Regisseur und Schriftststeller. Die Personalakte Trenker im Berlin Document Center. Bozen, Frasnelli-Keitsch, 1994. Leiser, Erwin. Deutschland erwache! Propaganda im Film des Dritten Reiches. Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1968. Mehring, Frank. «‹Mein Freund Hitler›; Luis Trenker zwischen ‹Heimat› und ‹Heim ins Reich.›» Film-Dienst 16 (2005): 41-43. Nottebohm, Rudolf, and Hans-Jürgen Panitz. Fast ein Jahrhundert. Luis Trenker. Munich: Herbig, 1987. Ompteda, Georg Freiherr von. Bergkrieg. Berlin: W. Kolk, 1932. CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 243 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 243 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 244 Wilfried Wilms Panitz, Hans-Jürgen. Luis Trenker ungeschminkt. Innsbruck: Tyrolia, 2009. Renker, Gustav. «Der Krieg in den Bergen.» Zeitschrift des Deutschen und Österreichischen Alpenvereins 47 (1916): 219-36. -. «Bergtage im Felde: Tagebuchblätter von Dr. Gustav Renker.» Zeitschrift des Deutschen und Österreichischen Alpenvereins 48 (1917): 177-200. -. Als Bergsteiger gegen Italien. Munich: Schmidkunz, 1918. Rentschler, Eric. «There’s no place like home: Luis Trenker’s The Prodigal Son (1934).» New German Critique 60 (1993): 33-56. Röck, Christian. Die Festung im Gletscher. Vom Heldentum im Alpenkrieg. Berlin: Ullstein, 1935. Schmidkunz, Walter. Der Kampf über den Gletschern. Munich: Bonsels, 1917. Sinsheimer, Hermann. «‹Berge in Flammen› im Ufa-Palast am Zoo.» Berliner Tageblatt 29 September 1931. Theweleit, Klaus. Male Fantasies. Trans. Erica Carter, Stephen Conway, and Chris Turner. 2 vols. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1989. Thompson, Mark. The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front 1915-1919. New York: Basic Books, 2008. Trenker, Luis. Alles gut gegangen. Geschichten aus meinem Leben. Hamburg: Bertelsmann, 1965. -. Helden der Berge. Berlin: Knaur, 1936. -. Kampf in den Bergen. Das unvergängliche Denkmal der Alpenfront. Berlin: Neufeld & Henius, 1931. -. Meine Berge. Das Bergbuch von Luis Trenker unter Mitarbeit von Walter Schmidkunz. Berlin: Neufeld & Henius, 1931. Uecker, Matthias. «The Face of the Weimar Republic: Photography, Physiognomy, and Propaganda in Weimar Germany.» Monatshefte für deutschsprachige Literatur und Kultur 99 (2007): 469-84. Wachtler, Michael. The First World War in the Alps. Bolzano: Athesia, 2006. Weber, Fritz. Feuer auf den Gipfeln. Südtiroler Alpenkrieg. Regensburg: Manz, 1932. -. Alpenkrieg. Klagenfurt and Vienna: Artur-Kollitsch Verlag, 1935. Weisbrod, Bernd. «Military Violence and Male Fundamentalism: Ernst Jünger’s Contribution to the Conservative Revolution.» History Workshop Journal 49 (2000): 69-94. Whalen, Robert. Bitter Wounds. German Victims of the Great War, 1914-1939. Ithaca and London: Cornell UP, 1984. Wilms, Wilfried. «‹The Essence of the Alpine World is Struggle›. Strategies of Gesundung in Arnold Fanck’s Early Mountain Films.» Heights of Reflection. Mountains in the German Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Twenty-First Century, Eds. Sean Ireton and Caroline Schaumann. Rochester: Camden House, 2012. 267-84. Wohl, Robert. The Generation of 1914. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1979. CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 244 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 244 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 «Stunde Null» on Nanga Parbat? The German «Schicksalsberg» in Preand Post-WW II Youth Literature HARALD HÖBUSCH U NIVERSITY OF K ENTUCKY Bisected by the «Stunde Null» 1 - the «Zero Hour» which, at least in theory, separated National Socialist Germany from its eventual democratic and socialist successors, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) - the story of the ascent of Nanga Parbat, Germany’s «Schicksalsberg» in the Himalayas, spans a period of two decades (1932-53), is equaled in drama only by the British epic of climbing Mount Everest, and has been recounted extensively - and one might even say, obsessively - in a variety of media (print, audio, film), both preand post-World War II. In this essay I will explore one particular aspect of this expansive body of narratives, the presentation of the Nanga Parbat story to a young German readership both before and after the «Stunde Null,» with the double intent of exploring the narrative and ideological (dis-)continuities 2 between these various Nanga Parbat stories and of defining the respective functioning of these stories as an integral part of the youth literature of the final years of the Third Reich and the formative years of the Federal Republic of Germany. The story of Nanga Parbat (8,126 m), the world’s ninth-highest peak, located in the extreme western part of the Himalaya chain in modern-day Pakistan, originates in the years following World War I, a time when Germany’s leading mountaineers had begun to set their sights on goals located well beyond their traditional area of activity, the European Alps. In the decade between 1928 and 1939 German expeditions repeatedly traveled to such remote locations as the Andes, the Caucasus, the Pamir and, most importantly, the Himalayas. 3 In 1929 the Munich notary and mountaineer Dr. Paul Bauer (1896-1990) had organized the first German Himalaya expedition to Kangchenjunga (8,598 m), the third-highest mountain in the world. In 1930, the «Internationale Himalaya-Expedition,» organized and led by the Breslau geologist Prof. Dr. Günther Oskar Dyhrenfurth (1866-1975), 4 set out to conquer Kangchenjunga once more but, like Bauer the previous year, failed to reach the summit. Kangchenjunga remained one of the primary goals for German mountaineers during the early 1930s: 1931 marked the year of the second German Kangchenjunga expedition, again under the leadership of Bauer. CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 245 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 245 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 246 Harald Höbusch However, in the dreams of German mountaineers at the time, Kangchenjunga was soon replaced by Nanga Parbat, and the fact that Nanga Parbat had been «discovered» by a German undoubtedly contributed to the claim by 1930s German mountaineers that Nanga Parbat was a «German» mountain. Bauer, for instance, repeatedly pointed to the Munich explorer and scientist Adolph Schlagintweit (1829-57) 5 as the first European paying attention to the mountain and sending news of its existence to Europe. 6 To him, Schlagintweit was the true «Entdecker» 7 of Nanga Parbat. In 1932, a joint German-American expedition, led by Willy Merkl (1900- 34), one of the premier German climbers at the time, and bankrolled primarily by two American participants, Rand Herron and Elizabeth Knowlton, made the first (unsuccessful) German effort at scaling the peak. Over the next seven years, until the outbreak of World War II, a total of five German expeditions would visit Nanga Parbat in addition to the 1932 Merkl expedition (expedition leaders in parentheses): 1934 (Merkl), 1937 (Dr. Karl Wien), 1937 rescue expedition (Bauer), 1938 (Bauer), 1939 (participants: Peter Aufschnaiter, Heinrich Harrer, Hans Lobenhoffer, Lutz Chicken). Nanga Parbat, however, did not treat its visitors kindly; in fact, it soon gained the title of German «Schicksalsberg» because of the repeat disasters striking German expeditions on its slopes and the resulting body count of altogether twenty-six dead: fifteen local porters as well as eleven German and Austrian mountaineers, among them some of the most highly regarded climbers of the interwar period. Disaster struck first with the 1934 expedition. Financed and executed with the full support of German National Socialist government agencies - the majority of funds were raised through the Reichsbahn-Turn- und Sportvereine and the Deutscher und Österreichischer Alpenverein (DuÖAV) - nothing less was expected of this expedition than «[…] die Eroberung des Gipfels zum Ruhme Deutschlands.» 8 That goal, however, proved elusive. Early on during the expedition, one of the nine German mountaineers, Alfred Drexel, succumbed to lung edema. During a subsequent summit attempt, three more German mountaineers, Merkl, Willo Welzenbach, and Uli Wieland, as well as three porters lost their lives. Caught in the onset of the monsoon, they failed in their attempt to descend from their high-altitude camp to lower elevations due to heavy snowfall and the effects of high-altitude sickness. The 1937 expedition to Nanga Parbat fared even worse. Financed by the newly formed Deutsche Himalaja-Stiftung, an organization closely connected to the National Socialist Deutscher Reichsbund für Leibesübungen through two of its founding members, Reichssportführer Hans von Tschammer und Osten and Bauer, the expedition left Munich with great expecta- CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 246 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 246 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 «Stunde Null» on Nanga Parbat? 247 tions, only to have them shattered once again by the mountain. Almost in an instant, seven German mountaineers and nine porters were killed by an avalanche leveling their high camp. It was with this tragic event that Nanga Parbat gained the title «Schicksalsberg.» Immediately after receiving news of the disaster, the Deutsche Himalaja-Stiftung launched a rescue expedition to Nanga Parbat. Its members, after several days of digging through the avalanche, were able to locate and lay to rest the bodies of five German mountaineers. In addition, they succeeded in retrieving most of the deceased’s personal belongings, including their diaries, as well as the film material of the original 1937 expedition. The year 1938 saw yet another German effort at fulfilling what by then had become somewhat of a German «Vermächtnis.» Again led by Bauer, yet another expedition traveled to Nanga Parbat in order to reach its summit, this time supported by a specially modified JU-52 transport plane supplied by Colonel Ernst Udet, at the time head of the T-Amt, the development wing of the Reichsluftfahrtministerium. Although this time no one got injured or killed, death was present on the mountain nevertheless; it was this expedition that discovered the bodies of the deceased of 1934, Merkl and Welzenbach. German efforts on Nanga Parbat continued in 1939. Reacting to the sobering fact that four previous expeditions had failed to reach the summit via the north side of the mountain, this visit was designed to explore a potential new route up the mountain from the east and, by doing so, lay the groundwork for a large expedition planned for the following year 1940. The outbreak of World War II, however, put an end to anybody’s mountaineering dreams; the four German expedition members were soon interned by the British forces in India. It took until eight years after the end of World War II that Germans (and Austrians) once more tried to reach the summit of Nanga Parbat. Named the Deutsch-Österreichische Willy-Merkl-Gedächtnis-Expedition and headed by Merkl’s half-brother, the Munich physician Dr. Karl Maria Herrligkoffer (1916-91), this undertaking marked the first expedition conducted independently of the organizational and financial resources of previous (National Socialist) Nanga Parbat expeditions. In fact, Herrligkoffer had been successful in securing the single annually available expedition permit for Nanga Parbat against strong competition and interference from the then still active Deutsche Himalaja-Stiftung. Herrligkoffer was criticized repeatedly by Bauer, the leader of the 1937 and 1938 expeditions, for his lack of organization and, especially, his selection of team members. Whereas Herrligkoffer simply tried to recruit the best climbers of the post-World War II period, Bauer favored (as on his previous expeditions) the idea of an already familiar group of CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 247 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 247 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 248 Harald Höbusch mountaineers or «Bergkameraden.» 9 While Bauer insisted on the «Alleinvertretungsanspruch» of the Deutsche Himalaja-Stiftung regarding expeditions into the Himalayas, Herrligkoffer ignored this «right» and pointed instead to the questionable National Socialist past of the Stiftung. In the end, Herrligkoffer emerged victorious from this extended struggle for the right to travel to Nanga Parbat 10 and was able to carry on with his expedition, an expedition which ultimately lead to the singular triumph of the Austrian climber Hermann Buhl (1924-57) on 3 July 1953. The exploits of German and Austrian mountaineers on Nanga Parbat between 1932 and 1953 were brought to the attention of the German public in both traditional and novel ways. A good half century after the publication of the Schlagintweits’ volume Reisen in Indien und Hochasien, Merkl’s limited documentation of the 1932 German-American Nanga Parbat expedition in a few articles in German and Austrian mountaineering journals marked the sole exception to the otherwise carefully planned and executed media campaigns associated with all subsequent Nanga Parbat expeditions. Beginning with Merkl’s own 1934 expedition, intensifying with the three expeditions organized and supported by the Deutsche Himalaja-Stiftung (1934, 1937, 1938), and culminating in Herrligkoffer’s 1953 Deutsch-Österreichische Willy-Merkl-Gedächtnis-Expedition, the reporting of these mountaineering enterprises to the German public turned out to be both extensive and all-inclusive, ranging from official expedition reports, personal expedition diaries, national radio broadcasts, and feature-length «documentary» films all the way to adventure stories geared specifically to teenagers. 11 The first of the official accounts of the German Nanga Parbat expeditions of the 1930s, Fritz Bechtold’s Deutsche am Nanga Parbat. Der Angriff 1934, became one of the most widely read expedition reports ever. 50,000 copies were printed for its first edition in 1935, another 20,000 copies followed the next year. Even in 1944, which saw the twelfth edition of the volume, the astounding number of 50,000 copies was produced. Willy Merkl - Ein Weg zum Nanga Parbat, a book that recounted the mountaineering life of the leader of the 1934 expedition and was published in 1936 by Herrligkoffer, had to be reprinted a total of seven times over a period of only two years. 12 Similar popularity was achieved by Hans Hartmann’s posthumously published diary Ziel Nanga Parbat. Tagebuchblätter einer Himalaja-Expedition, a small volume which appeared in 1938 and had an initial print run of 5,000 copies. Hartmann’s text, however, was subsequently reprinted a total of four times: in 1942, 1943, 1944, and 1945. The print run of the second edition alone was 10,000 copies. 13 The last book-length report of German pre-World War II expeditions to Nanga Parbat, Ulrich Luft’s account of the 1938 attempt titled CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 248 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 248 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 «Stunde Null» on Nanga Parbat? 249 Nanga Parbat. Berg der Kameraden, did not make it into print until 1943. However, once the volume did appear, it underwent a print run of 20,000 copies in 1943 and another 20,000 copies in 1944. The German public’s fascination with the «Schicksalsberg» clearly extended past the «Stunde Null.» This fact is attested to first by Rudolf Skuhra’s Sturm auf die Throne der Götter, a volume originally published in 1938 and subsequently republished five times (in both West Germany and Austria): in 1949, 1950, 1952, 1953, and 1954, now with added subtitle: Sturm auf die Throne der Götter. Die Himalaya-Expeditionen der Nachkriegszeit. Herrligkoffer, the leader of the successful 1953 Deutsch-Österreichische Willy- Merkl-Gedächtnis-Expedition, followed in the literary footsteps of earlier expeditions with the publication of his official expedition report titled Nanga Parbat 1953, a volume matched in popularity only by Bechtold’s pre-war book Deutsche am Nanga Parbat. Der Angriff 1934. While the West German original experienced two editions in 1954 alone, licensed editions appeared in Austria (Die Buchgemeinde) and the GDR (Verlag Neues Leben), in the latter case with an astounding print run of 50,000 copies. An alternative to Herrligkoffer’s official account was provided in Hermann Buhl’s Achttausend drüber und drunter, 14 a book written in collaboration with the Viennese mountaineer and Alpine writer Kurt Maix (1907-68). Buhl’s book, too, was licensed to the Büchergilde Gutenberg (Frankfurt/ Main) and the Buchgemeinschaft Donauland (Wien) and published in the GDR by the VEB Leipzig (F.A. Brockhaus Verlag). The publication, finally, of Ulrich Link’s Nanga Parbat. Berg des Schicksals im Himalaya (1953), Arthur Werner’s Weg und Ziel Nanga Parbat 1895-1953 (1954), Dyhrenfurth’s Das Buch vom Nanga Parbat. Die Geschichte seiner Besteigung 1895-1953 (1954), and Bauer’s Das Ringen um den Nanga Parbat 1856-1953. Hundert Jahre Bergsteigerischer Geschichte (1955) serves as yet another piece of evidence that the fascination of the German public with the story of Nanga Parbat continued well into the 1950s, a popularity which, at the time, was matched only by the story of the «Wunder von Bern,» the miraculous victory of the German soccer team in the championship game of the 1954 World Cup. A most intriguing aspect of the range of publications thematizing the exploits of German expeditions to Nanga Parbat lies in the fact that this range included numerous texts which were targeted specifically at a young reading audience, both before and, even more so, after the «Stunde Null.» During the final years of the Third Reich, the topic of German mountaineering expeditions to Nanga Parbat was adapted for a youth audience by two authors who were neither personally nor professionally affiliated with any of these expeditions: Ad. W. Krüger 15 and Wilhelm Kreuz. 16 Both of their ac- CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 249 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 249 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 250 Harald Höbusch counts were published exclusively during World War II, and both of them were aimed specifically at a young male reading audience. The first of these two texts, Krüger’s story Der Kampf um den Nanga Parbat, appeared in 1941 as volume 48 in the Aufwärts-Jugend-Bücherei of the Aufwärts-Verlag Berlin. 17 The Aufwärts-Jugend-Bücherei had been conceived in 1940 as part of a campaign by the Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda to produce a range of youth booklets 18 which were to impart National Socialist ideology in direct propagandistic fashion and replace the still highly popular, but from now on prohibited «Schund-» or «Groschenhefte.» 19 Its titles (altogether 99) continued to be published into the final years of World War II. 20 By the time Krüger’s story appeared, of course, the German armed forces were already at war («im Kampf»), thereby lending both title and plot of Krüger’s story a high degree of timeliness and urgency. Attempting both to revive and capitalize on the formerly widespread fascination of the German public with pre-World War II Himalaya, and especially Nanga Parbat, expeditions, the story recounts Merkl’s ill-fated 1934 enterprise and, in doing so, celebrates many of the «heroic» qualities von Tschammer und Osten, Bechtold, Bauer, and Luft had ascribed to German mountaineers in their aforementioned commentaries and accounts of several Nanga Parbat expeditions: the notion of the selfless leader along with related concepts such as loyalty, comradeship, and self-sacrifice (to the death). 21 A strong sense of loyalty between the expedition members is stressed from the very outset of Krüger’s story. Having just finished their final preparations in a Munich warehouse, the mountaineers report to their leader, Merkl, at his home. There, Merkl shows them a photograph of Nanga Parbat taken during his 1932 expedition. Impressed by the sheer size of the mountain, the men look at the image in awe; then, after a moment of hesitation, they walk up to Merkl and assure him of their dedication to the common goal: Und dann, als hätten sie sich verabredet, wo doch nur die Übermacht eines sie alle beseelenden großen Gefühls vorherrschte, traten sie zu Willy Merkl heran, einer nach dem anderen, und reichten ihm still die Hand. Ein Gelöbnis der Treue war es, und Merkl hatte sie verstanden. (6) More importantly, the mountaineers’ loyalty extends beyond the merely personal to their fatherland. Inspired by a farewell telegram from von Tschammer und Osten, the German expedition departs for India and is soon at work preparing for the first attack on the mountain. Realizing that the goal of the expedition is threatened by inclement weather and poor snow conditions, the fictional Merkl reflects on the dangers associated with continuing the assault on Nanga Parbat and finally decides to carry on, stressing the importance of their undertaking for their fatherland in the eyes of the world: «‹Dennoch! › CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 250 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 250 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 «Stunde Null» on Nanga Parbat? 251 sagt er endlich fest und zuversichtlich, ‹wir stehen hier als Deutsche, und eine ganze Welt sieht auf uns! Da wollen wir als Deutsche geben, was wir besitzen, Kraft, Energie, Verstand, Glauben und die Zuversicht auf den da oben! ›» (14). Merkl’s sentiment about the mission is shared by Alfred Drexel, the mountaineer who volunteers to set up the first high-altitude camp. Driven by the trust of his comrades - «Man weiß ja doch, der eine kann auf den anderen bauen wie auf Fels» (15) - Drexel overexerts himself during the push up the mountain, falls ill with pneumonia, and eventually dies in the arms of his fellow mountaineer and friend, Bechtold. In his final words, however, Drexel pays tribute to the larger cause of the expedition: «‹Fritz! › Seltsam klar tönt plötzlich die Stimme des Kranken durch das niedrige Zelt. ‹Fritz! Wenn ich jetzt sterbe, - versprich mir, - der Angriff auf den Berg - der geht weiter - gelt? - Nicht nachlassen -, den Gipfel -, den Gipfel - für Deutschland -! ›» (20). Parallel to Drexel’s demand for loyalty to the national cause in this scene runs the notion of sacrifice, a notion reinforced soon after by the narrator in a comment on Drexel’s death. «Was ist darüber noch zu reden? Sie kennen einander, sie wissen, daß der eine bereit ist, für den anderen zu sterben» (20). The connection between Drexel’s sacrificial death and the beneficiary of his sacrifice beyond the immediately personal is most clearly expressed in Krüger’s depiction of the burial: Der von den Nepalesen gezimmerte Sarg sinkt hinab. Die Hakenkreuzfahne fällt darauf. Mit entblößten Häuptern stehen die Männer davor. Und dann, dann braust aus ihren Kehlen, hier, im fernen Indien, das Horst-Wessel-Lied empor. Alfred Drexel, wer so starb, wie du, der starb wohl! (21) 22 The concepts of leadership and loyalty, comradeship and sacrifice meld together in the central scene of the novel, positioned halfway through the narrative. Immediately following Drexel’s burial, the mountaineers, standing next to his grave, discuss the future of their enterprise. Once again it is their leader, Merkl, who sets the tone with an offer to call off the expedition, this despite the fact that he might have to forego the goal of his life: Kameraden! Da unten liegt einer unserer Besten! Und an seinem Hügel stelle ich euch noch ein letztes Mal anheim, umzukehren, wer immer von euch unseres Werkes letztes und schwerstes Stück nicht zu bewältigen glaubt. Trete jeder hervor und sage mir offen, wer heute nicht mehr mit voller Seele, mit ganzem Willen und mit seiner größten Freude das Ziel anstrebt, das ich mir als Lebensaufgabe gesteckt habe. Ich nehm’s keinem übel! Treten einige zurück, so will ich mit dem verbleibenden Rest die Besteigung versuchen. Treten alle zurück, nun, so will auch ich still heimgehen und warten! Warten, daß ein künftiges Jahr uns günstigere Aussichten bringt! (22) CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 251 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 251 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 252 Harald Höbusch Before accepting any decision from his men, however, Merkl lists the various challenges the expedition, if continued, will face. While assuring them that his calculations and preparations were as detailed and thorough as possible, Merkl nevertheless has to concede that the conditions for an assault on the mountain are far from ideal. He goes on, however, by saying that, due to the sheer height of the mountain, there may never be perfect conditions for such an attempt, not even years from now. Having weighed all these factors, Merkl decides that he will continue with the expedition, despite the possible dangers: Wir wagen es dennoch! Trotzdem sage ich es jedem eindringlich: Die Gefahr, der wir uns unterziehen, ist sehr groß! Die Lawinenfälligkeit ist verstärkt, der Spurschnee ist gelockert, die Gletschermoränen haben ihre Fahrtgeschwindigkeiten um viele Meter vergrößert. Also: Ich nehme es keinem übel! Trete zurück, wer nicht mehr ganzen Herzens bei der Sache ist! (22) Merkl’s fellow mountaineers respond to his decision to carry on with a sense of total dedication to the cause. One by one, looking into Merkl’s eyes and shaking his hand, the Germans vow to follow their chosen path to the very end: «Alfred Drexel! Höre uns! Dein letzter Wille geschieht! Wir halten aus bis zum Letzten! » (23). 23 With this commitment, the goal for the rest of the expedition - and the second half of the story - is set. The remaining mountaineers attempt to conquer Nanga Parbat for their fallen comrade as well as Germany, and for most of them, this conquest ends in death. Three more German climbers, Merkl, Welzenbach, and Wieland lose their lives due to exhaustion and high-altitude exposure, adding to the list of «martyrs» who gave their lives for the German cause. In his portrayal of their last stand on the mountain, Krüger advertises once more the «qualities» of the German character: loyalty, comradeship, selflessness, and sacrifice. Despite being implored by Angstering, one of the Sherpas assisting the Germans during their ascent, to descend with him, Merkl tells Angstering to go alone. He cannot leave his friend, Wieland, behind: «‹Laß, Angstering! Ich bleibe bei dem Freunde! Ich verlaß ihn nicht! › ‹Du mußt mitkommen, Bara Sahib! › schreit Angstering verzweifelt. Merkl aber sieht ihn ruhig an: ‹Ich verlasse meinen Freund nicht, wenn ich ihn nicht retten kann! › sagt er fest» (37). Encountering yet another expedition member, Welzenbach, close to death, Merkl passes on his last chance to escape from the mountain and thereby accepts certain death for himself: «[Angstering]: ‹Bara Sahib! Die Nacht kommt! Das Wetter hebt von neuem an! Wenn du diese Nacht hier überstehst, dann bringe ich dir Hilfe! Ich will hinab! › Angstering tritt an ihn heran. [Merkl]: ‹Ja! Geh! Und eile dich! Vielleicht kann er gerettet werden, der CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 252 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 252 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 «Stunde Null» on Nanga Parbat? 253 Willo›» (39). The author uses his narrator to comment on Merkl’s motivation for his ultimate sacrifice: selflessness. «An sich denkt er nicht! » (39). Krüger concludes his novel with a final reference to the brave fight Germans put up in the struggle with Nanga Parbat, reminding his young reading audience one last time of the «heroic» traits called for in a time of national distress and the place they can be found: «Unten, auf der ‹Märchenwiese›, kündet ein schlichtes Steinmal, unweit von Balbos Grab, daß da hoch oben, unweit des so heiß ersehnten Gipfels, drei tapfere Deutsche ihr Leben ließen im Kampf um den Berg, den unbesiegten Nanga Parbat» (40). Kreuz’s Am Gipfel des Nanga Parbat, the second fictionalized account of the deadly 1934 Nanga Parbat expedition, 24 appeared in the same year as Krüger’s text (1941) as volume 57 of the Erlebnis-Bücherei, a series - just like the Aufwärts-Jugend-Bücherei - initiated by the Reich Propaganda Ministry and realized by the NSDAP-owned Steiniger publishing group in Berlin. Just like Krüger’s text, the booklet was part of a series of adventure stories (105 titles between 1940 and 1945) which were aimed primarily at a young male reading audience and often openly supportive of National Socialist ideology. 25 And, again like Krüger’s text, Kreuz’s version of the by now familiar story of the 1934 expedition pays special attention to several select issues: the idea of a Himalaya expedition as a national enterprise, the «heroic» character traits of the German mountaineers, and the portrayal of Merkl as a selfless leader and absolute authority figure. Already in the first paragraph of Kreuz’s account, the 1934 expedition to Nanga Parbat is identified as an enterprise shared by the entire German nation: «Es geht hier um ein hohes und hehres Ziel, und das ganze deutsche Volk nimmt im Geiste teil an dem kühnen Unterfangen seiner tapferen Söhne, als erste den schweren Achttausender, den sagenumwobenen Nanga Parbat, den Eckpfeiler des Westhimalaya, […] zu besiegen» (3). Repeatedly in Kreuz’s narrative we encounter references to the quintessential symbol of the «neues Deutschland» (19), the swastika: it flies high over the preliminary base camp and, later, over camp IV, and it is draped over the coffin of Drexel, the first mountaineer to die during the 1934 expedition, thereby claiming both the expedition and its participants for the German nation. 26 Immediately after the extended portrayal of Drexel’s funeral the notion of a national expedition is played up once more. As the narrator tells us, the postal stamps of «sämtliche Großstädte des Deutschen Reiches» on the letters and postcards received by the expedition indicate the level of attention the mountaineers and their exploits are being afforded by the fatherland: «Was aber das Schönste ist und wahrhaft erhebend: ganz Deutschland nimmt Anteil an dieser deutschen Expedition. Das verpflichtet» (19). CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 253 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 253 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 254 Harald Höbusch The mountaineers fulfilling this «obligation» are characterized in Kreuz’s text via a series of «heroic» qualities. Repeatedly, they are described as «stark und hart,» their «markige Gesichter» as expressing a «zäher Kampfeswille und frohe Siegeszuversicht» (3). Especially their fighting spirit is referred to throughout the narrative: as a desire to attack the mountain while still in the preliminary base camp, during the ascent to the first high camps, and on the traverse of the ice face of Rakhiot Peak, a key section of the 1934 ascent route. Their relationship among each other, in turn, is described as an «unverbrüchlich verschworene Gemeinschaft» (4). As part of this community «tut jeder Expeditionsteilnehmer sein Bestes für die Allgemeinheit nach seinen besonderen Kräften und Fähigkeiten» (9) and is «zum letzten Einsatz bereit […]» (4). But among all the expedition members it is the person - and character - of the expedition leader, Merkl, who receive most of the narrator’s attention. From the outset of Kreuz’s account, Merkl is portrayed as a «[g]roßer Führer» who supports the goal of the expedition in «selbstloser, unermüdlicher Weise» (4). As the expedition’s «Meister und Führer» (13) he issues orders; orders that are being followed without any debate: «Befehl ist Befehl» (14). 27 And it is one of these orders that signals for the reader the beginning of what the narrator calls a «Heldenkampf deutscher Bergsteigerzähigkeit» (27), the expedition’s - and especially Merkl’s - last stand on the mountain. Once more, the German climbers, caught in a snowstorm high up on the mountain, display their «[T]apfer[keit],» their «[Z]äh[igkeit],» and their «[V]erbissen[heit]» (29). While some of them escape the icy inferno (Erwin Schneider, Peter Aschenbrenner), others succumb to the cold: first Wieland, then Welzenbach. But it is Merkl, who, in his effort to save his fellow mountaineers, holds out the longest: «Merkl, den die Natur zur Führernatur vorbestimmte, hat bis zum Letzten in Sturm und Kälte ausgehalten, ein leuchtendes Vorbild bergsteigerischer Makellosigkeit» (31). Kreuz’s retelling of the 1934 Nanga Parbat expedition concludes with a brief discussion of the impact of Merkl’s death on the German mountaineering community. Kreuz claims that «Willy Merkl ist nicht umsonst geblieben» (31), rather, that his death inspired the subsequent expeditions to the mountain in 1937 and 1938. For Kreuz, the expeditions to the German «Schicksalsberg» are far from over; as he proclaims in the last sentence of his narrative: «Bald wird die Zeit kommen, wo die Zeitläufe den letzten Angriff auf den Berg gestatten» (31). Both Krüger and Kreuz, then, in their respective retellings, use the dramatic events of the German 1934 Nanga Parbat expedition as a vehicle (among several others in their multiple contributions to the two youth book series) CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 254 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 254 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 «Stunde Null» on Nanga Parbat? 255 to stress to their audience those qualities they perceived to be of the utmost importance to the German nation (and especially its young men) in a time of war: an unbreakable fighting spirit, a strong sense of personal comradeship and national community, a spirit of sacrifice, and an unquestioning trust in authority. In conjunction with our previous observations, their stories are therefore easily identifiable as belonging to what Norbert Hopster has termed «ns-affine Abenteuerliteratur» (Hopster et al. 2: 525); that is, a type of literature which selects its topics primarily on the basis of their respective affinity to the principal themes of National Socialism - themes which Viktor Böhm identifies as following: Unbedingter Wille zur unbeschränkten Macht, mythisiert in der Weihe an Deutschland, organisiert in hierarchischer Führer-Gefolgschaftsstruktur, legitimiert durch das ‹Recht› des Stärkeren, der ‹Herrenrasse›, dynamisiert durch gnadenlose Härte und Haß gegenüber allen inneren und äußeren humanen Regungen und Kräften, konkretisiert in Rüstung und Krieg. (Böhm 12) More specifically, Krüger’s and Kreuz’s stories can be characterized as a «modernisierte […] Form von Exempelliteratur,» a type of literature «an der beispielhaft scheinbar objektive Tatbestände oder Notwendigkeiten vorgeführt werden»; in our case how «Mut, Tatkraft und Aufopferung deutscher Männer […] sich auf das Schicksal des Volkes und kommender Generationen aus[wirken]» (Hopster et al. 2: 525). In this particular process of exemplification, as Hopster further observes, even failure - or death, as with the German Nanga Parbat mountaineers - carries a deeper meaning: it enters those who succumb to it into «die Phalanx jener Großen […], deren Tat zum Movens der völkischen Erneuerung stilisiert wird» (526). The ultimate purpose of this exemplification lies in the «psychophysische Indienstnahme» (533) of the young German male through the presentation of «kriegsaffiner Einstellungen» (520) in the adventure literature of the Third Reich. While during the final years of the Third Reich the story of Nanga Parbat was adapted for a youth audience by two authors unaffiliated with the expeditions, the situation after World War II was somewhat different. Herrligkoffer, the leader of the 1953 Deutsch-Österreichische Willy-Merkl-Gedächtnis- Expedition, went to great lengths to reach a young reading audience himself, surpassing in his effort (and success) even that of pre-«Stunde Null» authors Krüger and Kreuz. Herrligkoffer wrote almost half of all youth publications describing the 1953 Nanga Parbat expedition in person, the majority of which were published through the Für Euch-Bücherei Verlagsgesellschaft, a choice that allowed Herrligkoffer to market his various expedition accounts directly to German schools. 28 And, finally, while Krüger’s and Kreuz’s accounts had appeared only after the expeditions’ return to Germany, Herrligkoffer’s first CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 255 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 255 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 256 Harald Höbusch volume for the Für Euch-Bücherei - Nanga Parbat. Die deutschen Himalaya- Expeditionen 1932-1953 dargestellt von Willy Merkl † und seinem Bruder Dr. Karl M. Herrligkoffer - was published even before the expedition departed for Pakistan on 17 April 1953, an indication of the degree of control Herrligkoffer planned to - and, with very few exceptions, would - exert over all publications in connection with the Deutsch-Österreichische Willy-Merkl- Gedächtnis-Expedition. 29 But how did he tell - and this is the crucial question - the story of his own Nanga Parbat expedition after having drawn a clear distinction between his enterprise and those pre-World War II expeditions conducted under the aegis of the Deutsche Himalaja-Stiftung? Would there be a «Stunde Null» on Nanga Parbat, and would it mark a new beginning in terms of mountaineering philosophy and, especially, mountaineering narrative? As the lengthy title already hints, Herrligkoffer, in his first volume for the Für Euch-Bücherei, employed a double strategy of portraying his own expedition as the fulfillment of the legacy handed to him by his half-brother Willy (as well as all subsequent Nanga Parbat expeditions) and of identifying his own expedition as a national enterprise. In Nanga Parbat. Die deutschen Himalaya-Expeditionen 1932-1953, Herrligkoffer, in a brief introductory piece titled «Zum Geleit,» establishes these two connections at first in rather general terms: «Wir Männer der jetzigen Generation sind Erben der Überlieferungen und Wegbereiter für neue Taten der heranwachsenden Jugend.»/ «Viele Nationen haben ihre Besten ausgeschickt, um sich im Kampf mit den eisgepanzerten Riesen des Himalaja zu messen […]» (2). However, in a brief address at the end of this volume headlined «Liebe Jungen und Mädel in Deutschland und Österreich! » and signed by three German expeditions members, these two connections are spelled out in detail: [B]ei uns Bergsteigern kommt dazu noch die Verpflichtung, das zu vollenden, was zwei Mannschaften unter Willy Merkl begonnen haben. / Den Bergsteigern dieser zukünftigen deutsch-oesterreichischen Himalaja-Expedition ist es ein großer Ansporn, wenn sie wissen, daß alle ihre Landsleute, auch die jüngsten, hinter ihnen stehen und sie mit ihren guten Wünschen begleiten. (31-32) It comes as no surprise, then, that Merkl’s voice dominates Herrligkoffer’s 32-page volume: twenty-one pages alone are dedicated to Merkl’s report of his 1932 expedition, originally published in 1936 by Herrligkoffer in Willy Merkl. Ein Weg zum Nanga Parbat. The remaining seven pages of the text, authored by Herrligkoffer himself and describing the challenges of Himalaya mountaineering (one page), Merkl’s 1934 expedition (four pages), the expeditions conducted by the Deutsche Himalaja-Stiftung (two pages, but containing a lengthy passage about the discovery of Merkl’s and the Sherpa Gay Lay’s CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 256 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 256 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 «Stunde Null» on Nanga Parbat? 257 remains in 1938), and the new attempt in 1953 (one page), focus this volume even more strongly on Merkl and his expeditions. This personal connection is further intensified due to the fact that Herrligkoffer reiterates almost verbatim Merkl’s 1932 mantra regarding the proper mental attitude for Himalaya mountaineers and, in conjunction with the fateful 1934 expedition, highlights Merkl’s foremost mental characteristics: «innere Härte» (26) and «unbeugsamen Willen» (28). And, as regards the relationship of Nanga Parbat (and the expeditions to it) with the German nation, Herrligkoffer identifies Merkl’s 1932 enterprise as the one that established Nanga Parbat as «deutsche[n] Berg» (24), indeed, as «deutschen Schicksalsberg» (28, 30). Clearly, for Herrligkoffer, scaling Nanga Parbat remains a national enterprise, especially since his second use of the term «Schicksalsberg» occurs in the context of discussing his own 1953 expedition: «Doch allmählich wird es wieder Zeit, daß wir das Erbe unserer Kameraden antreten, jener Bergsteiger, die voll Begeisterung und Opferfreudigkeit im Kampf um den ‹deutschen Schicksalsberg› im Himalaja, den Nanga Parbat, gestanden und gefallen sind» (29-30). Herrligkoffer’s second contribution to the Für Euch-Bücherei titled Sieg über den Nanga Parbat, in its portrayal of the successful 1953 expedition, continues where Nanga Parbat. Die deutschen Himalaya-Expeditionen 1932-1953 had left off - in more than one way. Not only does it complete the narrative arch in these two volumes spanning from Merkl’s 1932 expedition to Herrligkoffer’s own expedition of 1953, 30 but it also continues the characterization of Herrligkoffer’s expedition as the fulfillment of Merkl’s legacy from 1934 (as well as all subsequent Nanga Parbat expeditions) and as a national, i.e., German, enterprise. It does so by following almost exactly the overall structure and, repeatedly, even the wording of Nanga Parbat 1953; it is, in fact, nothing more than a condensed version of Herrligkoffer’s official expedition report, including its acknowledgement of the sponsorship provided by various German companies at the end of the booklet. What sets Sieg über den Nanga Parbat apart from these two texts, however, is its increased focus on the notion and importance of comradeship, a notion traceable all the way back to Merkl’s report of the 1932 German-American expedition. Already in his brief introduction - once again titled «Zum Geleit» - Herrligkoffer identifies comradeship as the expedition’s key to success on Nanga Parbat: «Unser Sieg über diesen Giganten entsprang letztlich dem gemeinsamen Einsatz aller Expeditionsteilnehmer, von denen jeder für den anderen dachte und handelte. Es war ein Sieg des fanatischen Willens, der Gemeinschaft, der Kameradschaft, […]» (2). His description halfway into his narrative of the oath taken by all expedition members prior to establishing the high camps - «Wir geloben, in dem Ringen um einen der höchsten Gipfel unserer Erde ehren- CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 257 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 257 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 258 Harald Höbusch hafte Kämpfer zu sein, die Gesetze der Kameradschaft zu achten […]» (14) - reinforces this point, and the principle receives its ultimate validation at the conclusion of Herrligkoffer’s account when he states, «Wir hatten gesiegt! Dank der selbstlosen Kameradschaft, dank der Energie eines einzelnen, der wußte, daß hinter ihm eine Mannschaft stand, von der jeder bereit war, für den anderen sein Leben zu opfern» (30). However, in addition to repeatedly simply postulating the notion of comradeship as the expedition’s guiding and unifying principle, Herrligkoffer takes the worship of his half-brother’s expedition philosophy one step further by including in his account several scenes in which this principle manifests itself in action, repeatedly with himself at the center. One such moment is depicted in a segment titled «Ein schwerer Entschluß» in which Herrligkoffer rationalizes his wrong and correctly ignored order to recall the lead party from the mountain for the purpose of rest and physical recovery - despite perfect weather conditions: Allein die Sorge um die jungen Kameraden, die sich nach der Schinderei der letzten Wochen zu viel zumuteten, bestimmte mich so zu handeln. […] Ich wußte, daß die jungen Kameraden mich nicht verstehen würden, ja, daß auch in der Heimat die Meinung aufkommen könnte, meine Entscheidung sei vielleicht falsch gewesen. (22) Herrligkoffer goes on to claim that «All mein Denken und Handeln galt ihnen, und ich wünschte ihnen aus heißem Herzen den verdienten Erfolg» (22) - characterizing himself as the ultimate protector of and comrade to his fellow team members, and thereby inscribing himself into their community. This dynamic can be observed in two additional scenes. In one, titled «Bange Stunden,» Herrligkoffer describes the wait for Buhl’s return from his summit attempt from the perspective of the main camp, i.e., his perspective: «Immer und immer wieder sandten wir unsere guten Wünsche und Gedanken gleich einem Gebet nach oben zum Gipfelaufbau des Berges, wo wir Hermann Buhl in dieser von fahlem Mondlicht durchfluteten Nacht vermuteten» (24). Here, Herrligkoffer presents himself as the ideal comrade and leader, filled with concern for the well-being of his lead climber. And, in a final scene that describes Buhl’s return to camp V and his first conversation (via wireless) with the expedition leader after his summit success, Herrligkoffer creates the impression of an extraordinarily caring relationship between him and his fellow expedition member(s): «Ich sprach anschließend mit Hermann und beglückwünschte ihn im Namen aller Kameraden. Er dankte mir, daß ich ihn an der Expedition habe teilnehmen lassen und flüsterte mit heiserer Stimme: ‹Es sind die glücklichsten Stunden meines Lebens! ›» (27). With these repeat invocations of the notion of comradeship and multiple depictions of moments of comradeship in action, Herrligkoffer once more tries to fulfill the legacy of CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 258 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 258 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 «Stunde Null» on Nanga Parbat? 259 his half-brother Willy who, in his report, had praised the «restlos harmonischen Verlauf» 31 of his 1932 expedition. Herrligkoffer’s Sieg über den Nanga Parbat tries to conjure up just such an image; an image which, as the author himself in Nanga Parbat 1953, in a segment titled «Vom Unerfreulichen nachher,» grudgingly had to acknowledge, was far from reality. The notion of comradeship, so prominently featured in Sieg über den Nanga Parbat, also plays an important role in Herrligkoffer’s third, and most personal, contribution to the Für Euch-Bücherei titled Tagebuchnotizen des Expeditionsleiters Dr. Karl M. Herrligkoffer. In this diary, a stylized day-today account of the events of the successful 1953 expedition to what the author still identifies as Germany’s «Schicksalsberg» (9, 10, 78), Herrligkoffer in fact uses the very scenes from Sieg über den Nanga Parbat to once more depict this principle in action, including the (in)famous oath on the mountain, and concludes that Buhl’s summit success was due only to the «zähen, verbissenen Ringens aller Teilnehmer um den Erfolg» (7), that Buhl’s individual act had grown out of the «Gesamtleistung einer verschworenen Mannschaft» (78). But it is the notion of the 1953 expedition as the fulfillment of Merkl’s Nanga Parbat legacy of 1932 and 1934 that dominates Herrligkoffer’s diary, a link suggested to the reader both verbally and visually. While the volume’s cover depicts Herrligkoffer at his typewriter in the main camp, the leaf immediately following the title page contains a drawing of Merkl from 1932. That drawing, in turn, carries the following caption: «Willy Merkl und den guten Kameraden, die im Kampf um den Nanga Parbat ihr Leben gelassen haben, zum Gedächtnis» (5). With that, the focus of Herrligkoffer’s account in this volume is set; his daily entries again and again reference Merkl’s two expeditions, especially the one of 1934 that ended in tragedy. Already Herrligkoffer’s brief historical overview of Nanga Parbat’s mountaineering history contains three references to «mein Bruder» (9), and in his subsequent diary entries the author maps the mountain and the expedition’s progress on it - similar to Nanga Parbat 1953 - with the help of frequent references to his half-brother’s earlier expeditions: on a flight over Nanga Parbat (on 6 May) as he recalls Merkl’s photographs of the mountain and tries to locate his final resting place; during a walk (on 16 May) from the preliminary main camp to the main camp proper as he studies the mountain’s east ridge, the place of the 1934 tragedy; during deliberations (on 18 May) regarding the expedition’s general ascent strategy; while reflecting (on 22 June) on the proper mental attitude in the face of adverse weather conditions prior to the lead group’s final push up the mountain; and during the final ascent of Buhl (on 4 July) as he reports on the renaming of the «Mohrenkopf,» Merkl’s final resting place, into «Merklstein» (73). Herrligkoffer’s account in this volume concludes with CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 259 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 259 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 260 Harald Höbusch the assertion that «Das Vermächtnis Willy Merkls und seiner im Kampf um den ‹deutschen Schicksalberg› gefallenen Kameraden ist erfüllt» (78), a final statement that leaves no doubt as to Herrligkoffer’s highly personal mountaineering point of reference. Viewed together, Herrligkoffer’s three contributions to the Für Euch- Bücherei are far from providing a new beginning in terms of mountaineering philosophy and mountaineering narrative after the «Stunde Null.» Just like in his public statements during the planning phase of the expedition, Herrligkoffer initially draws a clear line between his 1953 expedition and those previously conducted under the aegis of the Deutsche Himalaja-Stiftung by marginalizing them in his accounts, thereby avoiding any direct contamination by Germany’s National Socialist past and its institutions. He then portrays his own enterprise almost exclusively as the fulfillment of Merkl’s personal Nanga Parbat legacy, effectively bridging, so to speak, the era of German Himalaya mountaineering dominated by the Stiftung. However, many of the «heroic» qualities lauded by Krüger and Kreuz in their respective accounts of Merkl’s 1934 expedition - will, determination, loyalty, comradeship, selflessness, and self-sacrifice (to the death) - as well as the notion of a Himalaya expedition as a national enterprise continue to play a key role in Herrligkoffer’s accounts. Indeed, most of the pre-war concepts are still very much alive, including the one of Nanga Parbat as the German «Schicksalsberg.» While Herrligkoffer tried to free these concepts from being associated with Germany’s National Socialist past by attributing them to his half-brother, i.e., by once more privatizing the Nanga Parbat story, this strategy had the potential to backfire. To begin with, Herrligkoffer was still talking about «legacy»: that notion, however, had permeated every single expedition report before the war, but expecially those published by the Deutsche Himalaja-Stiftung. Finally, the very fact that Herrligkoffer linked his own enterprise so closely and exclusively to the memory of Merkl and the way Merkl had conducted his 1932 and 1934 expeditions meant that the one notion that had dominated Merkl’s mountaineering philosophy - the notion of comradeship - continued to dominate Herrligkoffer’s own enterprise and his respective accounts of it. Unfortunately for Herrligkoffer, the notion of comradeship as a key principle of German Himalaya mountaineering had predated Merkl. As Reinhold Messner observed in his foreword to Karl Maria Herrligkoffer. Besessen, sieghaft, umstritten, Merkl had borrowed it from none other than Herrligkoffer’s arch-nemesis Bauer, and it was this very notion that played a central role in the Deutsche Himalaja-Stiftung’s expedition reports after Merkl’s death in 1934. In addition to Herrligkoffer’s own dramatizations of his 1953 expedition there exist several additional accounts - like Krüger’s and Kreuz’s texts writ- CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 260 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 260 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 «Stunde Null» on Nanga Parbat? 261 ten by individuals unaffiliated with any Nanga Parbat expedition - in which the authors nevertheless take on the task of retelling and, more importantly, reinterpreting its story (and that of previous expeditions) for the German public; a group of texts once again written specifically for a youth audience by authors such as Hans Geifes (Angriff auf den Nanga Parbat, 1950), Hans Thür and Hans Hanke (Sieg am Nanga Parbat, 1954), Thomas Trent (Sturm auf die Eisriesen, 1955), and Arthur Werner (Zum Gipfel des Nanga Parbat, 1956). The first of these four booklets, Geifes’ Angriff auf den Nanga Parbat, was part of Bachem’s Spannende Reihe, a series of adventure stories published by the Bachem Verlag Köln that included titles such as Blinkfeuer über der Ostsee. Geheimnisvolle Erlebnisse einer Jungengruppe im Ostseezeltlager (1949), Das Erbe am Kwantan. Straf-Expedition auf Sumatra (1950), and Hellm und die Hellgrüne Fahne. Eine Straßenjungengeschichte (1950). In Angriff auf den Nanga Parbat, Geifes focuses his narrative exclusively on Merkl’s 1934 enterprise, unmistakably - and unashamedly - basing his text on Bechtold’s official expedition report Deutsche am Nanga Parbat. Der Angriff 1934. Adopting Bechtold’s heavily militarized language, he portrays Merkl’s enterprise as a «Feldzug» (8) directed at the German «Schicksalsberg» (45), as a «ganz persönliche Auseinandersetzung auf Leben und Tod zwischen dem Berg und ihnen [the German mountaineers]» (7). Repeatedly, Geifes stresses for his young readers the unyielding «Kampfstimmung» (32) of these German mountaineers, their utter fearlessness as well as the absolute loyalty to the German expedition members exhibited by the Sherpa porters. Geifes concludes his account of Merkl’s 1934 expedition with the last sentence of Bechtold’s expedition report - «Schön muß es sein, mit dem Siegespreis dieses gewaltigen Berges nach Hause zurückzukehren. Größer noch ist es, sein Leben hinzugeben um solch ein Ziel, den jungen Herzen kommender Kämpfer Weg und Flamme zu werden» (Bechtold 64) - and a reminder that the death of Merkl and his companions was perceived by subsequent generations of German mountaineers as a «Vermächtnis,» a «leuchtender Auftrag» (Geifes 45) to continue the pursuit of Nanga Parbat’s summit. For Geifes this «Vermächtnis» and «Auftrag» extend to the present when, in the very last paragraph of his text, he points to the fact that to this day none of the 8,000 meter peaks has been climbed. Geifes’ volume, published at least three years earlier than all the other post- World War II texts discussed in this essay, serves as the most extreme example for the continuing presence after the war of pre-«Stunde Null» mountaineering philosophies and narratives in connection with the German Nanga Parbat expeditions; a disturbing phenomenon already observed - if only to a some- CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 261 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 261 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 262 Harald Höbusch what lesser degree - in connection with Herrligkoffer’s texts and equally discernable in the remaining texts by Thür and Hanke, Trent, and Werner. Thür and Hanke’s Sieg am Nanga Parbat was published in the Andermann-Bücher series which focused - as the inside cover states - on «Abenteuer in unserer Zeit» and included additional titles such as Geheimnis der Meerestiefe, Der Busch brennt, Die Freibeuter, Christian der Grenzgänger, Das Blockhaus am Biberfluß, Der weiße Biber, and Sieg über den Everest. Ranging from 64 to 128 pages in length, the series was aimed at an audience of nine years of age and older and enlivened its adventure stories by including - as in the case of Sieg am Nanga Parbat - a series of photographs and, especially, drawings that visually rendered the events recounted in the text. A second characteristic element of these youth texts, including Thür and Hanke’s, is the inclusion of frequent dialogic passages into their ongoing narrative; another structural element designed to capture and keep the limited attention of a young reading audience. A third element of this kind can be identified in the anthropomorphizing of the mountain itself, the characterization, for instance, of Mount Everest and Nanga Parbat as «Riesen,» of Nanga Parbat as Everest’s «Bruder» (8), and as the seat of the «furchtbare Schneegott» (60) Kang-mi who thwarts the efforts of man to climb his throne. For their portrayal of these efforts, Thür and Hanke consistently employ the language of war in a fashion that immediately recalls Bechtold’s Deutsche am Nanga Parbat. Der Angriff 1934, Kreuz’s Am Gipfel des Nanga Parbat, and Geifes’ Angriff auf den Nanga Parbat. In fact, the authors themselves proclaim that with regard to the 1937 expedition «[e]in Vergleich mit militärischen Operationen und eine Anleihe beim Wortschatz der Generalstäbler […] wirklich am Platz [ist]» (73). Thür and Hanke’s use of this type of language, however, is not limited to their description of the 1937 expedition; rather, it applies to their text as a whole and extends to all expeditions between 1932 and 1953. Repeatedly, the German efforts («der Kampf» [14]) on Nanga Parbat are described with military terminology such as «Großangriff» (13), «Kriegsrat,» «Großkampftag» (22), «Hauptstützpunkt» (25), «Bollwerk» (31), «Streitmacht» (38), «Einsatzbesprechungen» (39), «Kampfgruppe» (49), «Stoßtrupp» (74), «Rückzugsbefehl» (75) - the list of terms is all-encompassing and almost endless. Hand in hand with this all-out militarization of German expeditions to Nanga Parbat in Thür and Hanke’s text goes the authors’ heroicizing portrayal of the climbers’ struggle against the unyielding mountain. Repeatedly depicted as unfailing comrades to each other, their efforts to reach the summit of the «Schicksalsberg der Deutschen» (2) bring out the best of their manly qualities: Merkl’s «Zähigkeit» (13) during the planning phase of the 1932 ex- CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 262 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 262 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 «Stunde Null» on Nanga Parbat? 263 pedition; the sheer «Willenskraft» (24) and drive of his men during their time on the mountain; the steadfastness of Drexel and the loyalty of the Sherpa porters in 1934; the willingness among the members of the 1937 expedition to sacrifice their lives for a great and unprecedented cause; and, once again, the «übermäßige Willenskraft» (118) exhibited by Buhl during his 1953 solo summit attempt. As regards the representation of individual expeditions in Sieg am Nanga Parbat, Thür and Hanke foreground the expeditions directly - and indirectly - associated with Merkl’s person. Out of a total of 126 pages, 113 pages are dedicated to Merkl’s 1932 (14-36), 1934 (37-71), and Herrligkoffer’s 1953 expedition (86-126). For Thür and Hanke, very much like for Herrligkoffer in Nanga Parbat. Die deutschen Himalaya-Expeditionen 1932-1953, Merkl’s expeditions are the center of interest; they serve as the ultimate point of reference from which the German mountaineering efforts on Nanga Parbat are being interpreted. And very much like Herrligkoffer in Nanga Parbat 1953 and Tagebuchnotizen, Thür and Hanke include in their text frequent references to Merkl’s two pre-World War II enterprises: the history of German Nanga Parbat mountaineering in general is narrated relative to Merkl’s expeditions; references to Merkl’s mountaineering philosophy - «Was im Himalaja entscheidet, ist vor allem das Zusammenwirken gleichgesinnter Charaktere, ist Gemeinschaftsarbeit, die niemals dem persönlichen Ehrgeiz, sondern einzig dem großen Ziel dient» (108) - can be located throughout their text; and their accounts of the post-Merkl expeditions literally map their respective progress on the mountain via regular references to Merkl’s route, camps, and those who had died. These expeditions follow, as one chapter title claims with specific regard to the 1953 expedition, «In Willi Merkls Spur» (91), all the way to the summit of Nanga Parbat. The motivating force behind these expeditions, as Thür and Hanke already hint in the introduction to their volume, is a «heilige Verpflichtung» (8); a legacy they trace all the way back to Adolph Schlagintweit’s death in 1857 and see reinforced by the death of Drexel in 1934 whom Merkl had promised at his grave: «Freund Drexel, […] du bist gestorben mit dem Glauben, daß wir unser Ziel erreichen werden. Ich verspreche dir, daß wir mit aller Kraft, mit dem vollen Einsatz unseres Lebens weiter darum ringen wollen» (46). With the subsequent deaths of Merkl, Welzenbach, and Wieland during the same expedition, Nanga Parbat became Germany’s «Schicksalsberg»; and the legacy of the dead mountaineers now extended to the «ganzes deutsches Volk» (71). The expedition of 1937, as we know, further added to this legacy as Thür and Hanke interpret it: «Wieder war der Berg Sieger geblieben. Aber das Dutzend Gräber, in dem 27 Männer lagen, seit der Nanga vor mehr als einem CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 263 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 263 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 264 Harald Höbusch Menschenalter seine ersten Opfer gefordert hatte, schien den Heimkehrern eine Verpflichtung» (83). 32 And it was, of course, Herrligkoffer’s Deutsch- Österreichische Willy-Merkl-Gedächtnis-Expedition that attempted once more to fulfill this legacy: «Das Opfer, daß Willy Merkl und seine Freunde gebracht hatten, war für die ganze Bergsteigerwelt verpflichtend» (86). Buhl’s climb to the top of Nanga Parbat, finally, is seen as the fulfillment of this obligation, the conclusion of an age-old legacy: «Im letzten Licht des scheidenden Tages steht Buhl auf dem Gipfel. Er hat erreicht, worum sechs Jahrzehnte hindurch die besten Bergsteiger vergeblich gerungen hatten» (122). In sum, Thür and Hanke’s text is characterized by a double identity similar to that observed in Herrligkoffer’s three accounts of his 1953 enterprise. On the one hand, the authors present Merkl’s 1932 and 1934 expeditions as the ultimate point of reference for Herrligkoffer’s own expedition and consequently minimize the narrative exposure given to the expeditions conducted by the Deutsche Himalaja-Stiftung in 1937, 1938, and 1939; but even those, Thür and Hanke tell us, followed in Merkl’s footsteps. On the other hand, the authors resort to the very narrative strategies utilized and the mountaineering philosophies advertised in the official expedition reports of the Stiftung and, subsequently, the accounts of Krüger and Kreuz: the use of heavily militarized language, the heroicizing of the German Nanga Parbat mountaineers, the notion of legacy as the ultimate driving force for the expeditions, the idea of a Himalaya expedition as a national enterprise. All in all, their reliance in Sieg am Nanga Parbat on both narrative as well as philosophical concepts associated with a by now supposedly discredited era of German Himalaya mountaineering is considerably more extensive, undifferentiated, and unreflected than Herrligkoffer’s in his texts. While Thür and Hanke’s Sieg am Nanga Parbat limited its narrative scope to German expeditions to Nanga Parbat, Trent’s «Jugendbuch vom Kampf gegen Nanga Parbat und Mount Everest» titled Sturm auf die Eisriesen, published in 1955 by the W. Fischer-Verlag as part of the Göttinger Jugend-Bände series, 33 approaches these very expeditions in the context of parallel (British) expeditions to Mount Everest and earlier (German) expeditions to Kangchenjunga; that is, in the fashion of Skuhra’s Sturm auf die Throne der Götter. 34 Trent’s volume is comprised of a series of twenty-eight short, descriptive chapters that are alternatively introduced by guiding questions or statements, narrate the events on the three mountains with the help of frequent quotations from individual mountaineers, and orient the reader via multiple drawings and maps, often directly referenced in the running narrative. Trent opens his volume with a brief chapter that poses a fundamental and, on the surface, innocent, question: «Warum besteigen sie die Berge? » For the CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 264 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 264 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 «Stunde Null» on Nanga Parbat? 265 author, the answer cannot be found in practical reasons: «Nun haben aber einmal die Himalaja-Besteigungen keinen sogenannten praktischen Zweck, man kann sich nichts dafür kaufen, und niemand kann daran Geld verdienen, […]» (8). Rather, as Trent postulates, mountains are being climbed «[w]eil Männer ihren Mut und ihre Kraft erproben müssen, weil sich ihr Freiheitsgefühl nach der ewigen unbezwinglichen Bergwelt sehnt und weil die Schönheit der Natur für sie das Erlebenswerteste ist, was sich ein Mensch auf Erden wünschen kann.» Finally, as Trent adds, «[ersteigt] [d]er Mensch […] die Berge, weil er einen Zipfel der Ewigkeit ergreifen möchte» (10). For the teenage (and novice) reader, i.e., a reader unfamiliar with German mountaineering history, Trent’s rationalizations essentially disconnect British and especially German Himalaya expeditions from any historical and political context, thereby seemingly allowing for a fresh and unburdened approach to this topic. But, as it turns out, Trent’s rationale - with its rejection of the practical, its search for freedom in nature (and away from civilization), and its desire to experience the eternal - exhibits strong similarities to a 1922 article titled «Die Berge und ihre Bedeutung für den Wiederaufbau des deutschen Volkes» by the DuÖAV official Dr. Gustav Müller; a programmatic article that closely linked the act of mountaineering to the renewal of the German Volk and prepared the ground for the eventual appropriation of German (and Austrian) mountaineering by the National Socialist state. 35 In its subsequent treatment of the British Everest, German Kangchenjunga, and German Nanga Parbat expeditions, Trent’s narrative, in fact, repeatedly betrays this connection to an earlier era and its mindset. To begin with, the various mountaineering expeditions to the Himalayas are still presented as a matter of national importance: the British struggle on Everest is categorized as «eine nationale englische Angelegenheit» (14), and for Trent, «das englische Volk darf stolz darauf sein, daß es nach einer Serie von oft tollkühnen Angriffen innerhalb zwanzig Jahren einer englischen Mannschaft gelungen ist, die Göttinmutter der Berge zu besteigen» (31). The 1929 German Kangchenjunga expedition, in turn, lays claim to the mountain by leaving behind the German flag in a snow cave, and the repeat German attempts at reaching the summit of Nanga Parbat are presented as a matter of great import to the German nation, both before and after World War II: Nanga Parbat, as it turns out, is still the «Deutscher Schicksalsberg» (58). However, the degree to which Trent is caught up in outdated concepts of the German nation is most tangible in a comment on Buhl’s successful 1953 climb - «Allerdings ist Buhl Österreicher, aber sind sie nicht auch Deutsche, so gut wie wir? » (85) - a comment that unmistakably recalls the «Großdeutschland» of a bygone era. CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 265 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 265 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 266 Harald Höbusch In fact, it is in the extended portrayal of the German expeditions to Nanga Parbat that Trent’s deep-seated connection to this bygone era reveals itself most prominently. Throughout his coverage of these enterprises, Trent refers to Nanga Parbat as a «Mörderberg» (53), a «Riese aus Urzeiten» (69) who directs his «gefährlichste Waffen» (56) against those who intrude into his realm. With that, Trent employs an anthropomorphizing of the mountain traceable - via Thür and Hanke - all the way back to Hartmann’s Ziel Nanga Parbat of 1938, a text that like none other also expressed an unfaltering «spirit of attack» on the part of the German mountaineers. And it is indeed once more the terminology of war that dominates Trent’s account of German Nanga Parbat expeditions; they are presented as a series of «Angriffe» (53), their goal the «Eroberung» (62) of the mountain, etc. - we are by now familiar with the terminology, its origins, its previous adherents. Not surprisingly, then, Trent’s presentation of the events of Herrligkoffer’s 1953 Deutsch-Österreichische Willy-Merkl-Gedächtnis-Expedition follows the same pattern of backward orientation in its reliance on the equally familiar and burdened concepts of comradeship and legacy. Its members are still bound together by an oath - an oath that Trent quotes in its entirety - and thereby enter a bond that Trent himself identifies as one of the outstanding characteristics of Bauer’s expeditions to Kangchenjunga more than two decades ago, as «den vorbildlichen und kameradschaftlichen Geist der Mannschaften» (33). Furthermore, Herrligkoffer’s expedition is seen as fulfilling Merkl’s legacy from 1932 and 1934, Buhl’s «Gipfelsieg» as «die lebendigste Gedenktafel für Willy Merkl, eine in alle Welt lodernde Fackel» (89). Here again, pre-World War II interpretive constructs invade Trent’s text; a text which, compiled from a variety of sources not always compatible with each other (Bauer, Herrligkoffer), reveals the author’s unreflected and uncritical transmission of German Himalaya mountaineering history beyond the «Stunde Null.» The last text in our investigation, Werner’s Zum Gipfel des Nanga Parbat, was published in 1956 as volume 47 in the Leuchtturm Jugendbücher series by the Michael Winkler Verlag in Cologne. The Leuchtturm series was aimed at both boys and girls eight to fourteen years of age, offered (by 1956) a selection of 50 titles (mostly adventure stories such as Robi im Dschungel [vol. 16], Erich unter Schmugglern [vol. 18], Hilde will zum Zirkus [vol. 19], Sindbad, der Seefahrer [vol. 25], Robinson Crusoe [vol. 39], Abenteuer auf Norderney [vol. 44], etc.), and was advertised as «gut, spannend und lebensnah, mit zahlreichen Bildern.» 36 Like Thür and Hanke’s Sieg am Nanga Parbat, Werner’s text exclusively thematizes the German expeditions to Nanga Parbat, focusing its narrative on Herrligkoffer’s Deutsch-Österreichische Willy-Merkl-Gedächtnis-Expedition. And again like Thür and Hanke, Werner CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 266 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 266 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 «Stunde Null» on Nanga Parbat? 267 seeks to portray Herrligkoffer’s 1953 expedition as the successful conclusion to previous failed attempts on the mountain when, in a brief foreword, he introduces Nanga Parbat as «Deutschen Schicksalsberg» (2) and characterizes Buhl’s successful climb as the fulfillment of the legacy left behind by earlier expeditions, especially those conducted by Merkl. 37 Furthermore, in his extensive account of Herrligkoffer’s enterprise, Werner repeatedly stresses the advantages of the «neue Mannschaft» (5) consisting of both members of previous expeditions to Nanga Parbat - «diese ‹Alten›» Peter Aschenbrenner, Walter Frauenberger, and Hans Ertl - and members of the current generation of German and Austrian mountaineers - «die ‹Jungen›» (22) Hermann Buhl, Kuno Rainer, Albert Bitterling, Otto Kempter, Hermann Köllensperger, and Fritz Aumann: «Erfahrung der ‹alten Himalaya-Garde› und Jugend der neuen Bergsteiger-Generation ergänzen einander in glücklicher Weise» (23). Werner’s efforts at creating a sense of continuity between the various pre- World War II expeditions to Nanga Parbat and the 1953 Deutsch-Österreichische Willy-Merkl-Gedächtnis-Expedition are further reflected in the overall organization of his narrative. While the story of Herrligkoffer’s expedition takes up approximately two thirds of the volume, Werner uses the first third of his text to inform his young readers about the often tragic fate of the six previous expeditions to the mountain, thereby creating a strong sense among them of the terrible price exacted by Nanga Parbat on those who tried to climb it. Even in narrative terms, then, the 1953 expedition is built upon those that preceded it. This is further evident in the fact that three times in his narrative Werner chooses to insert references to actual memorial plaques placed on the mountain and honoring the deceased of previous expeditions, in two instances in fact depicting the actual inscriptions and their arrangement through textual miniaturization. With this, the memory of previous expeditions to Nanga Parbat is literally «inscribed» into Werner’s account of the most recent effort at scaling the peak, adding to the already strong sense of continuity between preand post-World War II expeditions Werner tries to communicate to his young readers and highlighting once more the «legacy» left behind by those who died on the mountain. What is transmitted in Werner’s text as well is the notion of high-altitude mountaineering as an enterprise of national interest and importance, carrying the potential for national glory. This view becomes evident first in Werner’s account of Himalaya mountaineering as a race to the «Third Pole»: Nur der «Dritte Pol», die höchste Erhebung der Erde, war noch unbesiegt. Die besten Bergsteiger aller Nationen wetteiferten deshalb, die Himalaya-Riesen zu bezwingen. Wie mit magischer Gewalt zogen die Achttausender des Himalaya die kühnsten Männer in ihren Bann. So stark war diese Anziehungskraft, daß nicht CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 267 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 267 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 268 Harald Höbusch nur einzelne Männer, sondern ganze Nationen davon gefesselt wurden. Es begann ein Wettstreit der Besten aller Völker, an dem neben Deutschen auch Österreicher, Schweizer, Engländer, Amerikaner, Franzosen, Italiener, Holländer, Norweger, Polen und Japaner teilnahmen, die «ihren» Berg ersteigen wollten. (7) For Germany, Werner elaborates, the goal lay with two mountains in particular, Kangchenchunga and Nanga Parbat, the latter soon occupying more than merely the minds of German mountaineers. In regard to Merkl’s 1934 expedition, Werner writes, «Das Ringen um den Nanga Parbat wurde ja mehr als ein sportlicher Wettkampf. Das ganze deutsche Volk hatte die Ersteigung dieses Berges zur Sache der Gemeinschaft gemacht, zum Zusammenwirken Gleichgesinnter, das einem großen Ziele dienen sollte» (8). And in regard to the 1937 disaster which killed altogether seven German mountaineers and nine Sherpas: «Als die Kunde von dem Lawinentod am Nanga Parbat nach Deutschland gelangt, rüstet die Heimat unverzüglich zu einer Bergungsexpedition unter Führung Paul Bauers, des Vorkämpfers der deutschen Himalaya-Forschung» (18). Werner’s awareness of the national(istic) character of previous German expeditions to Nanga Parbat (specifically those conducted after 1933), however, does not keep him from positioning the 1953 Deutsch-Österreichische Willy- Merkl-Gedächtnis-Expedition within a similar context. As mentioned earlier, his narrative still refers to Nanga Parbat as the German «Schicksalsberg,» and his characterization of various celebrations of the expedition’s success is interspersed with multiple references to its German origin: Die Heimkehr der erfolggekrönten Mannschaft ist ein wahrer Triumphzug. Bergkameraden aller Nationen senden Glückwunschdepeschen, als einer der ersten Oberst Hunt, der Leiter der Mount-Everest-Expedition 1953. Selbst in den kleinsten Bergsiedlungen, welche die Mannschaft auf dem Rückweg von der Rakhiot-Brücke durchschreitet, wird sie von der Bevölkerung auf das herzlichste begrüßt. Blumengewinde und Spruchbänder mit deutschen Inschriften schmücken die Straßen, ein Blumenregen überschüttet die Mannschaft. In Gilgit spielt die Kapelle der Gilgit-Scouts deutsche Weisen zum Willkomm. Auch in Rawalpindi und Lahore danken die Einwohner in überschwänglicher Weise dafür, daß auf dem Gipfel des «Königs der Berge» jetzt die Flagge Pakistans weht. (70) To these observations we need to add one more crucial - and most revealing - detail. Throughout his text, Werner goes to great lengths to describe the members of Herrligkoffer’s expedition not only as belonging to the «old» and «young» generation of Himalaya mountaineers, but also as being of both German and Austrian origin. The significance of this lies in the fact that all previous expeditions to Nanga Parbat had drawn their members from these two countries, and that the two countries had in fact become one on 13 March CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 268 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 268 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 «Stunde Null» on Nanga Parbat? 269 1938. Consequently, one has to ask whether Werner, with his focus on the joint nature of the expedition, is still caught up - we recall Trent’s equation of Austrians with Germans in Sturm auf die Eisriesen - in outdated Pan-Germanic notions when he describes Buhl’s return to his «geliebte Ramsau im Berchtesgadener Land» (71), the «Ramsau» referring to a cultural and geographic region encompassing parts of both modern-day Germany and Austria. Auch dort weht ein wahrer Wald von Fahnen in den deutschen und österreichischen Farben zu seiner Begrüßung. Ein dichter Blumenregen überschüttet ihn, begeisterte Willkommrufe brausen ihm entgegen. Die Heimat ehrt auf ihre Weise den Bergsteiger, dessen Tat alle bewundern - so sehr, daß Hermann Buhl, der Mann, der in vierzigstündigem Alleingang den Nanga Parbat bezwungen hat, als alles vorüber ist, nur schlicht sagen kann: «A bisserl a Strapaz is dös schon! das Gefeiertwerden, fast eine größere als so ein Aufstieg zum Nanga Parbat. (71) Viewed together, these individual observations reveal that Werner’s account of the 1953 Deutsch-Österreichische Willy-Merkl-Gedächtnis-Expedition is still very much rooted in the notions and concepts that had dominated the portrayal of German Himalaya expeditions to the German public prior to the «Stunde Null.» This assessment is strengthened further by one final piece of evidence: a direct quote from Herrligkoffer’s official expedition report; a quote recalling an ideal we were able to trace all the way back to Bauer’s expeditions of the late 1920s and early 1930s, the ideal of comradeship: Wir geloben, in dem Ringen um einen der höchsten Gipfel der Erde ehrenhafte Kämpfer zu sein, die Gesetze der Kameradschaft zu achten, und uns mit ganzer Kraft für die Erreichung des hohen Zieles einzusetzen, zum Ruhme der Bergsteigerei in der ganzen Welt und zur Ehre unseres Vaterlandes! (33) More than any other text, then, Werner’s account represents a conscious effort on the part of its author to extend Germany’s storied, if troublesome, mountaineering history in the Himalayas into a new era, a bold and open attempt at claiming the German Nanga Parbat tradition in its entirety for the future. Revisiting our original question about the narrative and ideological (dis-) continuities between preand post-«Stunde Null» youth texts about German Nanga Parbat mountaineering expeditions, we can now confidently state that in both regards the degree of continuity observed in these texts is substantially greater than the degree of discontinuity. While some authors like Herrligkoffer and, to a lesser degree, Thür and Hanke, indeed make an effort to dissociate German Nanga Parbat mountaineering from the expeditions conducted by the Deutsche Himalaja-Stiftung and seem to believe that the privatization of the Nanga Parbat story (by refocusing it on the personal link between Herr- CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 269 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 269 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 270 Harald Höbusch ligkoffer and Merkl) would amount to a «Neuanfang,» a new beginning of some kind, the reality is that the ideological constructs and narrative strategies identified in their texts reconnect them to the very era of German Himalaya mountaineering from which they seek to dissociate themselves. The same has to be said for Trent. While his strategy of dehistoricizing and depoliticizing German Nanga Parbat expeditions differs from the approach observed in Herrligkoffer’s and Thür and Hanke’s texts, the final outcome is the same: Trent’s effort, too, is undermined by the ties of his supposedly new mountaineering philosophy to a bygone era and the contamination of his account with pre-«Stunde Null» mountaineering principles. But where Herrligkoffer, Thür and Hanke, and Trent at least perceived the necessity to dissociate their accounts from those published before the «Stunde Null,» other authors did not. Geifes clearly sees nothing wrong with following in the ideological and narrative footsteps of Bechtold’s Deutsche am Nanga Parbat. Der Angriff 1934, and Werner even goes as far as consciously trying to rescue the legacy of all German Nanga Parbat expeditions, including those conducted under the aegis of the Deutsche Himalaja-Stiftung, into a new era. For these two authors, nothing has really changed. And there is yet another form of continuity we can observe in connection with these post-«Stunde Null» texts. As we recall, both Kreuz’s and Thür and Hanke’s volumes were part of two youth book series that had played a key role in the Reich Propaganda Ministry’s campaign against the «Schund-» or «Groschenhefte.» This campaign, however, as Heinz J. Galle 38 and Hopster 39 have observed, had its early 1950s West German equivalent in the «Kampf gegen Schund und Schmutz,» a campaign that manifested itself most prominently in the Gesetz über die Verbreitung jugendgefährdender Schriften of 1953, 40 the very year of Herrligkoffer’s successful Nanga Parbat expedition. Taking a last look at our post-«Stunde Null» texts, we realize that many (if not all) of them are indeed closely tied to this struggle. Herrligkoffer’s texts, for one, were part of the Für Euch-Bücherei, a book series which, according to reviews published by youth education agencies in several West German states, was perceived as providing «spannende Erlebnisberichte aus Forschung, Technik und Sport,» 41 lauded as a «wertvoller positiver Beitrag im Kampf gegen Schund und Schmutz,» 42 and recommended for purchase by schools, youth centers, and youth hostels. Trent’s book was published as part of the Göttinger Jugend-Bände, a series advertised as «Klar und sauber wie der Quell des lieblichen Göttinger Gänseliesels» (Trent 96) and obviously aimed at the moral fortification of the German youth. Werner’s account, finally, published in the Leuchtturm Jugendbücher series, contributed to a collection of youth titles characterized as «gut, spannend und lebensnah.» CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 270 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 270 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 «Stunde Null» on Nanga Parbat? 271 The seemingly innocuous term «gut,» however, ties this series to the 1950s campaign for the «gutes Jugendbuch» 43 and thereby directly to the struggle against «Schund und Schmutz.» 44 Once again, then, the story of Nanga Parbat was considered suitable reading material for young Germans; now, however, not in the context of a military war against the allies of World War II, but rather that of a war in defense, as Petra Jäschke has observed, of the values of the «christlich-abendländische Kultur» (Doderer 351). Here, too, we find no «Stunde Null» on Nanga Parbat; a conclusion that underscores the current consensus about early post-1945 West German children’s and youth literature: that it lacks a «Neuanfang» (Leutheuser 138), and that it is tainted by the same «üble Kontinuität» (Hopster et al. 2: 47) which characterized German post-World War II society in general. Notes 1 In historical terms, «Stunde Null» refers to 12: 00 AM on 8 May 1945, the hour of the unconditional surrender of the German armed forces under Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel. For a general overview of the developments in German literature during the years immediately following the «Stunde Null» see Schnell 61-71, esp. 68, 70. A detailed treatment of these developments and the central question of a «Neuanfang» in German literature can be found in Koopmann. Pertinent historical information is provided in Hockerts. 2 On the concept of (dis-)continuity as the reigning interpretative paradigm in recent German historical research on this period see Hockerts 149-50. 3 The year 1928 saw already three of them: German mountaineers (Eugen Allwein, Erwin Schneider, Dr. Karl Wien), jointly financed by the Emergency Foundation of German Scientists, the German and Austrian Alpine Club (DuÖAV), and the Soviet Academy of Science traveled to the Alai-Pamir range where on 25 September 1928 they reached the summit of Pik Lenin (7,127 m); the German Caucasus expedition (Sektion Hochland) under the leadership of Dr. Paul Bauer (soon to emerge as one of the key figures in German high-altitude mountaineering during the 1930s); and the first German Andes expedition sponsored by the DuÖAV, led by Hans Pfann. During the following year 1929, Willy Merkl, one of the premier German mountaineers of the period, led an expedition into the Caucasus region sponsored by the Sektion Bayerland (Munich). Over the next ten years, German mountaineers would focus their attention on two of these mountain ranges: the Andes and the Himalayas, the tallest mountain range in the world. In both of these regions, German explorers had left their early mark. In 1801, during his South American expedition, Alexander von Humboldt reached an altitude of 5,350 meters on Chimborazo (6,310 m), by then still considered to be the highest peak in the world. Between 1919 and 1939, Germans repeatedly followed in von Humboldt’s footsteps. In 1932, once again sponsored by the DuÖAV, German mountaineers traveled to the Cordillera Blanca in Peru and successfully scaled Huascarán (6,768 m). The Andes remained a goal for German and Austrian mountaineers until the outbreak of World War II: the years 1936 (Cordillera Blanca and Cordillera de Huayhuash; expedition leader: Hans Kinzl), 1938 (Cordillera Blanca; Sepp Schmidbauer, Sepp Bucher), and 1939 (Andes Re- CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 271 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 271 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 272 Harald Höbusch connaissance Expedition of the German Alpine Club) saw three more expeditions into this region. 4 In 1934, Dyhrenfurth led the second «Internationale Himalaya-Expedition» into the Baltoro region, successfully scaling five peaks above 7,000 meters. His wife, Hettie Dyhrenfurth, set a female altitude record on Sia Kangri (Queen Mary Peak), reaching an altitude of 7,315 meters. Dyhrenfurth’s expedition also served as the background for the production of Der Dämon des Himalaya, a feature film directed by Andrew Marton and starring Gustav Diessl and Jarmila Marton. 5 Various aspects of the life and work of Hermann, Adolph, and Robert Schlagintweit are discussed in Müller and Raunig. Additional information, particularly on the relationship between Alexander von Humboldt, the brothers Schlagintweit, the British Society, and the British East India Company can be found in Finkelstein. 6 Excerpts from the Schlagintweits’ expedition report Reisen in Indien und Hochasien were published in both German natural science journals and journals of popular science such as Globus. Illustrirte Zeitschrift für Länder- und Völkerkunde and Das Ausland. Wochenschrift für Länder- und Völkerkunde. Even while the brothers were still in Asia, local Munich newspapers such as Neue Münchener Zeitung had reported on their progress. 7 For a detailed account of this «discovery» see Bauer, Das Ringen 7-14. 8 Reichssportführer Hans von Tschammer und Osten. Quoted in Amstädter 409. 9 Bauer explained his position in the Mitteilungen des Deutschen Bergsteigerverbandes 4 (1937). 10 For a detailed discussion of this conflict between Herrligkoffer and Bauer see Mierau, Die DHS 158-81. 11 All this, of course, was in addition to extensive media coverage in form of regular national and local newspaper and magazine reports. 12 Following the return of Merkl’s 1934 expedition to Germany, Herrligkoffer, through his parents Therese and Rudolf Herrligkoffer, had claimed the expedition’s estate for himself and his family. Despite being under no legal obligation to do so, Bechtold agreed to pay Herrligkoffer the sum of 1,150 Reichsmark and provide him with access to the diaries and photos of the expedition for the production of his book. For details on this matter see Höfler and Messner 60; Mierau, Die DHS 158. 13 This was Hartmann’s second personal account of a Himalaya expedition. In 1934, Wien had published Hartmann’s diary of the 1931 Kangchenjunga expedition. 14 At least 10,000 copies were printed of this original edition. 15 «Ad. W. Krüger» is a pseudonym for Meta Trinchen Krüger. See Hopster et al. 1: 677. 16 «Wilhelm Kreuz» is a pseudonym for Walther Schreiber. See Hopster et al. 1: 672. 17 Krüger published two additional titles in this series: Entscheidung auf dem Muss Alla (vol. 64), and Alfred Wegener im Grönlandeis: Ein Tatsachenbericht (vol. 84). 18 Additional series were titled: Die Mädelbücherei, Kriegsbücherei der deutschen Jugend, Kolonialbücherei, Erlebnis-Bücherei. For details see Hopster et al. 2: 511, 624- 25. 19 For a discussion of the National Socialist campaign against the «Schmutz- und Schundliteratur» see Nassen 31-46. See also Hopster et al. 2: 108-12. 20 For more detailed information on this type of publication during the Nazi period see Galle 88-97. 21 A detailed discussion of the treatment of these concepts in National Socialist youth literature can be found in Nassen 62-76. CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 272 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 272 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 «Stunde Null» on Nanga Parbat? 273 22 With this reference to Horst Wessel, Drexel is inducted into the National Socialist pantheon, the locus of its «Totenkult,» the mystification of those who had given their lives for the movement. This economy of death, as Jay W. Baird has documented, can be traced all the way back to the death myth of World War I and is connected to such events as the «martyrdom» of Albert Leo Schlageter, the saga of Horst Wessel and, above all, the «Immortals» of the abortive Hitler putsch of 9 November 1923. Many of these «martyrs» had been immortalized in books, several also in films: the early fighters in Hitlerjunge Quex, Horst Wessel in Hans Westmar (both 1933). Elevating Drexel’s death on Nanga Parbat to the level of national martyrdom fits squarely into this economy of death and its continuing need for symbolic figures. Furthermore, it ties, in no uncertain terms, the death on the mountain to a «political» death. For a detailed discussion of hero worship within the context of National Socialist youth literature see Nassen 47-62. 23 This vow immediately reminds the modern reader of Josef Goebbels’s infamous «total war» speech at the Berlin Sportpalast on 18 February 1943. 24 Kreuz indicates that his account is based on Bechtold’s official expedition report, Deutsche am Nanga Parbat. Der Angriff 1934. 25 Krüger himself contributed four titles to the Erlebnis-Bücherei: Auf der Fährte des Säbelzahn-Tigers (vol. 89), Wie der Pekingmensch gefunden wurde (vol. 94), Deutsche bauen das Dnjeprkraftwerk (vol. 96), and Einer gegen Billionen (vol. 101). 26 Kreuz’s text also contains a drawing that depicts the swastika placed on top of a cairn memorializing the deceased of the 1934 expedition. See Kreuz 30. 27 The militaristic overtone of this statement is characteristic of Kreuz’s overall account: vocabulary such as «Schlacht,» «schwere Artillerie,» «Kämpfer,» «Streitmacht,» «Rüstzeug,» «Bresche,» «Abwehr,» «Kommandant,» etc. can be found throughout the narrative. 28 The Für Euch-Bücherei Verlagsgesellschaft m.b.H. (Hankensbüttel/ Hann.) was founded on 30 January 1952 by Dr. Paul Ullrich. Its business model was the production and distribution of a youth book series titled «Für Euch-Bücherei» with titles such as Im Ballon zum Nordpol (vol. 1), Bezwinger des Kibo (vol. 2), Roter Fels im Meer (vol. 3), «Passat» auf großer Fahrt (vol. 4), Flossentaucher im Mittelmeer (vol. 5), Elefantenjagd am Tschadsee (vol. 6), Meister der 1000 PS (vol. 7), and Wir fliegen wieder! (vol. 8). The typical volume retailed for DM -.30 to DM -.50. 29 In his contract with the members of the 1953 Deutsch-Österreichische Willy-Merkl- Gedächtnis-Expedition, Herrligkoffer prohibited any unauthorized interviews, presentations, and publications. See Märtin 299. 30 On page 3 of Sieg über den Nanga Parbat, Herrligkoffer writes, «Über die beiden von Willy Merkl in den Jahren 1932 und 1934 geleiteten Expeditionen und die weiteren Versuche, den Nanga Parbat zu bezwingen, berichtete ich in dem HEFT 9 der ‹Für Euch- Bücherei›, erschienen 1952/ 53.» 31 Herrligkoffer himself, on page 13, speaks of «schönste Bergharmonie» among the expedition members. 32 The twenty-seventh individual is the British mountaineer Albert Frederick Mummery who died on Nanga Parbat in August 1895. 33 The «Göttinger Jugend-Bände,» a youth book series aimed at individuals of the ages of twelve through sixteen, consisted of several subcategories: «Beliebte Jugendbücher,» «Aus unseren Tagen,» «Grosse Reihe (Für Mädchen/ Für Jungen und Mädchen),» and «Volksausgaben (Mädchenbücher/ Immer wieder neu).» The series was immensely popular: 450,000 copies were sold in 1952, one million in 1953, and 1.5 million in 1954. CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 273 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 273 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 274 Harald Höbusch 34 Trent lists as his sources: «Bechtold: Deutsche am Nanga Parbat, 1935, 1939; Skuhra: Sturm auf die Throne der Götter, 1950; Sven Hedin: Mount Everest, 1923; Fellow- Blacker: Der erste Flug über den Mount Everest, 1934; Howard-Bury: Mount Everest, Erkundungsfahrt 1921, 1922; Link: Mount Everest, 1953; Bauer: Kampf um den Himalaja, 1952; Herrmann: Das große Wagnis, 1936; ‹Der Bergsteiger›: Nanga Parbat, 1953, sowie Tageszeitungen und Zeitschriften.» (Trent 6). 35 Rapp calls Müller’s essay a «Schlüsseltext für die Neuorientierung» of the German and Austrian Alpine Club DuÖAV. (Rapp 37). 36 See the back cover of Werner’s book. 37 See Werner 22 and, especially, 57: «Buhl sieht den Gipfel jenes Achttausenders vor sich, […], um dessentwillen einunddreißig Kameraden […] ihr Leben ließen. Er will ihr Vermächtnis erfüllen.» 38 Galle 81. 39 Hopster et al. 2: 46. 40 On the genesis of this legislation see Doderer 317-24. 41 Amtsblatt des Ministeriums für Unterricht und Kultus von Rheinland-Pfalz, 7 March 1953. 42 Blätter der Wohlfahrtspflege in Baden-Württemberg, herausgegeben im Zusammenwirken mit den Landesjugendämtern, July 1952. 43 On this subject see Steinlein 323. 44 On this «positive Phase» of the fight against dirt and trash see Doderer 321-23, 328/ 29, 333-46. Works Cited Amstädter, Rainer. Der Alpinismus. Kultur - Organisation - Politik. Wien: WUV- Universitätsverlag, 1996. Bauer, Paul. Das Ringen um den Nanga Parbat 1856-1953. Hundert Jahre bergsteigerischer Geschichte. München: Süddeutscher Verlag, 1954. Baird, Jay W. To Die For Germany. Heroes in the Nazi Pantheon. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1990. Bechtold, Fritz. Deutsche am Nanga Parbat. Der Angriff 1934. München: Bruckmann, 1935. Böhm, Viktor. «Der März 1938 im Spiegel der Jugendliteratur.» 1000 und 1 Buch 2 (1987): 3-14. Buhl, Hermann. Achttausend drüber und drunter. München: Nymphenburger Verlag, 1954. -. Achttausend drüber und drunter. Leipzig: VEB F. A. Brockhaus Verlag, 1955. Doderer, Klaus, ed. Jugendliteratur zwischen Trümmern und Wohlstand 1945-1960. Herausgegeben und eingeleitet von Klaus Doderer. Erarbeitet von Martin Hussong, Petra Jäschke und Winfred Kaminski unter Mitwirkung von Hildegard Schindler-Frankerl und anderen. Weinheim and Basel: Beltz Verlag, 1993. Dyhrenfurth, Günther Oskar. Das Buch vom Nanga Parbat. Die Geschichte seiner Besteigung 1895-1953. München: Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung, 1954. Finkelstein, Gabriel. «‹Conquerors of the Künlün›? The Schlagintweit Mission to High Asia, 1854-57.» History of Science 38 (2000): 179-218. CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 274 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 274 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 «Stunde Null» on Nanga Parbat? 275 Galle, Heinz J. Populäre Lesestoffe. Groschenhefte, Dime Novels und Penny Dreadfuls aus den Jahren 1850 bis 1950. Katalog zur Ausstellung. Köln: Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek, 2002. Geifes, Hans. Angriff auf den Nanga Parbat. Köln: Verlag J.P. Bachem, 1950. Hartmann, Hans. Ziel Nanga Parbat. Tagebuchblätter einer Himalaja-Expedition. Berlin: Limpert, 1938. Herrligkoffer, Karl Maria, ed. Willy Merkl. Ein Weg zum Nanga Parbat. Leben, Vorträge und nachgelassene Schriften herausgegeben von seinem Bruder Karl Herrligkoffer. München: Bergverlag Rudolf Rother, 1936. -. Nanga Parbat 1953. München: J.F. Lehmanns, 1954. -. Nanga Parbat 1953. Wien: Die Buchgemeinde, 1953. -. Nanga Parbat 1953. Berlin: Verlag Neues Leben, 1954. -. Nanga Parbat. Die deutschen Himalaya-Expeditionen 1932-1953 dargestellt von Willy Merkl † und seinem Bruder Dr. Karl M. Herrligkoffer. Hankensbüttel/ Hann.: Für Euch-Bücherei, 1953. -. Sieg über den Nanga Parbat. Hankensbüttel/ Hann.: Für Euch-Bücherei, 1953. -. Tagebuchnotizen des Expeditionsleiters Dr. Karl M. Herrligkoffer. Hankensbüttel/ Hann.: Für Euch-Bücherei, 1953. Hockerts, Hans Günter. «Gab es eine Stunde Null? Die politische, gesellschaftliche und wirtschaftliche Situation in Deutschland nach der bedingungslosen Kapitulation.» Nachkriegszeiten - Die Stunde Null als Realität und Mythos in der deutschen Geschichte. Ed. Stefan Krimm and Wieland Zirbs. München: Bayerischer Schulbuchverlag, 1996. 119-56. Höfler, Horst, and Reinhold Messner. Karl Maria Herrligkoffer. Besessen, sieghaft, umstritten. Zürich: AS Verlag, 2001. Hopster, Norbert, Petra Josting, and Joachim Neuhaus. Kinder- und Jugendliteratur 1933-1945. Ein Handbuch. Band 1: Bibliographischer Teil mit Registern. Stuttgart and Weimar: J.B. Metzler, 2001-05. -. Kinder- und Jugendliteratur 1933-1945. Ein Handbuch. Band 2: Darstellender Teil. Stuttgart and Weimar: J.B. Metzler, 2001-05. Koopmann, Helmut. «‹Kahlschlag› - Der Mythos von der ‹Stunde Null› in der deutschen Literatur des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts.» Nachkriegszeiten - Die Stunde Null als Realität und Mythos in der deutschen Geschichte. Ed. Stefan Krimm and Wieland Zirbs. München: Bayerischer Schulbuchverlag, 1996. 157-83. Kreuz, Wilhelm. Am Gipfel des Nanga Parbat. Tatsachenbericht nach Aufzeichnungen der deutschen Himalaya-Expedition. Berlin: Steiniger, 1941. Krüger, Ad. W. Der Kampf um den Nanga Parbat. Berlin: Aufwärts-Verlag, 1941. Leutheuser, Karsten. Freie, geführte und verführte Jugend. Politisch motivierte Jugendliteratur in Deutschland, 1919-1989. Paderborn: Igel Verlag Wissenschaft, 1995. Link, Ulrich. Nanga Parbat: Berg des Schicksals im Himalaya. München: Bergverlag Rudolf Rother, 1953. Luft, Ulrich, ed. Nanga Parbat. Berg der Kameraden. Bericht der Deutschen Himalaja-Expedition 1938. Aus Tagebüchern von Bruno Balke, Fritz Bechtold, Rolf v. Chlingensperg, Alfred Ebermann, Uli Luft, Herbert Ruths, Lex Thoenes. Herausgegeben von der Deutschen Himalaja-Stiftung München. Mit Vorwort von Paul Bauer. Berlin: Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1943. Märtin, Ralf-Peter. Nanga Parbat. Wahrheit und Wahn des Alpinimus. Berlin: Berlin Verlag, 2002. CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 275 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 275 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 276 Harald Höbusch Mierau, Peter. Die Deutsche Himalaja-Stiftung von 1936 bis 1998. Ihre Geschichte und ihre Expeditionen. München: Bergverlag Rudolf Rother, 1999. Müller, Claudius C., and Walter Raunig, eds. Der Weg zum Dach der Welt. Innsbruck and Frankfurt a.M.: Pinguin-Verlag, 1982. Müller, Gustav. «Die Berge und ihre Bedeutung für den Wiederaufbau des deutschen Volkes.» ZDÖAV (Zeitschrift des Deutschen und Österreichischen Alpenvereins) 53 (1922): 1-9. Nassen, Ulrich. Jugend, Buch und Konjunktur 1933-45. Studien zum Ideologiepotential des genuin nationalsozialistischen und des konjunkturellen «Jugendschrifttums». München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1987. Rapp, Christian. Höhenrausch. Der deutsche Bergfilm. Berlin: Sonderzahl, 1997. Schnell, Ralf, ed. Geschichte der deutschsprachigen Literatur seit 1945. 2 nd ed. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, 2003. Schlagintweit, Hermann von. Reisen in Indien und Hochasien: Eine Darstellung der Landschaft, der Kultur und der Bewohner in Verbindung mit klimatischen und geologischen Verhältnissen. Basiert auf die Resultate der wissenschaftlichen Mission von Hermann, Adolph und Robert Schlagintweit, ausgeführt in den Jahren 1854-1858. 4 vols. Jena: Costenoble, 1869-80. Skuhra, Rudolf. Sturm auf die Throne der Götter. Berlin: Büchergilde Gutenberg, 1938. Steinlein, Rüdiger. «Neubeginn, Restauration, antiautoritäre Wende.» Geschichte der deutschen Kinder- und Jugendliteratur. Ed. Reiner Wild. 3rd ed. Stuttgart and Weimar: J.B. Metzler, 2008. 312-42. Thür, Hans, and Hans Hanke. Sieg am Nanga Parbat. Mit 16 Bildtafeln und vielen Zeichnungen. München and Wien: Wilhelm Andermann Verlag, 1954. Trent, Thomas. Sturm auf die Eisriesen. Ein Jugendbuch vom Kampf gegen Mount Everest und Nanga Parbat. Göttingen: W. Fischer-Verlag, 1955. Werner, Arthur. Zum Gipfel des Nanga Parbat. Köln: Michael Winkler Verlag, 1956. -. Weg und Ziel Nanga Parbat 1895-1953. Wien: Buchgemeinschaft Donauland, 1954. Wien, Karl, ed. Das Kantschtagebuch von Hans Hartmann. Mit Zeichnungen von Jürgen Klein. München: Verlag Josef Kösel & Friedrich Pustet, 1934. CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 276 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 276 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 Besprechungen / Reviews H ESTER B AER : Dismantling the Dream Factory: Gender, German Cinema and the Postwar Quest for a New Film Language. New York: Berghahn Books, 2009. 304 pp. $ 90.00 Hb. $ 34.95 Pb. Hester Baer’s new book Dismantling the Dream Factory: Gender, German Cinema and the Postwar Quest for a New Film Language represents an important contribution to the study of postwar German cinema. Perhaps its most significant accomplishment is to broaden the academic understanding of German film during the 1940s and 50s, a period that in the American and German academies has functioned largely as the straw man for the «real» rebirth of German cinema after National Socialism in the form of the post-Oberhausen New German Film and New German Cinema of the 60s and 70s. Baer’s book shines new light on the commercial cinema that arose from the wreckage of National Socialism and makes astoundingly clear how these films from the 40s and 50s began to invent a new film language for a postwar audience made up of seventy percent female viewers. While «Papas Kino» may have been struggling by the 1960s, Baer’s work shows that it was anything but «dead» as the adherents of the New German Cinema (and their academic and intellectual proponents in West Germany and abroad) would have us believe. Quality, engaging films were being made in the 1940s and 50s, and they were popular with their audience. The relative unimportance assigned to the period by film scholars may, as Baer argues persuasively in the introduction, have more to do with biases against popular, consumer culture - particularly those forms that address a predominantly female audience - among academic and cultural elites than the relative quality or critical nature of the films that were being made. Baer’s book supports Frank Stern’s thesis that «the New German Cinema began in 1946 and not in the late 1960s» (Stern, Frank. «Film in the 1950s: Passing Images of Guilt and Responsibility.» The Miracle Years: A Cultural History of West Germany, 1949-1968. Ed. Hanna Schissler. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2000. 267). In addition, Baer provides compelling interpretations of the ten featurelength films that form the basis of her study. Her interpretations focus on the role of gender and the female figures in the films as they relate to the social reconstruction of German society and the reconstruction of a viable German film language after National Socialism. One of the strengths of Baer’s study is that she situates her work within the scholarship on gender and postwar reconstruction as it has taken shape over the past thirty years in both the United States and Germany. Drawing on works as diverse as Angela Delille and Andrea Grohn’s Blick zurück aufs Glück: Frauenleben und Familienpolitik in den 50er Jahren and Kaja Silverman’s Male Subjectivity at the Margins, Baer makes a compelling argument for the central importance gender played in the social and political reconstruction of West Germany. Dismantling the Dream Factory is made up of three parts: «Relegitimizing Cinema: Female Spectators and the Problem of Representation,» «Art on Film: Repre- CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 277 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 277 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 278 Besprechungen / Reviews senting Gender and Sexuality in Popular Cinema,» and «Towards the New Wave: Gender and the Critique of Popular Cinema,» framed by an Introduction and Epilogue. Together the three sections build a convincing argument as to the central role played by gender in the reconstruction of German society and the reconstruction of a German film language after World War II. The first section «Relegitiminzing the Cinema» focuses on the problems of reestablishing a viable national cinema in the aftermath of the war. Baer gives critical readings of The Murderers Are Among Us (1946), Film Without a Title (1948), Love ’47 (1949), and Epilogue (1950). The second section «Art on Film» revisits postwar aesthetic debates as they play themselves out on the big screen in relation to gender construction in Willi Forst’s The Sinner (1951), Alfons Stummer’s The Forester of the Silver Wood (1955), and Veit Harlan’s Different from You and Me (1957). And the third section «Towards the New Wave» looks at the self-critical nature of Engagement in Zurich (1957), The Girl Rosemarie (1958), and The Bread of Those Early Years (1962). The book is clearly written and accessible to scholars and students in a variety of fields from film studies to German history and/ or gender studies. The focus on individual films in each chapter makes the book a must-have for those working on postwar film as the chapters can stand alone even as they contribute to broader arguments put forth in the book as a whole. As an increasing number of German Studies scholars pay closer attention to popular culture and its effects in postwar Germany, they will be building directly and indirectly on Baer’s book. University of Kentucky Jeff Rogers D EBORAH H OLMES AND L ISA S ILVERMAN (E DS .): Interwar Vienna: Culture Between Tradition and Modernity. Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2009. 310 pp. $ 75. While Germany’s Weimar Republic and its capital Berlin have been the focus of intensive historical, sociocultural, economic, and political study, Austria’s First Republic (1919-34) and the significance of Vienna continue to remain in Weimar’s shadow with respect to grasping the cultural-historical importance of the Austrian interwar period for understanding European modernity. The appearance of Interwar Vienna: Culture Between Tradition and Modernity in 2009 brings much-deserved attention to this fifteen-year period of Austrian cultural history and its significant contributions for examining the political, economic, and sociocultural tumult that both characterized the period and underpinned European modernity. Edited by Deborah Holmes, lecturer in German at the University of Kent, and Lisa Silverman, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the volume reflects the same interdisciplinary atmosphere that marked the interwar period in Vienna in terms of the interconnectedness «of public events and personal lives - including the related political and social influences that shaped the cultural products of these years» (10). With an eye toward illuminating the position of culture - defined broadly as the arts, humanities, and intellectual life - within the dominant sociopolitical tensions between the Social Democrats of «Red Vienna» and the Christian Socialists, who CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 278 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 278 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 Besprechungen / Reviews 279 dominated politics within the rest of the country and would eventually take unyielding political control in 1934, Interwar Vienna places its reader into the midst of this tendentious cultural conversation with essays that reveal «an intense consciousness of being ‹in between,› of representing a provisional state of affairs, [which] informed many of the creative and social products of the interwar period. Initially this sense of being in a state of transition could be positive, as it was for the Social Democrats, who believed they were one step closer to an ideal socialist society, or indeed for German nationalists, who felt Austria should now work toward becoming or joining a solely German nation. […] None of these possible responses remained mutually exclusive; it was perfectly possible to find optimism, nostalgia, and apprehension in any single reaction from practically any political viewpoint.» (8) It is through this focus on the liminal features bound up within the cultural and political facets of Vienna’s interwar atmosphere that Holmes and Silverman’s volume provides a much more nuanced understanding of cultural life within a constellation of competing political discourses, social projects, and economic uncertainties. The collection consists of twelve essays from thirteen contributors and examines case studies from the worlds of dance, theater, film, music, and literature against the backdrop of forces related to cultural and economic politics, race and Jewishness, which formed central tensions throughout the First Republic’s existence. Divided into four sections Interwar Vienna presents an organizing logic that hopes to provide in the first two sections the interwoven sociocultural, political, and historical foundation with which to read more closely the cultural examples taken up in the final two sections. Here Edward Timm’s essay reassessing the interconnected networks of intellectual creativity that existed among a range of cultural circles and thinkers, regardless of political affiliation, finds immediate resonance with Wolfgang Maderthaner and Lisa Silverman’s co-authored examination of the interrelationship between science, metaphysics, and faith in the perceived Jewishness of the Wiener Kreis. And John Warren’s historical study of cultural decline with the less-than-peaceful dissolution of the social democratic Red Vienna and the rise of Austrofascism in Vienna in the mid-1930s coincides well with Paul Weindling’s exploration of the divergent Austrian eugenics movement and its role in questions of public health and social welfare alongside issues related to racialized medicine within both the socialist Red Vienna and the German nationalist camps. The cohesion of the collection falters somewhat in bridging between the historical approaches of these first four essays and the close reading analyses crucial to the examination of the literary, filmic, and performative examples of the volume’s remaining eight essays. This minor consideration aside, the essays themselves each offer insightful interpretations of their respective subjects and serve well as both stand-alone articles and as demonstrative of the sociocultural and political tensions bubbling beneath the surface in Vienna. Readers progress through a series of insightful contributions that range in scope from investigations of literature (Ernst Weiss, Rudolf Brunngraber, Otto Neurath, Arthur Schnitzler, Franz Blei, and John Lehmann) to analyses of discrete cultural forms of dance (the Viennese free dance movement), film (1920s Viennese/ Austrian silent film), theater (venue-based political exploration of interwar Viennese theater history), and music (the impact of Schönberg’s Vienna on CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 279 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 279 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 280 Besprechungen / Reviews German music). While Interwar Vienna: Culture Between Tradition and Modernity thrives on the interdisciplinary and multi-perspectival approach that an edited volume provides, it would benefit from an editorial conclusion, if only to reiterate and comment further on the connections drawn across the individual contributions and across Holmes and Silverman’s engaging introduction. This slight concern aside, the volume will find a ready readership primarily among scholars interested in the interdisciplinary field of Austrian studies encompassing film and literary studies, music and performance studies, theater history, and political science and history. Arizona State University Daniel Gilfillan H ANS A DLER AND W ULF K OEPKE (E DS .): A Companion to the Works of Johann Gottfried Herder. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2009. 489 pp. $ 90. This book which contains seventeen articles by nineteen contributors is a milestone for international Herder scholarship. It is the first such volume available in English and a historic breakthrough. It meets the goal of the experienced editors, Hans Adler and the late Wulf Koepke, to convey a comprehensive picture of the life and the works of Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803). The editors have dared to tackle an overdue and onerous task in correcting an entire gamut of historical mistakes in previous misrepresentations of Herder. They have engaged a panel of experienced contributors from various disciplines and countries (including the United States of America, Canada, Germany, and Switzerland) to write this monumental but accessible and appealing volume. It is laudable that the editors address the mistakes of outdated Herder reception in their introduction and the contributors follow through in the same vein in their individual articles. The volume, therefore, serves as a corrective to earlier attempts to provide a presentation of Herder and his work as a whole in a field still dominated by the biography of Rudolf Haym (first published in 1877). Although Haym’s work is not without its merits, it unfortunately left a negative impression of Herder and proved a misleading resource for many generations to come. Adler and Koepke comment on Haym: «He depicted Herder as a thinker of the second order, one who already at the age of 21 had lost contact with the avant-garde of the early 1770s, Kant above all» (1). Haym represented Herder through the lens of Kant, who had been Herder’s professor in Königsberg and who claimed «in a malicious review» of the first two volumes of Herder’s Ideen zur Geschichte der Menschheit (1784-91) that Herder merged poetry and philosophy in illegitimate ways. Therefore, it is finally time to make Herder’s work fully understood in its own right. This book does just that. It also corrects the cliché of Haym’s one-sided emphasis on Herder’s role in the Sturm und Drang movement while ignoring his later developments. Adler and Koepke’s volume further challenges effectively Haym’s verdict on Herder’s jealousy of Goethe and Schiller. Adding to the severe misreadings of him by Haym, Herder was even more severely wronged in his reception history through his exploitation by the Nazis who misused his concepts of «Nation» and «Volk» for their own fascist purposes. Arnd Bohm in his contribution on «Herder and Politics» explains that there are «two most CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 280 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 280 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 Besprechungen / Reviews 281 widely held opinions about Herder’s politics» which are «inaccurate» (277). He was neither apolitical, nor was his concept of «Volk» any contribution to the nationalist movements’ of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries undermining of the universalist claims of the Enlightenment. Ulrich Gaier beautifully contextualizes the notions of myth, mythology, and new mythology in Herder’s work, and Stefan Greif explains that «Volk» according to Herder designates all those who are close to nature. I also find Robert Norton’s article «Herder as Critical Contemporary» and Karl Menges’s essay «Particular Universals: Herder on National Literature, Popular Literature, and World Literature» especially informative concerning an entire range of debates surrounding Herder nationally and internationally while positioning him both as an astute critic, theorist, and as an engaging speaker for Humanität. Marion Heinz and Heinrich Clairmont show how Herder connected the concepts of space, time and force, and how he interacted with the representatives of empiricism and idealism at his time in order to propose his own creative epistemology. Herder offers above all a «sensualistic reception of the Spinozist doctrine of amor dei intellectualis» (62). John Zammito makes Herder shine as a wonderfully strong vocal critic of any «Whig history» that imposes itself and its ideology on others. He claims Herder as a founder of the «philosophy of history» and a critic of imperialism. Herder argued that each nation has its own middle point of happiness in itself, just as every sphere has its center of gravity. He thus «naturalized reason» and held the conviction that «there is no categorical divide between nature and human history» (79). Hans Adler defines the concept of «Humanität» with eloquent differentiation, and while applying Cassirer’s notion of Funktionsbegriff against those who so far have interpreted Herder’s concept as if it were a «Substanzbegriff,» he suggests: «We have to step back and change our perspective […]. Herder’s Humanität is not a goal but a problem (that which is laid before, a task from the Greek proballein, German ‹Vorwurf›)» (105). Adler considers Herder’s approach to aesthetics as aisthetics (with an iota, from the Greek aisthánesthai: to perceive through the senses, that is, the logic of the body and the senses), thus offering an anthropological dimension to the field of aesthetics. He further points out that Herder’s concept of «Kraft» (power) was later relativized by the equally important concept of «Maß» (balance, moderation). Steven Martinson gives a brief sketch of Herder’s life and work and highlights his Humanitätsbriefe to show that Herder diagnosed the contempt for other people and times as an «epidemischer Zeit- und Nationalwahnsinn» (madness). Wulf Koepke develops some consequences of Herder’s idea of nemesis or of retribution in the center of his thinking on history while «castigating the hubris of the European civilization» (7). Herder made an anthropocentric turn and his project of an aesthetica naturalis is the key to understanding his relationship to Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume, Berkeley and others. Also, since Herder broadened his view beyond the confines of Europe, he demonstrated an interest in Asian and Native American traditions (instead of dismissing them like Kant) and laid the foundations for the contemporary multicultural approach to culture. Jürgen Trabant sees Herder as the creator of a «philosophy of language» and argues «there is no other thinker or writer - before Wilhelm von Humboldt and later, Ludwig Wittgenstein - for whom language is in the same depth and intensity the CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 281 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 281 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 282 Besprechungen / Reviews center and the subject of human thought and hence of the human being» (118). The volume is rounded out with contributions on Herder’s biblical studies by Christoph Bultmann; on his theology by Martin Kessler; on his aesthetics and poetics by Stefan Greif; his poetic works, translations, and views of poetry by Gerhard Sauder; on Herder as educator and administrator by Harro Müller-Michaels; and on his reception and influence by Günter Arnold, Kurt Kloocke, and Ernst Menze. All of these contributions provide a multifacetted picture of Herder as one of the most important and interesting authors of the eighteenth century. The volume concludes with an extensive bibliography arranged according to topics and a comprehensive index. Camden House has done a fine job in publishing this excellent volume. It is undoubtedly indispensable for future research on Herder, German and European literature and philosophy, comparative literature, and eighteenth-century studies. One can only wish that from now on one no longer has to defend Herder against Kant or Haym. This book will have a vast impact internationally and it has already introduced a new era of Herder scholarship. Purdue University Beate Allert P AUL M ICHAEL L ÜTZELER : Bürgerkrieg Global: Menschenrechtsethos und deutschsprachiger Gegenwartsroman. München: Wilhelm Fink, 2009. 360 pp. € 30,90. Paul Michael Lützeler, the Rosa May Distinguished University Professor in the Humanities and the founder and director of the Max Kade Center for Contemporary German Literature at Washington University in St. Louis, is known for his leadership in the field of contemporary literary studies. This text is the latest entry in his oeuvre that supports that claim, as documented by its public reception. A review in Der Spiegel (44/ 2009) called it «der seltene Fall eines literaturtheoretischen Werks, das lesbar daherkommt und weit über die Fachgrenzen hinausgreift,» and in Die Zeit (30/ 2010) Evelyn Finger noted that, «[i]n einer idealen Welt müsste es eigentlich sogar Pflichtlektüre für Außenminister sein.» Such praise is warranted, as the text is readable, consistent, and informative - a rare accomplishment for today’s scholars of literature. No wonder that Hans Wagener, in a German Quarterly review (83.3 [August 2010]), calls it «so etwas wie eine deutsche Habilitationsschrift» and «eine theoretisch fundierte Studie zu einem zentralen Thema der deutschen Gegenwartsliteratur» (395). Despite this acclaim, however, Bürgerkrieg Global is a rather willful book, seen from the Anglo-American perspective, and one that has actually missed some opportunities. It is an extended set of introductions to germanophone novels that take up contemporary sites where human rights violations and politics have entered the global news. The individual chapters introduce authors whose works deal with conflict zones. Lützeler introduces twelve novels in detail, each in its own chapter: Norbert Gstrein, Das Handwerk des Tötens (2003); Lukas Bärfuss, Hundert Tage (2008); Hans Christoph Buch, Kain und Abel in Afrika (2001); Jeanette Lander, Jahrhundert der Herren (1993); Dieter Kühn, Und der Sultan von Oman (1979); Nicolas Born, Die Fälschung (1979); Christian Kracht, 1979 (2001); Michael Roes, Leeres Viertel CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 282 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 282 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 Besprechungen / Reviews 283 Rub‘ Al-Khali (1996); Gert Hofmann, Vor der Regenzeit (1988); Friedrich Christian Delius, Adenauerplatz (1984); Uwe Timm, Der Schlangenbaum (1986); and Erich Hackl, Sara und Simon (1995). These novels deal with conflicts, human rights themes, globalization, and identity in Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Oman, Lebanon, Iran, Yemen, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay. Lützeler also asserts that their aesthetics often work against national aesthetic conventions (25). Aside from this main argument, he adds two excurse chapters dealing with novels on National Socialism’s legacy: Wolfgang Koeppen’s Der Tod in Rom (1954), and Peter Schneider’s Vati (1987). The choice of contemporary novels will inform his readers about a body of globally oriented germanophone literature that deserves to be recognized as looking beyond the legacies of National Socialism. Lützeler provides detailed plot summaries, describes the aesthetics of each work, and includes information on the human rights crises represented. Less felicitous, given his claim that the novels move beyond national traditions, is the relatively perfunctory political contextualization for each writer and novel. For instance, he amalgamates authors of East and West German origins with those from Austria and Switzerland, a mixture which potentially blunts perceptions about their possible political interventions into local politics. In a different vein, the inclusion of two NS-novels (one on Nazi Mitläufer in the postwar era and the other about Mengele) in a human rights context is an extremely political decision that again points to an underlying question about this affiliation of texts from different sources and nations. The introductory section, at fifty pages in length, presents texts from German thought that articulate arguments from human rights contexts, each in its own chapter: «Literatur und Globalisierung,» «Gewalt und Bürgerkrieg,» «Partisan und Terrorist,» and «Menschenrechtskultur und Weltethos.» His sources are important voices in continental philosophy rather than today’s theorists. Not surprisingly, then, in addressing such themes, Lützeler points out that literary scholars are in the «Nachhut» (15), the rear guard, behind social scientists and historians in dealing with such issues from today’s globalized world. And with this statement, the major weakness of the volume begins to emerge out from behind its overall excellent writing and solid research. While Germanists may indeed have overlooked the phenomenon of globalization in their work to a great degree, the same can by no means be said of scholars of anglophone and francophone world literatures, who have for at least a decade made precisely such discussions part of their scholarly work and teaching curricula. Lützeler thus tacitly assumes his German readership will not be aware of these sources, just as they were supposed to affiliate novels from very different political climates that all represent the human rights literature as defined by Lützeler. To overlook the global context of literary scholarship in a book on globalization is at least questionable. Scholars of germanophone literatures who are interested in these ideas might profitably take up a special issue of the Journal of Human Rights (9.2 [2010]), and especially the initial section written by Eleni Countouriotis and Lauren M. Goodlad, entitled «Introduction: Comparative Human Rights: Literature, Art, Politics» (121-26); one of the books that established the field, such as Lynn Hunt, Inventing CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 283 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 283 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 284 Besprechungen / Reviews Human Rights: A History (New York: W.W. Norton, 2007); or the work on testimonial literature in Latin America, typified in the anglophone world by The Rigoberta Menchú Controversy, edited by Arturo Arias (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2001). Bürgerkrieg Global will indeed open up a field of investigation for Germanists in outlining a contemporary, specifically politicized approach to contemporary germanophone literatures. Yet (pace Hans Wagener, who believes it documents German literature’s turn outwards to global human rights), and given that the study of human rights literatures has been an active field of scholarship in the anglophone world, it is unfortunate that an opportunity has been lost in the project’s execution. Lützeler clearly wants to establish the credibility of germanophone literature as a world human rights literature, but it is regrettable that he implies the isolation of both this literature and scholarly engagement with it. These are not German inventions, and so those Germanists who (rightly) are moved by this well-written book to take up the project should be warned that they need not recreate a theoretical wheel, and that the project of studying global literatures has much greater political and local nuance than Lützeler has in framing texts with widely diverse political claims based in human rights issues as «deutschsprachige Gegenwartsroman[e].» The University of Texas at Austin Katherine Arens C HRISTIAN R OGOWSKI (E D .): The Many Faces of Weimar Cinema. Rediscovering Germany’s Filmic Legacy. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2010. 354 pp. $ 85. Camden House’s The Many Faces of Weimar Cinema, edited by Christian Rogowski, is a welcome addition to the long line of Weimar film scholarship. The volume clearly shows the progress made since Kracauer’s and Eisner’s accusations that Weimar film was Nazi infected. The Many Faces of Weimar Cinema does not seek to replace Anton Kaes’s Shell Shock Cinema, Thomas Elsaesser’s influential Weimar Cinema and After, or Noah Isenberg’s Weimar Cinema, but rather add another layer of interpretation. As Weimar scholarship is moving beyond the canonical classics such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari or Fritz Lang’s films, the book provides much-needed information on many of the rediscovered movies. As Christian Rogowski states in his introduction, the book aims to expose a larger audience to the many recently discovered films that have become available on DVD, including Robert Reinert’s Nerven, Robert Wiene’s Orlacs Hände, Wilhelm Dieterle’s Geschlecht in Fesseln, Joseph Delmont’s Die entfesselte Menschheit, or Henrik Galeen’s Alraune. A number of articles focus on psychological issues in film related to Weimar Germany’s continued preoccupation with its post-WWI trauma, among them Barbara Hales’s article on Nerven and Anjeana Hans’s on Orlacs Hände. It becomes clear that Weimar cinema was progressive in a society deeply traumatized by the WWI experience. As Jill Smith writes, filmmakers collaborated with psychoanalysts in so-called «social hygiene films,» as did the psychiatrist Magnus Hirschfeld who worked with the filmmaker Richard Oswald. As a result, movie making became a major factor in sexual law reform. Christian Rogowski’s discussion of Geschlecht in Fesseln provides a convincing illustration of Weimar’s flawed homosexuality laws. CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 284 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 284 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 Besprechungen / Reviews 285 These issues of psychoanalysis and sexuality came together in Robert Reinert’s movie Nerven, one of the most discussed films of the recent Weimar film debate. Often considered the first German expressionist film, Nerven was one of the first movies to link Weimar’s political problems with the mental state of its citizens. It provides an excellent tool in recording the abundance of mental illnesses following WWI. As Barbara Hales shows in her essay, Weimar psychiatrists were attempting to blame war victims for instigating the revolution that brought the German monarchy to an end. If the returning soldiers could be blamed for the political unrest following WWI, Hales writes, society would be able to distance itself from the war and the revolution. Therefore Nerven, in which soldiers are depicted as madmen, must be seen as a symbolic representation of Weimar Germany’s unsettled cultural milieu. Another theme in The Many Faces of Weimar Cinema deals with the role of female stars, which Valerie Weinstein explores in her essay on the vamp in Henrik Galeen’s Alraune, Mihaela Petrescu on Brigitte Helm and Marlene Dietrich and their roles of developing the vamp for Weimar movies, and Richard McCormick on female desire in Ernst Lubitsch’s Sumurun. Lubitsch recognizes prejudices against «Ostjuden» which links into another theme of this book, that of Weimar Germany’s controversial responses to integrating Jews into its culture. Cynthia Walk explores the German- Jewish symbiosis in her article on E.A. Dupont’s movie Das alte Gesetz, a Jewish- Gentile romance. As the war experience was at the forefront of Weimar’s social problems, a number of contributions address this issue, among them Jaimey Fisher’s article on Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s Westfront 1918. In this well-written article Fisher uses an innovative spatial theory to analyze opposing shots in order to delineate confronting viewpoints. As the book is designed as a compendium of Weimar film, various other topics are explored, among them the star system, Weimar’s role in international film, and the upcoming sound film. There are also a number of essays on commercially successful films, such as exotic fairytales and romantic comedies. While some of the articles will be more useful than others, overall the book is very informative to both newcomers to the field and those more experienced in Weimar scholarship. The book is highly recommended not only for anybody teaching courses on Weimar film, but also as a useful addition to Weimar history courses. With the ready availability of Weimar films, students of German history would definitely benefit from the exposure to films in which many of the social and political issues are reflected. Christian Rogowski’s introductory comments and his brief bibliography about the history of Weimar film provide any newcomer to this field with enough information for a thorough film analysis. The attached filmography will be very helpful in locating movies for class use. University of the South Reinhard Zachau CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 285 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 285 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 286 Besprechungen / Reviews K ATY H EADY : Literature and Censorship in Restoration Germany: Repression and Rhetoric. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2009. 221 pp. $ 75. The introduction to Katy Heady’s book on censorship in Restoration Germany states the book’s project succinctly: it investigates «the effects of state censorship: that is, censorship exercised by public institutions with the intention of regulating public discourse» (3). This definition of the project sets it against other possible approaches to the phenomenon of censorship. First, it does not operate with broad notions of censorship, as they have appeared from Freud to Bourdieu and theorists of the «New Censorship,» but focuses on censorship by the state. Second, in doing so, it does not track the development of censorship policy or the actions of censorship officials. Rather, the book assesses the impact such censorship had on the literary writing it constrained, considering how authors anticipated, evaded, and responded to censorship practices. The result is a highly informative account that shows the interplay of political and social factors with literary composition and style. Readers of Heady’s well-researched book will learn a great deal not only about the climate of censorship in the German-speaking lands of the 1820s, but also about the literary strategies authors developed to make dissenting or unpopular views palatable to censors and the reading (or viewing) public. Heady draws her conclusions about these strategies from studies of six works by three authors. Chapters 1 and 2 examine works by Christian Dietrich Grabbe, the tragedy Herzog Theodor von Gothland and the comedy Scherz, Satire, Ironie und tiefere Bedeutung. Both were composed in 1822 and published in 1827. In Chapters 3 and 4, Heady discusses texts by the young Heinrich Heine, the Briefe aus Berlin (1822) and Reise von München nach Genua, which appeared as the third volume of the Reisebilder at the end of 1829. Finally, two plays by the Austrian Franz Grillparzer constitute the focus of Chapters 5 and 6: König Ottokars Glück und Ende (1825) and Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen (1831). Despite the different censorial conditions under which these three authors worked, Heady identifies common trends both in the patterns of censorship they anticipated, and in the strategies they used to avoid the stroke of the censor’s pen. First, she concludes that while censorship guidelines were written in «universal» terms, in fact it was possible to violate censorship principles as long as one did not threaten the ruling classes in doing so. Her analysis of Grabbe suggests, for instance, that attacking the Catholic Church was relatively safe in Protestant-dominated Prussia. The remaining conclusions address the strategies that authors developed to circumvent censorial action. Here, Heady again sets her own study off from others: While it has become commonplace to discuss how authors disguised contentious content, Heady identifies tactics that allowed authors to express dissenting or potentially disruptive content outright. In general, these tactics dampened the affective and rhetorical impact of such content within the work as a whole. First, by using abstract terms and refraining from naming particular institutions or practices, authors avoided triggering the censors’ protective action; Heine, for instance, stated his love of freedom quite openly, but dissociated such statements from any reference to the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, or national movements in Germany. Second, various strategies CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 286 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 286 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 Besprechungen / Reviews 287 minimized the intensity and fervor of potentially volatile statements: Heine’s cultivation of a lighthearted tone and the excision of potentially provocative language by all three authors belong in this category. Third, authors relegated dangerous material «to the margins of audience and reader perception» by dispersing dangerous content amid innocuous material and passing over controversial issues quickly and without comment, as Grillparzer did in his critiques of marriage and married life (200). Finally, Heady sees the authors as compensating for potentially dangerous material by presenting themselves in a positive, non-controversial light in other passages. Heine often flanked direct criticism with statements sympathetic to official policies and views, and Grabbe used paratexts to present himself as a serious literary author. For the most part, the analysis that brings Heady to these conclusions is both subtle and convincing, and it shows great sensitivity to the political and social conditions within which the authors composed their works. Interestingly, because of the varying source material available on each author, Heady uses very different methods in reaching her generalized conclusions. In the case of Grillparzer, successive manuscript drafts, including drafts with the censors’ own markings, allow her to analyze the censors’ concerns by interpreting their choices to strike or emend particular words, lines and scenes. She also reconstructs Grillparzer’s intentions and strategies on the basis of his successive drafts, but she spends relatively little time on such author-focused work. On the other end of the spectrum, the chapters on Heine rely primarily on published texts, although early drafts of Reise do inform some sections. As a result, Heady’s interpretations focus solely on decoding Heine’s intentions and critiques, often in passages Heady herself has identified as potentially dangerous. Finally, the two chapters on Grabbe, which are based on comparisons of the original and published manuscripts and on correspondence between Grabbe and his editor, fall between these two extremes. While they focus on authorial and editorial adjustments to anticipated censorial resistance, they are aimed at explaining the changes tracked through the text comparisons and correspondence. This study will be important for readers who want to understand the literary repercussions of censorship in the German states of the 1820s. For readers new to the topic, the introduction also provides a brief and highly readable summary of censorship practices from the early modern period to the contemporary Federal Republic, although these same readers may miss an overview of censorship scholarship. Finally, although Heady carefully restricts her conclusions to the writers of Restoration Germany, the authorial strategies she distills suggest a point of departure for investigations of how authors in other times and places have attempted to express dissenting, subversive, or offensive views. The Ohio State University Katra Byram CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 287 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 287 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 288 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 288 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH+Co. KG • Dischingerweg 5 • D-72070 Tübingen Tel. +49 (07071) 9797-0 • Fax +49 (07071) 97 97-11 • info@narr.de • www.narr.de JETZT BESTELLEN! Isabell Ludewig Lebenskunst in der Literatur Zeitgenössische fiktionale Autobiographien und Dimensionen moderner Ethiken des guten Lebens Mannheimer Beiträge zur Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft 78 2011, VIII, 229 Seiten €[D] 58,00/ SFr 77,90 ISBN 978-3-8233-6672-0 Wie kann ich ein gutes Leben führen? Zur Beantwortung dieser Frage muss das Individuum sich auf sich selbst besinnen, um zu erfahren, was ihm bejahenswert erscheint. Die Reflexion geschieht oft narrativ, indem das Individuum seine bisherige Lebensgeschichte erzählt. Literarische Lebensgeschichten, insbesondere fiktionale Autobiographien, eignen sich daher für die literaturwissenschaftliche Untersuchung unter dem Aspekt des guten Lebens. Auf diese Weise wird eine literaturethische Perspektive etabliert, bei der die Diskurse der Literatur und der modernen Ethik des guten Lebens wechselseitig befruchtend aufeinander bezogen werden. Im Mittelpunkt stehen die Interpretationen der Romane Room at the Top von John Braine, Lady Oracle von Margaret Atwood und The Remains of the Day von Kazuo Ishiguro. 077211 Auslieferung August 2011.indd 12 24.08.11 19: 48