388 Besprechungen / Reviews beyond its historical possibilities (imagine fighting for a woman without armor! ) and contemplate even greater rewards for their discipline (182-85). Schultz offers these ideas on the Sitz im Leben of courtly love with circumspection, creating an opportunity for discussion that I will take briefly in closing. I find his assertion that without the interest of noble men, the literature of courtly love would never have been written to be puzzling in its silence on possible influences from noble women (188). Wolfram, for one, is famously defensive about a lady’s judgment on his story, an anxiety that hints at a noblewoman’s role in cultural production. The underlying issue is how to think about gender - as a mode of rhetoric, as a regime of discipline (as Schultz does), but also as a system through which masculinity and femininity are related, inseparable from class and sensitive to religious, legal, and political change. The fiction tells us that the crisis in noble masculinity also placed new stresses on what it meant to be female and empowered. If gender at court was «constricting» for men, it was «conflicting» for ladies who were at once powerful and subordinate, both lords and «natural» women. Schultz’s contention that women are not the focal point in courtly fiction because their subordination to love was a continuation of their subordination in society overlooks the powers that noble women do exercise in fiction and the possible ways they might relate to history (183-84). What the fictional imprint of class and womanhood can look like is illustrated by Schultz’s own comment on the autonomy of Herzeloyde at the tournament at Kanvoleis: «institutions that [Herzeloyde] has established and over which she presides - the tournament, the court - determine the meaning of [Gahmuret’s] fighting, which is the meaning she wants it to have» (182). Gahmuret may be the focal point, but through Herzeloyde Wolfram gives us the idea of a woman whose social position gives her ultimate power, the power to determine what things mean. It relates to his anxiety about the judgment of the lady on him and his poem. Wolfram also provides Herzeloyde with an extensive biography in which lordship and womanhood are in almost continuous conflict. His biographical gesture is extraordinary but surely not pure fantasy. He does it again with Orgeluse, another lady who, to the distress of Gawan, determines what things mean, at least for the best part of the story. Wolfram is not unique: Kriemhild and Laudine also represent empowered lives played out through conflicted notions of relational gender. Although my observations move beyond courtly love and the history of sexuality per se, a richer notion of gender is relevant to their understanding. These fictional women may end well or badly, and be subordinated happily or unhappily to male privilege in the end, but how they get there is a very exciting story that we can’t afford to miss. Rice University Sarah Westphal-Wihl M ATT E RLIN : Berlin’s Forgotten Future: City, History, and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Germany. Chapel Hill & London: U of North Carolina P, 2004. xiv + 219 pp. $ 45. Matt Erlin’s study of the discourse on Berlin in writings from the second half of the eighteenth century, a contribution to scholarship on Germany’s literary and cultural history, investigates the role of Prussia’s capital in the «evolution of modern historical Besprechungen / Reviews 389 consciousness» (1). It is Erlin’s contention that texts from the period which represent, discuss, or otherwise reflect on Berlin display a new kind of historical thinking, one that places the city on a linear trajectory of development (rather than on a merely atemporal plane); thus, in the eighteenth century’s «evolving hermeneutics of historicity» (81), Berlin takes on an important conceptual role, serving simultaneously as a historical yardstick, an ideal of rationality, and a framework of thought structurally reflected in the writings of its resident intellectuals. In four chapters, each focusing on the writings of one prominent Enlightenment figure - Friedrich Gedike, the editor of the Berlinische Monatsschrift; the publisher Friedrich Nicolai; Gotthold Ephraim Lessing; and Berlin’s most renowned philosopher, Moses Mendelssohn - Erlin discusses views on fashion, ideas of urbanity, the city’s influence on eighteenth-century aesthetics, and its impact on philosophical conceptions of the time. Although the discourse centered around the city is focused on change and progression, the literary and philosophical representation of Enlightenment Berlin is really a tale of two cities, for the advent of modernity is marked by a dialectic according to which the emerging metropolis can be thought of as both a meta-historical constant and a location at the forefront of historical progress defined by its very historicity. All texts investigated in Erlin’s study show «an oscillation between the ahistorical universal and the historical particular, together with an effort to reconcile the two» (173), leading not only to reflections on the city’s place in history but also to increased attempts to theorize historical progression around the urban experience. Eighteenth-century Berlin was not on a par with Paris or London, as it had neither the cultural weight, nor the political significance, nor the size to compete with its fellow European capitals. Counting roughly 100,000 residents around 1750, it was nonetheless a city on the rise, and in that sense as vibrant and open as other political and cultural centers of Europe. Actual political change may not have come easily, yet the perception of perpetual transformation associated with the notion of urbanity was ever-present, exemplified, for instance, in the realm of fashion. The critique of superficial temporal change as epitomized in fashion could consequently serve as a way conceptually to differentiate mere change from qualitative historical progression. Such is the case in Friedrich Gedike’s letters on Berlin (1783-85), where the author tries to reconcile the idea of «a long-term cultural evolution» (62) with the change for change’s sake as modeled by the realm of fashion. Friedrich Nicolai, says Erlin, is similarly concerned with the city’s «multiple modes of temporality» (95), as he brings to the fore competing conceptions of history and a focus on the driving forces of historical consciousness. In Nicolai’s thinking it is the urban experience itself that provides the impetus for continuous transformation, a phenomenon that he recognizes and draws attention to, sometimes indirectly, as is the case in Book 4 of his novel Das Leben und die Meinungen des Herrn Magister Sebaldus Nothanker (1775), where again an argument about fashion serves to represent the different paradigms of historical transformation. Lessing’s Minna von Barnhelm (1767), argues Erlin, provides not just a fitting setting for the negotiation of the conflict between the independent-minded Minna and her counterpart, Major von Tellheim; the urban experience, too, leaves its aesthetic mark on the play. According to Erlin, the city of Berlin is a location signifying libera- 390 Besprechungen / Reviews tion in both an emancipatory and a self-destructive sense. On the one hand, the play’s protagonists find themselves «in a state of newfound autonomy» (105), yet on the other hand they fall prey to «an immature subjectivity run wild» (112), a danger accompanying the freedom they enjoy. In this context, the urban experience can also be understood as representing a certain kind of epistemology, «one that posits the constant exposure to new, often contradictory viewpoints as the only source of truth» (120). As Erlin demonstrates, Tellheim’s belief in timeless universality stands in stark opposition to the multi-faceted historical experience, the position represented by Minna and evidently also the one favored by the playwright. As the play suggests, Enlightenment is not simply linked to, but actually synonymous with the urban experience. Erlin’s final chapter, devoted to the discussion of a selection of Moses Mendelssohn’s writings, picks up on this same point when he contends that Mendelssohn’s experience in Berlin served as «an enabling condition for his philosophical production» (145). Although the writings discussed do not explicitly address the city, Mendelssohn’s concern «with the value and the inherent risks of both social intercourse and societal development» (152) points to the central role of late eighteenth-century Berlin in his thinking. According to Erlin, the philosopher’s ideal of the development of all human capacities is inextricably linked to his urban experience, namely that of a German Jew frequenting enlightened circles, as well as of the philosopher promoting the Jewish Enlightenment, itself largely coterminous with the urbane existence of Berlin’s Jewish community. While Matt Erlin’s study is not a cultural history of Berlin itself, it should be considered a welcome addition to the inquiry into such a history and makes for edifying reading. His interpretations seem fresh and lucid, and although the paradigmatic relationships he tries to establish seem overly mediated at times, his readings do offer surprising and often compelling insights into the role of the city in historical thinking in the second half of the eighteenth century. One problematic aspect I see is the unresolved tension between the study’s theoretical and historiographic approach that permeates the entire inquiry from the difference between title (theoretical) and subtitle (historical) to the frequent use of the stylistically awkward attribution «theoreticalhistorical.» As a study in cultural history, the depth in terms of source material seems not quite sufficient fully to support the author’s far-reaching claims. In terms of its methodological approach, the deeper connection between the four authors studied remains somewhat unclear. Theoretically speaking, it would have been helpful to have at least one «control sample» from a more marginal perspective. Interestingly, Erlin introduces the notion of gender into his discussion of Lessing’s Minna von Barnhelm but does not apply it consistently throughout the study. This could have opened up a different perspective on the city’s conceptual place altogether. These considerations, however, should not detract from the book’s obvious merits, and one should give credit to the author for embarking on the study of such a complex subject matter, providing his readers with a book rich in thought and of scholarly integrity throughout. University of Georgia Martin Kagel