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COLLOQUIA GERMANICA BAND 43 Internationale Zeitschrift für Germanistik Herausgegeben von Harald Höbusch und Linda K. Worley in Verbindung mit Jane K. Brown (Seattle), Katharina Gerstenberger (Salt Lake City), Todd C. Kontje (San Diego), John Pizer (Baton Rouge), Maria Tatar (Cambridge), Anthony Tatlow (Dublin), Robert von Dassanowsky (Colorado Springs) und den Mitgliedern der Division of German Studies (University of Kentucky) Band 43 · 2010 Published for the UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY by A. FRANCKE VERLAG TÜBINGEN AND BASEL © 2013 · Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH & Co. KG Alle Rechte vorbehalten / All Rights Strictly Reserved Satz: typoscript GmbH, Walddorfhäslach Druck und Bindung: Laupp & Göbel, Nehren ISSN 0010-1338 INHALT Heft 1/ 2 Themenheft: Cold Fronts. Kältewahrnehmungen in Literatur und Kultur vom 18. bis 20. Jahrhundert Gastherausgeber: Inge Stephan und Monika Szczepaniak A NNE D. P EITER : «Die Fahrt gegen Süden war ein ewiges und im höchsten Grade langweiliges Einerley.» Georg Forsters Reise zur Antarktis . . . . . . . . . 5 K ATHRIN M AURER : «Ich hatte dieses Ding nie so gesehen wie heute.» Zur Verunsicherung der Wahrnehmung in Adalbert Stifters «Eisgeschichte» . . 35 I NGE S TEPHAN : Kalte Weiblichkeit. Zu einem Topos in der Literatur des 19. Jahrhunderts, mit einem Ausblick auf Leni Riefenstahl im 20. Jahrhundert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 M ONIKA S ZCZEPANIAK : «Helden in Fels und Eis.» Militärische Männlichkeit und Kälteerfahrung im Ersten Weltkrieg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 I NGA P OLLMANN : Kalte Stimmung, or the Mode of Mood: Ice and Snow in Melodrama . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 C AROLINE S CHAUMANN : Memories of Cold in the Heat of the Tropics: Hans Ertl ’ s Meine wilden dreißiger Jahre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 K ATHARINA G ERSTENBERGER : «YOU ARE FROZEN»: Andreas Ammer and FM Einheit’s Radio Play Frost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 U LRIKE V EDDER : Kältelehren der Winterreise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 Heft 3 Themenheft: Screening German Perpetration Gastherausgeber: Brad Prager und Michael D. Richardson B RAD P RAGER , M ICHAEL D. R ICHARDSON : Introduction: Screening German Perpetration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 J ENNIFER M. K APCZYNSKI : Raising Cain? The Logic of Breeding in Michael Haneke ’ s Das weiße Band . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 M ICHAEL D. R ICHARDSON : Reenacting Evil: Giving Voice to the Perpetrator in Das Himmler-Projekt and Das Goebbels-Experiment . . . . . . . . . . 175 S TEPHAN J AEGER : Between Tragedy and Heroism: Staging the West German Past in Ilona Ziok ’ s Fritz Bauer: Tod auf Raten . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 B RAD P RAGER : Nazi, Interrupted: Cutting into the Past in Malte Ludin ’ s Documentary 2 oder 3 Dinge, die ich von ihm weiß . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 E RIN M C G LOTHLIN : Listening to the Perpetrators in Claude Lanzmann ’ s Shoah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235 Heft 4 S IEGFRIED C HRISTOPH : An Onomastic Note on Wolfram ’ s Gahmuret . . . . . 273 R ÜDIGER S CHOLZ : Edel sei der Mensch - und strafe. Goethes Aufsatz zur Beibehaltung der Todesstrafe für Kindesmörderinnen . . . . . . . . . 285 K ATHARINA VON H AMMERSTEIN : «Imperial Eyes»: Visuality, Gaze and Racial Differentiation in Texts and Images around 1900 . . . . . . . . . . 295 R OBERT D ASSANOWSKY : A Reasonable Fantasy: The Musical Film under Austrofascism 1933 - 38 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319 Besprechungen/ Reviews A NNE F UCHS , K ATHLEEN J AMES -C HAKRABORTY and L INDA S HORTT (Eds.): Debating German Cultural Identity since 1989. (Hiltrud Arens) . . . . . 341 C ARL N IEKERK : Reading Mahler: German Culture and Jewish Identity in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna. (Gabriel Cooper) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343 S ABINE G RO ß (Ed.): Herausforderung Herder - Herder as Challenge. Ausgewählte Beiträge zur Konferenz der Internationalen Herder-Gesellschaft (Ulrike Wagner) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345 D IETER S TRAUSS : Oh Mann, oh Manns. Exilerfahrungen einer berühmten deutschen Schriftstellerfamilie (Frederick A. Lubich) . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Inhalt VI 8 J AN K NOPF : Bertolt Brecht. Lebenskunst in finsteren Zeiten. Biografie (Siegfried Mews) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351 L YN M ARVEN and S TUART T ABERNER (Eds.): Emerging German-Language Novelists of the Twenty-First Century. (Corinna Kahnke) . . . . . . . . . 353 G ERT H OFMANN , R ACHEL M AGSHAMHRÁIN , M ARKO P AJEVIC´ , and M ICHAEL S HIELDS (Eds.): German and European Poetics after the Holocaust: Crisis and Creativity. (William Collins Donahue) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355 VII Inhalt An Onomastic Note on Wolfram ’ s Gahmuret SIEGFRIED CHRISTOPH U NIVERSITY OF W ISCONSIN -P ARKSIDE Nomen est omen, as the old adage advises us. The fact that names are portents of character, as well as signifiers of individual identity, is a commonplace at the heart of onomastic interests. 1 A reader ’ s understanding of Gottfried ’ s Tristan is shaped early and definitively when the author states that the name given to him marked him for an unhappy fate: «von triste Tristan was sîn name; / der name was ime gevallesame / und alle wîs gebær: / daz kiesen an dem mære» (Tristan, 2001 - 04). 2 In the following I would like to argue that Gahmuret, Parzival ’ s father, bears a descriptive name. To that end, the evidence of descriptive names in Parzival will be discussed briefly. This will be followed by a review of the salient features of Gahmuret ’ s characterization and the scholarship that has dealt with it, as well as the source(s) of his name. Finally, linguistic matters will be addressed with respect to their bearing on the etymological explanation for Gahmuret ’ s name. The virtually undisputed champion of naming among the Middle High German authors is Wolfram von Eschenbach. The sheer number of proper nouns, both of places and persons, is astonishing in scope and variety of putative sources. Particularly interesting to scholars have been the so-called redende Namen, «welche über ihren Träger etwas aussagen, oder deren Bedeutung das Wesen desselben bezeichnet» (Froehde 141), i. e., names that invite the reader to reflect about a character ’ s attributes and, in so doing, the etymology of a name. Well-known examples include the eponymous protagonist, Parzival, and his wife, Condwiramurs. Condwiramurs, as Wolfram tells us, is derived from Condwîrenâmûrs (Parzival 327, 20), «guiding love.» 3 Parzival, in turn, is so named because «der nam ist rehte enmitten durch» (Parzival 140, 17). Many of the other proper names that Wolfram scatters and clusters throughout Parzival are the subject of onomastic scholarship, particularly with respect to source. 4 Broadly speaking, the approaches have highlighted three sources for Wolfram ’ s naming impulses. The first is the matter of names given to characters that are nameless in Chrétien ’ s unfinished model, the Roman de Perceval ou le Conte du Graal. Parzival ’ s cousin, Sigune, and Anfortas, Wolfram ’ s Grail King and brother to Parzival ’ s mother, Herzeloyde, are examples of such naming. It is consistent with Wolfram ’ s genealogical preoccupation that someone as important as the hero ’ s cousin and mother ’ s brother should merit names in their own right, rather than Chrétien ’ s more impersonal descriptors, germainne cosine (Chrétien 3586) and li Rois Peschierre (Chrétien 3506) respectively. 5 The second category of naming sources of interest to scholars contains proper nouns which, for lack of compelling evidence to the contrary, Wolfram appears to have invented from whole or partially cut cloth, e. g., Kyot and Flegetanis. 6 Finally, there remains a group of names that offers a tantalizing glimpse of Wolfram the indefatigable wordsmith. This group includes the kind of alteration of an attested, transmitted source for a name that, depending upon whether we see Wolfram as an impish ingénue or an embarrassingly plodding illiterate, delights or insults the ear. Is the character ’ s name Terredelaschoye, for example, really Wolfram ’ s clumsy misreading of a person for what was a place name in the original, or is this «confusion» merely one of Wolfram ’ s many recourses to poetic license? 7 Wolfram ’ s treatment of names in this respect is closely linked to the debate about his «learning,» as Werner Schröder wryly observes: «[O]bwohl er keine Schule besucht hatte, hat er sich mit dem Heißhunger des Autodidakten viel, wenn auch manchmal krauses Wissen angeeignet, das er als Steinbruch für seine Erfindungsgabe zu nutzen verstand, nicht zuletzt auf dem Felde der Namen» (xxiv). Within the context of Wolfram ’ s multiple naming strategies, the name of Parzival ’ s father, Gahmuret, is particularly interesting and promising to onomasticists for several reasons. First, it is the name of an important character in the hero ’ s family tree. The importance of Gahmuret is suggested even more strongly by the fact that an entire cycle of prefatory adventures is devoted to him. Second, it represents another instance of Wolfram naming a character that had been unnamed in Chrétien ’ s model. Third, it is a name that, as in the case of so many others, lends itself to etymological speculation within the context of both redende Namen and the presaging power of naming. One of the first things striking the reader of the Gahmuret episodes is the distinctiveness of his characterization with respect to the attributes attached to him, as well as the scenes in which those attributes assert themselves. In other words, Gahmuret ’ s character, and therein also his fate, seems to me to be reflected in his very name. I am mindful of the fact that, while almost any etymological argument can be possible, it requires more to make it plausible, convincing or even compelling. In the case of popular medieval literary texts etymological calisthenics, scribal inconsistencies, and multiple adaptations across several languages leave room for any number of possible onomastic explanations or derivations. 274 Siegfried Christoph An interesting point of departure is the fact that Gahmuret ’ s name has as often occasioned etymological speculation, without much regard to his narrative presence, as it has been more or less ignored in discussion. One of the most ardent admirers of Gahmuret, Margaret Richey, for example never touches on an etymological or even literary source for his name. The scholarship that has addressed Gahmuret ’ s name falls into several broad categories. The first includes what might be called the accidental camp, according to which Wolfram ’ s naming strategies are based on alteration, corruption, or misunderstanding of the source(s). Joachim Heinzle and others, for example, posit that the name Gahmuret was likely taken «mistakenly» from the geographical identifier of Bliocadrans, «le roi Ban de Goremet» and Perceval ’ s father in the prologue to Chrétien ’ s Conte du Graal (Chrétien 465). 8 Ernst Brugger combines onomastic threads by proposing that the name was transferred from place to person, not unheard of in the case of Wolfram, by none other than the no less etymologically elusive Kyot himself. Karl Bartsch (138) surmises that Wolfram may have had in mind the German name Gamarit as a model for Gahmuret. Bartsch further surmises that the name may be connected to an early, fragmentary version of a Tirol und Fridebrant, in which the name [G]amuret occurs. Richard Heinzel suggests a derivation from Gamor, a Saracen prince who appears in an early English tale about Arthur and Merlin. 9 What these derivations have in common is the search for a textually attested source, or inspiration, for Gahmuret ’ s name. Such derivations are understandable in view of the pervasive body of onomastically established dramatis personæ in Arthurian texts. Largely absent in these discussions, however, is consideration of how a particular derivation drives, or is driven by, the relationship between Gahmuret ’ s name and characterization. One of the early exceptions is San-Marte [Schulz], who derived Gahmuret ’ s name from the Welsh camgredwr, meaning «heretic,» because of his marriage to the black, heathen queen, Belakane (401). According to San-Marte, Wolfram wrote down the name «nach dem ungefähren Klange» (400), and from thence San- Marte imputed the meaning of Liebeskleinod, «small love token,» from game + amoreux. Almost any etymology is possible, one might argue. Sigune, for example, may well be a thinly veiled anagram of Chrétien ’ s nameless cosine, while Belakane may well be derived from Pelikan, «pelican,» as San-Marte speculates, or as easily from belacana, «beautiful reed,» as Bartsch suggested. Yet the underlying question is left begging, as Wolfgang Kleiber argues succinctly: «Weitere Quellen wären nachweisbar, doch halte ich die Suche nach Vorlagen für steril; wichtiger scheint mir [. . .] die naheliegende Frage, 275 An Onomastic Note on Wolfram ’ s Gahmuret was Wolfram mit diesen Namenmassen bezweckt hat» (83). For much of what has been written about Wolfram ’ s naming strategies, then, Heinzle ’ s observation about Brugger ’ s own etymological argument remains valid: «Die Beweisführung [. . .], an allen entscheidenden Punkten auf Hypothesen angewiesen, ist zu spekulativ, um ernsthaft erwogen zu werden» (50). Against this background, I would like to suggest a derivation of Gahmuret ’ s name that is more context-sensitive with respect to narrative and characterization. My suggestion seeks to address Kleiber ’ s intentional issue on the notoriously slippery ice of phonetic, not to mention orthographic, vagaries. If Gahmuret ’ s name can be read to suggest something about his character, to be a nomen est omen representation of sorts for that character, then it seems useful to start with what Wolfram tells us about Parzival ’ s father. Several points are germane in this regard. The first, and arguably critical, point to be made is that Gahmuret and his offspring are identified explicitly as being descendent from a specific line, Mazadan, a line that was enriched by supernatural genes through Terredelaschoye: «sîn art was von der feien» (Parzival 400, 9). In effect, this meant for Gahmuret that the merry month of May inevitably compelled a «stirring of the loins»: «sîn art von der feien / muose minnen oder mine gern» (Parzival 96, 20 - 21). The reader is thus prepared already for the fact that Gahmuret becomes embroiled quickly and serially in affairs of the heart. To judge by Belakane ’ s and Herzeloyde ’ s reception of Gahmuret, his looks and actions were such that his amorous overtures met with favor. The same can be surmised of Anpflise, the widowed French queen, with whom Gahmuret had had a prior «understanding,» and who pursued her claim on him through emissaries. Hilda Swinburne summarizes that «it is part of his inheritance, a quality of his family, that he shall be a great lover» (199). Nor was Gahmuret indifferent to making an attractive impression, as witness the description of his entrance to Kanvoleis, Herzeloyde ’ s home: «dô leite der degen wert / ein bein für sich ûfez phert, / zwên stivâl über blôziu bein» (Parzival 63, 13 - 15). In short, Wolfram tells us in no uncertain terms that Gahmuret was destined to love as surely as he was made to be loved in turn. The second point to be made about Gahmuret is his indisputable prowess as a knight. Whether he is portrayed as a knight-errant rescuing a beautiful damsel in distress, like Belakane, or whether he is a spontaneous participant in a tournament, the «prize» of which happens to be the equally beautiful Herzeloyde, Gahmuret is victorious against any and all challengers. To judge by the appellatives alone that Wolfram lavishes on Gahmuret, the prologue would seem to serve a fairly simple and obvious function, i. e., to presage that his son, Parzival, is likewise destined to be anything but a slouch in matters of 276 Siegfried Christoph love and fighting. Yet we also know about Parzival that he is destined to be a hero «slowly wise,» «træclîche wîs» (Parzival 15, 4). There is an element of youthful rashness in Parzival that bears comparison to his father. 10 Gahmuret ’ s relationship to both Belakane and Herzeloyde blossoms quickly, yet is also marked by irresolution on Gahmuret ’ s part. He acts quickly and decisively but is loath to accept the implications of committing to the eventual prize. Given Gahmuret ’ s prowess, it is not surprising that Belakane was more than willing to grant him the favors that she had withheld from the erstwhile lover who had died in her service. Gahmuret seems not to have thought through the consequence of a long-term, sedentary relationship with Belakane. Much can be said of the racial and religious that overshadows Gahmuret ’ s relationship with Belakane. Gahmuret himself early on raises the canard of religion when he writes to Belakane that baptism would be a condition for his commitment: «frouwe, wiltu toufen dich, / du maht ouch noch erwerben mich» (Parzival 56, 25 - 26). Not only is Belakane willing to be baptized for Gahmuret ’ s sake, «ich mich gerne toufen solte / unde lebens wie er wolte» (Parzival 57, 7 - 8), but Wolfram himself had earlier suggested that Belakane had been baptized by her own tears following the death of her lover, Îsenhart: «ir kiusche was ein reiner touf» (Parzival 28, 14). In the end, however, it becomes clear that Gahmuret seeks to extricate himself from a commitment, or rather the consequences of a commitment, into which his amorous nature had compelled him. The issue of baptism arises after the fact. This is not to suggest that Gahmuret had changed his mind about Belakane ’ s attractiveness as a worthy object and source of minne. There remains, however, a strong sense that Gahmuret was not prepared to «settle down» and thus to forsake further adventures, both martial and amorous. Unbeknownst to himself, Gahmuret leaves behind an expecting mother. In much the same way Gahmuret ’ s son was later to leave his mother impetuously. Gahmuret, like Parzival, is characterized by a certain impulse to rashness. The second relationship into which Gahmuret enters is no less marked by impulse and reluctance. Gahmuret again becomes involved in a matter involving consequences that he is reluctant to accept. In fairness to Gahmuret, one could not have expected him to know precisely what prize was attached to the tournament at Kanvoleis. As far as Gahmuret was concerned, the tournament was an opportunity for fame, honor and the sweet, if fleeting, solace of fair ladies. To his surprise, however, Gahmuret again has a queen dealt to him, along with the explicit prospects of domestication. What follows in the exchange between Herzeloyde and Gahmuret underscores the resolve of the former and the reluctance of the latter. Gahmuret first cites Belakane as the reason for being unable to commit to Herzeloyde, 277 An Onomastic Note on Wolfram ’ s Gahmuret «frouwe, ich hân ein wîp» (Parzival 94, 5), an argument which the queen dismisses peremptorily and with an ironic reference to Gahmuret ’ s own previous alibi: «Ir sult die M œ rinne / lân durch mîne minne. / desto ufes segen hât bezzer kraft» (Parzival 94, 11 - 13). Anticipating further argument, Herzeloyde also dismisses Queen Amphlîse ’ s epistolary claim: «oder sol mir gein iu schade sîn / der Franzoyser künegîn? / der boten sprâchen süeziu wort, / si spiltn ir mære unz an den ort» (Parzival 94, 17 - 20). In a penultimate act of what begins to seem like a desperate attempt to avoid commitment, Gahmuret cites his brother ’ s death as an impediment to the kind of happiness that Herzeloyde presumably deserves: «ich solt iuch, frouwe, erbarmen: / mir ist mîn werder bruoder tôt. / durch iwer zuht lât mich ân nôt. / kêrt minne dâ diu freude sî: / wan mir wont niht wan jâmer bî» (Parzival 95, 6 - 10). Herzeloyde is well prepared to block Gahmuret ’ s retreat: «Lât mich den lîp niht langer zern: / sagt an, wâ mite welt ir iuch wern? » (Parzival 95, 11 - 12). In what amounts in this case, and after what preceded it, to lame recourse to a technicality, Gahmuret challenges the legitimacy of the tournament itself: «ez wart ein turney dâ her / gesprochen: des enwart hie niht» (Parzival 95, 14 - 15). In the end, however, Gahmuret is declared victor and rightful consort to the queen. Gahmuret ’ s irresolution has found its match in Herzeloyde ’ s resolve, buttressed by the counsel of her advisors. The reasons that he marshals for avoiding the prize of Herzeloyde again have nothing to do with the queen as such. On the contrary, Gahmuret is more than willing to answer the call of his genetic predisposition toward amorousness. He is not, however, ready or willing to pay the price of sedentary domestication that comes with the prize. Even a medieval audience, used to the errant knight ’ s perpetual quest for fair lady ’ s favor while remaining for the most part unattached, might have been struck by the question of how Gahmuret proposed to jump from one assignation to another without eventually facing the kind of commitment that service to fair ladies would at some point entail and that was the rightful culmination of many a hero ’ s questing. Gahmuret ’ s problem is ultimately, to paraphrase and modify Margaret Richey ’ s assessment, 11 that he is irresistibly driven to be at once faithful and faithless. He is compelled to love two things without apparent end, namely women and knight errantry. He commits to the first as impetuously as he pursues the latter stubbornly. When faced, as in the cases of Belakane and Herzeloyde, with a prize that binds, Gahmuret is caught in a position in which he seeks to avoid personal responsibility for the consequences of his actions. It is, in the end, Herzeloyde who summarizes eulogistically the character of her 278 Siegfried Christoph husband: «mînes herzen freude breit / was Gahmuretes werdekeit. / Den nam mir sîn vrechiuger» (Parzival 109, 21 - 23). I have tried to offer in some detail an insight into Gahmuret ’ s character as Wolfram draws it in word and action. The rationale for doing so on behalf of an onomastic argument arises in part from the very purpose which much of medieval literary naming served, as Bruno Boesch suggests: «[Der redende Name] sucht bewußt den Zusammenhang zwischen Wortbedeutung und Namensträger neu zu schaffen. Der Name wird zur Metapher, welche die Vorstellung in einer bestimmten Richtung festlegt. Zugleich ist er im Rahmen der Dichtung ein Vorausurteil, das die Freiheit in der Verfügung über die Gestalt einschränkt» (247). With a clearer picture of the Namensträger ’ s character it is possible to consider its relationship to the Wortbedeutung. There are several approaches to considering this relationship. One is to defer to the constraints - or possibilities - of a well-established literary tradition with an equally well-established cast of characters, like Arthurian literature. 12 Given a potential combination of scribal error, cross-lingual corruption, and an imagination spurred when encountering an exotic name, a range of variants and sources, can be rationalized for a given name. In the case of Gahmuret, several issues arise when trying to explain or derive his name. The first of these is that Wolfram ’ s name for Parzival ’ s father, Gahmuret, is distinctly different from the name for Perceval ’ s father, Bliocadran, in the eponymous «continuation» of Chrétien ’ s Conte du Graal. 13 The difference is such that it would be difficult to argue for a misreading or mishearing of the French name. On the surface, the relationship between Wolfram ’ s Gahmuret and the character Beals von Gomoret in Hartmann von Aue ’ s Erec seems more plausible, though this derivation is not based on any meaningful relationship between name and character. Moreover, there are some linguistic matters that come into play in an argument deriving Gahmuret from Gomoret. If one were to adopt a linguistic approach, there appear to be at least three changes to be accounted for in the change from Gomoret to Gahmuret. 14 The first is the insertion of the h in Gahmuret in most of the name ’ s renderings. 15 Second, the vocalic change from a mid-back o to an open a seems arguably as much deliberate as a matter of error. Third, there is a similarly notable vocalic change from mid-back o to high-back u. While any error is possible, I hope to make a plausible case for a reading of Gahmuret ’ s name that is «meaningful.» The linguistic issues involved in deriving Gahmuret from Gomoret can perhaps best be approached from the perspective of other naming characteristics. While it cannot be proved that the lowering of Gomoret ’ s o to Gahmuret ’ s a was not accidental, this kind and degree of vocalic change is not an «error» 279 An Onomastic Note on Wolfram ’ s Gahmuret commonly attributed to mishearing. Scribal error in misreading a instead of o also seems unlikely, since the manuscript variants consistently write a in Gahmuret ’ s name, whatever other variant spellings may be attested. Moreover, Wolfram consistently renders a in the first syllable of his presumed source ’ s names as a, e. g., Brandelidelîn from Brandeliz, Karid œ l from Carduel, der Waleis from li Galois. Likewise, Wolfram consistently retains Chrétien ’ s o, as in Dodines from Dodiniaus, Monte Rybele from Montrevel, and Joflanze from Djofle. If, then, Gomoret served as a naming model for Gahmuret, a case can be made that Wolfram ’ s change from initial o to a was deliberate. To this can be added the fact that Wolfram added an h to the name he chose for Parzival ’ s father. Again, there is no compelling scribal or phonetic reason to make this particular change, especially if it is intended to be unpronounced. There is no reason to assume that the h was inserted to mark lengthening of the preceding a. 16 If the h was inserted to mark the syllabic end as a velar fricative, rather than a lengthened vocalic a, then the pronunciation would be the same as Middle High German gâch, which is often reduced to h, analogous to the contrast between New High German adverbial hoch and adjectival hoh-. Middle High German gâch, denoting «impetuous, sudden, eager, ardent, rash,» describes accurately the way in which Gahmuret pursues his fundamental passions for knightly derring-do and love. This is far from compelling on linguistic grounds, but it is plausible from the perspective of descriptive naming. The second part of Gahmuret ’ s descriptive name points even more directly, and consistent with the thrust of the narrative, to his amorous passions. Here, too, I take it as a given that linguistic evidence is far from compelling, or even consistent in the manuscript variants, but the matter of Gahmuret and love have been acknowledged as closely linked since earliest scholarship. If a plausible argument can be made for a two-syllable name, of which the initial vowel of the second syllable has been elided, then amour seems a defensible candidate for completing Gahmuret ’ s descriptive name. One possible explanation for the elision may have to do with the use of the h in the final position of the first syllable to suggest a fricative and hence meant to be read as gâch, «impetuous.» Without elision the h would be intervocalic, something like Gahamuret, which might give a reading of the h as resonant rather than fricative and hence distort an important element of the descriptive name. Amour does occur in various spellings 17 in Parzival, so that Wolfram ’ s familiarity with it can be stipulated. Finally, there is the matter of the ending, -et that bears some speculation. A simple conjecture is that the often diminutive - et ending is analogous to other names found in Parzival and elsewhere: Iwanet, Trebuchet, Kaylet, along 280 Siegfried Christoph with feminine formations like Lunete. Another explanation for the - et ending is that Wolfram meant to suggest a Germanized verb, amûren, in either its third-person singular or past participial form, amûret. This possibility is especially tempting, even if more speculative than what has been suggested so far, for two reasons. First, the explanation accounts for every part of Gahmuret ’ s name and has the specious persuasiveness of being «thorough.» Second, it suggests both sides of Gahmuret ’ s tempestuous love life, namely that he loves quickly and is just as quickly loved. At this point, and in defense of what has been argued on behalf of Gahmuret as one of the redende Namen in Wolfram, it should be recalled that Wolfram often and tantalizingly invites precisely this sort of questioning approach to his characters and the narrative strands into which they are woven and reveal themselves. This remains both the boon and bane of Wolfram scholarship. Werner Schröder ’ s remark about the roster of knights cited by Parzival (772, 1 - 23) bears repeating in this context, too: «[D]ie Phantasie [ist] selten ganz freischwebend. In der Mehrzahl lassen sich Anregungen, Anstöße, Muster erkennen. Da sie öfter entlegen scheinen, sind sie wahrscheinlich manchmal nur noch nicht entdeckt» (xxv). Gahmuret, the man who loves - and is in turn loved - quickly, can thus be seen to be possessed, like so many other Wolfram creations, of a descriptive name. While the arguments for the meaning of Gahmuret ’ s name may not be compelling, they are plausible and, perhaps more importantly, consistent with Gahmuret ’ s characterization. No author who, like Wolfram, challenges his audience at every turn of the tale to read beyond the boundaries of the text would begrudge the extended search for meaning, for connections, for significance. Notes 1 An early version of these remarks was presented at the Kentucky Foreign Language Conference. I acknowledge gratefully the helpful comments and suggestions of colleagues. 2 All citations from Gottfried von Strassburg, Tristan, Text und kritischer Apparat. 3 All citations from Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, Studienausgabe. 4 See for example early studies by Schulz (1857) and Bartsch (1874); for modern studies see Fourquet (1949), Kleiber (1962), Knapp (1974), Rosenfeld (1974), Schmid (1978), and Schröder (1982). See also more recently Gerstenecker (2008). I am indebted to Albrecht Classen for his reference to some interesting onomastic etymologies proposed by André de Mandach (1995). 5 All citations from Les romans de Chrétien de Troyes. 281 An Onomastic Note on Wolfram ’ s Gahmuret 6 The scholarship on whether Kyot and Flegetanis were actual or invented sources cited by Wolfram for his Parzival remains both unresolved and impassioned. For a good overview of the competing positions see Draesner (1993). 7 Wolfram changes Chrétien ’ s Blancheflor la bele to Condwiramurs, and in so doing creates a fanciful syllable etymology that bears no linguistic similarity to the French original. 8 A roi Bans de Gomeret also appears in Chrétien ’ s Erec et Enide. 9 Although Heinzel does not consider Gahmuret to be a descriptive name, he does recognize an essential feature of Gahmuret to be a «flatterhafter Liebhaber» (96). 10 The issue of Gahmuret and Parzival ’ s inherited predisposition(s) is discussed in Christoph. 11 «Small cause has Gahmuret to misprize his own powers in the art of wooing and winning! The story shows him to have been at all times an irresistible attractive lover» (2). 12 See for example Bruce (1999). 13 See Wolfgang (1976). 14 In considering this sort of linguistic reconstruction it helps to bear in mind the injunction, attributed to Voltaire, that etymology is a science «where the vowels do not count at all and the consonants very little.» 15 Lachmann ’ s Parzival edition lists several manuscript variants for Gahmuret ’ s name, including Gagmuret (D), Gahmuoreth (D), gahmuret (G, D), gahmures (G) Gahmûretes (G), gahmôrets (G), Gahmuet (G), Gahmurt (G), gamurete (D), Gamuret (dg). Wolfram ’ s Titurel, in which Gahmuret also appears, includes the variants Gamurehten (G) and Gahmiret (G). 16 «Im Wortauslaut bezeichnet [h] den Lautwert unseres ch.» Paul (1969): 112. 17 For example: «si wære wol âmîe» (Parzival 345, 23); «ir habt ein ander âmîs» (Parzival 133, 10); «Amor was sî krîe» (Parzival 478, 30), «Condwîren âmûrs» (Parzival 527, 20). Works Cited Bartsch, Karl. «Die Eigennamen in Wolframs ‹ Parzival › und ‹ Titurel › .» Germanistische Studien 2 (1875): 114 - 59. Boesch, Bruno. «Über die Namengebung mittelhochdeutscher Dichter.» Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 32 (1958): 241 - 62. Bruce, Christopher. The Arthurian Name Dictionary. New York: Garland, 1999. Brugger, Ernst. «Ein Beitrag zur arthurischen Namenforschung, Alain de Gomeret.» Aus romanischen Sprachen und Literaturen, Festschrift Heinrich Morf. Halle: Niemeyer, 1905. 53 - 96. Chrétien de Troyes. Les romans de Chrétien de Troyes. 5, Le Conte du Graal (Perceval). Ed. Félix Lecoy. Vol. 1. Paris: Librairie Honoré Champion, 1981. Christoph, Siegfried. «Gahmuret, Herzeloyde and Parzival ’ s erbe.» Colloquia Germanica 17 (1984): 200 - 19. Draesner, Ulrike. Wege durch erzählte Welten: Intertextuelle Verweise als Mittel der Bedeutungskonstitution in Wolframs ‹ Parzival › . Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang, 1993. 282 Siegfried Christoph Fourquet, Jean. «Les noms propres du ‹ Parzival › .» Mélanges de Philologie romane et de Littérature médiévale offerts à Ernest Hoepffner. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1949. 245 - 60. Froehde, Oscar. Beiträge zur Technik der attischen Komödie. Leipzig: O. R. Reisland, 1898. Gerstenecker, Michael. Poetologie der Personennamen bei Hartmann von Aue und Wolfram von Eschenbach: Exemplarische Untersuchungen. U of Vienna Dipl.-Arb., 2008. Gottfried von Strassburg. Tristan, Text und kritischer Apparat. Ed. Karl Marold and Werner Schröder. 2nd ed. 1912. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1969. Heinzel, Richard. Über Wolframs von Eschenbach Parzival. Sitzungsberichte der kais. Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, philosophisch-historische Classe 130. Wien: F. Tempsky, 1893. Heinzle, Joachim. Stellenkommentar zu Wolframs Titurel. Tübingen: M. Niemeyer, 1972. Kleiber, Wolfgang. «Zur Namenforschung in Wolframs ‹ Parzival › .» Deutschunterricht 14 (1962): 80 - 90. Knapp, Fritz Peter. «Der Leitstand der Eigennamen im ‹ Willehalm › und das Problem von Wolframs Schriftlosigkeit.» Wolfram-Studien 2. Berlin: E. Schmidt, 1974. 193 - 218. Mandach, André de. Auf den Spuren des Heiligen Gral: Die gemeinsame Vorlage im Pyrenäischen Geheimcode von Chrétien de Troyes und Wolfram von Eschenbach: Neue Version. Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1995. Paul, Hermann. Mittelhochdeutsche Grammatik. 6th ed. Tübingen: M. Niemeyer, 1969. Richey, Margaret. Gahmuret Anschevin. A Contribution to the Study of Wolfram von Eschenbach. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1923. Rosenfeld, Hellmut. «Die Namen in Wolframs ‹ Parzival › .» Wolfram-Studien 2. Berlin: E. Schmidt, 1974. 36 - 52. Schmid, Elisabeth. «Semantische Illusionen. Zu einigen Namen bei Wolfram von Eschenbach.» Germanisch-romanische Monatsschrift 28 (1978): 291 - 309. Schröder, Werner. Die Namen im ‹ Parzival › und im ‹ Titurel › Wolframs von Eschenbach. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1982. Schulz, Albert [San-Marte]. «Über die Eigenamen im Parzival des Wolfram von Eschenbach.» Germania 2 (1857): 385 - 409. Swinburne, Hilda. «Gahmuret and Feirefiz in Wolfram ’ s ‹ Parzival › .» Modern Language Review 51 (1956): 195 - 202. Wolfgang, Lenora, ed. Bliocadran, A Prologue to the Perceval of Chrétien de Troyes, Edition and Critical Study. Tübingen: M. Niemeyer, 1976. Wolfram von Eschenbach. Parzival, Studienausgabe. Ed. Karl Lachmann. 6th ed. 1926. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1965. 283 An Onomastic Note on Wolfram ’ s Gahmuret Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH+Co. KG • Dischingerweg 5 • D-72070 Tübingen Tel. +49 (07071) 9797-0 • Fax +49 (07071) 97 97-11 • info@francke.de • www.francke.de JETZT BESTELLEN! Eva Hoffmann Goethe aus Goethe gedeutet 2., durchgesehene Auflage 2011, 630 Seiten geb. €[D] 98,00/ SFr 137,00 ISBN 978-3-7720-8413-3 „Schlüssel liegen im Buche zerstreut, das Rätsel zu lösen...“ Goethe Es gibt in Goethes Leben ein Zentrum, das den Großteil seiner Dichtung durchstrahlt: die starke Bindung an eine Frau. Ihr Tod stürzte ihn in jungen Jahren in Verzweiflung und Schuldgefühle, bis er endlich Beruhigung fand in ihrer lebenslangen Feier und, wie er gewiß war, in von ihr empfangenen Zeichen. Sein eigener Unsterblichkeitsglaube fand Bestätigung, indem er „Sie“ - Neuplatoniker, der er war - als einen Abglanz göttlicher Wahrheit erlebte. Dies behielt er für sich. Da er sich als Glied einer Reihe „wiederholter Spiegelungen“ in Einklang wußte mit Dichtern der Vergangenheit, mit Dante, Petrarca oder Hafis und ihren ähnlichen Geschicken, offenbarte er sich im Sinne des von ihm gerühmten Analogiedenkens. Zudem gab er vielfältige Hinweise auf Geheimes, größere und kleinere „Schlüssel“, „das Rätsel zu lösen“. Solch ein Schlüssel, die Dichtung Trilogie der Leidenschaft, öffnet Wege rückwärts und vorwärts durch das Werk. 033411 Auslieferung April 2011 12 08.04.11 13: 52 Edel sei der Mensch - und strafe Goethes Aufsatz zur Beibehaltung der Todesstrafe für Kindesmörderinnen RÜDIGER SCHOLZ U NIVERSITÄT F REIBURG Im Zusammenhang mit dem Todesurteil für Johanna Catharina Höhn, die ihr ohne Hilfe geborenes Kind unmittelbar nach der Geburt in einem Anfall von Panik getötet hatte, verlangte Carl August, Herzog von Sachsen-Weimar, Mitte Oktober 1783, nach dem Vorliegen des Todesurteils, von jedem seiner drei Räte des Geheimen Consiliums ein schriftliches Votum zu der Frage, ob im Staat Sachsen-Weimar die Todesstrafe für das Delikt der Tötung des neugeborenen Kindes durch die ledige Kindesmutter abgeschafft oder beibehalten werden sollte. Die Antwort auf diese Frage war mit dem Schicksal Johanna Höhns verbunden: Im Fall der Beibehaltung würde sie hingerichtet werden. 1 Das Geheime Consilium war die eigentliche Regierung. Alle Entscheidungen blieben diesem Gremium vorbehalten. Ihm gehörten neben Herzog Carl August an: Jacob Friedrich Freiherr von Fritsch (1731 - 1814), seit 1754 im Staatsdienst, Wirklicher Geheimer Rat seit 1772; er war der Dienstälteste. Christian Friedrich Schnauss (1722 - 1792) war zwar älter als Fritsch, aber erst seit 1779 Geheimer Rat. Johann Wolfgang Goethe, seit 1782 von Goethe (1749 - 1832), war der Jüngste, seit 1779 Geheimer Rat. Eine Verteilung von Aufgabengebieten gab es in diesem Gremium nicht. Carl August hatte, das Todesurteil für Johanna Höhn voraussehend, 2 schon im Mai für die Abschaffung und damit für die Begnadigung Johanna Höhns plädiert, die Räte seiner Verwaltungsbehörde, der sog. «Regierung», hatten einzeln dazu schriftliche Stellungnahmen abgeben müssen. Jetzt mußten auch die Geheimräte sich schriftlich äußern. Goethe hat sich dagegen gesträubt. Erst teilte er mit, dass er sich nicht «getraue», seine Gedanken «hierüber in Form eines Voti» abzufassen. Das ist seltsam, denn er war ausgebildeter Jurist mit Universitätsexamen und mit, wenn auch kurzer, Praxis als Rechtsanwalt. Gerade über die Todesstrafe hatte er beim Abschluß des Jurastudiums eine These verfaßt, 3 er kannte die Rechtsliteratur darüber. Obwohl das Votieren alltägliches Geschäft im Geheimen Consilium war, wollte Goethe kein Votum abgeben, sondern statt dessen einen Aufsatz einreichen, was er auch getan hat. Als Schlußfolgerung dieses Aufsatzes teilte er mit, dass es nach seiner «Meinung räthlicher seyn mögte die Todtesstrafe beyzubehalten». Die beiden kurzen Texte im vollständigen Wortlaut: Da Serenissimus clementissime regens gnädigst befohlen daß auch ich meine Gesinnungen über die Bestrafung des Kindermords zu den Ackten geben solle, so finde ich mich ohngefähr in dem Falle in welchem sich H.[err] Hofrath Eckardt befunden als diese Sache bei fürstl. Regierung cirkulirte. Ich getraue mir nämlich nicht meine Gedancken hierüber in Form eines Voti zufassen, werde aber nicht ermangeln in wenigen Tagen einen kleinen Aufsatz unterthänig einzureichen. Weimar d. 25. Oktbr 1783 JWGoethe. Da das Resultat meines unterthänigst eingereichten Aufsatzes mit beyden vorliegenden gründlichen Votis völlig übereinstimmt; so kann ich um so weniger zweifeln selbigen in allen Stücken beyzutreten, und zu erklären, daß auch nach meiner Meinung räthlicher seyn mögte die Todtesstrafe beyzubehalten. d. 4 Nov. 1783 JWGoethe. 4 Der Aufsatz liegt nicht bei den Akten, er ist verschwunden, auch in Goethes privatem Nachlaß fand er sich nicht. Über die Gründe zu spekulieren, ist müßig. Für die Vermutung, Goethe habe den Aufsatz möglicherweise zurückgefordert, weil er ihn in einem schlechten Licht zeigt, 5 gibt es keinen Beweis oder auch nur Anhaltspunkt. Dass Goethe nachweislich eigene Briefe «aus politisch empfindlichen Korrespondenzen» zurückgefordert und vernichtet hat, 6 reicht zur Vermutung nicht aus, dass er dies auch mit seinem Aufsatz zur Todesstrafe getan hat. Vielleicht hat sich jemand von der Regierung den Aufsatz ausgeliehen und dann nicht mehr zurückgegeben. Auch die Voten der Regierungsmitglieder sind verschwunden, und auch die Reinschrift des Todesurteils lag nicht bei der Akte B 2754, obwohl auf dem Deckblatt vermerkt; die Konzeptfassung fand sich bei den Akten des Schöppenstuhls. Aus der Schlußfolgerung ist zu entnehmen, dass Goethe nach Abwägen von Für und Wider sich für die Beibehaltung der Todesstrafe bei Kindesmord aussprach. Ob er auf den konkreten Fall einging, läßt sich nicht erschließen. Seither wird bedauert, das wir die Argumentation Goethes nicht studieren können. Es gibt aber ein Dokument Goethes aus dem Jahr 1783, in welchem diese Frage erörtert wird: Das ist das Gedicht Edel sei er Mensch, 1783 veröffentlicht, 1789 von Goethe mit dem Titel Das Göttliche versehen. Ich werde im folgenden darlegen, welche Position Goethe darin zu Strafen einnimmt. Meine These ist, dass Goethe in diesem Gedicht jene Argumentation formuliert, die mit großer Wahrscheinlichkeit auch sein Aufsatz formuliert hat. 286 Rüdiger Scholz Das Gedicht wurde im November 1783 im Tiefurter Journal «dem Weimarer Kreise mitgeteilt», 7 in jener handschriftlichen, nur in elf Exemplaren hergestellten Zeitschrift für den Weimarer Kreis um Anna Amalia. Es gibt eine handschriftliche Fassung Goethes. 8 Wann es genau entstand, ist unbekannt, aber offenbar im Laufe des Jahres 1783; Karl Otto Conrady vermutet mit Recht im «Spätherbst». 9 In dieser Zeit entschied sich das Schicksal von Johanna Höhn. Am 25. September erging das Todesurteil, am 25. Oktober sträubte sich Goethe gegen das ihm abgenötigte Votum, am 4. November reichte er seinen Aufsatz ein und votierte für die Beibehaltung der Todesstrafe und damit für die Hinrichtung. Am 28. November wurde Johanna Catharina Höhn hingerichtet. Die zeitliche Nähe des Gedichtes zum herausragendsten Weimarer Geschehen des Jahres 1783, der Hinrichtung von Johanna Höhn, ist evident. Hinzu kommt der thematische Bezug. Das Gedicht erörtert das Thema der ethischen Wertung menschlicher Handlungen und ausdrücklich auch die Frage des Rechts des Menschen zu strafen. Zeit und Thema stiften den Zusammenhang. Die Gleichzeitigkeit von Goethes Äußerungen zum Recht des Menschen zu strafen und in seinem Votum zur Beibehaltung der Todesstrafe für Kindestötung unmittelbar nach der Geburt durch die ledige Kindesmutter macht das Gedicht Edel sei er Mensch zu einem politischen Text. Das Gedicht ist Goethes Beitrag zur Frage der Abschaffung der Todesstrafe. In der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts neigte sich die erregte gesamteuropäische Diskussion um die Todesstrafe gerade für dieses Delikt der Abschaffung zu, die in einigen Ländern, z. B. Rußland und Schweden, 1783 schon abgeschafft war und in den nächsten Jahren in weiteren Staaten abgeschafft wurde - nur nicht in Sachsen-Weimar. Der Hintergrund war das Vordringen des modernen Schuldstrafrechts, welches das aus dem Mittelalter stammende Vergeltungsstrafrecht ablöste, von dem die Carolina, die Peinliche Hals-Gerichtsordnung Kaiser Karls V. von 1532, beseelt war. Damit waren die Umstände der Tat für das Strafmaß zu berücksichtigen, und hier gab es in der sozialen und psychischen Notlage der allein gelassenen Dienstmägde bei der unehelichen Geburt mit der drohenden Folge des Verlustes des Arbeitsplatzes Entlastungsgründe für die Mutter. Goethes Schwager Johann Georg Schlosser beispielsweise hatte sich für die Abschaffung der Todesstrafe ausgesprochen. Wie kritisch auch in Weimar die Todesstrafe für dieses Delikt gesehen wurde, zeigt das Reskript des Herzogs vom 13. Mai 1783, in dem Carl August für die Abschaffung und damit für die Begnadigung zu lebenslanger Haft eintrat. Dort heißt es: 287 Edel sei der Mensch Wenn man erwägt, unter was für Umständen die That verübt wird, und wie leicht es geschehen kann, daß das Gemüth einer [eingefügt: ] unehelich schwangern] Weibes=Person, [eingefügt: ] bey oder kurz nach ihrer Entbindung,] in einem Augenblicke der Schwäche und Betäubung, durch den Eindruck der Furcht [eingefügt: ] vor] der sie, wenn ihre uneheliche Schwangerschaft bekannt würde, unausbleiblich erwartenden Schande und denen dabey aus der Belästigung mit einem Kinde für sie erwachsenden Beschwerlichkeiten übermeistert und zu Faßung, auch jählinger Ausführung des unnatürlichen Entschlußes, das unglückliche Geschöpf, von deßen Daseyn sie alle diese Übel zu besorgen hat, aus dem Wege zu reumen, hingerißen wird: So kann es nicht fehlen, daß diese Betrachtung nicht unter der Abscheu, den das Verbrechen selbst erweckt, einiges Mitleiden gegen die Verbrecherin mit mischen, und einen Bewegungs=Grund zu Milderung der Strafe an die Hand geben sollte. 10 Das war ein bewegendes Plädoyer für die Berücksichtigung der Tatumstände für das Strafmaß, eine beeindruckende Argumentation für die generelle Abschaffung der Todesstrafe für dieses Delikt. Den Höhepunkt der Kritik zeigte Wilhelm Bodes Bemerkung, die Hinrichtung von Johanna Höhn erscheine ihm als «Staatsmord». 11 Goethe selbst war in seinem berühmten Roman Die Leiden des jungen Werthers von 1774, der ihm Weltruhm einbrachte, für das Schuldstrafrecht eingetreten, er hatte mit seinem Faust, dessen erste Fassung in Abschriften in Weimar seit 1775 kursierte, dieses Thema aufgegriffen und Margarete ihr Kind im Zustand des temporären Wahnsinns töten lassen, also die Tat in Richtung Schuldunfähigkeit gewertet. In dem Iphigenie-Drama, das seit 1779 in der Prosafassung existierte und 1779 in Ettersburg aufgeführt wurde, mit Goethe als Orest und, ab der dritten Vorstellung, mit Herzog Carl August als Pylades, wird in Gestalt der Titelheldin für den Verzicht auf Tötung plädiert. Kurz: Goethes Plädoyer für die Beibehaltung der Todesstrafe für Kindestötung und damit für die Hinrichtung von Johanna Höhn erscheint nicht nur heute, sondern auch schon 1783 nicht zu Goethes Werken zu passen, sie erscheint als ein extrem inhumanes Verhalten. Das passt auch so gar nicht zusammen mit dem Aufruf zu humanem Handeln in dem Gedicht Edel sei der Mensch, dessen Anfangs- und Schlußverse eigentlich wie eine Selbstermahnung Goethes klingen, Leben zu erhalten. Neuere Veröffentlichungen betonen daher zu Recht die Divergenz zwischen der hochethischen Dichtung und Goethes konkretem Handeln. Karl Otto Conrady hat sich 2007 ausführlich mit der Frage beschäftigt, wie beides bei Goethe zu verstehen sei. Er verweist darauf, dass neben der Aufforderung, edel, hilfreich und gut zu sein, dem Menschen auch das Recht zu richten und zu strafen zugesprochen wird und dass der Appell des Gedichtes «unspezifisch allgemein, ethisch abstrakt» sei. 12 288 Rüdiger Scholz Dass Goethe aus tiefster Überzeugung für die Todesstrafe plädierte, dass es ihm darauf ankam, das Recht auf die Verhängung und Exekutierung der Todesstrafe zu verteidigen, zeigt der Mittelteil des Gedichtes Edel sei der Mensch. Um das zu erläutern, dient ein Blick auf das Ganze des Gedichts. Hier der vollständige Text: Edel sei der Mensch, Hilfreich und gut! Denn das allein Unterscheidet ihn Von allen Wesen, Die wir kennen. Heil den unbekannten Höhern Wesen, Die wir ahnen! Ihnen gleiche der Mensch! Sein Beispiel lehr ’ uns Jene glauben. Denn unfühlend Ist die Natur: Es leuchtet die Sonne Über Bös ’ und Gute, Und dem Verbrecher Glänzen wie dem Besten Der Mond und die Sterne. Wind und Ströme Donner und Hagel Rauschen ihren Weg Und ergreifen Vorübereilend Einen um den andern. Auch so das Glück Tappt unter die Menge, Faßt bald des Knaben Lockige Unschuld, Bald auch den kahlen Schuldigen Scheitel. Nach ewigen, ehrnen, Großen Gesetzen Müssen wir alle Unseres Daseins Kreise vollenden. Nur allein der Mensch Vermag das Unmögliche: Er unterscheidet, Wählet und richtet; Er kann dem Augenblick Dauer verleihen. Er allein darf Den Guten lohnen, Den Bösen strafen, Heilen und retten, Alles Irrende, Schweifende Nützlich verbinden. Und wir verehren Die Unsterblichen, Als wären sie Menschen, Täten im Großen, Was der Beste im Kleinen Tut oder möchte. Der edle Mensch Sei hilfreich und gut! Unermüdet schaff ’ er Das Nützliche, Rechte, Sei uns ein Vorbild Jener geahneten Wesen! Man darf über den plakativ edlen Anfangs- und Schlußversen den Mittelteil nicht übersehen. Hier werden Natur und Mensch als Gattung unterschieden. Goethe betont, dass zwar der Mensch «nach ewigen, ehrnen, / Großen Gesetzen», denen der Natur, leben muß, dass aber anders als die Natur, die keine Moral kennt, und anders als «das Glück», das, «unter die Menge» «tappt» und sowohl unschuldige Knaben - nicht aber unschuldige Mädchen! 289 Edel sei der Mensch - wie Schuldige beglückt, es dem Menschen vorbehalten ist, zu unterscheiden, zu wählen, zu richten, zu belohnen und zu strafen: «Nur allein der Mensch / Vermag das Unmögliche: / Er unterscheidet, / Wählet und richtet; [. . .] / Er allein darf / Den Guten lohnen, / Den Bösen strafen, [. . .]». Wie stark Goethe den Menschen und sein Vermögen zu ethischen Beurteilungen im Gegensatz zur Natur sieht, die keine Gefühle kennt, zeigt, dass er vier Strophen dieser empfindunglosen Amoralität der Natur widmet, von denen die erste konstatiert, dass auch dem «Verbrecher» die Sonne leuchtet und Mond und Sterne glänzen. Dass in einem solchen Gedicht das Recht des Menschen zu strafen betont wird, ein Recht, das den Menschen über die Natur stellt, mutet seltsam an. Man erwartet eher Verse über Sympathie, Freundschaft und Menschenliebe. Die Strophen des Mittelteils (V. 13 - 48) haben Auswirkungen auf den Schluß. Dass in der letzten Strophe der edle, hilfreiche und gute Mensch aufgefordert wird, «das Nützliche, Rechte» «unermüdet» zu schaffen, schließt offenbar das Strafen ein: Das «Rechte» bezieht sich auf «richtet». Wir alle haben das Gedicht offenbar falsch verstanden. «Das Göttliche» in der späteren Überschrift und in der zweiten Strophe verweist auf den Menschen als Gattung, und dieses Göttliche des Menschen bezieht sich neben dem Edlen und Guten auch auf das allein dem Menschen vorbehaltene Vermögen, ethisch zu urteilen und zu richten. Goethe hat offenbar unter dem Edlen, Hilfreichen und Guten auch das Strafen verstanden: Der Mensch «allein darf / [. . .] den Bösen strafen» wäre dann die Kernaussage, die das Göttliche des Menschen (mit)begründet. 13 Das Gedicht Edel sei der Mensch ist mit seiner Aufforderung an den Menschen, Gutes, Nützliches, Rechtes zu tun, zugleich eine Rechtfertigung des strafenden Menschen. 14 Ich halte es für möglich, ja wahrscheinlich, dass Goethe mit seinem Gedicht und dessen zwei Gesichtern - Gutes tun und strafen - in der aktuellen Diskussion über die Abschaffung der Todesstrafe für die Tötung des eben geborenen Kindes durch die ledige Kindesmutter den Standpunkt des harten Strafens rechtfertigen will. Die Rechtfertigung liegt darin, dass Goethe das Strafen allein den göttlichen Wesen und den Menschen vorbehält, basierend auf der allein diesem zukommenden Unterscheidung des Guten und Bösen. Ich gehe noch einen Schritt weiter: Für mich sieht es so aus, dass das Gedicht den Kern der Argumentation des verloren gegangenen Aufsatzes Goethes zur Frage der Abschaffung oder der Beibehaltung der Todesstrafe für dieses Delikt enthält. Die abstrakte Begründung für die Beibehaltung der Todesstrafe würde auch erklären, dass Goethe für seine Argumentation die Form eines Aufsatzes wählte. Goethe argumentierte auf der obersten philosophi- 290 Rüdiger Scholz schen Ebene, seine ethisch philosophische Begründung passte nicht zum Stil eines Votums. Gegen die seit 1764 laufende internationale Diskussion über die Abschaffung der Todesstrafe überhaupt und die Zuspitzung der Abschaffung bei Kindestötung in der Zwangslage der ledigen Mutter hält Goethe am Recht der Bestrafung auch durch Hinrichtung fest, selbst bei diesem Delikt. Mit seinem Votum für das Edle, Hilfreiche und Gute wehrt er das Gegenargument ab, sein Votum für die Hinrichtung sei brutal, unmenschlich, sei «Staatsmord», zerstöre den Glauben an das Gute im Menschen. Die Argumentation Goethes ist nicht neu. Die Begründung für die Verhängung der Todesstrafe und das Recht auf Hinrichtung von Verurteilten geschah von jeher mit der Gottnähe des Menschen. Denn zumindest nach christlicher Auffassung darf nur Gott über Leben oder Tod entscheiden, weshalb z. B. Selbsttötung als verwerflicher Mord gewertet und mit dem Ausschluß vom Gemeindefriedhof geahndet wurde und Abtreibung verboten war. Im Alten Testament jedoch sollte nach I. Mose 9,6 das Blut eines Mörders durch Menschen vergossen werden. Schnauss verweist auf dieses Bibelzitat, rückt es aber etwas beiseite: «Ich übergehe den Grundsatz: Wer Menschenblut vergeußt p.» 15 Mit der Fähigkeit zu moralischen Urteilen und daraus folgenden Sanktionen bis zur Hinrichtung maßt sich der Mensch ein Gott vorbehaltenes Recht an. Nach Goethes Argumentation im Gedicht Edel sei der Mensch zu Recht, denn die Göttlichkeit des Menschen erhebt ihn über die Natur, die weder den Guten belohnen noch den Bösen bestrafen kann. Umgekehrt wurde die Abschaffung der Todesstrafe auch und in erster Linie damit begründet, es stehe dem Menschen nicht zu, Leben auszulöschen, denn alle Menschen, auch die Verbrecher, seien Gottes Geschöpfe. Nicht jeder Mensch durfte strafen, schon gar nicht mit dem Tode. Das ‹ göttliche › Recht zu strafen war seit Jahrhunderten Staat und Herrscher vorbehalten. Die niedere Gerichtsbarkeit des Adels schloß die Verhängung der Todesstrafe aus. Selbstjustiz war verboten. Ein entscheidendes Merkmal von Staatlichkeit war und ist das Gewaltmonopol. Unter diesem Leitsatz wurden Duelle auch in absolutistischen Regimen verboten, deren Hauptstütze der Adel war, der das Recht auf Duelle aus dem mittelalterlichen Faustrecht für sich beanspruchte. Goethe tritt mit seiner naturrechtlichen Begründung des Rechts zu strafen für das Herrschaftrsrecht ein, über Tod oder Leben zu verfügen, aber er begründet es mit dem Recht der Gattung Mensch: Ein Verzicht auf die Todesstrafe erschien Goethe, so die Argumentation des Gedichts, offenbar ein Schritt des Menschen zurück in den rohen Naturzustand. 291 Edel sei der Mensch Im Hinblick auf das Gedicht Edel sei der Mensch stellt der Kontext der Entstehungsgeschichte die bisherige Interpretation auf den Kopf. Wer hätte gedacht, dass dieses Gedicht, welches in der ersten und letzten Strophe im Sichtbar-Machen des Göttlichen «mit Hilfe der Humanität des Menschen», so Gerhard Kaiser, seine Kernaussage zu haben scheint, 16 in Wahrheit in der Rechtfertigung der Beibehaltung der Todesstrafe und der Rechtfertigung der Hinrichtung von Johanna Höhn seine Entstehung, seinen Sinn und seinen Zweck hat? Dass «das sittlichste Gedicht Goethes», so Max Kommerell, 17 in seinem Kern ein Plädoyer für die Todesstrafe und die aktuelle Hinrichtung einer verurteilten Frau ist, dürfte eine sensationelle Erkenntnis sein. Notes 1 Eine ausführliche Darstellung der Höhn-Geschichte in: Rüdiger Scholz (Hg.), Das kurze Leben der Johanna Catharina Höhn. Kindesmorde und Kindesmörderinnen im Weimar Carl Augusts und Goethes. Die Akten zu den Fällen Johanna Catharina Höhn, Maria Sophia Rost und Margaretha Dorothea Altwein (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2004) 6 - 28. Die Dokumente auch in: Volker Wahl (Hg.), «Das Kind in meinem Leib». Sittlichkeitsdelikte und Kindsmord in Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach unter Carl August. Eine Quellenedition 1777 - 1786 (Weimar: Verlag Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 2004). 2 Carl Augst am 13. Mai an seine Regierung: «Wir haben Uns aus denen von Euch mit Euren Berichte vom 2 ten My. anhero eingeschickten, bey dem hiesigen Amte wider die bey selbigem, wegen begangenen Kinder=Mords in Verhaft sitzende Johanna Höhnin, aus Tannroda, ergangenen Untersuchungs=Acten umständlichen Vortrag thun laßen, und finden leyder! den Fall [. . .] so beschaffen, daß mit Gewißheit vorauszusehen, daß, [. . .], nach denen vorhandenen Gesetzen, wider die Verbrecherin auf eine Todes=Strafe werde gesprochen werden.» Scholz, Das kurze Leben 65, Anm. 1. 3 Positiones Juris, 53. These: «Ponae capitales non abrogandae» (Todesstrafen sind nicht abzuschaffen). Zwei Thesen weiter (Nr. 55) stellt Goethe fest, es sei unter den Gelehrten strittig, ob Kindesmöderinnen hinzurichten seien: «An foemina partum recenter editum trucidans capite plectanda sit? quaestio est inter doctores controversa.» (Ob nicht einer Frau, die ihre kürzlich geborene Leibesfrucht ermordet, der Kopf abzuschlagen sei? Diese Frage ist unter den Gelehrten kontrovers.) Johann Wolfgang Goethe, dtv- Gesamtausgabe (München: dtv, 1962) XIII, 158. 4 Scholz, Das kurze Leben 87, Anm. 1. 5 Das vermutet Sigrid Damm, Christiane und Goethe (Berlin: Insel Verlag, 1998) 90. 6 W. Daniel Wilson, Das Goethe-Tabu: Protest und Menschenrechte im klassischen Weimar(München: dtv, 1999) 351. 7 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Werke: Hamburger Ausgabe in 14 Bänden. 11. Aufl. Hg. Erich Truntz (München: dtv, 1978) I, 537. 8 Sie befindet sich im Düsseldorfer Goethe-Museum. Goethe, Werke I, 537. 9 Karl Otto Conrady, «Goethes Gedicht ‹ Edel sei der Mensch › im Schattten eines Todesurteils. Ein Vortrag zur Information und Reflexion». In: Peter Hanau/ Carl A. 292 Rüdiger Scholz Lückerath/ Wolfgang Schmitz/ Clemens Zintzen (Hg.), Engagierte Verwaltung für die Wissenschaft. Festschrift für Kanzler Johannes Neyses (Köln: Universitätsu. Stadtbibliothek, 2007) 39 - 54, hier 40. Gedruckt wurde es erstmals von Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi 1785, ohne Goethes Wissen. Erst in der Ausgabe von Goethes Schriften 1789 erhält es die pompöse Überschrift «Das Göttliche». 10 Scholz, Das kurze Leben 65 f., Anm. 1. 11 Scholz, Das kurze Leben 18, Anm. 1.; zitiert nach W. Daniel Wilson, Unterirdische Gänge. Goethe, Freimaurerei und Politik (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 1999) 201. Ebenso Wilson, Das Goethe-Tabu 8. 12 Conrady, «Goethes Gedicht» 53, Anm. 9. 13 Auf die Bedeutung des Strafens in Goethes Gedicht habe ich schon 2004 hingewiesen: Rüdiger Scholz, «Goethes Agieren im Weimarer Staat und die Humanität der Klassik». In: Colloquia Germanica 37 (2004): 129 - 51, hier 144. 14 Inwieweit die Formulierung «geahndeten Wesen» statt «geahneten Wesen» in Goethes Handschrift ein Freudscher Versprecher ist - alles muß «geahndet», d. h gestraft werden - , mag dahingestellt sein. 15 Scholz, Das kurze Leben 84, Anm. 1. 16 Gerhard Kaiser, Geschichte der deutschen Lyrik von Goethe bis Heine. 2. Teil (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1988) 463. 17 Max Kommerell, Gedanken über Gedichte (Frankfurt a. M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1943) 447; zitiert nach Conrady, «Goethes Gedicht» 52, Anm. 9. 293 Edel sei der Mensch Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH+Co. KG • Dischingerweg 5 • D-72070 Tübingen Tel. +49 (07071) 9797-0 • Fax +49 (07071) 97 97-11 • info@francke.de • www.francke.de NEUERSCHEINUNG APRIL 2012 JETZT BESTELLEN! Klaus Schenk ERZÄHLEN SCHREIBEN INSZENIEREN Zum Imaginären des Schreibens von der Romantik zur Moderne 2012, 548 Seiten, 9 Abbildungen €[D] 88,00/ SFr 117,00 ISBN 978-3-7720-8382-2 Seit der späten Romantik tritt in Prosatexten eine imaginäre Problematik des Schreibens hervor. Vor allem aber an den literarischen Krisenphänomenen seit der Jahrhundertwende um 1900 wird eine Spannung zwischen Erzählen und Schreiben ersichtlich. Narrative Genres werden auf die medialen Inszenierungen ihrer Schreibweisen hin transparent. Bei Autoren der Nachkriegsmoderne übernimmt die Schreibthematik die Funktion, an die literarischen Entwicklungen der Moderne anzuschließen. In der Autobiographisierung des Schreibens seit den 70er Jahren zeichnet sich zudem ein Feld von autofiktionalen Inszenierungen ab. In der vorliegenden Studie werden Funktionen des Schreibens für literarische Texte von der späten Romantik bis zur Moderne in ihrer imaginären Dimension untersucht, wobei sich ein Spannungsfeld zwischen Erzählen, Schreiben und Inszenieren ergibt. An Textbeispielen von E.T.A. Hoffmann, Franz Kafka, Günter Grass, Christa Wolf u.a. können die Ambivalenzen von Schreibinszenierungen in literaturtheoretischer und textanalytischer Hinsicht aufgezeigt werden. 026012 Auslieferung April 2012.indd 32 19.04.12 10: 03 «Imperial Eyes»: Visuality, Gaze and Racial Differentiation in Texts and Images around 1900 KATHARINA VON HAMMERSTEIN U NIVERSITY OF C ONNECTICUT The frequency of terms like «gaze/ Blick,» «view,» «look,» «eyes,» «seeing,» «visions,» «image,» «imagination,» «iconography,» «Spektakel,» «Schaustellung/ Zurschaustellung,» and «voyeur» in titles 1 of postcolonial 2 analyses indicates the great importance postcolonial critics have placed on the visuality of the colonial imagination and discourse. Birgit Tautz ’ s volume Color 1800/ 1900/ 2000: Signs of Ethnic Difference (2004), for example, investigates how visual perception has contributed to the construction of racial difference and how vision and perception have related to representation and textuality over the course of the past two centuries. Thomas Miller ’ s comparative study of German and American anthropology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries outlines how «physical-type» anthropology «sought to build a scientific racial typology from observations of individual characteristics» (124): «Differences in skin and eye pigmentation were considered essential markers of differentiation among human groups» (126). Such descriptions in medical and anthropological scholarship influenced the «scientific and popular discourse about race and the historical origins of human populations» (124). Although nineteenth-century anthropometry was gradually abandoned after its failure to provide an objective racial classification, a hierarchicalized, neo-Darwinian anthropology of human variation from lower to higher states and popular discourse about supposedly natural racial differences continued well into the twentieth century (124). In Looking for the Other (1997), Ann Kaplan investigates «modernism ’ s two powerful objectifying gazes - those of patriarchy, the much-debated ‹ male gaze, › and of colonialism - the ‹ imperial gaze › » (22). She concludes that «looking is power» (4) as it «symbolizes ways of being toward others, ways of expressing domination» (299). In terms of vision, Kaplan differentiates between gaze as «a one-way subjective» activity and look which «connote[s] a process, a relation» (xvi). Vision, observation, and perception have played a central role in the construction of biological categories, in the visual tropes that pervaded the categorization of human bodies, and in the application of these categories to social classification in racial and racist terms 3 that resulted in segregation, discrimination, and the construction of imperialist hierarchies. While racial identity has been socially constructed, it has been inscribed in the body through a taxonomy invented and defined by the white observer. Applying theoretical approaches to the interplay between vision and racism, I revisit here textual and visual images of European-African encounters as they are represented in selected European works of anthropology, literature, and art around 1900. 4 More specifically, I focus on contradictions between colonial and anticolonial elements as well as on the intersection of racism and sexism as they are reflected in representations of the imperial gaze across cultural and racial divides. My investigation includes representations of colonial-era gazes in Dr. C. H. Stratz ’ s 1904 Naturgeschichte des Menschen. Grundriss der somatischen Anthropologie. Mit 342 farbigen Abbildungen und 5 farbigen Tafeln; in literary works such as fin-de-siècle Peter Altenberg ’ s Ashantee (1897) and Rainer Maria Rilke ’ s 1902/ 03 poem «Die Aschanti Figure 1: Cartoon of scientist inspecting Saartje Baartman, marketed as «The Hottentot Venus.» Engraving ca. 1850. 296 Katharina von Hammerstein (Jardin d ’ Acclimatation)»; and in art work such as Wilhelm Gause ’ s gouaches depicting African Ashanti who were exhibited in Vienna in 1896 and 1897; to expand on European perspectives, I briefly refer to Édouard Manet ’ s and Pablo Picasso ’ s paintings both entitled Olympia (1863 and 1901), and Picasso ’ s Les Desmoiselles d ’ Avignon (1907). In 1904, after Germany had proudly been the third-largest colonial power (after Britain and France) for twenty years, Dr. C. H. Stratz published his compendium. The title page announces the inclusion of 324 color illustrations (photographs of naked human beings from around the globe) and five charts that are intended to serve as «objektives Beweismaterial» so that readers and onlookers may draw their own conclusions (V - VI). As Stratz ’ s foreword explicitly states, his volume is designed to educate «a wider audience» (V) about scientific scholarship on the history of human development. It furthermore intends «die theoretische Grundlage [zu] schaff[en], von der die praktischen Versuche zur Verbesserung und Veredlung des Menschengeschlechts ausgehen müssen» (V). This allusion to racial hygiene - which precludes interracial sexual relations, as the white European race is envisioned at the top and other races further down on the evolutionary scale - is accompanied by a statement that puts anthropological science proudly at the service of German colonialism: «[V]on ganz besonderer Wichtigkeit ist sie [die Verbesserung und Veredlung des Menschengeschlechts] für einen kolonialen Staat, zu welchem auch Deutschland in den letzten Jahren mehr und mehr geworden ist» (V). The volume promotes the notion of the white race as the most advanced by claiming scientific authority - note the author ’ s academic title on the cover - underscored by the frequent use of scientific terminology to categorize physical phenomena and «typical» racial attributes and by combining the text with overwhelming visual «proof» to substantiate observations and conclusions regarding racial typology which had already been called into question by another branch of anthropology (e. g., by Franz Boas) years earlier (Miller 130). Normalcy is measured by white European standards as the caption explaining the photograph of a young white woman suggests: «normaler weiblicher Körper (Böhmin)» (173, my emphasis). By contrast, a group of indigenous Herero from Southwest Africa (today ’ s Namibia) is considered deficient: «ausgesprochen primitiv» (348). The political element in Stratz ’ s vision-based classification and hierarchicalization of races becomes obvious when we consider how this approach contributed - in the name of science - to justifying the colonial rule of supposedly superior «civilized» German colonizers over supposedly inferior «primitive» 5 African natives in the German colony of Southwest Africa in a political climate that 297 «Imperial Eyes»: Visuality, Gaze, Racial Differentiation made possible the genocide of the Herero at the hands of German colonial troops in the very year Stratz ’ s volume was published (1904). The racist implications of Stratz ’ s visual categorization of humankind are accompanied by sexist imagery: the photo of a young, naked white woman shows her abashedly hiding her face (173); by contrast, naked black women and men are presented in full view emphasizing their supposedly primitive nature, e. g., by depicting men with bow and arrow and wild, «unkempt» hair (373) or by photographing young women in suggestive poses such as with arms folded behind their head and exposing their bare breasts (344). In the guise of a scientific quest and accompanied by scholarly semantics, Stratz ’ s compilation of photographs of naked people, most of them women, resembles a pornographic publication that eroticizes the exotic. The volume thus helps construct and consolidate the stereotypical image of black women ’ s supposedly highly developed, untamed and innate sensuality, lack of a «civilized» sense of decency and morality, and sexual availability - in this case, to the camera and thus to the presumably white European male onlooker and reader. As early as «in the eighteenth century, anatomy and public exhibitions in anatomical theaters were used to present theories of racial difference [. . .] and to forge, through the community of spectators, the awareness of racial, ethnic and [. . .] fictionalized national communities» (Tautz 28). By 1900, photography allowed for mass production of visual images that promoted notions of ethnic alterity and pseudoscientific concepts of racial and national communities. While Stratz ’ s intention may have been honorable in the sense of spreading knowledge about other cultures, his presentation of them demonstrates that the author could not shed the a priori patterns of perception regarding race, gender/ sex, and nation that shaped his gaze through what Mary Louise Pratt calls «imperial eyes.» The tight link between gaze, visuality, and racial differentiation had intensified in European discourse since the early 1800s when competition for and exploitation of colonies increased, particularly in Africa, and national pride was on the rise in European countries. In his 1811 Lehrbuch der Naturphilosophie, Lorenz Oken, along with numerous European scientists of his day, categorizes black Africans as ape-men and differentiates between the black skin-man and the white eye-man; he thereby determines and justifies the «superior» position of the reflective, systematic white observer vis-à-vis the «inferior» black object of observation reduced to his or her exterior appearance (Benthien 180). At almost the same time South African Saartje Baartman, who was marketed as the «Hottentot Venus,» was exhibited in England and France for her protrusive buttocks. The rumor of her peculiar 298 Katharina von Hammerstein genitalia drew crowds. Her racial/ sexual «anomaly» was associated with «animality» (Shohat 69), and she was treated by medical and social scientists throughout the nineteenth century as an icon of sexual and racial differences (see fig. 1; Gilman, «Black Bodies» 232 - 39). Her image literally «gave body to racist theory» (Lindfors 62) and was exploited to justify the concept of the white and black races › «natural» differences in intellect, civilization and human rights, or the lack thereof. Over the course of the nineteenth century, exhibiting one «exotic» individual for public observation gave way to a stream of ethnographic exhibits which presented images of entire foreign - including African - landscapes, animals, and groups of people to white audiences in European cities. Völkerschauen, 6 such as those organized by Carl Hagenbeck as early as the 1870s, gained enormous mass popularity and became a financially lucrative enterprise. «In a culture of colonial consumption, Blackness [was] made to serve the desire for exoticism and exhibitionism» (Badenberg, «Mohrenwäsche» 163). Frequently, the «ethnic villages» were set up in zoological gardens which enhanced the impression of the projected natural, animal-like primitivism of the human exhibits. While staged as quite inauthentic spectacles, the shows suggested to the white European onlookers authentic encounters with indigenous «savages.» Visually demonstrating an ostensibly natural polarity between European civilization, technological advancement, modernity and presumed superiority on the one hand and primitivism and presumed inferiority on the other, between Us and Them, Self and Other in general and White and Black in particular, ethnographic exhibits contributed to presenting the white man ’ s domination over other races as the result of a supposedly natural inequality and thus justifying colonialism as a supposedly natural political system. At the same time, a new wave of romanticization of «natural (wo)man» cast her/ him as counterposed to the assumed physical degradation and moral decadence of industrialized populations (Miller 124). «Having defined the dark race in opposition to civilization with industrial culture, the native was therefore perceived as being ‹ purer, › nearer to the origin of man» (Vera 117). In the realm of turn-of-the-century literature, we find in Peter Altenberg ’ s Ashantee (1897) an example of romanticizing Africans as «purer,» more genuine, and less affected than Europeans - more specifically Austrians. The work displays an ambivalence between admiration, even idealization, of the Ashanti as «paradise people» (1897 dedication; 2007, 27) 7 in the eyes of a wellmeaning Austrian on the one hand and Eurocentrism, racial essentialism, and sexist perspectives on the other. In his collection of Impressionistic sketches, Altenberg describes the encounters of the work ’ s autobiographical protago- 299 «Imperial Eyes»: Visuality, Gaze, Racial Differentiation nist called Sir Peter and Peter A. with a group of Ashanti tribespeople from the Gold Coast of Africa, the former British colony known today as Ghana. Members of the real-life Ashanti had indeed been installed as living objects in a popular ethnographic exhibit from July through October 1896 in the Vienna Tiergarten am Schüttel, then still located in the Prater. 8 While Altenberg ’ s depiction of them shows genuine curiosity about cultural differences, scholars ’ interpretations of the images he constructs vary. 9 Like Stratz, Altenberg employs exoticism in his portrayal of the exhibited Ashanti; however, he does so not to promulgate Western hegemony, but rather to criticize the dehumanizing prejudices common in turn-of-the-century Vienna where the ethnic and national tensions of the multinational Habsburg Empire created a political and social climate of racism and stark differentiation between Self and Other. While most of the thirty-eight episodes of Ashantee present images of daily life in the Vienna Ashanti exhibit and the protagonist ’ s friendly relations with and admiration of a group of adolescent Ashanti girls, several episodes explicitly target Altenberg ’ s fellow Viennese who are depicted staring insensitively at the African Other and as lacking cross-cultural empathy. Early in the text, the autobiographical character - here in his role as tutor of two white Viennese children - is shown to explicitly reject the notion of polarizing Europeans and Africans on the grounds of light or «dunkle Pigment-Zellen» (Altenberg 1987, 234; 2007, 32). He declares the supposed «Abgründe zwischen uns und ihnen» to be constructed by the «dumme Volk, [das] sich über sie stellt, sie behandelt wie exotische Tiere» (ibid). In clear opposition to the popular vision-based concepts of racial classification and hierarchicalization as promoted, for example, by Stratz, the text openly criticizes European arrogance, the exoticizing of Africans, the linking of them to animals, and then placing them on a lower rung of universal human development than northern Europeans. In almost satirical fashion, one episode in Ashantee describes a rich Viennese lady visually inspecting Akolé, a young Ashanti woman, whom she considers purchasing for her decadent son as «ein ideales Moment [. . .], eine Medizin der schlaffen erschöpften Seele, ein Tonikum» (1987, 251; 2007, 62). The African girl ’ s natural skin color figures, in the Viennese lady ’ s imagination, as an exotic asset adding to the anticipated healing effect on the Austrian victim of civilization. The text calls attention to the self-serving, parasitical elements inherent in the binary opposition of nature vs. culture in general and of classifying African primitivism as a refreshing remedy for a decadent European civilization in particular. Another episode entitled «L ’ homme médiocre» (1987, 257 - 59; 2007, 75 - 76) introduces a mediocre 300 Katharina von Hammerstein man who wishes to buy the services of a black woman as would a john in a brothel. The reader is made to think of him as an insensitive lowlife who, unlike Peter A., does not appreciate the Ashanti «paradise» women ’ s true visual and spiritual beauty of body and soul, but views them as exotic lovers Figure 2: Original book cover of Peter Altenberg ’ s Ashantee. Berlin: S. Fischer, 1897. (Dokumentationsstelle, Literaturhaus, Vienna; reprinted in Altenberg 2007, 3) 301 «Imperial Eyes»: Visuality, Gaze, Racial Differentiation for hire. 10 The Viennese onlookers at the Ashanti exhibit are thus cast as ignorant, prejudiced and lust-filled observers who are fascinated by the Ashanti, 11 yet cross the cultural and racial divide merely by gazing at them and occasionally by touching them, but not by reaching out with their hearts. By highlighting their haughty, insensitive, and selfish attitudes which manifest themselves in their inspecting and calculating gazes and consolidate «the abyss [.] between us and them» rather than bridge it, the text exposes the polarizing, hierarchicalizing, and exploitive nature of European racism, exoticism, and primitivism - in the sense of defining the Other as exotic or primitive - and the fact that white Europeans looked at black Africans as possessions to be purchased, consumed, and disposed of. Altenberg ’ s criticism furthermore demonstrates that Eurocentric and colonialist gazes and attitudes were alive and well in turn-of-the-century Austria despite the fact that the Habsburg Empire had no overseas colonies. Altenberg ’ s critical depiction of the racist distance, divisive gaze, and emphasis on difference, control, and ownership exhibited by the fictional Viennese, is contrasted with positive descriptions of Sir Peter ’ s unprejudiced, integrative, interracial interaction and seemingly disinterested look of admiration, if we employ Kaplan ’ s above-mentioned differentiation between gaze as being one-directional and signaling power and look as a dialogical process building a two-way relationship (Looking for the Other xvi). Unlike the other Viennese, Altenberg ’ s fictional doppelgänger is characterized as an emotionally involved and sympathetic crosser of cultural and racial boundaries who derives his «anthropological» knowledge about Ashanti customs and their mentality from sincere interest in and observation of them, and even learning their language. In turn, his fictional Ashanti are constructed to view him as a friend whom they welcome into their most intimate space. 12 The way the text renders the Ashanti ’ s responses mirrors the evaluative contrast between most Austrians ’ exploitive gaze at the Ashanti Other and Peter A. ’ s empathetic look at them. While Altenberg ’ s female African characters are shown despising ordinary Viennese, they figuratively and literally embrace Sir Peter irrespective of his sexually charged gaze at their «tadellose[n] Körperbau [und] Haut wie Seide» (1987, 242; 2007, 45) and his frequent erotic touching which is at no point in the text equated with the encroachments of the «mediocre man.» This self-aggrandizing take on the author ’ s fictional representative in the eyes of the text ’ s Ashanti strangely matches the colonial legend of the benevolent German(-speaking) colonizer who, unlike his British or French counterparts, was supposedly loved by his devoted native subjects (Friedrichsmeyer et al. 21). 302 Katharina von Hammerstein Altenberg ’ s observation and literary representation of interracial gazes and looks thus extend to the reverse look of the Ashanti at the Austrians, or shall we say, to his perception and interpretation of it. If we take, with Miller, reciprocity as the essence of the look, then, «looking at the world, what I see is a picture of the world looking back» (124). Altenberg constructs a picture of the world - including the Ashanti Other - that matches his desired image of the Self. According to his letters, his real-life Ashanti friends gave «black» looks - in the sense of both contemptuous and African - to the Viennese (to Annie Holitscher, August 11, 1896, cit. Kosler 165) while they met him with the «mildesten Blicke»: «Wenn ich komme, strahlt ihr Auge in Freundschaft» (to Gretl Engländer, August 5, 1896, cit. Lunzer and Lunzer-Talos 87). However, while the fictionalized accounts of his encounters in Ashantee praise the African children ’ s eyes as «sanfteste Augen der Welt. Paradieses- Augen» (Altenberg 1987, 238; 2007, 38), the text at no point portrays the Ashanti as either looking or gazing. This seems appropriate, considering Kaplan ’ s thesis that being at liberty to look involves an element of «power» in the sense of independence and that the one-directional gaze even symbolizes «ways of expressing domination» (Looking for the Other 4, 299). Altenberg ’ s fictionalized Ashanti, just as the ones in real life, are not endowed with the power to gaze at their Viennese environment in the sense of controlling it. By interpreting the look in their eyes and quoting Ashanti reactions in Altenberg ’ s translations of their native tongue, the text creates the illusion of providing access to unmediated, authentic Ashanti sentiments and invites the reader to take an ostensibly unbiased look behind the Ashanti scenes. Altenberg ’ s appropriation of their voices and ways of looking to support his own cause is, in fact, «dispossessing the subaltern of authority over [. . .] identity,» as Ella Shohat would call it (41). Altenberg seems to be aware and critical of what Kaplan identifies one hundred years later as «the oppressive structure of the objectifying gaze and the reliance on (superficial) exterior bodily signs (like skin color) that feed prejudice and hate» (Looking for the Other 299). Yet, he excludes his own, or his autobiographical character ’ s, objectifying gaze from his critical analysis 13 and seems oblivious to the fact that he, too, is a Viennese and therefore a privileged white European gazing at black African performers hired to satisfy the whites ’ sense of superior Self and voyeuristic desire for the exotic and erotic. In the triangle of gazes and looks represented in Ashantee - those of the Viennese, Sir Peter, and the Ashanti - he positions his character Sir Peter and thus himself, the author, on the Ashanti ’ s side of the fence. Not only does this interpretation represent a delusion, but it is also self-serving, as Altenberg establishes his moral high ground vis-à-vis his fellow Viennese by appro- 303 «Imperial Eyes»: Visuality, Gaze, Racial Differentiation priating the Ashanti ’ s supposedly more human - and humane - perspectives and attitudes to merge with his own and support his critical views on European civilization, specifically the racism of fin-de-siècle Vienna. Despite good intentions and sympathy for the colonial underdog, Altenberg ’ s romanticization of the Ashanti as children of nature and peaceful, sensuous, free «paradise people» implies an essentialization 14 which follows patterns of gazing at and categorizing Africans that come close to applying the very imperial lens typical of the racist nineteenth-century anthropology the text explicitly rejects. His idealization of the Ashanti serves his agenda - of criticizing his contemporaries - more than it represents actual Ashanti perspectives or needs. This self-serving view corresponds with Kaplan ’ s thesis that «the subject bearing the gaze is not interested in the object per se, but is consumed by his own anxieties, which are inevitably intermixed with desire» (Looking for the Other xviii). In Ashantee, men ’ s erotically charged gazes run like a leitmotif through the episodes which repeatedly rave about the Ashanti women ’ s «wunderbaren hellbraunen Brüste» (1987, 236; 2007, 34), their naked «ideale Oberkörper« (1987, 248; 2007, 56), and «wunderbare glatte, kühle Haut» (1987, 235; 2007, 32). As I have outlined elsewhere in more detail, 15 the autobiographical character ’ s desire for the Ashanti girls puts him on a par with the sexist fellow Viennese the author seeks to expose. For the book cover (fig. 2) Altenberg selected the photograph of two bare-breasted Ashanti women which visibly attests to the voyeuristic pleasure of both author and expected readership. Thus, the proximity Andrew Barker observes between German ethnological research of the time and soft pornography («Unforgettable» 57) holds true for Ashantee, too. The work ’ s highly visual descriptions show elements of the same colonial narrative of sexualization and visual ownership of the female body that I have demonstrated for Stratz ’ s History of Man. We find here merged both the male and imperial gazes. Altenberg and his autobiographical character Sir Peter fall into the category of what Pratt terms the « ‹ seeing man, › an admittedly unfriendly label for the European male subject [. . .] whose imperial eyes passively look out and possess» while he at the same time «seeks to secure [his] innocence» by assuming an «anticonquest» position (7). Altenberg ’ s liberal, «anti-conquest» critique of racism in public and scientific discourse, well-meaning advocacy of Ashanti concerns, and support for them distinguishes him from representatives of hardcore racist anthropology like Stratz - with whom he shares, however, the good intention of spreading insights about another culture among a German-speaking audience. The pervasive essentialization and eroticization of the Ashanti in 304 Katharina von Hammerstein Ashantee nevertheless reflect a white European male ’ s pattern of perception and objectifying gaze and demonstrate that Altenberg, like Stratz, cannot escape the limitations of his «imperial eyes.» Consequently, in contradiction to the author ’ s explicitly stated antiracist intent, his literary representation of the Vienna ethnographic Ashanti exhibit in Ashantee perpetuates some of the racist and sexist gazing patterns typical of nineteenth-century European discourses in science and art. Compared to Altenberg ’ s Ashantee, Rainer Maria Rilke ’ s 1902/ 03 poem «Die Aschanti. (Jardin d ’ Acclimation)» (150 - 51) denies any sense of a sexual attraction to the scantily dressed «braune[.] Mädchen» the author had seen at the Paris Ashanti exhibit. At the center of this poem is the first-person narrator ’ s twofold disappointment with the Africans ’ inauthentic performance catering to the European onlookers ’ expectations and, as a result, with the performers ’ failure to confirm his own preconceived «Vision von fremden Ländern.» The narrator ’ s unfulfilled expectations of Africans are, however, not unlike those of historical audiences of such events around 1900. The «vision» is listed in the first three stanzas: «Gefühl von braunen Frauen, die/ tanzen» and drop their «Gewänder[.],» «wilde, fremde Melodie[n]» presumably of drums, «samten» skin, and «Augen, die [. . .] flammten.» The images remind us of Altenberg ’ s sensuous descriptions of the Ashanti exhibited in Vienna and correspond with widespread contemporary, predominantly physical and thus visual stereotypes. The threefold mention of the Africans ’ «Blut» as the origin of their songs (cultural production) and core of their being (mentality) underscores the idea of their proximity to nature, alludes to the binary opposition constructed between Africans ’ supposed naturalness vs. Europeans ’ supposed civilization, and thus corresponds with the biologistic Figure 3: Ashanti village in Vienna Zoological Garden. Gouache by Wilhelm Gause, 1897. (Wien Museum, Vienna; reprinted in Altenberg 2007, 59). 305 «Imperial Eyes»: Visuality, Gaze, Racial Differentiation Figure 4: Ashanti village school in Vienna Zoological Garden. Gouache by Wilhelm Gause, 1897. (Wien Museum, Vienna; reprinted in Altenberg 2007, 37). Figure 5: Ashanti village dance performance in Vienna Zoological Garden. Gouache by Wilhelm Gause, 1897. (Wien Museum, Vienna; reprinted in Altenberg 2007, 44). 306 Katharina von Hammerstein approach to «racial» differences. The poem, in fact, is somewhat ambivalent as to whether the expectations outlined in its first half reflect those of the narrator or those of the voyeuristic masses he may want to criticize. Anne Dreesbach concludes that the only difference between the poetic narrator and audiences of contemporary ethnographic shows is his «Enttäuschung darüber, dass die Realität der Ausstellung seinem Bild nicht entspricht» (205). Indeed, Rilke ’ s narrator expresses unease at the Africans ’ «wunderliches Sich-Verstehen/ mit der hellen Menschen Eitelkeit» which he interprets as their corruption by «neue[.] fremde[.] Dinge, die sie nicht verstehen.» Following his emotionally charged observations the immediacy of which is enhanced by the poem ’ s trochees, he voices in a single, stand-alone and thus highly expressive verse a sense of disquietude at the adjustment of the exhibited black people to white society ’ s self-serving and vain expectations of them: «Und mir war so bange hinzusehen.» This verse is the only one explicitly highlighting the narrator ’ s personal stance. It refers to both his gazing and his emotion doing so. Surprisingly, his implicit criticism of the Ashanti ’ s behavioral adjustment to their assigned roles is directed not at the white initiators or audience of the pseudo-ethnographic spectacle but rather at the black performers themselves for displaying an attitude of willing conformity. Noticing merely their «Gelächter,» the narrator does not acknowledge the forced character of actual Africans ’ performances at ethnographic exhibits. Rilke, like Altenberg, explicitly refers to the strong visual impact of the encounter with the Ashanti exhibited at the Paris Jardin d ’ Acclimatation. Unlike Altenberg ’ s Sir Peter in Vienna, Rilke ’ s narrator perceives the Africans ’ eyes as burning neither with the fire of eroticism nor with that of resistance: «keine Augen, die wie Waffen flammten.» It is his perception of the show as performative and inauthentic that causes his disappointment and consequently eliminates any compassion, not even to speak of desire, for the observed Ashanti. As in Rilke ’ s famous poem «Der Panther,» written in September 1902, the narrator of «Die Aschanti» expresses his preference for images of animals which, although caged and exhibited away from their natural habitat, supposedly remain detached from and uncorrupted by their voyeuristic, «civilized» environment. 16 According to his perception, they do not seek «Eintracht mit dem Treiben neuer/ fremder Dinge» but withdraw «still,» «leise,» «teilnahmslos,» fade away passively and «allein,» yet remain «treuer» to themselves than the Ashanti he observes. Comparing exhibited human beings from Africa with exhibited animals, even if by contrast, alludes to and possibly enhances the contemporary colonialist discourse that constructs 307 «Imperial Eyes»: Visuality, Gaze, Racial Differentiation black Africans as animal-like and seeks to confirm this concept through spectacles that display them at zoological gardens. Looking relations as portrayed in Rilke ’ s «Die Aschanti» are clearly onesided, even if the poem calls attention to the observer ’ s uneasiness with both his objects of inspection and his own emotional reaction while observing. Yet, his gaze and the Africans ’ visual impression on him rather than his actual communication with them is taken as a reliable base for his sense of understanding and, in fact, of entitlement to judge the black Other. If this poem was intended to criticize the violations of human dignity at ethnographic shows as some scholars suggest, it does so in a most covert manner. Barker, for example, concludes, «Whereas Altenberg uses the exploitation of the Ashanti as the basis for a critique of late nineteenthcentury mores, Rilke, typically, shies away from the socially critical implications of his material, although they are certainly there implicitly» («Unforgettable» 66). 17 In the realm of graphic art, Wilhelm Gause ’ s gouaches from 1897, reprinted here as figures 3, 4, and 5, were probably painted during the second Ashanti exhibit in Vienna in the same year. While an acquaintance between Altenberg and Gause cannot be established, the gouaches complement Altenberg ’ s Ashantee and reflect the same discourse. They, too, portray Viennese-Ashanti interracial interactions; 18 they, too, represent a white artist ’ s and, presumably, a white viewer ’ s gaze at scantily dressed African males and females; and they, too, display Viennese gazes at the Ashanti, while the Ashanti do not look back. Figure 3 presents to the viewer the «Ashanti village» in the Vienna Zoological Garden: well dressed, presumably middle-class, white visitors stroll around primitive huts and inspect the native goods for sale on display tables; African men, women, and children dressed in African print fabric sell wares, wander about, and, by contrast, seem to be looking aimlessly. Figure 4 depicts fourteen black children tightly and orderly seated in two rows of an open-air, but fenced in «school room»; the class is headed by a male African teacher whose authority is underscored by colonial symbols like holding a switch and wearing a white European-style shirt. The children are shown to be well behaved, diligently reading or writing, and not raising their eyes, while they are - like animals in a zoo - observed with great curiosity by white onlookers of varying ages and both sexes standing outside the fence. The image captures the phenomenon of one-directional white gazing, but does not critically expose it. The uneven power relation between white gazes and the black subaltern not looking back is complicated by the portrayal of the teacher, whose attire, switch, and standing position align him with the white onlookers and identifies him as an African supervisor at the service of white interests, as 308 Katharina von Hammerstein he assists in satisfying the «Schaulust» (voyeurism) of the Viennese by ensuring a smooth performance. His role as disciplinarian resembles that of contemporary African administrators in Africa who control their fellow country(wo)men at the service of white colonial powers. Despite painting him practically facing the viewer, Gause chose not to endow him - the overseer of the powerless nonlookers for the benefit of the powerful onlookers - with the power of gazing straight at the viewer. In figure 5, two small African girls and, more highlighted, four adult African women are dancing to the beat of drums while an audience of African men and women looks on. The adult dancers ’ dresses are folded down to the waist to expose, as in Stratz ’ s images and Altenberg ’ s descriptions, their naked upper bodies. White people are absent in this gouache. Ignoring the performance character of the so-called fetish dance of semi-nude women, which in reality was an integral part and major attraction of the Europe-touring Ashanti exhibit, the dance appears to be performed by Ashanti for Ashanti. Similar to the effect that the direct speech of Altenberg ’ s Ashanti has on the reader, Gause ’ s gouache, too, provides the onlooker with a seemingly unmediated glimpse into Ashanti life. The illusion of an exclusively African event removed from the artificiality of a staged spectacle for the white audience is dispelled by the fact that the three women dancing in the foreground do not face the African crowd in the background, but appear to be dancing for and exposing their bare breasts to the white artist and thereby the white viewer of the gouache. None of the Africans are shown to look back at the viewer. In fact, the topless dancers are painted with downcast eyes suggesting a gesture of submissiveness. As in Altenberg ’ s Ashantee or Stratz ’ s Naturgeschichte des Menschen, black women appear to be subserviently available to the white «master ’ s» gaze. The metaphorization of the narrative of mastery through the denuded black female body and thus sexualization of colonial relations characterizes all three works. We may apply to the representations of gazing as power in Stratz ’ s anthropological and Altenberg ’ s literary texts as well as Gause ’ s gouaches what Kaplan poses for the unequal relations in which blacks serve whites but may not observe them: «Only white people, i. e., those conceived as subjects, can observe and see. Since blacks are not constituted as subjects, they cannot look (i. e., look for whites, satisfy openly their curiosity about whites) let alone gaze (in the sense of dominating, objectifying)» (7). African women ’ s visual objectification and sexualization, the notion of their actual sexual availability to the white male onlooker, suitor, or master, and their implicit or explicit approximation to prostitutes in the eyes of white scientists, authors, and artists has a long tradition in nineteenth-century 309 «Imperial Eyes»: Visuality, Gaze, Racial Differentiation medical, social, and artistic discourses beyond German-speaking Europe (see Gilman, «Bodies»). In Édouard Manet ’ s famous and initially scandalous painting Olympia of 1863, 19 for example, a black pussycat serves to symbolize white and naked Olympia ’ s hidden genitals and links them to her black, although clothed maid (Torgovnick 102). While Olympia, stretched out on a bed, confidently gazes straight at the viewer of the painting, the maid ’ s look is absorbed by her white mistress. Picasso ’ s 1901 parodistic sketch of Manet ’ s Olympia creates even more forcefully a linkage between black women and sexuality, namely, prostitution. As with Altenberg ’ s dual male gaze as author and character, here too the voyeuristic male pleasure is doubled since one of the two sexualized observers of the naked black woman is a self-portrait of Picasso (ibid; Gilman, «Bodies» 251). The image of prostitution and brothel life is at the center of Picasso ’ s Les Desmoiselles d ’ Avignon (1907) which introduces his période nègre and is considered a milestone in modern art. 20 The painting famously connects the motifs of the female body, African art, and debased sexuality, as it depicts five nude women in suggestive poses; they are light-skinned but their stylized features are clearly reminiscent of African masks. The work was inspired by «primitive» masks of what was then called «art nègre» and by Picasso ’ s visit to the Paris Musée d ’ Ethnographie du Trocadéro in 1907. Employing «art nègre» had become popular among French artists opposed to colonialism since reports about slavery-like conditions in the French Congo had reached the Paris public in 1905 (Badenberg, «Art nègre» 225). Unlike Rilke, Picasso does detect elements of resistance in African perspectives and incorporates them into his own defiance of traditions in European art and society. Les Desmoiselles d ’ Avignon thus reflects turn-of-the-century European artists ’ fascination with African «primitivism» as they searched for alternatives to the alienating impact of European civilization; the painting critically addresses exploitive power relations by stylizing prostitutes as the epitome of society ’ s victims, as was fashionable also in German Expressionist art and literature. 21 At the same time, the protest and sympathy are - as in Altenberg ’ s Ashantee - accompanied by the essentialization and sexual objectification of the «savage» black woman and the appropriation of African themes to support a white man ’ s own critique of European traditions. However, unlike the images of African women I have discussed so far, three of Picasso ’ s five nude women in Les Desmoiselles d ’ Avignon stare straight at the viewer. Yet, they do not actually stand for African women or even African issues, but are stylizations in the service of the white European artist ’ s agenda. As with Altenberg ’ s Ashantee, one might read Picasso ’ s Les 310 Katharina von Hammerstein Desmoiselles d ’ Avignon, too, as «dispossessing the subaltern of authority over [. . .] identity» (Shohat 41). As has been demonstrated, turn-of-the-century discourses motivated by anticolonialism produced numerous representations of European gazes at and perspectives on Africans, particularly on African women who were frequently envisioned naked and presented as such to the reader or viewer. Even renderings of Africans ’ reverse gazes at German-speaking cultures were most often written by white Austrian or German writers who utilized the African Other ’ s supposed impressions to either critique their own societies 22 or to reify stereotypical European assumptions about the African way of thinking. 23 By contrast, contemporary documentations of black Africans ’ or African-Americans ’ experiences in German-speaking countries from authentic African or African-American perspectives are extremely rare. 24 Having analyzed a selection of turn-of-the-century textual and visual representations of white gazes and the black subaltern mostly not looking back, one might ask what lessons can be learned from the interracial looking relations represented in texts or art work of the colonial past. In which ways might they be enlightening for the interracial, interethnic, and/ or intercultural looking relations in the globalizing present - that is within today ’ s multiand intercultural German-speaking societies? 25 In the realm of literature, Paul Michael Lützeler has coined the term «postkolonialer Blick» - translated as «postcolonial view» - capturing the critical approaches taken by some contemporary German-language authors to writing about living conditions in former colonies and their current relations to the West. 26 The postcolonial view, according to Lützeler, tries to find alternatives to the colonial gaze that was, and still is, some might say, characterized by a superior white attitude within colonial (and neocolonial) power relations, a strategy aimed at conquest, and the writer ’ s assumed omniscient perspective and ability to categorize and evaluate (Pratt 201). By contrast, a number of current German-speaking writers observe life in and from the so-called «Third World» in an effort to «recognize the culturally foreign, not with a superior, know-it-all, exploitive, colonial attitude, but with an open, inquisitive, empathetic, and, at the same time, critically postcolonial view in mind» (Lützeler, «Postcolonial View» 9; see also «Einleitung: Postkolonialer Diskurs» 29) - or at least, that is the intention. Lützeler ’ s juxtaposition of colonial gaze and postcolonial view highlights, however, an ambivalence that, I argue, links some multiand intercultural and postcolonial approaches of the late twentieth century to liberal elements in the former colonial discourse: like Altenberg, for example, many late twentieth-century liberal German-language authors strive for intercultural dialog, understan- 311 «Imperial Eyes»: Visuality, Gaze, Racial Differentiation ding, and empathy intended to counteract and replace the colonialist obsession with classification, hierarchicalization, and domination; yet, the constellation of a Western subject observing a non-Western object remains in place while questions of Western positionality may or may not be critically reflected upon. 27 As a general observation, Lützeler appropriately acknowledges that even recent, open-minded, and interculturally and interracially well-intentioned Western intellectuals - just as some of their liberal predecessors around 1900 - «often cannot make good on their good intentions and have difficulties or don ’ t manage at all to shed their patterns of perception» («Einleitung: Postkolonialer Diskurs» 29). 28 Ann Kaplan promotes as an alternative to the categorizing, hierarchicalizing, appropriating, often sexualizing, and altogether objectifying «imperial gaze» a «different kind of [interracial] looking, not in the service of the self» (Looking for the Other xx). As quoted above, she proposes this looking «as a process, a relation, rather than a gaze» (14). This dialogical, interactive kind of looking between members of different ethnic backgrounds would not be based on essentializing constructs of the Other (neither idealizing nor demonizing ones), as we have found in science (Stratz), literature (Altenberg, Rilke), and art (Gause, Manet, Picasso) around 1900. It would not cast the Other in the position of object, but would instead recognize «the Other as an autonomous subject» and would thus respect both white and «black subjectivity» (299 - 300). Rather than insisting on self-interested dominance, this kind of interested looking at and for the Other would invite cross-fertilizing exchange and inspire mutual transformation. It would aid in learning to walk the fine line between defining one ’ s own self-image and respecting the other ’ s difference without insistence on divisive polarity. This focus on the cultural dimensions of colonial or neocolonial looking relations, however, must be expanded to account for the economic and structural conditions of inequality. From the onlooking, powerful whites and the assigned nonlooking of powerless blacks in anthropological, literary, and artistic representations of European-African relations around 1900, we have come a long way and still have a long way to go. As Richard Dyer suggests, «whites must be seen to be white, yet whiteness as race resides in invisible properties and whiteness as power is maintained by being unseen» (47, cit. Tautz 23). 29 Notes 312 Katharina von Hammerstein 1 See Dreesbach, Friedrichsmeyer/ Lennox/ Zantop, Gilman, Guthke, Kaplan, Langbehn, Lützeler, Miller, Palmberg, Pratt, Schwarz, Shohat, Tautz, Vera, von Hammerstein, Zantop, to name a few. 2 I employ the term postcolonialism in its meaning of critiquing colonial and neocolonial structures. I share, however, Anne McClintock ’ s concerns that the complexity of the phenomena cannot be captured in this single term, that «the historical rupture suggested by the preposition ‹ post- › belies both the continuities and discontinuities of power that have shaped the legacies of the formal European and British colonial empires» («Angel» 87), and that despite postcolonial theory ’ s intent to «challenge the grand march of Western historicism with its entourage of binaries (self-other, metropolis-colony, center-periphery, etc.) the term ‹ post-colonialism › nonetheless re-orients the globe once more around a single, binary opposition: colonial/ postcolonial» (Imperial Leather 10 - 11). 3 In my use of the overlapping terms «racial» and «racist,» I follow Susanne Zantop who terms as «racial» the attempt to state objective, unchangeable differences between human groups on the grounds of biological attributes; she uses the term «racist» for the endeavor to link these objective categories to (d)evaluating and hierachical attributes («Blick des ‹ weißen Negers › » 137). 4 For general publications about German colonial discourse, see, for example, Bechhaus-Gerst/ Gieske/ Klein-Arendt, Berman, Conrad/ Randeria, Fiedler, Friedrichsmeyer/ Lennox/ Zantop, Gilman, Kundrus, Martin, van der Heyden, and van der Heyden/ Zeller. For colonial elements in Austrian culture, see Sauer. 5 For primitivism in Western discourse and art, see Rubin and Torgovnick. 6 For Völkerschauen in German-speaking countries, see among others Ames, Brändle, Dreesbach, Schwarz, Staehelin, Thode-Arora, and van der Heyden. 7 Two sets of page numbers are provided in parentheses for readers of Altenberg ’ s Germanlanguage original (1897) and the English translation (2007). 8 For the Vienna Ashanti exhibits and Altenberg ’ s rendering of the one in 1896 in Ashantee, see Barker, Dreesbach 205 - 14, Göttsche, Forster, Kim, Kopp and Schwarz, Lunzer and Lunzer- Talos, Schwarz, Scott, and von Hammerstein. 9 While Scott, Foster («African Spectacle»), and Barker focus on Altenberg ’ s advocacy of interracial tolerance, Göttsche, Kim, and von Hammerstein examine the traces of racial and colonial discourse. See furthermore the collection of essays in Kopp and Schwarz ’ s edition. 10 It must be mentioned here that while the text Ashantee repeatedly condemns exploitive encroachments on Ashanti women by crude Viennese men in search of commercial sex, the author Altenberg had, according to his writings, relations with several of the young Ashanti women exhibited in the 1896 Ashanti village and in a personal letter considers buying his favorite «kleine schwarze Freundin» (Altenberg to Annie Holitscher, August 11, 1896, cit. Kosler 164). 11 Vienna newspapers of the time of the real-life Ashanti exhibit report a veritable «Aschanti- Fieber» among the Viennese (e. g., Neues Wiener Tagblatt, October 7, 1896). Between July and October 1896 half a million visitors were recorded, which averages out to approximately five to six thousand per day. 12 Several episodes show Sir Peter in the Ashanti girls ’ living quarters and as privy to their complaints, regarding, for example, the skimpy clothes they have to wear despite the cold Viennese weather because they «are supposed to look like savages, Sir, like Africans» (2007, 36, my emphasis). 13 See Miller ’ s biopsychological explanation for an observer ’ s inability to reflect on his own biased position: «The seeing eye beholds the world-picture yet is never in the picture. It is axiomatic that we can never see our own eyes. The position of the observer excludes a certain area from the field of vision, that which is closest to the source itself» (124). 14 «Essentialism, understood as a belief in the real, invariable and fixed properties which define the essence of a given entity, structures most of colonialist discussion and nurtures its language and images. [. . .] Essentialism, as an approach to knowledge of any entity, radically undercuts the cultural, psychological and social complexities that underlie differences: It denotes that which is irreducible, unchanging, and therefore constitutive of a person or thing. The 313* «Imperial Eyes»: Visuality, Gaze, Racial Differentiation ‹ African, › as defined in colonialist writing, is an essentialist construct. [. . .] The African essence is circumscribed before being actually encountered. To the observer, it has existed as image, rather than actual» (Vera 117). 15 See von Hammerstein, « ‹ Dem edlen Männer-Auge › ,» «Viennese Style.» 16 For a comparison of Rilke ’ s poems «Die Aschanti» and «Der Panther,» see Unglaub. 17 For another comparison of Rilke ’ s «Die Aschanti» and Altenberg ’ s Ashantee, see Dreesbach 204 - 14. 18 Vending African goods (Altenberg 1987, 250; 2007, 60), «school» (1987, 238 - 39; 2007, 38 - 39) and performances of the so-called native fetish dances (1987, 243 and 262; 2007, 46 - 47 and 85) also figure in several episodes of Altenberg ’ s Ashantee. 19 Images of Manet ’ s Olympia, Picasso ’ s Olympia, and Les Desmoiselle d ’ Avignon can easily be found on the internet. 20 For brief interpretations of Picasso ’ s Les Desmoiselles d ’ Avignon within the context of appropriating African art and criticizing European traditions, see Torgovnick 99; Badenberg, «Art nègre» 226 - 25; Gilman, «Bodies» 253; and Hermand 71 - 72. The original painting can be viewed at the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). 21 For the employment of African art in the German Expressionists ’ opposition to traditional art, see Badenberg («Art nègre» 237 - 47) and Hermand. 22 E. g., in Altenberg ’ s Ashantee (1897) or Hans Paasche ’ s satirical Die Forschungsreise des Afrikaners Lukanga Mukara ins innerste Deutschland (1912/ 1913). See also Stein. 23 See, for example, a fabricated letter «Wie Mullah Ali über Deutschland denkt» in Tageszeitung für Oldenburg (Sept. 16, 1905: «Nachrichten für Stadt und Land»). It was presumably composed by an anonymous journalist on the occasion of the 1905 Abyssinian [Somali] Völkerschau in Oldenburg. I thank Ms. Evelyn Kloos, Landesmuseum für Natur und Mensch, Oldenburg, for providing me with a copy of this newspaper article. 24 On the topic of Africans in German-speaking countries around 1900, see among others Bechhaus-Gerst, Bechhaus-Gerst et al., Brändle, Gilman, Höpp, Opitz et al., Sauer, Thode- Arora, van der Heyden. Only Brändle, however, published on very rare African voices about Germany. My own article «Subalterne konnten sprechen: (Dis-)Positionen von Afrikaner- Innen und Afro-Amerikanern im und zum Deutschland und Österreich des späteren 19. Jahrhunderts» will become available soon. 25 Displaying essentializing images of Africa(ns) are not a notion of the past in German media and public discourse, as the installation of an «African Village» in the «exotic atmosphere» of the Augsburg zoo demonstrated as recently as 2005. 26 Lützeler ’ s anthology of primary texts, Der postkoloniale Blick. Deutsche Schriftsteller berichten aus der Dritten Welt (1997), assembles works by Uwe Timm, Hans Christoph Buch, Martin Walser, Hans-Jürgen Heise, Hugo Loetscher, Peter Schneider, Hans Joachim Sell, Hubert Fichte, Erika Runge, Ingeborg Drewitz, Günter Grass, Bodo Kirchhoff, Eva Demski, and Luise Rinser about their experiences in the so-called Third World. Lützeler ’ s companion volume, Schriftsteller und «Dritte Welt.» Studien zum postkolonialen Blick (1998), compiles critical articles about German literature on this topic. 27 As an example, Susanne Zantop harshly criticizes Hans Christoph Buch ’ s novel Karibische Kaltluft (1985) for its continued display of an appropriating colonial gaze, the author ’ s lack of awareness of his biased and subjective Western white male positionality vis-à-vis black Caribbean women, and the work ’ s disregard for the interracial and intergender hierarchies still at play («Blick des ‹ weißen Negers › » 142, 151). 28 Tautz, too, addresses the ongoing roles of vision and perception in today ’ s relationship between «Other» and Western Self: «Seeing, although somewhat elusive because of the momentary, subjective and culturally suspect nature of perception, has also been invoked to authenticate the ‹ Other › and Western encounters with cultural alterity, while simultaneously being undermined by the demands of academic lingua to go beyond the deceptive vision that is always already prefigured by a complex social position» (Tautz 23). 29 «Widely regarded as a position or a space of action, whiteness connotes almost exclusively political power, rather than the corporality, the physical existence of a white-skinned body» (Tautz 23). 314* Katharina von Hammerstein Works Cited Altenberg, Peter. «Ashantee.» Gesammelte Werke in fünf Bänden. 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Volker Steenblock Philosophieren mit Filmen ISBN 978-3-7720-8481-2 A Reasonable Fantasy: The Musical Film under Austrofascism 1933 — 38 ROBERT DASSANOWSKY U NIVERSITY OF C OLORADO , C OLORADO S PRINGS The Austrian musical film of the early sound era would not be primary in carrying the cinema ’ s reputation nationally and abroad. Instead, the core Viennese Film of Willi Forst and Walter Reisch, their lavish, mostly period melodramas set in Vienna and dealing with love in the music or art world, were more significant and many were remade by Hollywood studios throughout the 1930s. Nevertheless, Austrian film could showcase an uncommonly large pool of famous musical talent which it borrowed from its formidable opera stages and concert halls. These were often confusingly split between the “ aryanized ” films after 1933 (often co-produced with Germany) made for German import and the Emigrantenfilm, or the independent cinema, comprised of German émigré and Austrian/ Hungarian talent unacceptable to German racial standards. This article will examine how Austrian musical film performed a “ national service ” under Austrofascism by underscoring Viennese and Austrian cultural identity. Set in contemporary time, the Musikfilm or Sängerfilm differs in mood and message from traditional cinematic operetta treatments - ironically more popular during the silent era than in sound after 1930 - through a selfconscious awareness of the era ’ s economic and social hardships. Unlike the escapist opulence of Hollywood musicals during this period or the Nazi German attempt to provide entertainment that ideologically supported its new racist order, Austrian musical films projected a sense of measured or reasonable “ fantasy ” which, to some extent, echoed the modest values of the Biedermeier period settings of the Viennese Film and the core genre ’ s selfsacrifice themed narratives. These films were the most popularly successful in approaching class conflict, poverty, and gender role questions. Their mild experiments in mise-en-scène, montage, photography and lighting, and most importantly music, offered a more accurate cultural barometer of Austria ’ s attempt to absorb postimperial sociopolitical realities than the more internationally famous Viennese Film genre. While sound production came relatively late to Austria given the high costs of refitting studios and theatres, the country could boast one of the leading sound processes of the time. Austrian film had experimented as early as the mid-1920s with a sound to film transfer process, but the American synchronized Western Electric system beat it to the international market in 1927. By the early 1930s, the Austrian Selenophon system and the German Tobis- Klangfilm system were considered rivals of the American system, vying for European dominance until the 1938 Anschluss ended Selenophon ’ s run. Rather than copy Hollywood ’ s “ all singing, all dancing, all talking ” productions that attempted to capture global imagination with new technology overkill, Austria used sound to bring its vaunted cabaret tradition to the screen, and like the French, particularly René Clair, who would so influence Willi Forst in his Viennese Film genre, initially concentrated on romantic comedies and dramas, with interspersed song or dance numbers. Additionally, Vienna ’ s film industry, still influenced by leftist politics and projects of the 1920s (the theatres in the city were run by the Social Democratic KIBA organization), used sound to present unique proletarian cinema; feature narratives that explored the working class milieu and the fables of anticapitalist comedies influenced by Soviet film. The core Forst/ Reisch Viennese Film genre, its imitations and generalizations (to the point that any film dealing with a sentimental narrative in Viennese dialect would eventually be considered such), was to represent Austria ’ s motion picture style through the Austrofascist period into the Anschluss and even influenced the imperial-era costume dramas and comedies of the postwar cinema. It appeared nearly simultaneously with the Dollfuss clerico-authoritarian state, and its stylized period romances dealing with the sacrifice of love for art emphasized the topos Vienna at the same time that it provided a more edifying film experience than simple operetta or the few overtly Catholic-themed features. The contemporary Austrian musical film which also emerged with sound was unlike those that made history in Hollywood, London, Paris, or even Berlin. With the Viennese Film as bearer of the image of a Vienna both national and international audiences wanted to see (but without the tired clichés and narrative limitations of operetta brought to the screen), the Austrian Musikfilm concentrated on contemporary settings, mostly believable romantic/ comic characters which had been influenced by the cabaret tradition, and new music - which also meant waltzes reframed by modern orchestration. The genre attempted to locate a modern Vienna, yet its urban and suburban petit bourgeois and working class world struggling to survive the economic depression and find happiness in a modest way, had not forgotten its artistic and cultural heritage. For the most part, while the Musikfilm makes this past an unquestioned basis of Viennese/ Austrian identity, it does not sentimentalize the past or aspects of the lost monarchy. 320 Robert Dassanowsky Two films by Hungarian director in Vienna, Paul (Pal) Fejos, ostensibly had the most influence on the direction of the contemporary Austrian musical film. Fejos, who had studied medicine and had worked in minor positions in film in Vienna, Berlin, and Paris after the war, managed to find employment in the U. S. in 1926 as a research assistant in chemistry for the Ford Foundation in New York, but he moved to Hollywood to direct low-budget films for Universal Studios. His 1928 film, Lonesome, a socially critical love story between two alienated New Yorkers which anticipates his first Austrian film, Sonnenstrahl/ Ray of Sun (1933), brought him attention and he directed the lavish 1929 art-deco sound musical Broadway, for which he and his cinematographer Hal Mohr developed a giant crane and which utilized early Technicolor in its finale. His prediction of what would become the Hollywood Golden Age musical spectacle moved him to MGM, but his unsatisfying tenure there turned him briefly to productions in Paris and Budapest. After being replaced as director of the royal intrigue melodrama Captain of the Guard (1930), his contract with MGM was terminated and he relocated to Vienna. There he followed in the cinematic footsteps of the successful Austro- Hungarians before him (Michael Curtiz and Alexander Korda) under the tutelage of leading silent-era producer Sascha Kolowrat, and their concept of creating a more internationalist Austrian film style. Fejos, however, rejected the concepts of Hollywood ’ s trendy Busby Berkeley musical epics or the Rogers and Astaire dance films in favor of fables about achievable personal goals. He aimed these at audiences that had to rebuild identities amid sociopolitical trauma and had experienced none of the postwar economic success that America enjoyed. French star Annabella, with whom he had worked in Paris, and German leading man Gustav Fröhlich were Fejos ’ s choices for the socially critical Viennese musical film of 1933, Sonnenstrahl/ Ray of Sun. Shot mostly on location and presuggesting neo-realism, the film grounds its story firmly in the poverty of the day, opening with a newsreel informing of the world ’ s events and concluding with a report on unemployment and financial depression in Austria, in which the male lead, Fröhlich, as the unemployed chauffeur Hans Schmidt, is spotted by the camera as he stands in an unemployment line. He is an unhappy, rumpled everyman attempting to avoid the camera ’ s glare. The introduction breaks the audience ’ s expectation of cinema as escapist fantasy and reproducer of safe convention. The spectator is forced to sympathize and even identify with the character of Hans and the “ realism ” functions as a distancing effect from notions of the constructed romance or comedy in favor of a more socially critical involvement. In the following scene, Hans is informed that he has been locked out of his room 321 A Reasonable Fantasy because he owes rent and his belongings have been taken in lieu of payment. The dejected man makes his way to the Danube Canal intending to drown himself. As he attempts to write a suicide note, he is interrupted by another figure with similar plans. A young woman suddenly jumps into the canal and Hans rushes to pull her from the dark, cold water. He sits wrapped around her freezing body in the dramatic chiaroscuro lighting used to suggest that this ought to be a romantic moment. But it cannot be. As he berates her for wanting to throw her life away, she finds his note. The failed double suicide attempt instead becomes an introductory catharsis that underscores despair. Hans ’ s rescue of the woman, which also rescued him, provides a tabula rasa at the very start of the narrative. The hope of the film, even as the musical it will become, stems from this moment of gentle intimacy and the conveyance of the value of a single life. In the police wagon, covered in blankets and with their faces denying the artificial cinema glamour of the era, the film falls silent as if to indicate that the vulgarity of sound technology is not needed to bring the point across. It is both unspoken and universal. In what should have become one of the classic scenes in Western cinema history, Hans writes on the frosted window words that will make us hope for this couple in a measured and honest way: “ Das Leben ist schön. ” Rather than echo the contrived Hollywood escapism he had known, Fejos transforms a social critical narrative into a poetic realist musical. The film begins with the disaster that other melodramas might conclude with. Film historian Christine Brinkmann maintains that the sequence in the police wagon is central to all his sound work, which continues a love for the silent, the atmospheric, and the rapidly altering emotions of the characters (3). His narrative prefers the clarity of realism and its irony without the convoluted subplots usually found in romantic and urban drama films. At the police station, Hans discovers that saving Anna ’ s life earns him a small reward, and so they pass beyond the other pathetic figures in the station until they see the sun rising and Hans points out the “ Sonnenstrahl. ” There is a new day and it has promise. Hans buys Anna a comb and discovers he can create small spot removers from soap chips which he then sells. They manage to afford a room for Anna, while Hans sleeps on a park bench. The scene of the following morning underscores Fejos ’ s poetization of the impoverished existence: the newspapers which blanket him blow away in the wind as he awakens (referencing the “ magical ” effects of Hollywood musicals but finding visual beauty in the everyday world), and a fountain provides for Hans ’ s morning ablutions. Anna sells balloons in the Prater and Hans, in blackface, also works as a “ moor ” in a shooting gallery. But he is hurt and Anna loses the balloons. The 322 Robert Dassanowsky druggist who subsequently treats Hans ’ s wound hires Anna to be his shampoo model, and Hans parades the streets with a sandwich board promoting the shampoo. Fejos uses silent montage to essay their interactions and to convey Hans ’ s desire to own a taxi, which is set to the tinny opera music that is heard from a store ’ s loudspeaker. It suggests a metafilmic parody of the form of the musical/ opera/ operetta film itself. Hans and Anna manage to secure work as managers of an apartment house, but only as a married couple. Hans places a curtain ring on Anna ’ s finger and they symbolically marry themselves as they watch a fancy wedding at the St. Stephen ’ s Cathedral from a distance. Unable to afford such a ceremony and without relatives or friends, they nevertheless insist on the sacrament. They may “ borrow ” the ritual from another couple, but the experience is theirs. Brinkmann believes this to be homage to Murnau ’ s Sunrise (1927) in which a couple secretly doubles a wedding, but it is also an ambiguous statement on the importance of Catholic values in Austria. The couple has found a basis for their happiness together aside from what money might bring them. Their symbolic honeymoon, which they pantomime as a world trip in an empty travel agency, “ works like an insert of a musical number, ” (Brinkmann 3). Even more so is their next job as night cleaners in a department store after they have lost their required deposit for the dual managerial position at the apartment house. With the radio on, they dance to the band music accompanying the report of a millionaire ’ s gala party in Florida, again referencing the Hollywood musical with its exotic locales and its dream resolution, which is unthinkable here. Donning the elegant clothing they find, they continue their fantasy honeymoon, but are dismissed the next morning when they are found asleep in their costumes. When the couple witnesses a street accident that involves a bank courier, they return his bag to the bank and as a reward, Hans becomes the new courier. With a decent wage, they are able to rent a room in the Wohnhaus Friedrich- Engels-Platz, the modern Social Democratic workers apartment block completed that year (it became one of the sites of conflict between the Austrofascist regime and Leftists in the short civil war of 1934). Fejos seems less interested in making a point regarding partisan politics than about the human condition, and he contrives the first shots of the new building complex to make the site only slightly recognizable. Hans and Anna have also managed the down payment on a taxi. The couple subsequently attends a chauffeur ’ s ball where they emerge from a pile of streamers and confetti as from a marriage bed singing “ Ein kleines Lächeln bringt dir wieder Sonnenschein. ” This apotheosis of their relationship and celebration of their measured success is Fejos ’ s closest approach to the production style of a conventional musical 323 A Reasonable Fantasy film. But while their hard work continues, their luck does not last. Hans ’ s injury in attempting to find a child ’ s lost coin in the tracks of an oncoming streetcar lands him in the hospital and Anna unsuccessfully attempts to fill in as a courier. Her heartbreaking exhortations to block the man who has come to repossess their taxi for lack of payment evolves into a mass scene of support by her neighbors who take up a collection for the payment by opening their pockets and purses to toss their spare coins onto her in the courtyard. This artificial ray of sun more than covers the outstanding payment, and ultimately integrates the isolated couple into the community. In the epilogue, Hans is dressed in his dashing chauffeur uniform and Anna in a white dress, a recollection of their unconventional wedding. They take the children of their new friends for a ride in their flower-strewn taxi. The upward spiral of Hans and Anna, a wry reference to the downward civilization spirals of such timely philosophers as Oswald Spengler and other pessimistic social critics, is one that empowers the audience with dreams that are won through hard work and love, but can also be understood through the Catholic ideology of the new corporate state. Having been cleansed of their pasts in a baptism in the Danube, their chaste faith in their marriage, true joy with one another, and the return of the wedding symbolism at the end, this time with children - a suggestion of a family to come - articulates Fejos ’ s realistic cinematic escapism with a purpose. The director ’ s second film in Vienna, the 1933 Frühlingstimmen/ Voices of Spring (released before Sonnenstrahl) reworks Johann Strauss melodies and offers new music by operetta composer Robert Stolz to support this urban petit bourgeois comedy, which focuses on the collision of values and mores of the aspirant boheme - the young singing students of Vienna ’ s famous Academy of Music and Performing Arts. Fejos again maintains a “ small dreams ” concept here and uses the chubby Austro-Hungarian character actor, S. K. Szakall (Szo ˝ ke Szakáll in Hungary; S. K. Sakall in his Hollywood career), to be the through-line which keeps the large ensemble cast and its subplot of mistaken identity less operetta and more a comedy of contemporary mores and egos. In the role of Schuldiener Krüger, he establishes himself as one of the most popular comic actors in the independent (not for German distribution) Viennese Film before 1938. His blustery character here is responsible for everything from distributing piles of sheet music, to fixing and cleaning instruments, to assisting the music professors and students in their work, and seems to be a parody of Paul Hörbiger ’ s porter in Max Ophüls ’ s acclaimed cinematic treatment (and influence on the Forst/ Reisch Viennese Film) of Schnitzler ’ s bourgeois tragedy, Liebelei/ Flirtation (1933). Hörbiger had to contend with one willful daughter but Szakall ’ s Krüger is given two: Hannerl 324 Robert Dassanowsky (opera star Adele Kern) and Olly (Ursula Grabley), and the unrelenting men who want to marry them. They are not the helpless süßes Mäderl character of the bourgeois tragedy, but rather self-aware and often headstrong young women who intend to be stars and find love with the men they desire. The skeletal operetta structure of the film allows Fejos to hang fresh and provocative commentary about the younger generation, poverty, the agency of woman, and the self-importance of the creative man on a trusted form. His Vienna is a modern urban site in which we hardly see anything recognizable. Even a trip down the Danube in which the music students sing Johann Strauss is given the feel of a working class youth outing, and what little romance it conjures in the surroundings and the music is subverted by a comedic scene in which the befuddled Krüger has a stack of sheet music blown from his hands and then, in a fit of exasperation, dumps the rest of the Blue Danube Waltz score into the Danube. It is a patent symbolic farewell to Viennese operetta cliché. The film pits the contemporary attitudes of youth against the tradition of their elders and the individual against the mass. While the concept of voice and music students studying and performing in Vienna recalls similar territory in the core Viennese Film, Fejos avoids the sentimental or the bittersweet by creating true gender role conflict that rises above the comedy and the musical aspects of the film. A group of young female singers supports Hannerl, who insists she is ready for public engagement, while her love interest, composition student Franz (Oskar Karlweis), equally supported by his male comrades, berates her for being immature and self-destructive if she does not finish her vocal training. This conflict becomes more important to the narrative than the operetta-type misunderstandings regarding Krüger ’ s daughters and the two possible suitors. The film stresses traditional values of education for a brasher new generation, even as the narrative partially liberates women on a social level and plays with traditional gender role convention. An “ impromptu ” operatic confrontation during lunch in the academy ’ s cafeteria between the female and male students over the ownership of a sausage satirizes the traditional functions of male and female voices in opera and provides one of the most entertaining scenes in the film. When Franz fights for control of Hannerl and her studies, she blatantly rejects his demands and decides to quit the academy to find a theatrical agent. Meanwhile, Toni (Hans Thimig), the intractable son of the owner of a chain of ice cream parlors, angers his father by rejecting work because he is seduced by Olly ’ s strong desires. The couple ’ s relationship is cemented in a comedic set piece in which Toni is responsible for delivering an ice cream “ Bombe ” to Hannerl ’ s engagement party, but which melts by the time he has finished 325 A Reasonable Fantasy flirting with Olly, nibbling at the ice cream, and ultimately realizing they too must get married. The subtext of financial hardship skewers any opportunity for the narrative to fall into sentimental romance and is even used to derail any audience expectation of it. Fejos sets up a typically lavish, even Hollywood style mise-en-scène for the engagement party at Krüger ’ s apartment, filling it with beautiful flowers, well-dressed and haughty bourgeois guests, and the promise of wine and delicacies, and then literally deconstructs it. Maids and other representatives of the performers from the Academy ’ s concert come to claim the flowers that were delivered by family and well-wishers, and which Krüger, believing no one wanted them, has used for the party ’ s decoration. As the flowers are removed and the room becomes more ordinary, the guests lose their happy mood, and the ice cream bombe, which was rather small to begin with (emphasizing the costly nature of such exotic trifles) arrives melted on a plate with a few wafers. With his social climbing ruined, an exasperated Krüger tosses the rest of the flowers out the door. Like the stack of sheet music that goes into the Danube, Fejos and Szakall literally toss out film convention in a romantic anarchy that Hollywood would call the screwball comedy. Even more revealing of the poverty of Austria at the time is the penultimate scene in the modern office of the talent agent where Hannerl has gone to find work. The establishing shot shows no traditionally recognizable Vienna, only a modern office building, in which well-dressed people populate the waiting room. Hannerl has a conversation with a distinguished elderly performer who confesses that “ es ist so weit . . . dass man nicht mehr zu essen hat . . . ” But he refuses the coin she offers him imagining he will yet get work. When he emerges dejected from the agent ’ s office, he asks her for the coin, which he accepts with a tattered glove. He kisses her hand gallantly and departs. The allegory of a postimperial Vienna caught between important old traditions and vital modern possibilities, and the poverty that subverts the synthesis shatters the comedy of the film. But Fejos refuses to return the female figure completely to the role of wife and mother. Hannerl is stopped from going into the agent ’ s office by an elderly woman who tells her that she never managed to have a career because she too did not finish her studies and fell into the “ schmutzige Gesellschaft ” of show business. Her exhortation that the one year left in her studies will make all the difference and save her from failure may not be convincing, but it hints at a sleazy Vienna of prostitution and criminality that had only heretofore been articulated in such landmark dramatic silent films as G. W. Pabst ’ s Die freudlose Gasse/ The Joyless Street (1925) and Gustav Ucicky ’ s Café Elektric (1927). Hannerl takes the woman ’ s advice and arrives in time to perform at the academy ’ s special broadcast on the radio. It is not in some ballroom or boudoir but amidst the technological and 326 Robert Dassanowsky stylistic modernity of the new radio station (suggesting Austria ’ s actual cutting-edge RAVAG founded in 1924) that Hannerl is reunited with Franz, and their relationship, now couched in continuing education and the respect of art over fame, seems to secure a progressive future together. Fejos was not against seeing film production as a factory of fairy tales for adults. He comments as early as 1929 that it is no “ lowly goal ” to create such films: “ an hour of dreams come true is worth years of strife in the present mad scramble for wealth; nothing could be closer to the pursuit of happiness than the fantasy produced by a few thousand feet of realistic bits of photography ” (Koszarski 225). But his emphasis on “ realistic ” always forestalls sensationalism, contrived ideas of happiness, and the fantasy conclusions that European and American musical film often represented in the world depression era of the1930s. Also popular in Austria and abroad were the somewhat more idealistic transformations of the poverty Fejos used as a background to his musical comedy, particularly those that functioned as star vehicles for opera and operetta performers. Musicals built around the singing voice of tenor Joseph Schmidt whose significant success in Richard Oswald ’ s German production, Ein Lied geht um die Welt/ My Song Goes Round the World (1933) was one of the first casualties of the new Nazi regime that would suggest the future for Jewish performers in Austrian cinema. Its condemnation by the Nazi press led to Schmidt and Oswald ’ s move to Vienna and the creation of three Emigrantenfilme not for German distribution: Wenn du jung bist gehört dir die Welt/ When You are Young, the World Belongs to You (1934) directed by Oswald, Ein Stern fällt vom Himmel/ A Star Fell from Heaven (1934) directed by Max Neufeld, and Heut ’ ist der schönste Tag in meinem Leben / Today is the Best Day of My Life (1936), in which Schmidt plays a double role, directed again by Oswald. Although Schmidt ’ s popularity led him to star in the British remakes of Ein Lied and Ein Stern, his fame did not lead to an international career after the Anschluss, but exile and early death. As in Fejos ’ s musicals, Schmidt, who was not a leading man type, found resonance playing the everyman in a petit bourgeois setting: a naïve and poor music student who manages to substitute his voice for an ailing singing movie star and thus wins the girl and a career in Neufeld ’ s film. In Oswald ’ s final film with Schmidt, the singer plays orphaned twin brothers, Beppo and Tonio, each brought up by different uncles who detest one another. Tonio has a successful international career as a variety singer, while Beppo lives in the material neediness of running a booth in the Prater amusement park. Through confusion Beppo proves he is as talented as Tonio and the uncles are reunited. While the films manage to create a happy ending in the recognition of Schmidt ’ s characters as 327 A Reasonable Fantasy talented performers, the conflict is always with circumstances caused by the economic depression which is neither resolved nor displaced by the modest possibilities of the main character ’ s future success. More escapist in its romantic melodrama, but no less focused on material scarcity is Zauber der Boheme / The Charm of the Boheme (1936) directed by Geza von Bolvary as a vehicle for the Austrian singer Marta Eggerth and the Polish Jan Kiepura, a real-life couple who display the kind of “ chemistry ” in the film that classic Hollywood pairings such as Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire or Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy were known for. Von Bolvary, a Hungarian long in Austrian and German cinema, was an accomplished imitator of Willi Forst and the Viennese Film in his own right and style, and Zauber der Boheme mirrors the Puccini opera La Bohème in a contemporary story of impoverished artists in Paris. Like Fejos ’ s Vienna, it is not a recognizable Paris, rather a seemingly timeless stand-in for Vienna given the atmospheric cinematography of Franz Planer whose style added to the cinematic signature of the Forst films (crane shots of crowds, panning shots across ballrooms and concert houses, single figures juxtaposed against baroque patterns or design, intense close-ups), and the emphasis on the Viennese dialect to represent the lower class characters and the comedic relief of the Austro-German supporting characters, Paul Kemp, Oscar Sima, and Theo Lingen. The contrivance of Eggerth ’ s character Denise managing to sing the role of the dying Mimi in the Puccini opera opposite her great love Rene played by Kiepura, whom she had pretended to reject years earlier so that his career would not be hurt by devoting himself to her illness seems pure operatic, even Hollywood-tragic irony. It is actually borrowed from the self-negation of the female in the bourgeois tragedy of the German-language stage and the sacrifice of love for art from the Forst/ Reisch Viennese Film. Denise ’ s momentary success as she actually perishes on the stage singing the role of the dying Mimi, offers a sociocultural message on the danger of destroying one ’ s future by preserving an image or a role. She plays the demimondaine social butterfly to ward off Rene and then actually suffers Mimi ’ s ultimate fate. Does the claustrophobia that pervades Bolvary ’ s elegant film in which escapism into fantasy equates with an ominous future, even death, suggest the state of Austria a year before its annexation? There were notable Hollywood musical imitations which placed its narrative in the fantasy of glamorous evening dress and tap dancing on art deco sets, but as impressively as Stefan Szekely ’ s Hungarian-Austrian film, Ball im Savoy/ Ball at the Savoy (1934) manages to translate Busby Berkeley to Central Europe, his frothy internationalism fell short of appreciation in both 328 Robert Dassanowsky Hungary and Austria. The right-wing nationalists in Hungary condemned such internationalist (read: Hollywood) style filmmaking which employed Jewish performers in urban/ cosmopolitan (read: decadent) story lines and demanded a “ Christian Hungarian ” cinema instead (Frey 203 — 22). While the independent film industry in Austria would have profited from more of Szekely ’ s coproductions and cosmopolitan use of international genres which made these films globally viable and removed the Nazi German factor both as market and with regards to style influence, it instead pointed to an exile future for Szekely and many of his performers. While the Austrian musical film of the period might have used elements of the more lavish Viennese Film, or even some Hollywood-style glamour, it remained based in the lives of the working class or impoverished petit bourgeoisie. Resolution of its conflicts would not lead to studio fantasies of Golden Age Hollywood or Nazi cinema, but to a general message of camaraderie that was seemingly apolitical and a hope for a future that was considered reasonable. Opernring/ Thank You, Madame, directed in Vienna by Italian filmmaker Carmine Gallone in 1936 thus becomes an apotheosis of the form through its conscious re-collection of the familiar and expected elements of the 1930s Austrian musical film: a taxi driver (as in Fejos ’ s Sonnenstrahl) named Toni Kowalski with a brilliant voice is performed by Jan Kiepura in a conscious reflection of his Zauber der Boheme character but also of the Joseph Schmidt musicals. And like those musicals, a beautiful but poor young woman is in love with him - here it is the flower seller Mizzi (Friedl Czepa). Comedic support is provided by the blustery newspaper vendor Heini, played by Fritz Imhoff, but which is nearly interchangeable with similar roles performed by S. K. Szakall, Oskar Sima, or Hans Moser. Fritz Planer is the mandatory cinematographer and the music, while not recycled Johann Strauss or composed by operetta greats such as Franz Lehár or Robert Stolz, is from Austrian cinema ’ s most prolific film music composer of the era, Willi Schmidt-Gentner. Impoverishment had become a reliable plot motivation in Austrian musical film by this film. The hungry Toni stumbles in on a free meal at a restaurant where a singing contest is being held. Unable to believe his luck, he sings for his supper and is an immediate hit with the hungry crowd in the restaurant, while Heini ’ s bad singing relegates him to the role of Toni ’ s manager. The news of Toni ’ s new popularity is happily received by Mizzi and the couple ’ s sentimental grandmothers. Corinne Dalma (Luli von Hohenberg), the powerful wife of an opera singer and a wealthy high-society woman in her own right, decides to make a star of Toni, which separates him from Mizzi, Heini, and his working class element. Ultimately it is revealed that Corrine is 329 A Reasonable Fantasy simply bored with her husband, whose career she also created, and that she is using Toni for her own pleasure. Toni walks out on her, but the taxi drivers unite to save his career by blocking traffic and allowing him to perform on the Opernring. Corrine returns to her husband and Toni to Mizzi. The happy ending signals the promise of a better future rather than any windfall of great success and it is the working class and the petit bourgeoisie that unite to make this possible. Similar to Fejos ’ s films, and like Johannes Reimann ’ s Austrian-German Eva (1935), an updated version of Franz Lehár ’ s period operetta where porcelain workers unite paternally rather than politically to protect one of their own daughters from the aristocratic factory heir, the taxi driver unity in Gallone ’ s film indicates the corporatist economic structures of Mussolini ’ s Italy and Austrofascism. (Bernold; Dassanowsky, “ Gendering the Crusade ” ). Rather than reject their working class roles in a revolt that might gain them a more capitalist or Marxist existence (National Socialist racism does not enter into this universe), these drivers support their industry and relate to the other classes and characters not as a mass of workers or as individuals struggling to escape the mass, but simply as taxi drivers, their identity as interest group functioning and collectively negotiating within the requirements of the corporative regime. Toni Kowalski ’ s breakout vocal success, particularly as he is typed as Austro-Pole, signifies the enduring cosmopolitan nature of Vienna, thus its connection with the imperial world, but also the multiethnic and seemingly classless high-art abilities found in Vienna. The popular success and subsequent marketing of Jan Kiepura, who was so popular in Austria that Opernring received a double world premiere - in Salzburg and Vienna - gave the divided Austrian film industry hope for continued growth and popularity at home, even in competition with German and Hollywood imports. Nevertheless, by 1936, a great deal of the Jewish/ German/ Austrian talent that had participated in Vienna ’ s early sound film industry had already left the country for fear of eventual Nazi annexation. Premiere (1937) was even more calculated to showcase a phenomenon and take on both the Hollywood musical genre and the German revue film with new hybrid elements. Zarah Leander, the Swedish singer with the deep voice and the Garboesque features who would become the leading popular film star of the Third Reich, was first a success on the Vienna stage, and her appearance in Premiere echoed reality in the re-presentation of her character as a new singing sensation. The spectator is bonded with the audience in the film and in its adulation of Leander, a totalizing formula that Hollywood had used to manipulate reception in its debut presentations and which was most notably translated in propaganda documentary to stimulate a mass identification in 330 Robert Dassanowsky Leni Riefenstahl ’ s Triumph des Willens/ Triumph of the Will (1935). What was new, aside from Leander ’ s intelligent acting style and unusual vocal range, was the bonding of a murder mystery to the musical which suggests early Hitchcock. While the crime is based in an act of passion, the victim ’ s brutal treatment of his previous protégée echoes the warning of abuse of women behind the scenes of show business from Frida Richard ’ s character in Frühlingsstimmen. It provides a contrived but nevertheless moralistic condemnation of the (sexual) exploitation of a woman by a quintessential representative of the era ’ s capitalist manipulation of the arts, the impresario. The central film guide of the Austrofascist regime, Der gute Film (The Good Film), found Premiere to be an entertaining production, but suggested in its rating of Category II ( “ einwandfreie Unterhaltung ” ) that it was not a particularly ideological or culturally valuable film. This Catholic Church-led publication rarely went beyond a calm approval of Austrian films, even the ones that suggested a moral message or were particularly well made. Instead, it is the application of the Category III rating that appears to have been the true mission of the guide, which was used to warn off audiences from the “ undistinguished ” or creatively “ weak ” Nazi German imports and some “ immoral ” Hollywood sensationalism (gangster and exploitation films). Its surprisingly frank criticism or lukewarm reception of films made by companies and filmmakers that might be considered “ patriotic ” in their positive depiction of Austria or cosmopolitan Viennese culture, or that blatantly positioned themselves against Nazi propaganda, seemed to intentionally avoid what might be construed as a contamination by government approval, particularly for films that were bound for the diverse European market and marginal North and South American release. The understanding that Hollywood often looked to Austria (more than any other European cinema aside from its coproduction with England) for popular remake material and the ability to participate in the global film market was more essential than touting an ideology that was difficult to crystallize in film beyond a few overtly Catholic narratives and without overlapping with some aspects common to both Austrian and German fascism: significance of völkisch/ rural culture and of traditional family structure, anticapitalism/ anti-Marxism, veneration of leadership and historical figures. It is clear that throughout the Austrofascist era, the daily newspapers provided far more pro-Austrian film propaganda than the state ’ s official organ. While there was no official state cinema publication to greet Fejos ’ s Frühlingsstimmen, the 24 November 1933 issue of the “ Deutsch-Österreichischer Jugendbund, ” the publication of a Catholic cultural club that served as the basis for the Dollfuss regime ’ s Der gute Film later that year, underscores 331 A Reasonable Fantasy the two standout sequences in the film, the impromptu “ Sängerkrieg ” about sausages, and the moving character exchanges in the agent ’ s office. It labels the film “ harmlose Unterhaltung ” ' but misses the opportunity to point to the positive image of contemporary youth involvement with Austrian high culture as a valuable national asset. By comparison, the daily papers provided a far more “ patriotic ” evaluation of the film. Aside from the general praise surrounding Vienna Opera coloratura Adele Kern ’ s first film appearance, the Neue Freie Presse regards the scene in the agent ’ s office with the impoverished actor literally begging for coins and the warnings of exploitation voiced by the elderly woman as one “ die ihn von sämtlichen in Berlin oder Hollywood erzeugten ‘ Wiener ‘ Filmen mit ihrer Rosabeleuchtung und ihrer Zuckerwassersüsslichkeit ganz gründlich unterscheidet ” (18 November 1933). The blatancy of pointing to the international rivalry in copying Austrian cinema ’ s genre style gives importance to its films and its influence, while the review discounts the imposters by touting the substance found in the Viennese original, a publicity angle that would have been expected from more official state sources. Equally impressive is the review appearing in the Neues Wiener Tageblatt, which in addition to praising the comedic talents of all involved, considers the dramatic episode in the agent ’ s office to be career performance. The honesty of Fejos ’ s reflection of Austrian poverty and the bittersweet quality it gives the more comic elements is approached by the Neues Wiener Journal as a “ Spiel ums Wienerische ” and compares him, of course, to René Clair (19 November 1933). The Illustrierte Kronen Zeitung does not even try to analyze Fejos ’ s choices and simply suggests “ daß er Österreich kennt und liebt, daß der Zauber seiner Landschaft, der Welt seiner Bewohner unsentimental erstehen lassen kann und hat auch gezeigt, wie weit die echte, grazöse Wiener Leichtigkeit von der lächerlich-kitschigen des Hollywood Wien entfernt ist ” (18 November 1933). Once again, in pointing out a market rivalry which also flatters the originals, it was a fact that the Hollywood remakes and imitations of Viennese Film/ musicals were popular but wooden and did not measure up to the dramatic quality of the Viennese productions despite the opulent remounting Hollywood could afford. New York Times critic Frank Nugent observed in 1937 that “ it is unfortunate we should have seen Escapade before having had an opportunity to admire Masquerade in Vienna [Maskerade (1934) dir. Willi Forst], the Viennese film which Metro [MGM] copied in 1935 when it sought an introductory vehicle for Luise Rainer. Escapade, we now realize was a rather bad imitation. ” The 22 December 1933 issue of Der gute Film in which Fejos ’ s Sonnenstrahl is reviewed, frames the publication and its role with the transcript of a talk by 332 Robert Dassanowsky Vienna ’ s Cardinal Theodor Innitzer in which he encourages Catholics to resist Russian film propaganda that has been banned in Germany and England, but is shown in Austria with the notice of the banning utilized as a sensationalist selling point. Fejos ’ s film, which poeticizes and musicalizes the lost lives of two unemployed lovers, and their attempt to find normalcy, is awarded a Category IIa rating for its remarkable entertainment value, but the very narrative of a couple attempting to escape poverty (and even suicide at first) through reasonable fantasies of a home and steady work are discounted as “ Motive aus der Wunschwelt der Arbeitslosen. ” Even the “ romantic optimism ” of the two “ honest and descent ” characters, and the willingness of their neighbors to help them, is pushed aside for the problem of form and style. According to the reviewer, the realistic and romantic scenes are presented without any internalized (psychological? ) synthesis by the characters: “ Als Traum eines Arbeitslosen in dieser Gestaltung durchaus möglich und bedeutend, als Schicksal eines Arbeitslosen verfehlt ” (Der gute Film, 22 December 1933). The climax of the film occurs in the Friedrich-Engels- Platz housing block, one of the major accomplishments for the “ Red Vienna ” regime prior to the Dollfuss regime which would be a target for government forces the following spring in the short but bloody civil war between the Socialists and the rightist Fatherland Front government. The population Fejos presents at the apartment complex appears to be very middle class and there is no overt attempt at framing them (nor the impoverished central couple) specifically as working class. This ambiguity can be understood to reflect the anti-Socialist stance of the Dollfuss government. Nevertheless, the specter of “ Red Vienna ” overrides the fraternal lesson of the film, and the final statement - “ Trotz des Mangels in der Gestaltung bemerkenswerte Unterhaltung ” - seems to vaguely deride and praise the film ’ s ideology simultaneously. Not surprisingly, the daily newspapers utilize this criticism of narrative form in order to downplay the value of the film as working class fable. The Neue Freie Presse (17 December 1933) considers Fejos a director with fresh and unique ideas, and a style of his own, yet finds Sonnenstrahl still a nearly silent film in which the sound scenes seem to create a stylistic conflict (a criticism also voiced on the same day by the review in the Neues Wiener Journal) in a film that is a “ mosaic ” rather than the “ obvious ” model of René Clair ’ s (sentimental) view of the Parisian urban working class in Sous les toits de Paris (1930). Other reviewers followed suit: the Neues Wiener Tageblatt suggests that despite the deus ex machina, which robs the film of its “ inner Wahrscheinlichkeit, ” the film can still be satisfying. This review was published on 17 December 1933, five days before Der gute Film, and may have been influential. 333 A Reasonable Fantasy Der gute Film seems open to diversity within the limits of its anti-Socialist/ anti-Nazi stance. The opening essay of the 8 February 1935 issue which features the review of Szekely ’ s opulent Busby-Berkeley-esque version of the Paul Abraham operetta, Ball im Savoy, is a reprint of a presentation by Gustav Machaty at the University of Berlin, entitled “ Der steile Weg zur Filmkunst. ” A Czech director active in Austrian film, he is most remembered for Ekstase/ Ecstasy (1933), the class-conflict romance in which Hedy Kiesler (the future Hedy Lamarr) not only appears nude, but gives what is ostensibly the first mainstream European film performance of a female orgasm. Machaty ’ s film style is a unique blend of studio fantasy and naturalism/ realism, and his topics remained controversial in his following melodrama on adultery and the lure of wealth, Nocturno (1934). His appearance as a lecturer in a German National Socialist film symposium or in the pages of the Catholic government film guide of Austrofascism is one of the most unlikely results of the anti-capitalist social criticisms in his work, but an enlightening demonstration of the overlapping general ideals shared by these adversary fascist states. The confusion of identities and a missing piece of jewelry make up the thin plot in what is Stephen Szekely ’ s emulation of opulent Hollywood escapist entertainment in Ball im Savoy. The director felt strongly that Hungary, Austria, and the transcultural cinema of Central Europe (excluding Germany) would do well to adapt a more Hollywood style both for market reasons and as a counter to Nazi cinema and that of the Nazi sympathetic film criticism in Hungary (see Frey 204 — 10). The government publication, as usual, presented the Hungarian-Austrian coproduction with a Category II rating (several German and American films populated Category III in this particular issue). But unlike the Fejos flirtation with “ Red Vienna, ” this Emigrantenfilm musical spectacle was heralded as a sensation, and its mix of Austrian, Hungarian, and German performers (all forbidden to work in any film bound for Germany) - Gitta Alpar, Hans Jaray, Rosy Barsony Felix Bressart, and Otto Wallburg - were praised as major film stars in the daily press ( “ Der neue Film. Ball im Savoy ” ). The Ilustrierte Kronen Zeitung, not known for its detail or in-depth criticism, elevates the film into a near cultural-political statement: “ [I]n Budapest gedreht, in Wien uraufgeführt und für die ganze Welt bestimmt, die sich dieses österreichisch-ungarischen Erzeugnisses zweifellos freuen wird ” (5 February 1935). The film becomes the so-called “ proof ” of the joint and natural Austrian-Hungarian prowess (suggesting its historical and mythic imperial identity) in world-class production of this genre. The enthusiasm which greeted this coproduction and its symbolic “ Middle- European ” union was certainly avoided by Der gute Film for just that reason. The lucrative Czechoslovakian, French, British, Italian, and Yugoslavian 334 Robert Dassanowsky markets were still wary of such a geopolitical reunion and firmly opposed to the possibility of a Habsburg return or any perceived reactionary “ revanchism ” by Austria. The Franz Lehár period operetta Eva, re-visioned in 1935 by Ernst Marischka in a contemporary factory, avoids any image of working class threat to bourgeois control, even when the heir to the factory has fallen for one of their daughters. All anxieties are resolved through the idea that factory employees including the leadership are part of an extended family, and this negates any potential class conflict or necessary social shifts or changes. Interestingly, and fitting its tendency to avoid direct praise of pro-Austrofascist themes, Der gute Film awards this unique attempt at modernizing operetta a Category II rating and actually calls attention to the lack of more serious social commentary: “ Das in die Handlung hineingelegte soziale Problem bleibt oberflächlich ” (30 August 1935). Significantly, it questions whether the aristocratic heir to the factory who ultimately marries the worker Eva, will even be successful in saving the factory from failure. While this statement may suggest subtle leftist criticism, it in fact represents the Mussolini-style corporatism of Engelbert Dollfuss and his early Austrofascist phase which intended to actively deal with class-conflict ideologically. Following his murder by Austrian Nazis in 1934, the successor authoritarian regime of Kurt von Schuschnigg grew less dogmatic and more traditionally bourgeois. The popular press avoids the class conflict question by shifting the focus on the rupture of traditional gender role imagery. The Neue Freie Presse accurately types the character of Eva as a “ süßes Mädel, ” the sweet innocent girl of the lower classes or the suburb town that is a stock exploitation figure in the literary/ cinematic bourgeois tragedy. Yet the review considers her, as played by Magda Schneider, to be a “ new woman ” of the postimperial era, and in no way weak or exploitable. She is aware of the traditional sexual politics of her relationship with a freewheeling aristocrat and refuses to play the outmoded role, even becoming the dominant partner. She is her suitor ’ s equal from the start despite class differences: “ [N]ie ein Dirnchen, eigentlich immer schon in Ansätzen die Frau Direktor ” (22 August 1935). The Neue Wiener Tageblatt avoids dealing with the social-political angle and simply praises the film for its music, charm and, most of all, for its excellence as a Viennese Film, although the film does not take place in Vienna. According to the review, its essence - “ Geschmack, Witz und Gemüt ” - is pure Viennese filmmaking which can only be found in films made in a Viennese studio (22 August 1935). This enthusiasm is a cinematic-patriotic volley against the imitation Viennese films from Germany and Hollywood, and like the interpretation of Ball im Savoy as a symbolic resurgence of an Austro- 335 A Reasonable Fantasy Hungarian cultural merger by the Illustrierte Kronen Zeitung (see above), it is perhaps more important for what it seems at pains to avoid articulating: the difference of Viennese-Austrian culture from the German and a burgeoning nationalist (or retrograde imperialist) pride given the varied politics of the international cinema market, the desire not to alienate either the suppressed Austrian pan-Germans/ crypto-Nazis or leftist readership/ audiences in Austria and not to appear to be a state-controlled press as in Nazi Germany. Lest the central Catholic aspect of the regime and the Institute for Film Culture which functioned as the coordinating arm of the government ’ s film policies be forgotten with Schuschnigg ’ s somewhat more secular/ pro-monarchist leadership, the 1 September 1936 issue of Der gute Film opens with a papal encyclical, “ Vigilanti cura, ” on the importance of cinema and the departure of film from its correct path into celebrations of negative social aspects. Further, it recalls the papal meeting with American journalists in 1934, in which the potential use of cinema in “ Erziehung und Bildung ” was expressed. It clearly reminds the reader of the very purpose of the publication and its categorization of film for Austrians. The same issue reviews Carmine Gallone ’ s Jan Kiepura star vehicle, Opernring, with an expected Category II rating. While it finds the production to be an attractive “ singer film, ” the short critique admits that it has become difficult to create new, believable, and not clichéd plots for this genre. Nevertheless, it emphasizes Gallone ’ s presentation of Viennese atmosphere, character types, and everyday life. In the year of the creation of the Berlin-Rome Axis, in which Austria ’ s erstwhile protector Mussolini abandoned Austria to Hitler ’ s goals of infiltration and ultimate annexation, the publication hardly provides a call to arms from its regime-loyal readership. Ambiguity rather than direct propaganda was apparently the wiser choice given the now German control of the board of Austria ’ s largest film concern, Tobis-Sascha (they had been invited to invest in the company before the National Socialists came to power in Germany in 1933). Its majority hold now removed the influential producers known as the Pilzer Brothers from the board in an “ Aryanization ” action which permitted the company to make films exportable to Nazi Germany, but also to destabilize and dishearten independent Austrian film production. Tobis- Sascha now began to buy up smaller production companies in an effort to control the Austrian production landscape and prepare for the planned German annexation from inside a sovereign country. Instead of launching a campaign of counter-propaganda, the Vienna press heralded the hysteria that was caused by Kipura ’ s appearance at cinemas showing his film, and registered a mild suggestion of the unified, classless interest in things cinematically Viennese as represented by Kiepura ’ s public 336 Robert Dassanowsky performances: “ Aus allen Bezirken sind sie gekommen, der Prater ist natürlich vollzählig versammelt ” (Illustrierte Kronen-Zeitung, 22 August 1936). The 22 August 1936 edition of the Neue Freie Presse does, however, seem more film patriotic than before, given the now nearly hopeless situation of a future for independent Austrian film production. The review of Opernring frames the production as a core Viennese Film (a man having to choose between art/ fame and love) and celebrates the atmosphere of the film ’ s petit bourgeois setting in a coded statement that backhandedly praises the avoidance of the proletariat per se, although Kiepura ’ s character is a taxi driver as are most of his friends, his love interest is a poor flower girl, and the society patron that gives him his operatic career for her own self-indulgent reasons, causes the same sort of nervously implied but undeveloped class conflict seen in Eva. Ironically, the review considers Friedl Czepa who plays the flower girl as the “ great hope for Austrian film. ” She instead became one of the popular character actors in Nazi cinema after the annexation and according to exiled Jewish author Carl Zuckmayer, who compiled a secret dossier for the US Offices of Strategic Services (forerunner of the CIA) between 1943 and 1944 in which he provided his impressions of cultural figures in the Reich for the purpose of postwar occupation, Czepa was indicated to be among the opportunistic or ideologically motivated supporters of National Socialism (Zuckmayer). A stunningly positive review of MGM ’ s Rosemarie as a Hollywood Viennese operetta film follows on the page directly after the review of Opernring. While the Neue Freie Presse had, like most papers, been critical of Hollywood impersonation given the rivalry for box office at home and abroad, the flattering review suggests a true pro-Hollywood change in Austrian film politics in 1936. The attempt by several major studios (including MGM and Twentieth Century Fox) to invest in Vienna ’ s film industry, coproduce features, and offer a significant number of dubbing commissions was crushed by German demands and economic pressure, and the Hollywood plan was dead by early 1937. It led to a withering of American film distribution in Austria in favor of increased German product (Dassanowsky, Austrian Cinema 73 — 74). Following this debacle, Zarah Leander ’ s film debut in the 1937 Premiere, a film made for distribution in Germany and thus following National Socialist racial demands, is reported with a specific turn against Hollywood in Der gute Film which had not taken such overt positions in the past. Considered a tasteful piece of escapist entertainment and given a Category II rating, the critique considers the film far better than American examples of the revue film and praises the murder mystery in this hybrid. Crime and murder had 337 A Reasonable Fantasy previously landed Hollywood and other films in the Category III rating in this publication for its unattractive violence and, as the papal encyclical “ Vigilanti cura ” had reported in the 1 September 1936 issue, such aspects were part of the “ wrong path ” for cinema. The Neues Wiener Journal of 6 February 1937 goes even further with an anti-American stance, declaring triumphantly: “ Das Monopol Hollywoods auf dem Gebiete des Revuefilms scheint ein für allemal gebrochen. ” It praises the music film ’ s hybridization with the crime mystery genre as more substantive entertainment than just a typical revueserving narrative. The usual rivalry with German film is not evoked. The concept of an independent Austrian cinema has de facto perished along with its Hollywood hope the year prior to Nazi annexation. The representation of burgeoning Viennese and Vienna-associated musical talent in the 1930s Austrian musical film genre points to the creation of a growing national cultural consciousness through cinema. Operetta fantasies which so identified Viennese culture function as extratextual reference in these films by dint of their difference, and in the attempt to reframe the unique cinematic topos of Vienna beyond imperial nostalgia. A mainstay in Austrian cinema since the early silent era, operetta had become too fanciful to function as bankable cinematic escapism given the severe economic hardships of the country, and as a competitive product of a film industry striving to locate and promote its own identity. The attempt to position Austrian film, particularly the musical entertainment genre, against Nazi German film and its ideologically-aimed co-opting of the Viennese cinematic idiom, and battle Hollywood ’ s flattering but market-dominating filmic “ Vienna, ” would ultimately signal Austria ’ s frustrated geopolitical isolation long before Hitler ’ s demands for National Socialist representation in Vienna ’ s government in his meeting with Chancellor Schuschnigg at Berchtesgaden in February 1937. Works Cited Ball im Savoy [Ball at the Savoy]. Dir. Stephan Szekely. Elektra-Film, 1935. “ Ball im Savoy. ” Der gute Film 22 Dec. 1933: 6. “ Ball im Savoy. ” Illustrierte Kronen-Zeitung 5 Feb. 1935: 9. Bernold, Monika. “ Eva, Johannes Reimann (1935). ” Der österreichische Film von seinen Anfängen bis heute. Ed. Gottfried Schlemmer and Brigitte Mayr. Vienna: Synema, 2000. 2 — 23. Brinkmann, Christine N. “ Sonnenstrahl, Paul Fejos (1933). ” Der österreichische Film von seinen Anfängen bis heute. Ed. Gottfried Schlemmer and Brigitte Mayr. Vienna: Synema, 1999. 1 — 26. 338 Robert Dassanowsky Café Elektric. Dir. Gustav Ucicky. Sascha-Film, 1927. Dassanowsky, Robert von. Austrian Cinema: A History. Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland, 2005. — . “ Gendering the Crusade: Representations of Female Roles and Sexuality in Film under Austrofascism. ” Sexuality, Eroticism and Gender in Austrian Literature and Culture. Austrian Culture Series. Ed. Clemens Ruthner. New York: Peter Lang, 2012. 288 — 96. “ Der erste Adele Kern Film. Frühlingsstimmen. ” Illustrierte Kronen-Zeitung 18 Nov. 1933: 9. “ Der Film: Eva. ” Neues Wiener Tageblatt 22 Aug. 1935: 9. “ Der Film: Frühlingsstimmen. ” Neues Wiener Tageblatt 18 Nov. 1933: 12. “ Der neue Film. Ball im Savoy. Festpremiere im Lustspieltheater. ” Neues Wiener Journal 2 Feb. 1935: 12. “ Der neue Film. Premiere. ” Neues Wiener Journal 6 Feb. 1937: 11. “ Die päpstliche Enzyklika ‘ Vigilante cura ‘ über das Filmwesen. ” Der gute Film 1 Sept. 1936: 1. Die freudlose Gasse [The Joyless Street]. Dir. G. W. Pabst. Sofar-Film, 1925. Ein Lied geht um die Welt [My Song Goes ‘ Round the World]. Dir. Richard Oswald. Terra-Filmkunst, 1933. Ein Stern fällt vom Himmel [A Star Fell from Heaven]. Dir. Max Neufeld. Styria- Film, 1934. Eva [Eva, The Factory Girl]. Dir. Johannes Riemann. Atlantis-Film, 1935. “ Eva. ” Der gute Film 30 Aug. 1935: 7 — 8. Ekstase [Ecstasy]. Dir. Gustav Machaty. Elektra-Film, 1933. “ Film: Frühlingsstimmen. Adele Kerns Filmdebüt. ” Neues Wiener Journal 19 Nov. 1933: 30. Frey, David. “ Just What is Hungarian? Concepts of National Identity in the Hungarian Film Industry, 1931 — 1944. ” Constructing Nationalities in East Central Europe. Ed. Pieter M. Judson and Marsha L. Rozenblit. New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2005. 203 — 22. Frühlingsstimmen [Voices of Spring]. Dir. Paul Fejos. Ernst-Wolff-Film, 1933. “ Frühlingstimmen. ” Neue Freie Presse 18 Nov. 1933: 10. Heut ’ ist der schönste Tag in meinem Leben [Today is the Best Day of My Life]. Dir. Richard Oswald. Globe-Film, 1936. “ Kardinal Dr. Theodor Innitzer über den Film. ” Der gute Film 22 Dec. 1933: 1. “ Kiepura-Rummel im Kino. ” Illustrierte Kronen-Zeitung 22 Aug. 1936: 6. Koszarski, Richard. Hollywood Directors 1914 — 1940. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976. “ Lehár ’ s Eva im Film. ” Neue Freie Presse 22 Aug. 1935: 8. Liebelei [Flirtation]. Dir. Max Ophüls. Elite-Tonfilm, 1933. Machaty, Gustav. “ Der steile Weg zur Filmkunst. ” Der gute Film 8 Feb. 1935: 1. Mitteilung der Filmstelle des Deutsch-Österreichischen Jugendbundes 24 Nov. 1933: 4. “ Neuer Kiepura-Film: Opernring. ” Neue Freie Presse 22 Aug. 1936: 7. Nocturno [Nocturne]. Dir. Gustav Machaty. Mawo Filmproduktion, 1934. 339 A Reasonable Fantasy Nugent, Frank S. “ The Screen. Masquerade in Vienna with Paula Wessely Opens at the Fifty-Fifth Street Playhouse. ” New York Times, 26 Jan. 1937. 19 Mar. 2013. <http: / / movies.nytimes.com/ movie/ review? res=9905E5D7143AE23ABC4E51DFB7668 38C629EDE>. Opernring [Thank you, Madame]. Dir. Carmine Gallone. Gloria-Film, 1936. “ Opernring. ” Der gute Film 1 Sept. 1936: 12. Premiere. Dir. Geza von Bolvary. Gloria-Film, 1937. “ Premiere. ” Der gute Film Folge 199/ 1937: 9 — 10. “ Premiere. ” Neue Freie Presse 9 Feb. 1937: 9. Sonnenstrahl [Ray of Sun]. Dir. Paul Fejos. Tobis-Sascha, 1933. “ Sonnenstrahl. ” Der gute Film 22 Dec. 1933: 5 — 6. “ Sonnenstrahl. ” Neue Freie Presse 17 Dec. 1933: 23. “ Sonnenstrahl. ” Neues Wiener Journal 17 Dec. 1933: 35. “ Sonnenstrahl. ” Neues Wiener Tageblatt 17 Dec. 1933: 17. Sunrise. Dir. F. W. Murnau. Fox Film Corporation, 1927. Wenn du jung bist gehört dir die Welt [When you are Young, the World Belongs to You] Dir. Richard Oswald. Haas-Film, 1934. Zauber der Boheme [The Charm of the Boheme]. Dir. Geza von Bolvary. Intergloria, 1937. Zuckmayer, Carl. Geheimreport. Ed. Gunther Nickel and Johanna Schrön. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2002. 340 Robert Dassanowsky Besprechungen/ Reviews A NNE F UCHS , K ATHLEEN J AMES -C HAKRABORTY and L INDA S HORTT (Eds.): Debating German Cultural Identity since 1989. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2011. 256 pp. $ 80. This collection of stimulating essays edited by Anne Fuchs, Kathleen James-Chakraborty, and Linda Shortt examines anew the question of German cultural identity posed by unification in 1989/ 90. In the introduction, the editors outline their main ideas in light of public debate and explain their attempt to resist a homogenized interpretation of German cultural identity by choosing a wide range of disciplines, topics, and analyses. The contributions, including those by the editors, come from the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, and the United States and are written by Peter Fritzsche, Pertti Ahonen, Jennifer A. Jordan, Andrew J. Webber, Deniz Göktürk, Jürgen Paul, Elizabeth Boa, Anja K. Johannsen, and Aleida Assmann. They represent the plurality of responses by discussing the challenges of the Berlin Wall still traceable on the physical fabric of the country and complement the conversation on the process of German unification. As distinct from the discourse on normalization which the editors problematize, they argue that German identity remains fractured along shifting boundaries of geographic, ethnic, and political significance. Recent public debates on monuments and architectural landand cityscapes, the legacy of the GDR, the continuing issue of immigration, and the presence of Islam in contemporary Germany bring to light the complexity of creating a new sense of a shared and transformed nationhood, crucial for an understanding of a changing German identity. Another focal point is the question how the country still struggles with distinctive and competing narratives and memory discourses in the East and the West. The editors make a case for a «multi-vocal history that investigates life in the GDR from an ethnographically attuned perspective» (9) in the discussion on Ostalgia to challenge any monolithic perception of the GDR. This book also illuminates new aspects of Westalgia as a variety of historical nostalgia that pertains to art and literature reflecting the rupture of 1989/ 90 for West Germans. Despite the multiplicity of interpretations, the editors have structured the anthology in three thematically overarching, coherent, and complementary sections. The first section called «Historical and Sociological Reflections: 1989 and the Rehabilitation of German History» consists of three essays in which German historical consciousness is investigated. The first essay explores how 1989 anchored and revised modern chronological imagination, and how it changed and rehabilitated competing models of historical explanation of earlier periods and also created new localized stories and perspectives. The second contribution focuses on the Mauerschützen trials of the 1990s in the Berlin area. Despite their contested, politicized, and divisive qualities the trials had a positive political effect for the transition into a unified country, since they not only exposed rifts along the East and West boundaries but also revealed compromises and humane decisions made by the judicial system. The third essay in this section examines food and regionalism as a site of collective memory in post-1989 Germany. Regional identity and aspects of agricultural life, food production, and gastronomy are perceived as closely connected to national identity in the way that the larger identity is fueled by the regional one, not in opposition to it. Daily foods in Germany are heterogeneous and mostly regionally produced. These products are deeply linked to the importance of biodiversity and identifications of particular landscapes, and notions of regional and national identity. In the second section of the book, «Architecture and Filmic Mediations: Germany in Transit and the Urban Condition,» four essays focus on alternative geographic, nostalgic recreational, and multicultural topographic identities in post-unification Germany. The first essay analyzes the topographic turn in cultural criticism and how this is linked to forms of urban topography. Post-unification movies, such as Gespenster (2005) by Christian Petzold set in Berlin, take up the ambivalence in which urban topography is key to that condition. Questions of uncertainty of memory and identity, and of exploitation and displacement come to the fore through the spectral vision of abandoned, barely recognizable, and transitional spaces in the center of the capital through which the protagonists move. The next essay in this section examines debates on migration and public memory which are produced in the social sciences, literature, and the arts. The author argues for a transnational perspective on the fall of the Wall and a transnational articulation of identity that reflects the multicultural reality of contemporary Germany. She focuses on Turkish cinema (Schwarzfahrer [1993]) and the exhibition Projekt Migration (2005) which stages the archive of migration as an art project, mainly projecting documents and art work on a variety of screens and monitors at multiple venues in highly mediated and localized forms. In the third essay, Berlin and its restructured and rebuilt architectural center is the focus of analysis from which it becomes clear that the architectural construction is central to the new national identity of the Berlin Republic by which it transformed modernism into an instrument of memory. The fourth contribution speaks about the complex rebirth and architectural transformation of Dresden following unification and its incredible importance for the citizens of the city as well for the country ’ s history. The third section of the book, «Retrospective Reimaginings: The Death and Afterlife of East and West Germany in Contemporary Literature,» draws attention to the function of literature as a cultural archive that recreates alternative visions for the past, present, and future. In the first essay, the East German sense of «Heimat» is observed through the lenses of contemporary East German writers, such as Christa Wolf, Jens Sparschuh, Ingo Schulze, and Ante Ravic Strubel. The next essay explores West German writers and their revisioning of West Germany before unification, especially in Jochen Schimmang ’ s Das Beste, was wir hatten (2009). It becomes evident that Westalgia and Ostalgia are connected phenomena and both are linked to the instability and pressures inherent in globalization. The third contribution discusses Monika Maron ’ s and Angela Krauss ’ s particular poetological responses to fractured German history and the process of unification. The poet Durs Grünbein and Dresden ’ s specific cultural and historical topography in his different poetry publications are analyzed in the following essay. The last contribution interprets Marcel Beyer ’ s highly 342 Besprechungen/ Reviews reflexive novel Kaltenburg (2008) as an encoded representation of the past in which historical trauma is foregrounded through the animal world (bird ’ s eye) and becomes a new type of memory fiction. This scholarly, thought-provoking study with its transdisciplinary and differenciated approaches to the discussion of German cultural identity seeks to inspire and create an academic knowledge transfer. The volume participates not only in an ongoing exchange between fields and intellectuals, but also reveals important aspects and questions on contemporary German identity and is therefore of great interest to everyone engaged in the scholarship of German Studies. University of Montana Hiltrud Arens C ARL N IEKERK : Reading Mahler: German Culture and Jewish Identity in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2010. 322 pp. $ 75. With this study, Carl Niekerk intends to provide a «companion to Mahler ’ s music that helps its audiences understand its literary and cultural roots» (1). However, what Niekerk offers his audience is much greater than his modest description might suggest. Reading Mahler investigates an impressive portion of Mahler ’ s oeuvre and offers a sophisticated portrait of the composer as a critical reader of German culture: music, philosophy, literature, and art. The book illustrates how these traditions shaped the themes, structures, and textual heart of Mahler ’ s compositions, but also how Mahler ’ s compositional choices identify him as a conscious participant in the cultural traditions with which he engaged. Mahler ’ s works shared in a discourse that connected Jewishness, the Enlightenment, and modernity, in an effort to reinvent the German cultural tradition. Niekerk maintains that one must take the composer ’ s texts seriously to comprehend Mahler ’ s aesthetic project - not merely the texts set to music, but also the elaborate notes Mahler provided as a means to guide his audience ’ s reception. Although Mahler often retracted these attempts to situate and clarify his compositions, his «programmatic/ anti-programmatic» attitude signaled a desire to detach his art from any overarching philosophical or musicological principles (5). Niekerk thus posits Mahler as a decidedly modern artist, conscious of the multiple (and sometimes self-contradictory) interpretations his works and their textual components could evoke. Studying Mahler as a reader proves to be an especially fruitful strategy, given his documented interests in German literature and philosophy, as well as the pivotal position texts occupy in his music. While «cultural» readings of Mahler are nothing new, musicologists have typically employed this approach as support, rather than as the basis of their analyses. For students of literature and philosophy, the texts Mahler used in his works should also be of particular interest, since they broach political, aesthetic, and metaphysical concerns. Specifically through texts, Niekerk argues, Mahler ’ s works could enter into a dialogue with German cultural traditions and pursue 343 Besprechungen/ Reviews a polemical and emancipatory agenda, critical of cultural norms and skeptical of ideological claims. Niekerk ’ s first chapter focuses on the relationship between Mahler ’ s First Symphony and Jean Paul ’ s novel, Titan. Mahler ’ s interest in Jean Paul led him to develop «an against-the-grain rereading of German literary history» (33). Jean Paul ’ s ironic, playful Anti-Bildungsroman inspired the thematic development and compositional structure of the First Symphony. While the First Symphony does not explicitly critique the Bildungsroman, Mahler ’ s composition opposes the genre ’ s typical optimism, closed structure, and uniform style. Through programmatic statements accompanying the symphony, Mahler encouraged his audience to participate in constructing the symphony ’ s narrative and to confront the ambiguity of its message (52). The second chapter presents a compelling analysis of Mahler ’ s song cycle, «Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen,» and his settings of Volkslieder from Des Knaben Wunderhorn. These compositions appropriate Romantic literary tradition and draw on its notion of Volk, yet they do not conform to Romanticism ’ s naïve idealization of the past. Mahler ’ s readings of the Volkslied tradition ultimately reveal a culture in crisis, rather than a stable national foundation through culture. Through the songs ’ immanent reflection on art, Mahler addresses the role of art in the construction of cultural memory and calls a normative understanding of German national culture into question. Niekerk argues in the third chapter that Nietzsche ’ s conceptions of the world and of art ’ s function inform the Second, Third, and Fourth Symphonies. Mahler ’ s friend, Siegfried Lipiner, contributed to the composer ’ s growing interest in Nietzsche when he wrote a distinctly Nietzschean essay on the renewal of religious ideas. Lipiner had hoped to attract the attention of Richard Wagner, whose musings on religion and art Nietzsche rejected. In the controversy between Nietzsche and Wagner, Niekerk places Mahler squarely on Nietzsche ’ s side. However, Niekerk resists portraying Mahler as a dogmatic reader of Nietzsche ’ s philosophy. By considering Mahler ’ s texts, Nierkerk illuminates Mahler ’ s reception of Nietzsche, and shows how Nietzsche ’ s philosophy provides Mahler with the means to reread German cultural history and to suggest an alternative path for German nationalism. In the fourth chapter (the shortest, but also the most intriguing to this reader), Niekerk interprets Mahler ’ s Seventh Symphony as a rereading of Romanticism that allows the composer to reclaim the marginal, «dark side» of German cultural history. Niekerk provides a «cultural history of light/ dark imagery at the turn-of-the-century» and links it to the Romantic predilection for nocturnal pieces (136). The Dutch composer, Alphons Diepenbrock, whom Mahler knew and admired, perpetuated this nocturnal aesthetic. Mahler ’ s visits to Amsterdam and his encounters with Dutch culture inspired him to seek out «alterity within the German tradition» (148). The bestselling work of Julius Langbehn, Rembrandt als Erzieher (1890), proves especially significant in this context: Langbehn desired a renewal of German society through art and posited Rembrandt as the model artist for that endeavor. Niekerk reads Mahler ’ s symphony as an «essay on the night» (152), a musical illustration of Rembrandt ’ s «Night Watch» that meditates on the possibility of shedding light on darkness, of finding order in chaos. 344 Besprechungen/ Reviews The fifth chapter examines Mahler as a critical reader of Goethe ’ s Faust, which occupied a central position in debates surrounding the instrumentalization of art for German nationalism. While conservatives championed Goethe as a national poet and Faust as a quintessentially German figure, cultural critics such as Heine and Nietzsche construed Goethe ’ s writing as a cosmopolitan project against nationalism; Niekerk situates Mahler ’ s reception of Goethe closer to Nietzsche ’ s and Heine ’ s readings. In the Eighth Symphony, Mahler ’ s setting of Faust II ’ s final scene adopts a «postmetaphysical» philosophy, which posits the existence of a global community, a «transcultural» tradition inclusive of difference (164, 176). The book ’ s final chapter explores Mahler ’ s Orientalism in Das Lied von der Erde, the Kindertotenlieder, and his settings of German Oriental-style poems. Placing Mahler ’ s reception of Orientalism in the context of the German cultural imagination, Niekerk illustrates how Mahler ’ s works ruminate on the construction of the Orient as «Other» by Western culture. Orientalism allows Mahler to rethink his aesthetic project and to assert a non-Western philosophy of life. In turn, the cultural otherness invoked by Mahler ’ s music and texts suggest the notion of «Weltliteratur,» in Goethe ’ s sense; Mahler ’ s compositions demonstrate that a dialogue between cultures can reveal something universally shared by even the most diverse cultural traditions. Although Nierkerk ’ s arguments are sufficiently nuanced and complex, his writing remains clear and engaging throughout: a laudable feat. The study has one minor but significant weakness: the texts appearing in Mahler ’ s works might have been printed in full to make the analysis more easily to follow (Niekerk only supplies Mahler ’ s program notes for Chapter 1). Overall, though, Reading Mahler is an exemplary work in cultural studies scholarship, a thoroughly interdisciplinary and highly accessible book that will appeal to scholars and students in many fields, as well as to Mahler enthusiasts. University of Virginia Gabriel Cooper S ABINE G RO ß (Ed.): Herausforderung Herder - Herder as Challenge. Ausgewählte Beiträge zur Konferenz der Internationalen Herder-Gesellschaft, Madison 2006. Heidelberg: Synchron, 2010. 350 pp. € 38,00. Herausforderung Herder - Herder as Challenge presents a collection of nineteen essays in German and English from the 2006 conference of the Herder Society hosted by the University of Wisconsin in Madison. As the volume ’ s title indicates, the articles are not tied together by a particular theme but rather by the assumption that Herder ’ s legacy still poses an overall challenge to us that calls for further critical investment. Reviewing major critical sources of the past years, Sabine Groß introduces that challenge as a twofold one: Moving him out of the shadow of towering figures such as Kant or Goethe, scholars have put much effort into foregrounding the value and relevance of Herder ’ s fragmentary and often highly provocative style of writing. At another, more general level, such reevaluations of the complex nature of his works have demonstrated that we fail to understand the role of this perhaps most important «Querdenker der deutschen 345 Besprechungen/ Reviews Aufklärung» (9) if we approach him as a counter-Enlightenment thinker. Rather, we need to engage with Herder as someone who compels us to discard any one-sidedly rationalist understandings of the age and reexamine its many facets through the lens of his multi-dimensional thinking across disciplines. Groß sets up these insights as the point of departure for Herausforderung Herder. Taking the research desiderata that Hans Adler laid out in the special issue Johann Gottfried Herder 1744 — 1803 of the Monatshefte in 2003 as a general point of orientation, she discusses in the introduction how each article ’ s individual focal point adds to the existing body of scholarship. Given the large number of articles, it is impossible to fit a discussion of each one into the limits of this review format. I therefore have had to make selections from each of the seven rubrics in which the articles are organized, hoping that my brief introductions will animate the reader to explore the volume in its entirety. The first section, «Challenges of Herder ’ s Legacy,» examines the history of Herder ’ s reception cross-culturally and advances thereby into fields that have hardly been explored. Ernst A. Menze provides textual evidence that leaves no doubt about the important role that Herder ’ s anthropological and historical understanding of religion played during the formative years of American Transcendentalism. Broadening the perspective of earlier publications, Menze zeroes in on the presence of Herder ’ s thinking in Emerson ’ s major essays. He suggests using his findings as a starting point to go beyond the level of textual influences by asking in what ways such cross-cultural affinities may cast new light on the «critical potency» (34) of both Emerson ’ s and Herder ’ s works. Like Menze, David L. Simmons uncovers Herder ’ s understudied significance for the direction of American thinking in the field of religion but with a focus on the present. Drawing on a number of unexamined sources, Simmons calls attention to the assessments of Herder ’ s thinking by members of the «Marburg School» with the neo-Kantian Hermann Cohen and Ernst Cassirer as leading figures. According to Simmons, we should consult their works so as to gain a full picture of the significance of Herder for the contemporary comparative study of religion. He contrasts the «Marburg School» with what he calls the «Romantic School» as originated by Wilhelm Dilthey, dismissing the latter. While Simmons ’ depiction of the «Romantic» critical tradition is reductive and problematic, his demonstration of how the works of the Marburg circle promote a more comprehensive understanding of Herder ’ s contributions to the study of the Bible internationally is compelling. Section two, «(Re-)situating Herder,» continues the study of Herder ’ s reception, and the nature and impact of his religious thinking. Silvio Vietta ’ s and Alexej Ponomarev ’ s essays resonate with the latest body of criticism on Herder and religion; both critics suggest that Herder ’ s historical treatment of the Bible cannot be accommodated by a linear history of secularization where poetry and aesthetics simply replace the idea of divine revelation in the scriptures. Vietta points to Herder ’ s investigations of the capacities of human senses as authentic vehicles for spiritual revelation. Ponomarev demonstrates how Herder forged a new understanding of religion through his engagement with Spinoza. Ponomarev ’ s way of bringing Herder and Spinoza ’ s doctrine of substance into conversation is illuminating. His conclusion, however, that Herder ’ s understanding of religion prepares a nihilistic world view is unconvincing in light of Herder ’ s complex negotiations between natural and revealed 346 Besprechungen/ Reviews religion as they have been worked out, for instance, in Christoph Bultmann ’ s monograph on Herder ’ s Genesis interpretation. The contributions assembled under «Imagining the Other» provide captivating new perspectives on how Herder imagines the relationships between different peoples and cultures. With his article on how Herder integrates and evaluates accounts of travels to Pacific regions in the Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, Helmut Peitsch contributes to the field of postcolonial studies. He argues that Herder ’ s privileging of European cultures over Pacific ones rests on a highly dynamic understanding of what constitutes cultural advancement. According to Peitsch, Herder ’ s model envisions unequal stages between cultures to gradually approximate one another. Sonia Sikka, by contrast, brings into view a very different facet of Herder ’ s ideas regarding the status of foreign cultures. Consciously changing the paradigm of her previous work, Sikka suggests that Herder ’ s exclusively negative and disparaging descriptions of China in the Ideen complicate our image of him as the Enlightenment philosopher most perceptive toward cultural differences. With her investigations of the status of «gypsies» in works such as the Ideen, Iulia-Karin Patrut concentrates on yet another dimension of Herder ’ s representation of the «other.» She works out the contradictory status that «gypsies» have in Herder ’ s oeuvre: on the one hand, he associates them with nature and an authentic German cultural past with which he and his fellow Romantics sought to align themselves; on the other, «gypsies» figure as «anti-Bürger» whose attributes run counter to bourgeois norms. «Gender, Society, Politics, Language» continues the theme of otherness in the domain of Gender Studies. Michael Maurer contests common assumptions regarding the conservative division of labor between Herder and his wife Caroline Flachsland by arguing that we have to refrain from applying modern feminist criteria. He argues that they ran their household together like a family business that bespeaks a political program aimed at bourgeois autonomy. Anke Gilleir approaches the theme of Herder and gender not biographically but against the backdrop of his philosophy of language. In an analysis whose individual steps are not always easy to follow, Gilleir works out a compelling claim regarding the link between Herder ’ s notion of womanhood and his representation of the characteristics of poetic language. Reminiscent of the attributes ascribed to women, poetic language figures as natural and authentic in Herder ’ s discourse; at the same time, however, that same language also appears arbitrary and rhetorically constructed. So, interestingly, while Herder adheres to a rather nonprogressive understanding of the relationship between men and women, the highly gendered nature of poetic language bespeaks the arbitrariness of such categories. Section five, «Herder on Language, Herder as Editor: Positions, Transitions, Subversion,» concentrates primarily on Herder ’ s language philosophy. Angelica Nuzzo suggests that he formulates an alternative to the existing tensions between logic and history in Hegel ’ s and Kant ’ s works by transforming «philosophy into a historical science of the human being» (199). His understanding of the linguistic nature of thinking provides a link between Hegel ’ s dialectic logic and Kant ’ s logic of a priori forms. With her comparative reading of the Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache and the Metakritik, Marion Heinz contributes to the long overdue reevaluation of Herder ’ s later works. She demonstrates how Herder fundamentally 347 Besprechungen/ Reviews revises his philosophy of language in the Metakritik by replacing his early anthropological approach by a philosophy of life that takes its cue from Spinoza. The articles assembled under «Herder and Current Challenges» ask in what ways his legacy contributes to our understanding of contemporary concerns and questions. For Stefan Greif, Herder ’ s philosophical thinking figures as an example that «radically modern philosophy has its beginning in the eighteenth century» (243), heralding the works of Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, among others. What makes their philosophies radical is the departure from universal categories and the turn toward aesthetics as the realm for the subject to unfold itself. Ulrike Zeuch argues that Herder ’ s concept of the imagination helps to elucidate the «crisis of representation» as it has been debated since the 1960s. Herder ’ s contribution to the problem of representation lies in his observations regarding the truth status of authentic human emotions. The volume concludes with a section titled «Reading Textual Form» to accommodate Staffan Bengtsson ’ s extended investigation of the role of textual form for our understanding of Herder ’ s works. Given its length and detail, this essay poses a challenge to the reader. Bengtsson claims that the editions of the Älteste Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts are all based on a version that was never authorized by Herder, and he then turns to a different one that he takes to be the original. According to Bengtsson, this version reveals the importance of typography and layout for our understanding of Herder; the edition shows that we have to approach him «as an author of works in which thought and argument find their necessary and significant complement in material form» (326 — 27). Herausforderung Herder is a testimony to how considerably scholarship on Herder has advanced over the past years, especially due to the promotion of such scholarly efforts through regular conferences sponsored by the Herder Society. This collection contains a number of high-quality contributions that bring to bear fresh, multidisciplinary perspectives on the major fields of Herder research. Any eighteenthcentury scholar should consult this book to gain an overview of where Herder scholarship currently stands and pick up on the contributors ’ gesturing at where the future challenges of the field lie. Columbia University Ulrike Wagner D IETER S TRAUSS : Oh Mann, oh Manns. Exilerfahrungen einer berühmten deutschen Schriftstellerfamilie. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2011. 157 pp. € 18,50. Spätestens seit Heinrich Breloers Fernsehtrilogie Die Manns - Ein Jahrhundertroman (2001) hat sich diese Familie im Bewusstsein der Deutschen als die wohl repräsentativste der modernen deutschen Kultur etabliert. Der Literaturkritiker Marcel Reich- Ranicki meint sogar, dass sie dem deutschen Bildungsbürger so wichtig sei wie den Briten die Windsors. Unzählige Essays, literaturwissenschaftliche Aufsätze und Bücher, sowie zahlreiche Bildbände sind über Leben und Werk einzelner Familienmitglieder veröffentlicht worden, begleitet von mehreren Verfilmungen und Neuverfilmungen ihrer wichtigsten Novellen und Romane. Und nun also eine weitere Monografie zum Thema ihrer Exilerfahrungen. 348 Besprechungen/ Reviews Um es gleich vorweg zu sagen, dieser Band hätte keinen berufeneren Autor finden können. Dieter Strauss war jahrzehntelang Direktor diverser Goethe-Institute in verschiedenen Ländern und Kontinenten. Seine Kontakte zur Familie Mann reichen bis ins Jahr 1975 zurück, als er zusammen mit Michael Mann, dem jüngsten Sohn Thomas Manns, die noch unveröffentlichten Originaltagebücher des Vaters an niederländischen Universitäten vorstellte. Später lernte er in Brasilien bei seinen Nachforschungen über das Heimatland Julia Manns, der Matriarchin des Thomas- Mann-Clans, auch Frido Mann, den Enkel Thomas Manns, in Sao Paulo kennen und organisierte im Laufe der Jahre in verschiedenen Städten und Ländern Ausstellungen zu Themen wie der brasilianischen Kindheit Julia Manns und den Exilerfahrungen Klaus Manns in Frankreich, deren Organisation ihn wiederum mit Elisabeth Mann in Verbindung brachte. Nicht zuletzt realisierte er die Vor-Premiere von Breloers Dokudrama für das Pariser Goethe-Institut sowie das deutsch-französische TV- Programm «Arte». Der eigentliche Inhalt des Buches ist in die folgenden sechs thematischen Unterkapitel aufgeteilt: «Die Manns in Extremsituationen des Exils», «Die Gründe für das Exil der Manns», «Entwicklung des politischen Bewussteins und politischer Kampf der Manns bis in die ersten Jahre des 2. Weltkrieges», «Adaption der Manns in den Exilländern», «Entzauberung des Exils nach dem 2. Weltkrieg» und «Nach der Entzauberung: der letzte Aufbruch der Manns». Die eigentliche Darstellung der jeweiligen Problematik kombiniert kurze, prägnante Schilderungen der relevanten persönlich-familiären wie politisch-historischen Situation mit signifikanten Zitaten der verschiedenen Familienmitglieder, die ihren Briefen, Tagebüchern und literarischen Werken entnommen sind. So entsteht ein facettenreiches Kaleidoskop persönlicher Erlebnisse, zeitgenössischer Betrachtungen und gesellschaftsgeschichtlicher Ereignisse, die in ihrer Vielfalt ein rundum faszinierendes Panorama bieten. Die Geschichte der Mann-Dynastie beginnt geradezu exotisch-märchenhaft mit den Kinderjahren Julia Manns, deren brasilianische Heimat der Verfasser aus eigener Erfahrung als geradezu idyllisch-paradiesisch beschreibt. Die Übersiedlung der jungen Julia ins nordische Lübeck figuriert gewissermaßen als die erste sinnbildliche Erfahrung der Vertreibung aus dem heimatlichen Paradies und der Auswanderung in die ferne Fremde. Wenige Jahrzehnte nach Julia Manns Ankunft in Deutschland beginnt mit der Machtergreifung der Nationalsozialisten der große Exodus der deutschen Kultur. Der Verfasser kontextualisiert seine diversen Zitate immer wieder mit historischen Fakten und Statistiken. So erfährt der Leser zum Beispiel, dass von den rund eine halbe Million Menschen, die aus Nazi-Deutschland flohen, etwa 11500 Literaten, Künstler und Wissenschaftler waren, die Mehrzahl von ihnen Juden, und dass die großzügigsten Aufnahmestationen die USA, Palästina, Lateinamerika und Schanghai waren (19). Der organisierte Wahnsinn dieser Epoche leuchtet schon früh im Schicksal Golo Manns auf, der sich «1940 als Freiwilliger in Frankreich gemeldet hatte, um gegen die Nazis zu kämpfen, aber stattdessen interniert wurde» (16). Während Thomas Mann in Amerika zum «Kaiser» (78) der Emigranten aufstieg und entsprechend in Los Angeles, im «Weimar on the Pacific» residierte, versank sein Bruder Heinrich mehr und mehr in der Anonymität und progressiven Senilität. Seinen schwül-obszönen Zeichnungen aus 349 Besprechungen/ Reviews dieser Dämmerzeit, die der Steidl-Verlag 2001 in einem dicken Wälzer herausbrachte, attestiert Strauss die morbid expressionistische Ästhetik der repräsentativen Weimarer Maler und Zeichner George Grosz, Otto Dix und Rudolf Schlichter. «Dass die abgebildeten Menschen keinen glücklichen Eindruck machen, ist allen Zeichnungen gemeinsam: es gab einfach nichts zu lachen» (77). In den Jahren der amerikanischen Emigration machte Erika Mann nach ihrem Vater sicherlich die erfolgreichste Karriere als medienwirksame Intellektuelle und schließlich als erfolgreiche Kriegsberichterstatterin der BBC in Ägypten, Marokko, Algerien, Palästina und später im Irak und Iran. Nach dem Ende des Krieges berichtete sie in amerikanischer Uniform aus München, Berlin, Weimar, Köln, Frankfurt und Dachau. Einzigartig an diesem großen Familienroman ist auch, dass nicht nur der pater familias, sondern auch drei seiner sechs Kinder, nämlich Erika, Klaus und Golo, homosexuell veranlagt waren. Während Thomas Mann bis ins Patriarchenalter das Geheimnis seiner Sexualität hütete, hat sich sein Sohn Klaus bereits mit achtzehn Jahren dazu bekannt und sie in den frei-frivolen Jahren der Weimarer Republik auch offen ausgelebt, nur um sich später im Amerika der beginnenden McCarthy-Ära unter anderem als sexuell pervers diffamiert zu finden. Während Thomas Mann nach dem Zweiten Weltrieg noch einmal die Wehmut einer aussichtslosen Verliebtheit ergriff, trieb Klaus Mann in dieser Zeit eine ganz andere Schwermut um. Er fühlte sich, obgleich er die Zeit des Dritten Reiches im Ausland und im aktiven Kampf gegen das Nazi-Regime verbracht hatte, mitverantwortlich für Deutschlands europäische Katastrophe: «Dies unselig problematische, schuldbeladene Volk, gehöre ich nicht zu ihm? Ich fühle mich mitschuldig» (130). Enttäuscht, dass der Kampf der Intellektuellen für eine bessere Welt gescheitert war, verstieg er sich schließlich in den Vorschlag eines kollektiven Freitods der kulturellen Eliten: «Hunderte, ja Tausende von Intellektuellen sollten das tun, was Virginia Woolf, Ernst Toller, Stefan Zweig, Jan Masaryk getan haben. Eine Selbstmordwelle, der die hervorragendsten Geister zum Opfer fielen, würde die Völker aufschrecken» (15). Man darf sehr bezweifeln, dass diese Selbstauslöschung der Eliten die Überlebenden des Weltkrieges, die Täter und Opfer der Gewalttaten, zu besseren Einsichten bewegt hätte. Während Klaus Mann nach Kriegsende schließlich den Freitod wählte, machte sein Bruder Michael zunächst als erfolgreicher Musiker und schließlich als promovierter Germanist in Amerika Karriere, doch auch sein Leben sollte letztendlich in einem Tod enden, der höchstwahrscheinlich ein Freitod war. Bekanntlich ist der Kern der Mann-Familie auf Grund der einsetzenden Denunzierung durch die Agenten McCarthys Anfang der fünfziger Jahre in die Schweiz zurückgekehrt. Noch am amerikanischen Flughafen befürchteten Erika und Thomas Mann, so Klaus Pringsheim, dass man sie wegen ihrer angeblichen Kommunismus-Sympathien verhaften und am Verlassen des Landes hindern würde. Auch die nächste Mann-Generation blieb vom Trauma der erzwungenen Emigration nicht verschont. Der kleine Frido Mann, Michael Manns Sohn und Thomas Manns Lieblingsenkel, musste bereits als Kind durch die Tischgespräche der Familie in Kalifornien erfahren, dass sein Herkunftsland das Reich des Bösen schlechthin war. Strauss folgerte: «Das führte dahin, dass er jahrelang jeden Schurken auf der Kinoleinwand für einen bösen Deutschen hielt und ihn in seiner Phantasie Englisch mit deutschem Akzent sprechen ließ» (63 — 64). 350 Besprechungen/ Reviews Während von den drei Töchtern Thomas Manns Erika die letzten Jahre ihres Lebens nach ihrer Rückkehr in die Alte Welt in wachsender Enttäuschung und Verbitterung verbrachte, schlugen sich Monika und Elisabeth in verschiedenen Ländern diesseits und jenseits des Atlantiks mehr oder weniger erfolgreich durchs Leben. Golo Mann ist in gewisser Hinsicht die traurigste Gestalt unter den Mann-Kindern. Er wagte es erst nach dem Tode seines Vaters aus dessen langen Schatten zu treten und profilierte sich im Laufe der Jahre zu einem anerkannten Historiker, nur um von der radikalisierten Studentenbewegung als ausgemachter Reaktionär verschrieen zu werden, sodass er sich mehr und mehr in sein Schweizer Refugium zurückzog. Frido Mann ist der letzte Spross der Mann-Familie, der sich als Autor fiktionaler und autobiografischer Bücher, einer Sintflutoper und nicht zuletzt einer Romantrilogie einen Namen gemacht hat. In letzterer erkundet er die Welt seiner brasilianischen Vorfahren, und so verliert sich schließlich die Spur dieser in vielfacher Hinsicht so außergewöhnlichen Familiengeschichte wieder in jenem Mutterland, dem einst ein wesentlicher Teil ihrer kreativen Kräfte entsprungen war. Dem Werk ist ein Verzeichnis der für diese Studie wesentlichen Primär- und Sekundärtexte sowie ein Anmerkungsverzeichnis der verschiedenen Kapitel angeschlosssen. Insgesamt hat Dieter Strauss mit diesem Band der reichen Literatur zu Leben und Werk der Manns eine ebenso unterhaltsame wie aufschlussreiche Studie hinzugefügt, in der die Epoche der Emigration und ihre zahlreichen persönlichen und historischen Tragödien auf vielfache Weise zur Anschauung gelangen. Old Dominion University Frederick A. Lubich J AN K NOPF : Bertolt Brecht. Lebenskunst in finsteren Zeiten. Biografie. München: Carl Hanser Verlag, 2012. 559 pp. € 27,90. Although there certainly is no dearth of biographies on the subject of Bertolt Brecht, virtually all of them tend to be somewhat dated in that their publication preceded the opening of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 and German (re)unification in the following year. Without doubt, these unexpected events in the political realm created the conditions for Brecht ’ s eventual, unanticipated, and virtually universal acceptance in all of Germany and beyond after decades of acrimony fueled primarily by the Cold War. As one of the subheadings of the biography under discussion puts it succinctly: «Der Kalte Krieg: Kein Platz für Weigel, Brecht und ihr [Berliner] Ensemble» (483 - 87). Yet the process of Brecht ’ s posthumous recognition reached its climax on occasion of the celebration of his one-hundredth birthday in 1998 - an event that turned into a veritable media spectacle and overshadowed essentially futile attempts to diminish the stature of Brecht such as that by John Fuegi in his controversial Brecht & Company. Sex, Politics, and the Making of the Modern Drama (1994; an expanded and revised German version was published in 1997). Such a remarkably positive and fairly universal acknowledgment was not necessarily to be expected in the case of Brecht who had famously written «Wirklich, ich lebe in finsteren Zeiten! » in his well-known and often quoted poem «An die Nach- 351 Besprechungen/ Reviews geborenen.» Although the poem was first published in 1939 during Brecht ’ s exile in Scandinavia and hence specifically refers to his fate as a refugee from Nazi Germany, Jan Knopf, a renowned Brecht expert who, among other notable contributions to Brecht scholarship, served as one of the editors of the thirty-volume Große kommentierte Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe (1988 - 2000) and editor of the fourvolume Brecht-Handbuch (2001 - 2003), draws explicit attention to those proverbial dark times in the subtitle of his biography - thereby perhaps not entirely convincingly implying that Brecht ’ s entire life was exclusively engulfed by dark times. These dark times Brecht came to grips with by means of his Lebenskunst or ability to master challenging situations during his life. As a consequence, Knopf goes beyond the confines of a conventional life story by including fairly extensive references to and brief explications of those political, economic, and cultural developments during Brecht ’ s lifespan with which the subject of his biography had to contend and to which he responded via his writings. Knopf clearly indicates the interrelatedness of Brecht ’ s biography and the events that shaped it by establishing a pertinent historical framework as evidenced by the designation of the four chapters of the biography - each of which is subdivided into numerous, comparatively brief sections which are usually headed by pithy formulations. The chapter headings correspond to the commonly accepted periodization of German history during Brecht ’ s lifetime. Thus in the comparatively brief first chapter, entitled «Deutsches Kaiserreich (1898 - 1918),» which depicts Brecht ’ s essentially bourgeois childhood and youth in Augsburg as well as the beginnings of his writings, Knopf also draws attention to the jingoistic tendencies prevalent in the German Empire before and during World War I by referring, for instance, to the infamous «Hunnenrede» (1900) of Wilhelm II, in which the Emperor ordered the German troops embarking for China to crush the so-called «Boxer Rebellion» without mercy (14). Moreover, Knopf sketches the unsettling consequences of the First World War such as «die Entmachtung des bürgerlichen Individuums» (53) - a process that is reflected in Brecht ’ s early plays Baal and Trommeln in der Nacht. «Weimarer Republik (1918 - 1933),» the second and lengthiest chapter, is devoted to what may be defined as Brecht ’ s rise to prominence during a period that constituted presumably the least «finster[e]» period of his life. Notably Brecht ’ s attempts to become established in Berlin, the cultural center of the Weimar Republic, were ultimately successful as the extraordinary and almost legendary success of Die Dreigroschenoper (1928), a collaborative effort with Kurt Weill, shows. Conceivably, the heading of one of the subsections, «Auto, Technik, Sex» (179 - 84), puts in a nutshell Brecht ’ s extra-literary preoccupations and pursuits - not necessarily in this order - such as his uncanny ability to acquire cars without sufficient funding or his noteworthy indulgence in promiscuity, the beginning of which Knopf dates at about 1919/ 1920 (39). Paula Banholzer («Bi»), Hedda Kuhn, and Marianne Zoff in Augsburg and Munich, as well as collaborator Elisabeth Hauptmann, remarkable actress and Brecht ’ s future wife Helene Weigel, and talented working-class co-author Margarete Steffin in Berlin played important roles in Brecht ’ s life. The third chapter, entitled «Deutscher Faschismus (1933 - 1945/ 47),» deals with Brecht ’ s exile in Scandinavia and the United States (the year 1947 denotes Brecht ’ s 352 Besprechungen/ Reviews return to Europe from his American exile). The manifold dangers of the exile existence are evident, for example, in the episode entitled «Kreuzfahrt als Himmelfahrtskommando: Marx übers und ins Meer» (387 - 89) about the escape of Brecht and his family (including Ruth Berlau) on the Swedish freighter Annie Johnson from Vladivostok in Siberia to San Pedro, the harbor of Los Angeles, in 1941. At the end of the journey Brecht tossed his edition of Marx ’ s writings, which he had purchased shortly before his departure from Vladivostok, overboard to avoid trouble with the US immigration authorities. The entire episode is reported by Knopf in a factual manner; after all, the situation did not lend itself to heroics on the part of the presumed Marxist Brecht who had escaped from both the Nazis and Stalin ’ s henchmen. As actor and theater director Fritz Kortner, also a refugee from Nazi Germany, put it: «Es war wirklich Rettung in der höchsten Not» (389). Brecht ’ s exile ended after his well-rehearsed «Valentiniade» (455) before HUAC on 30 October 1947 in Washington, DC. In the concluding chapter «Deutsche Folgen (1945/ 47 - 1956),» Knopf provides a detailed discussion of the last phase of Brecht ’ s life and creativity in Switzerland and (East) Berlin. The return to Berlin proved to be problematic inasmuch as Brecht was not eagerly welcomed by the party functionaries of the SED. However, after the Berliner Ensemble, owing to the indefatigable efforts of Helene Weigel, had in 1954 finally found a venue first at the Deutsches Theater and then a permanent home at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, the erstwhile site of the staging of Die Dreigroschenoper, the ensemble ’ s productions eventually achieved national and international renown; however, Brecht and his theater never gained the full support of the authorities. Particularly after the unsuccessful uprising on 17 June 1953 in East Berlin and the GDR, Brecht spent much time in Buckow, his country retreat, before his death in 1956. Despite Knopf ’ s claim that in view of the extraordinarily extensive archival and other materials, which served as the sources of his biography, his main task was «wegzulassen» (522), Bertolt Brecht provides a wealth of information and casts new light on various facets of the «finsteren Zeiten» in Brecht ’ s life. Moreover, Knopf provides reader-friendly «Stellennachweise,» a «Werkregister,» as well as a «Personenregister» - items that are not necessarily to be expected in a biography. It may be perceived as disappointing that Knopf ends his biography with Brecht ’ s death and thereby foregoes the chance to provide an assessment of his enduring significance for the first decade or so of the twenty-first century. To be sure, such an omission appears to be a minor lapse in view of the detailed, impressive account that Knopf provides. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Siegfried Mews L YN M ARVEN AND S TUART T ABERNER (E DS .): Emerging German-Language Novelists of the Twenty-First Century. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2011. 273 pp. $ 75 Lyn Marven, who has translated numerous contemporary German texts and her coeditor Stuart Taberner, who has established himself through numerous books and edited volumes as one of the prominent voices on contemporary German literature, 353 Besprechungen/ Reviews succeed in presenting a volume that delivers a detailed analysis of recently emerging authors. Marven defines these «emerging writers» in her introduction as those who have encountered «a rise to prominence on a number of levels and in a range of arenas» (1) in the first decade of the new millennium. The selection strikes an effective balance in analyzing works of well-known authors such as Juli Zeh, Sybille Berg, and Sven Regener as well as introducing lesser-known authors and works to an international audience. Each of the first fifteen contributions concentrates on the analysis of one narrative, presenting both author and text to the reader. The chapters analyze the respective material in the context of the writer as a whole and place them within wider literary or theoretical trends. Whilst the novels may be united «in their lack of unity» (12), they present an intricate mosaic-like image of the Berlin Republic through a range of literary styles, plots, and protagonists. Each of the authors delivers a comprehensively researched and methodically argued chapter. Anke Biendarra analyzes the trauma the protagonist of Terézia Mora ’ s debut Alle Tage (2004) undergoes and concludes that «the text undermines the notion that transnational mobility and its associated process can set free any liberatory power» (58). Stephen Brockmann traces Juli Zeh ’ s interest in contemporary nihilism in her novel Spieltrieb (2004), refreshingly presenting her image of the Generation Golf as knowledgeable in literature, philosophy, and politics and engaging in questions of morality and values (72). Coining the term «Eastern turn» for contemporary Germanlanguage literature, Brigid Haines examines Wie der Soldat das Grammofon reparierte (2006), Sa š a Stani š ic´ ’ s first novel, as a counter narrative to «the stereotypes of exotic, yet tragic Balkan otherness» (105), articulating the metaphor of sport to negotiate issues of nationalism, identity, and violence. Discourses of Heimat are inspected through Sibylle Berg ’ s peripatetic characters in her novel Die Fahrt (2007), which according to Emily Jeremiah places her into a «glocal» (143) context, simultaneously exploring and partaking in the production of a new form of hybrid. When the protagonist of Karen Duve ’ s intertextual Taxi (2008) navigates the urban space of Hamburg, Heike Bartel reads his movement through space and time as a «critical reflection of postmodern society and its troubled individuals» (191), showcasing Duve ’ s talented writing and signature dark humor. Leaving Germany behind, Yadé Kara ’ s Café Cyprus (2008) transports the reader to London as seen through the eyes of Berlin born Hasan Kazan; Kate Roy locates in this novel a «challenge to categorical distinction in ethnic terms» (207). Returning to Berlin and Sven Regener ’ s popular protagonist Herr Lehmann in Der kleine Bruder (2008), Andrew Plowman convincingly argues that he is confirmed as the sine qua non for a mythic SO36 scene in the memory and performance of 1980s Kreuzberg (225). Last but not least, Sonja Klocke analyzes issues of disability and illness in Kathrin Schmidt ’ s Du stirbst nicht (2009) as illustration of the existing connections between body, memory, and language, recovery of which all has the protagonist ultimately find her new positionality (240). The last section of the book puts its projected goal of making contemporary German-language literature accessible to an international audience into practice, when it concludes in a surprising move with two texts in translation, Katy Derbyshire ’ s 354 Besprechungen/ Reviews translation of a chapter from Clemens Meyer ’ s Als wir träumten and Jamie Lee Searle ’ s rendition of a chapter of Vladimir Vertlib ’ s Das besondere Gedächtnis der Rosa Masur. Emerging German-Language Novelists of the Twenty-First Century delivers a timely and relevant contribution to the discourse on contemporary German-language authors, succeeding in introducing exciting and innovative voices of the twenty-first century. Not only does the collection deliver an excellent road map of the Berlin Republic in the new millennium, it is a pleasure to read. I highly recommend the text for graduate student seminars and any scholar with an interest in contemporary Germanlanguage literature. Duke University Corinna Kahnke G ERT H OFMANN , R ACHEL M AG S HAMHRÁIN , M ARKO P AJEVIC´ , AND M ICHAEL S HIELDS (E DS .): German and European Poetics after the Holocaust: Crisis and Creativity. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2011. 310 pp. $ 75. This compendium of articles represents a substantial and illuminating contribution to the discussion of postwar Holocaust poetics. But the editors of this collection seem determined - at least in their introduction to the volume - to hide this light under a bushel. First, they raise false expectations of fresh topicality by ringing the bell of urgency: «In this sixty-fifth anniversary year of the end of the Second World War and the liberation of Auschwitz, we are fast approaching the eight-decade death-knell for all ‹ lebendige Erinnerung › [. . .]. It would seem [. . .] that we have reached another critical milestone on our path backward into the future» (1). We are led to believe - or at least I was - that this anthology has something to do in particular with the contemporary juncture of Holocaust studies - that is, with the situation in which we find ourselves today. But the book could have been written, with few exceptions, decades ago. In their introduction, the editors provide a turgid rehashing of already well-known and widely discussed Adornian precepts about post-Holocaust aesthetics applied to authors (mostly poets) from the immediate postwar generation. Thus we have here a return in time to a select body of literature that generally comports well with the Adornian model, rather than a book that takes account of the more recent and fundamental changes in Holocaust poetics, e. g., the massive challenge to Adorno posed by popular culture. One thinks for example of Andreas Huyssen ’ s pathbreaking article on the 1978 television series Holocaust (in his After the Great Divide [1987]), or of Geof Eley and Atina Grossman ’ s influential reading of Schindler ’ s List (1997); or again of the widespread embrace of Art Spiegelman ’ s cartoon rendering of Holocaust narrative in his much discussed Maus (1991). All this - and frankly much more - has radically changed the way we conceive of Holocaust poetics. But the editors of this book evade all that controversy, hewing closely, loyally, to Adorno; for even when they note revisions or divergences, it is still as if Adorno ’ s «Commitment» essay were the touchstone, the gold standard of Holocaust poetics. They are in an additional respect somewhat anachronistic, insofar as they fail to inform the reader that Saul Friedlander has in fact retracted his famous prohibition on 355 Besprechungen/ Reviews the «unrepresentability» of the Holocaust. At Christopher Browning ’ s prodding, Friedlander acknowledged what must by now be evident: authors, filmmakers, and other artists have for decades been representing the Holocaust in a whole variety of ways, often in apparent «violation» of Adorno ’ s injunction. Even if the editors didn ’ t know that Friedlander had recanted, which is perhaps a reasonable assumption given the date of their book, they might have pointed out more clearly how the very chapters that comprise their book actually place in doubt the old «certainties» about Holocaust poetics. Elaine Martin, for example, does this in her discussion of Nelly Sachs. Martin shows how Sachs struggles with language and thus with the possibility of representing the genocide (not a new, but certainly a valid point). Yet in order to elucidate this very point, she reverts to Ruth Klüger ’ s rather straightforward, realistic account of what actually happened in the gas chambers (30) precisely so that we can fully appreciate Sachs ’ s rigorous restraint. We need a Klüger (and her ilk), she implies, to understand what is being withheld. Without quite acknowledging it, Martin has thus revealed the paradox - or contradiction - in Adornian Holocaust «poetics.» Yet it is in the end more important for her - as it is for many contributors - simply to show how Sachs (or the respective author) still and all illustrates Adorno ’ s aesthetic recipe, or something very close to it. Certainly we knew even before Jeremy Adler ’ s recent piece in the Times Literary Supplement (August 2012) that some inmates and survivors recited canonical poetry and even wrote their own (often traditionalist) poetry during the Holocaust - indeed that they considered this a kind of survival strategy. Rüdiger Görner makes this very point in his richly informed literary-historical chapter «Between Kahlschlag and New Sensibilities»: «[E]ven poetry written in the concentration camps betray [sic] a strong sense of traditional form through which the suffering poets hoped to resist barbarity» (133). Another contributor, Tatjana Petzer, makes a similar argument with regard to the Yugoslavian writer, Danilo Kis (one of the few authors treated here who is not German, thus authorizing the somewhat misleading inclusion of the word «European» in the book ’ s title). Based on a close reading of two of his novels, she concludes that «Kis ’ s post-Auschwitz aesthetics» constitutes a kind of «ethical writing» that «activates the awareness that creativity [. . .] is as important for the continuation of life after surviving a catastrophe as the traditional Jewish notion of zahor, the imperative to ‹ remember › » (263). This does move us refreshingly beyond the pale of Adornian dogma. Unfortunately, the somewhat verbose introduction (one sentence actually contains three footnotes! ) serves as a harbinger of what is to come. Too often, the editors have asked too little of their contributors, such that we are left with essays (Gisela Dischner ’ s, for example) that begin virtually in medias res and proceed almost in a stream of consciousness style; or with essays that seem in search of their own thesis (e.g., Aniela Knoblich on Thomas Kling). This may in part be an attribute of writing about poetry (the focus of most of the essays), wherein critics - not unlike those writing about theory - tend to mimic the obliqueness of their subject matter. In the case of this book, it may also be a problem of translation: both from another language into English, and from a (presumably) meandering conference paper into a crisp scholarly essay. Here Gert Hofmann ’ s barely readable four-and-one-half page essay on Claude 356 Besprechungen/ Reviews Lanzmann (which does not even venture a hypothesis regarding Lanzmann until the bottom of the second page) must stand as one painful example. But if we set aside the occasional lack of editorial rigor, we discover some compelling pieces indeed. Marton Marko ’ s chapter on Ingeborg Bachmann illuminates the role of nature insightfully; elegant close reading (e. g., of the word «Boden» in the context of «Blut und Boden») is a real strength of this and other essays. Annette Runte «rescues» Rose Ausländer for modernism, without stretching the moniker unduly; and Marko Pajevic´ ’ s essay is a strongly written piece about the «committed» moment of Ilse Aichinger ’ s «privatist poetry» (103). Stefan Hajduk ’ s essay is one of the few pieces to go well beyond what its title offers, giving us a magisterial overview of the work of Gottfried Benn; it will be of use to any student of Benn. Similarly, Chris Bezzel ’ s chapter is one you wish were much longer: he lucidly tells the story of German «concrete poetry» and places it within a wider, international context. Nevertheless, I found myself wanting exemplary readings of classical concrete poems to complement the almost too concise overview and historicization of the movement. It is not clear to me that the Charlotte Beradt ’ s Das Dritte Reich des Traums (1966) really fits this collection, but Hans-Walter Schmidt-Hannisa makes a strong case for its inclusion, basing his argument on the alleged «failure of realism in the face of the [. . .] Shoah» (119). Renata Plaice and Barry Murnane both contribute pieces on Heiner Müller; the former on Hamletmachine, the latter (more substantially) on the Germania cycle. Peter Tame ably traces André Malraux ’ s debt to Oswald Spengler, and in the process briefly indicates the break with Adornian poetics. Manuel Bragança examines an unpublished Satre novel, presumably to highlight the failure of literature in the face of need for real political commitment. There is much good work to be found between the covers of this volume, but the editors - and some of the authors themselves - make it sometimes quite difficult to find. Duke University William Collins Donahue 357 Besprechungen/ Reviews Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH+Co. KG www.francke.de JETZT BES TELLEN! Daniela Finzi Unterwegs zum Anderen? Jugoslawiens aus deutschsprachiger Perspektive ISBN 978-3-7720-8475-1