Slave and Sovereign: Alma M. Karlin and Senta Dinglreiter in the Western Pacific RICHARD SPERBER C ARTHAGE C OLLEGE Between World War I and II, two German-speaking female travel writers visited islands in the western Pacific, i.e., Melanesia. In many ways, these two travelers could not be more different: Alma M. Karlin traveled by herself, but Senta Dinglreiter always traveled in the company of a male guide. While Karlin explored the backwaters of the western Pacific, Dinglreiter never left wellestablished colonial routes. If the title of Karlin’s narrative - Im Banne der Südsee: Tragödie einer Frau (1930) - highlights her struggles as a single female traveler, the title of Dinglreiter’s So sah ich unsere Südsee (1939) connotes possession and belonging. At home in «our South Seas,» the former German colony of northeastern Papua New Guinea, Dinglreiter claims to continue what she does in Germany: «Ich rede und handle zu Hause, wie ich will» (So sah ich 267). Dinglreiter’s sovereign self appears to have nothing in common with Karlin’s self-designation as a slave: «Ich habe mich im Südsee-Inselreich stets als Sklavin gefühlt» (Im Banne 131). Slave and sovereign, Karlin and Dinglreiter seem to be located on the extreme ends of the experiential spectrum of female travel writing. Yet, critics of women’s travel writing suggest that the experiences of female travelers are typically located in a grey zone where oscillating feelings of empowerment and disempowerment, of aggrandizement and abjection, mark ambivalence and uncertainty. 1 Similarly, Sara Mills defines women’s travel writing as «a strange mixture of the stereotypically colonial in content, style and trope […] whilst at the same time being unable to adopt a straightforwardly colonial voice» (4). For Mills, this inability to speak in a colonial voice results from discursive constraints on women. 2 This paper, too, suggests that Karlin’s enslaved and Dinglreiter’s sovereign self are conditioned discursively, specifically by mission discourse. The following definition of mission discourse derives from Nicholas Thomas’s discussion of late nineteenthand early twentieth-century British missionary activity in Fiji and the Solomon Islands: If savages are quintessentially and irreducibly savage, the project of converting them to Christianity is both hopeless and worthless. The prospect of failure would be matched by the undeserving character of the barbarians. This is why mission dis- CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 175 CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 175 29.04.2009 14: 58: 04 Uhr 29.04.2009 14: 58: 04 Uhr 176 Richard Sperber course must simultaneously emphasize savagery and signal the essential humanity, and more positive features, of the islanders to be evangelized. (128) Mission discourse advances a dynamic rather than static definition of savagery because it requires islanders to be learners in the process of evangelization. What Thomas does not address is that the limited agency of the savage as learner may put into question the success of evangelization. Islanders may use missionary education to construct selves at odds with the goal of this education. Thus, mission discourse contains a certain degree of instability. My choice of mission discourse as the discursive context for Im Banne der Südsee and So sah ich unsere Südsee is based in the female writers’ contacts with missionaries. In fact, both travelers are in frequent, if not permanent, contact with missionaries: Karlin relies on missionaries for lodging, and Dinglreiter travels with a male missionary guide. What is more, Karlin and Dinglreiter identify with a female and male missionary, respectively. To the extent that they admire their missionary model and submit to their authority willingly, both travel writers occupy the level of savage. My use of the term savage follows mission discourse and conceives of the savage not as a barbarian but as a learner, that is, a potentially subversive learner who may rewrite the goal of mission discourse. In addition, the use of mission discourse as the discursive horizon for Im Banne der Südsee and So sah ich unsere Südsee echoes Mills’s attempt to interpret women’s travel writing «within its period and its discursive constraints» (5). In Karlin’s case, such constraints are visible in her self-designation as a slave. At first sight, Dinglreiter’s emphasis on her sovereign self has nothing in common with Karlin’s self-perception. Upon closer inspection, however, Dinglreiter’s self hinges on approval by her male missionary guide. Her self-presentation as an eager student listening to her missionary master locates Dinglreiter on the level of the learner. As both travelers acquire a certain independence within their discursive constraints, they begin to inscribe ambivalence. Thus, my discussion will expand on Karlin’s rewriting of religious conversion as aesthetic production, as well as on the photographs in Dinglreiter’s narrative. Although So sah ich unsere Südsee is highly procolonial, 3 some of its photographs show Dinglreiter’s inability to adopt the colonial voice. Her camera eye registers the instability in mission discourse, its failure to control the learner’s perspective. By documenting indigenous agency, Dinglreiter’s images defy the subordinate discursive position of islanders and female travelers. A brief look at some biographical facts suggests that Karlin’s and Dinglreiter’s complex relationship to colonial discourse has its origins in their complex historical and social positions at home. Born in 1889 in Celje, Slovenia, Karlin was educated in the Habsburg and British Empires. After finishing secondary CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 176 CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 176 29.04.2009 14: 58: 04 Uhr 29.04.2009 14: 58: 04 Uhr Slave and Sovereign 177 school in Graz, Austria, she studied at a polytechnic university in London, earning a degree as a translator by showing proficiency in English, French, Russian, and Norwegian, among other languages. Karlin spent World War I in Scandinavia where she wrote a novel. She then decided to become a writer and in 1919 embarked on an eight-year journey around the world in order to collect material for future novels. Between 1924 and 1926, Karlin visited Fiji, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Bougainville, and northeastern Papua New Guinea. Karlin’s departure from Europe was also influenced by the outcome of World War I. In 1919, she became a citizen of the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, later called Yugoslavia. Since she identified with Austria and Great Britain, 4 Karlin did not care for this new citizenship. Her lack of identification with Yugoslavia is also evident in the absence of any reference to linguistic proficiency in Slovenian or Serbo-Croatian in the two volumes of her travel narratives, Einsame Weltreise: Tragödie einer Frau and Im Banne der Südsee: Tragödie einer Frau, both published 1930. For a polyglot as talented as Karlin, this absence is significant. As regards her career as a writer, Karlin used the observations and insights from her eight-year journey to write exoticist novels and short stories. A reviewer of her 1938 novel Kleiner Frühling emphasized the importance of her travel experiences for her books: «Das was immer wieder an dieser Dichterin fesselt, ist die hinter dem Werke stehende Persönlichkeit. Eine kleine, fast kindhaft zarte Frau, die schier Übermenschliches an Entbehrungen und Strapazen mit mehr als männlichem bewunderswertem persönlichem Mute auf sich nimmt» (Niesel-Lessenthin 243). This comment suggests the extent to which Karlin’s fictional texts were identified with her travel experiences. This is not surprising because her two volumes were the best-selling travel narrative of 1930. At the same time, the reviewer’s biographical literary criticism overlooks the discursive constraints on Karlin’s «tragedy» in the Pacific. My analysis of these discursive constraints highlights ambivalence and does not lend itself to a heroic portrait of Karlin as a survivor. Compared to Karlin, Dinglreiter’s geographic, educational, and linguistic horizon was much smaller when she came of age. Born in 1893 in rural Bavaria, Dinglreiter grew up on a family farm and received little formal schooling. When she was nineteen years old, she went to Munich to start an apprenticeship as a cook. Growing signs of independence can also be seen in her attempt to open a photographer’s studio in the Bavarian capital. In 1925, she traveled to the United States, where she spent several months working in New York, Chicago, and Denver, before continuing on to Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia. When she worked as a secretary in an engineering firm in Chicago, she soon advised the engineers on questions of design and was invited to par- CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 177 CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 177 29.04.2009 14: 58: 04 Uhr 29.04.2009 14: 58: 04 Uhr 178 Richard Sperber ticipate in the engineers’ decision-making processes. 5 Dinlgreiter’s foray into the traditionally masculine domain of engineering was tempered by the more traditionally feminine role working as a maid for a family near Denver. The fact that she straddled conventional gender roles with the «new woman» of the Weimar Republic is also evident in the title of her initial travel narrative, Deutsches Mädel fährt um die Welt (1932). Despite her independence as a single female traveler, the title underlines that the traveler remains a «Mädel.» Dinglreiter’s limited independence can therefore not be confused with the socially transgressive type of the «new woman.» 6 Her career as a travel writer took a more procolonial direction after visiting former German colonies in Africa and publishing Wann kommen die Deutschen endlich wieder? (1935). While German travel writers were often sponsored by their publishers, it is likely that Dinglreiter also received financial support from procolonial groups in Germany as she prepared for her 1938 trip to northeastern New Guinea. It is also possible that she was sponsored by Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers Party because she was an early member, joining the party before 1930, and gave speeches on her African travels to fellow party members. In So sah ich unsere Südsee, Dinglreiter repeatedly voices her admiration for Hitler and defends the Third Reich in conversations with non-German nationals. When an Australian woman points out that women have no rights in Nazi Germany, Dinglreiter replies, «Ich rede und handle zu Hause, wie ich will» (So sah ich 267). Rather than viewing this response as a purely ideologically statement by a Nazi woman, I suggest that it be seen as a reflection of Dinglreiter’s attempt to straddle subordination with independence. Dinglreiter’s contradictory self-presentation here anticipates similar tensions to be explored in the discussion of So sah ich unsere Südsee below. Karlin’s and Dinglreiter’s travel narratives have received scant scholarly attention. Annegret Pelz has likened Im Banne der Südsee to other narratives by early twentieth-century German-speaking women travelers such as Marie von Bunsen, Alice Schalek, or Hannah Asch: «[E]in zum Teil massiv kolonialistisches und eurozentrisches Bewußtsein [geht] eine merkwürdige Verbindung ein mit der Selbstdarstellung als moderne und emanzipierte europäische Frau» (238). While Pelz highlights Karlin’s self-confidence, my discussion concentrates on Karlin’s self-designation as a slave, thus elaborating on the crisis - rather than the confidence - of her self. If Karlin’s narrative, as Pelz suggests, contains colonialist ideology, it is not as strongly ideological as Dinglreiter’s So sah ich unsere Südsee which Hans Fischer defines as a noxious mix of various ideologies. Fischer draws attention to Dinglreiter’s «politische Überzeugungen, die vor allem ihre Bücher über die Südsee und Afrika durchziehen, ihr Natio- CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 178 CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 178 29.04.2009 14: 58: 04 Uhr 29.04.2009 14: 58: 04 Uhr Slave and Sovereign 179 nalismus, Kolonialismus, schließlich ihr Nationalsozialismus, Rassismus und Antisemitismus. Auf dieser Grundlage sind einigermaßen sachliche Berichte über fremde Völker nicht zu erwarten» (126). Given the presence of these ideologies in Dinglreiter’s narrative, the absence of a more or less objective ethnography is not surprising. While it is important to denounce nationalist, colonialist, racist, and anti-Semitic aspects of ethnography, it is also possible to turn the table, as it were, and propose an ethnography of such ideologies. I am here thinking of Thomas’s proposal for an «ethnography of colonial projects» which «presupposes the effect of larger objective ideologies, yet notes their adaptation in practice, their moments of effective implementation and confidence as well as those of failure and wishful thinking» (60). What Thomas calls «adaptation in practice» emphasizes the incomplete textual implementation of ideologies. The ethnography of colonial projects thus locates ruptures in the reproduction of ideologies in the heterogeneity of the colonialist text. In Dinglreiter’s narrative, such ruptures lie in the tension between the written and photographic registers of her text. Im Banne der Südsee does not contain photographs, but visuality has a similarly disruptive effect. It is the gaze of the other that undermines what Pelz sees as Karlin’s colonialist and Eurocentric-feminist self. Im Banne der Südsee corroborates Kaja Silverman’s argument that the gaze destabilizes subjectivity, regardless of the identity of the one who is looking. 7 As the following discussion will show, Karlin’s subjectivity is destabilized by the gaze of whites as well as by the gaze of islanders. In other words, her sense of being enslaved in the Pacific results from such visual objectification. Poignantly, this objectification commences as she enters the Pacific. Traveling from San Francisco to Honolulu, Karlin is painfully aware of the stares of first-class passengers directed at her in the steerage where she travels with Portuguese, Philippine, and Chinese passengers: Nichts empfand ich auf meiner weiten Reise so furchtbar, wie die Blicke der Ersten auf mich unten im Zwischendeck. Da hinauf gehörte ich meiner heimatlichen Stellung, meiner Bildung und meinen Wünschen nach, und hier unten, in Schmutz, Unwissenheit und Unschliff mußte ich mich herumtreiben, einzig weil wir ehemaligen Österreicher ein verarmtes Volk geworden sind. (Einsame Weltreise 165) The personal tragedy in the subtitle of Karlin’s narrative - Tragödie einer Frau - is thus linked to a national tragedy - the impoverishment of the Austrian people. The passive construction («weil wir ehemaligen Österreicher ein verarmtes Volk geworden sind») underscores that nothing can be done against this outcome of World War I. In fact, it is not only Austrians who have become impoverished but «former Austrians» as well. Interestingly, Karlin prefers to define herself as a former Austrian rather than mention her actual CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 179 CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 179 29.04.2009 14: 58: 04 Uhr 29.04.2009 14: 58: 04 Uhr 180 Richard Sperber Yugoslav citizenship. In the two volumes of her travel narrative, this new citizenship appears only in negative terms. Her Yugoslav citizenship impedes her mobility, leading to delays at visa-issuing agencies and national borders. In addition, her disengaged, nearly bureaucratic reference to her Yugoslav citizenship as «mein SHS-Paß» (Einsame Weltreise 26) differs markedly from her nostalgia for the Habsburg Empire. In her visual exchange with first-class passengers, her painful recognition of the gaze of the other constitutes an instance where Karlin’s subjectivity is not defined by colonialist ideology and feminism, as Pelz claims, but by the fear of reverse colonization. 8 In short, Karlin is afraid of becoming identified with the colonized, her non-European fellow passengers in the steerage. Karlin emphasizes that she ought to travel in first class because of her education. While her education in the Habsburg and British Empires provided this Slovenian imperial subject with a rare geographic and professional mobility, it has not paid off entirely insofar as she is not able to publish the articles and stories she has already written on her eight-year journey. Im Banne der Südsee contains numerous references to her disillusionment, even bitterness, resulting from the failure to publish her articles and short stories in Germany. 9 In order to be recognized as a writer, she takes the unusual step of donating articles to the German-language newspaper of her Slovenian hometown: Das Blatt meiner Vaterstadt allein hatte schon an zweihundert Beiträge gebracht - alle unentgeltlich und von mir nur übersandt, um das Deutschtum zu fördern, konnten sich die ärmeren Deutschen rund umher doch nicht ein teures deutsches Buch kaufen, wenn sie auch gern Deutsch lesen, und war, was ich da schrieb, nicht besser als seichte Schundliteratur, die billig zu erstehen ist? (100) Aside from seeking recognition, Karlin also aims to situate herself above the German-speaking minority of Celje. Her rhetorical question not only underlines her superiority over Celje’s German-speaking minority who consume literary trash («seichte Schundliteratur») but also casts her as their teacher. Rather than an act of great generosity, Karlin’s donation may be seen as an attempt to overcome her postwar marginalization as a former Austrian. Marginalized by other whites, she in turn marginalizes the German-speaking minority, those Germans of Celje who have not benefited from empire as much as Karlin. If Karlin achieves symbolic superiority with respect to Celje, she fails to do so in the western Pacific. British colonial officials suspect this German-speaking traveler of being a German spy, and Karlin begins to submit her writings to British and French officials in order to prove that she is a writer. 10 At first sight, the suspicion of Karlin as a spy appears unreasonable, even absurd, for how could a single female traveler with a Yugoslav passport, too poor to CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 180 CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 180 29.04.2009 14: 58: 05 Uhr 29.04.2009 14: 58: 05 Uhr Slave and Sovereign 181 afford passage with other whites, be seen as a spy? However, as the Pacific historian Hermann Hiery has pointed out, the western Pacific was a highly volatile region between World War I and II: The non-German colonies in the Pacific seemed, at first, to be less affected by the outbreak of war than the German colonies. But here, too, the European war opened valves which had previously seemed to be firmly closed. An apocalyptic mood spread. And just as after the Second World War cargo cults began to blossom, so now indigenous prophets appeared, preaching the imminent end of European norms. (33-34) Evidence of regional instability can be seen in the nervousness of European border officials who do not believe that Germany has relinquished its colonial designs in the western Pacific. It can also be found in the rise of indigenous resistance, for instance in Karlin’s encounter with a high-ranking islander on Malaita, Solomon Islands. This encounter is framed by what Corinne Fowler calls explorer discourse. In her discussion of Catherine Oddie’s Enkop Ai: My Life with the Maasai (1994), Fowler argues that Oddie «adopts nineteenth-century explorer discourse through the use of the picturesque» (217). Likewise, Karlin tries to «paint» the native from Malaita whom she calls a chief: «Es war der berüchtigte Häuptling von Malaita, und er starrte aus allen Augen zu mir empor. Ich […] starrte mit allen Augen auf ihn hinunter und beschrieb im Geiste schon seine buschigen Brauen, seinen Muschelschmuck um die kräftige Brust, seine breitgequetschte Nase. Das erforderte Zeit» (Im Banne 77). It is not only her drawing a mental portrait of the chief that locates Karlin in an earlier explorer discourse. The pre-World War I Pacific is also evident in the spatial organization of this encounter: her position staring down at the native marks a hierarchical relationship between explorer and native. This hierarchy soon collapses as Karlin notices his staring at her: «Er besah sich einmal so recht eine Europäerin von den falschen Fußhülsen bis hinauf zum glatten, nichtssagenden Haar» (77). In explorer discourse, the native would be expected to utter cries of astonishment at the simultaneously strange and marvelous appearance of the Western visitor. Nothing of this sort happens here as the islander, through Karlin’s interpretation of his gaze, reacts with disenchantment, noticing her «anodyne hair.» Since «Malaita ist noch voll von Menschenfressern» (75), the islander’s disenchanted gaze is not based in civilization but savagery. The chief rejects Karlin’s appearance not on the basis of a comparative judgment on the clothes and hair-style of Karlin and other Westerners but on the basis of his allegedly cannibalistic interest in her. In other words, the chief gazes at her because he wants to eat her: «Endlich stieß er einen tiefen Seufzer aus und entfernte sich ohne Gruß, vornehm. So etwas Kleines hatte er zu fressen gehofft! Für- CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 181 CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 181 29.04.2009 14: 58: 05 Uhr 29.04.2009 14: 58: 05 Uhr 182 Richard Sperber wahr, die Weißen waren ein Volk, das nur zu enttäuschen vermochte. Aber sehenswert waren sie immerhin, auch wenn sich das Fressen nicht verlohnte» (77). Pleased in disappointing him - i.e., disappointing his cannibalistic desire - Karlin concludes this encounter on an ironic note as she jokes about her physical imperfections. This irony, however, should not ignore the inversion of visual control in this exchange. If it begins with Karlin staring down at the chief, it leads to him staring at her at length and leisure («Er besah sich einmal so recht») and ending their exchange through his controlled departure. At the end of this exchange, Karlin has become «sehenswert,» i.e., has been objectified by the gaze of the other. While Karlin’s irony disavows this objectification, it cannot mask a split between language and body. Karlin’s irony betrays a form of rhetorical control notably disconnected from control over her body, which she portrays as abject and inadequate. A more sovereign subject of explorer discourse might ignore the gaze of the native other, or acknowledge it only to reassert visual control over the native. Karlin’s enslavement in the western Pacific is evident in her presenting the islander as the subject of the gaze, as the winner of their visual contest whose sovereign departure from this exchange is not devoid of nobility («und entfernte sich ohne Gruß, vornehm»). This is not the only instance in Im Banne der Südsee where Karlin fails to ignore or question the islanders’ gaze. While the gaze of male Fijians at her body may result from boredom, curiosity, or sexual interest, Karlin immediately identifies it as cannibalistic. While her exclamation «Suppenknochen! » (16) marks her triumphant defiance of cannibalistic desire, it also connotes a similarly unanimous affirmation of her own body as inadequate. Given these recurring experiences of visual objectification, it is not surprising that Karlin enjoys staying at Catholic missions, for the mission compound provides spatial separation between Westerners and islanders. In contrast to the first-class passengers on the ship from San Francisco to Honolulu, Western missionaries do not look down at Karlin. 11 What is more, Karlin finds a Catholic mission in northeastern Papua New Guinea in which one female missionary has removed mirrors. Since the gaze of the other is the main source of Karlin’s enslavement, the absence of mirrors means that Karlin has less opportunities to reflect herself in a mirror and be reminded of how others look at her. While she praises the missionary, sister Dolorisa, for removing mirrors, Karlin still cannot help reflect herself in the mirror-like surface of a puddle: Schwester Dolorisa war eine Heilige. […] Sie fastete, ohne daß man es merkte, sie verrichtete ihre Arbeit still und unauffällig,und sie sprach nie einen Tadel aus, aber an ihr merkte ich immer meine Schattenseiten. […] Sie kam aus Amerika und war sehr hübsch anzuschauen, schlank und wundersam weiß im Gesicht, doch nie woll- CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 182 CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 182 29.04.2009 14: 58: 05 Uhr 29.04.2009 14: 58: 05 Uhr Slave and Sovereign 183 te sie auch nur einen Spiegel in der Mission wissen. Ich betrachtete mich zuzeiten im Wasser einer Pfütze unweit des Kuhstalls. Da an mir nichts zu sehen war, bedauerte ich den Mangel nicht. (147-48) Typically, Karlin sees herself through the gaze of the other. The passive construction («Da an mir nichts zu sehen war») posits an other who finds fault with Karlin’s body. Since the American missionary occupies a space without mirrors, her face connotes beauty rather than lack, as evident in the allusion to her face as alabaster («wundersam weiß im Gesicht»). As slim as Karlin, the missionary’s body does not evoke the painful self-realization of being nothing but «Suppenknochen! » What Karlin admires in the missionary is her escape from the gaze through the removal of mirrors, as well as her efficient work. It is therefore not surprising that sister Dolorisa will become Karlin’s model for a feminine self that has transcended the body. Not only has this missionary veiled her body to such an extent that only her face and hands are visible beneath her uniform, but she has also attained the disembodied spiritual beauty of saints: «Schwester Dolorisa war eine Heilige.» It is only in writing that Karlin approximates sister Dolorisa’s transcendence and spiritual beauty. Karlin often does not have extended periods of time available for writing because of practical necessities such as finding a ship, lodging, or battling malaria. In some rare moments, though, she works as efficiently as the American missionary. Just as sister Dolorisa works «unauffällig,» so does Karlin manage to disappear in her texts: Ich ging in meinen Werken auf. Es war dies scheinbar das einzige Band, das mich an die Menschheit knüpfte. Sonst, wenn ich unter dem flimmernden, blauschwarzen Tropenhimmel stand und die Sterne beobachtete, wünschte ich mir zur Belohnung der irdischen Pein nur eins: Hinaufgenommen zu werden auf einen Stern, der ganz leer und ganz still war, der eine Bücherei in allen Sprachen und eine Erika hattte und auf dem ich allmählich vergessen dürfte, daß ich je so etwas wie die Erde gekannt … (136) Karlin tries to repeat sister Dolorisa’s ascension into the disembodied condition of a saint. By ascending toward an empty star, Karlin not only ensures spatial superiority for her own gaze but also, more importantly, undisputed sovereignty as the subject of the gaze: the empty star contains no other gaze. By «Erika» Karlin refers to her typewriter, and it is not fortuitous that her model of a successful writer is called Erika. This is the name of the sixteenyear-old protagonist in her western Pacific novel Vier Mädchen im Schicksalswind (1936). After the death of her mother, she and her father emigrate to the western Pacific island of Vanikoro where her father works as a supervisor in a kauri plantation. Erika begins to write short stories, sends them to Germany, and soon receives an acceptance letter from a German publisher. CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 183 CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 183 29.04.2009 14: 58: 05 Uhr 29.04.2009 14: 58: 05 Uhr 184 Richard Sperber In no time, Erika has accomplished what eludes Karlin during her 1924-26 travels through the western Pacific - publication and recognition as a writer. Moreover, it is no accident that Karlin has used the company name of a typewriter for her protagonist. For Karlin, the typewriter embodies a model of mechanical efficiency, and the sixteen-year-old protagonist’s immediate success similarly connotes a machine-like productivity. It is therefore fitting that this protagonist can conceive of fertility only in terms of writing. When her father complains that her decision to become a writer violates what he sees as the biological destiny of women, i.e., becoming a mother, Erika defends writing as a sublimated form of fertility. 12 In short, the character of Erika in Vier Mädchen im Schicksalswind shows how Karlin translated sister Dolorisa into a model for the female writer. Just as sister Dolorisa achieves spiritual beauty by escaping from the gaze and by denying her body, sexual desire, and gender identity, so does Erika attain aesthetic beauty by becoming a similarly neutered and disembodied subject. Just as sister Dolorisa becomes an inconspicuous («unauffällig») instrument of God’s will, so does Erika become an instrument of writing - the identity between her name and that of a typewriter is therefore intentional. Finally, sister Dolorisa not only provides a personal but also a discursive template for Karlin. The American missionary embodies an important dimension of mission discourse, that is, spiritual transcendence. Karlin supplies the other dimension: the savage and her potential for conversion. This designation of Karlin as a savage accords with her self-portrait as a slave and her proximity to the colonized. It is my contention that Karlin inscribes herself into mission discourse in order to become a writer. This results in a reorientation of mission discourse: first, Karlin as the savage does not rely on missionary guidance but enacts the process of conversion herself; second, the goal of conversion is not Christian womanhood but success as a female writer. By success, Karlin does not have commercial fame in mind; rather, success refers to the selfless creation of aesthetic beauty and therefore mirrors sister Dolorisa’s selfless attempt to effect spiritual beauty. Moreover, Karlin’s attempt to construct a new identity as a writer echoes the transformation of islanders from savages into Christian subjects. In mission discourse, this transformation includes a transitional state of identity called infancy: «The mission postulated neither masculinity nor femininity but infancy, a protosocial condition from which Christian manhood and womanhood are imagined to emerge» (Thomas 133). Infancy does not connote childhood as much as a blank slate, a temporary absence of identity. In Karlin’s case, this negativity is expressed in self-portraits as a slave, a former Austrian, «something small» («etwas Kleines»), or mere cannibalistic fodder («Suppenknochen! »). All CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 184 CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 184 29.04.2009 14: 58: 05 Uhr 29.04.2009 14: 58: 05 Uhr Slave and Sovereign 185 these point to a negative identity which is also central to the transformation of islanders in mission discourse. At the same time, Karlin’s inscription into mission discourse must not overlook her redirection of this discourse, for her goal is not to become a communal Christian subject but an isolated subject whose aesthetic development is imaged in terms of an ascension to an empty star. We do not know how the American missionary gauges the success of her missionary work, but it is safe to assume that she would not concur with Karlin’s verdict on missionary work as «die Hoffnungslosigkeit der Umwandlung» (Im Banne 85), i.e., the failure to civilize islanders. While Karlin reserves «Umwandlung» only for her own hoped-for development as a writer, she nonetheless affirms the entire process of mission discourse: starting from the recognition of her present condition as inferior (i.e., slave), leading to her belief in her potential to change - what mission discourse calls «infancy» - and ending in the attainment of a state of transcendence. Within these parameters, Karlin hijacks and destabilizes this discourse: the goal of this savage is not to serve others as a reborn Christian subject but rather to serve herself only. To the extent that she rewrites spiritual as aesthetic transcendence for the benefit of an asocial self, Karlin’s appropriation of mission discourse is startling and scandalous. Karlin thus inscribes ambivalence into (mission) colonial discourse. Karlin’s complaint about not being recognized as a writer is not shared by Dinglreiter. The fact that Dinglreiter has no literary ambitions is also evident in her willingness to pass narrative authority on to her male missionary guide Winkler whom she joins in his «Inspektionsreise» (So sah ich 95) into the highlands of northeastern Papua New Guinea. Here is a representative example of Dinglreiter relinquishing her narrative authority: Herr Winkler sagte: «In den Küstendörfern gibt man uns zwar etwas zu essen, auf den Bergstationen dagegen bekommen wir das Beste, auch wenn die Leute hernach selbst sparen müssen.» «Sie schwärmen ja förmlich für die Hochländer, da würde ich doch gern mehr über sie hören.» «Nun gut! Die Bergvölker müssen sich vielfach unter schwierigen Verhältnissen ihren Lebensunterhalt verdienen, denn die Bodenbearbeitung an den steilen Hängen ist unendlich viel härter als an der Küste…. Die Leute sind […] sehr fleißig und moralisch gefestigter als die weniger arbeitsamen, aber äußerlich gewandteren Küstenbewohner.» (104-05) The Protestant missionary continues for another page, and what is interesting here is not Winkler’s information as much as Dinglreiter’s silence: she neither comments on his observations on New Guinean highlanders, who were beginning to be mapped and classified more intensively in the 1930s, 13 nor raises CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 185 CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 185 29.04.2009 14: 58: 05 Uhr 29.04.2009 14: 58: 05 Uhr 186 Richard Sperber a question. Her subordinate role in her own narrative renders Winkler the undisputed authority. Although her exchange with Winkler is structured like a dialogue, no dialogue takes place. There are two times in So sah ich unsere Südsee when Dinglreiter challenges Winkler with critical questions, but she quickly abandons her challenge insofar as she does not engage with his replies to her critical questions. If Karlin’s literary ambitions redirect mission discourse, Dinglreiter’s mock-Socratic dialogue with Winkler stabilizes mission discourse. The following discussion will examine how Winkler deploys key elements of mission discourse, such as the islanders’ savagery and humanity, their infancy, their conversion, and the role of the missionary in this process. I will also draw attention to ruptures in Dinglreiter’s reproduction of Winkler’s mission discourse. Since her missionary informant dominates the verbal register of So sah ich unsere Südsee, such ruptures will be located on the visual register, or more precisely in the tension between Dinglreiter’s photographs and her explanations of them. By portraying western Pacific islanders as savages but not cannibals, mission discourse highlights their positive features. Winkler, too, praises their industry, moral rectitude, and hospitality. However, this praise pivots on the binary opposition between highlanders and coastal islanders. This opposition is anchored in the practice of hospitality: whereas highlanders are hospitable and generous, coastal islanders perform hospitality in a merely perfunctory fashion: «In den Küstendörfern gibt man uns zwar etwas zu essen, auf den Bergstationen dagegen bekommen wir das Beste, auch wenn die Leute hernach selbst sparen müssen» (104). 14 The loss of hospitality in coastal areas is said to derive from too much contact with Westerners and Chinese traders. Dinglreiter emphasizes that trade is not productive labor (So sah ich 46) and that the proliferation of «die gelbe Handelsrasse» has become a serious problem (47). Winkler goes further and suggests that the Chinese have begun to corrupt highlanders. The missionary explains the rise of cargo cults in the highlands through Soviet propaganda disseminated by Chinese agents: Herr Winkler erzählte: «Moskaus Sendlinge sind hier wie überall fest an der Arbeit. Chinesen sind es, die hier die Propaganda durchführen…. Sie reden den Schwarzen vor, alle diese wunderbaren Dinge, die durch die Schiffe für die Europäer ankommen, seien gar nicht von ihnen gemacht, sondern sie fielen irgendwo einfach vom Himmel, kämen von einer höheren Macht und seien für alle Menschen gleichermaßen bestimmt.» (102) «So ist das also,» meinte ich. «Seit Moskau in Europa eine Schlappe nach der anderen erleidet und umwälzende Erfolge dort kaum mehr zu erwarten sind, wendet man sich den Primitiven in Afrika und sogar der Südsee zu.» (104) CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 186 CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 186 29.04.2009 14: 58: 05 Uhr 29.04.2009 14: 58: 05 Uhr Slave and Sovereign 187 In New Guinea, cargo cults emerged after World War I as an indigenous effort to make sense of vast differences in material wealth. Although they worked hard, islanders realized that they were unable to gain access to Western technology and consumer goods. There is nothing inane, as Winkler claims, about islander perception that Western wealth falls from the sky because technology and consumer goods were sent as cargo on airplanes. A form of religious syncretism, cargo cults combined ancestor worship with millenarian aspects of the New Testament and claimed that islanders would soon receive the wealth that Westerners had withheld from them. Thus, the communist idea of the equal distribution of wealth did not derive from Soviet propaganda but from the teachings of missionaries like Winkler as well as from the islanders’ own reading of the Bible. Homegrown rather than imported, cargo cults had their roots in the islanders’ incorporation of Christian teachings into traditional cosmologies and served to express indigenous resistance to colonial rule (Lattas). By claiming that they have been manipulated by Soviet communism, Winkler portrays highlanders as impressionable and naïve. Their impressionability is also propitious to the extent that it dovetails with mission discourse. In mission discourse, the «infancy» of islanders marks their potential for conversion. Since the existence of cargo cults demonstrates that the islanders have begun to advance their own explanations why they remain poor, Winkler struggles to prevent such explanations and other forms of agency. Specifically, he tries to control them through surprise and intimidation: first, he plays a gramophone record to which they respond with cries of astonishment (100); second, he lectures them about the size of German cities. As Dinglreiter recounts Winker’s speech, Ferner sagte er den Leuten, die noch keine Stadt, höchstens auf Sattelberg fünf bis sechs Europäerhäuser zusammen gesehen haben, daß München, «mein Heimatdorf», alle Papua beherbergen könnte…. Rufe der Überraschung und des Staunens mischten sich immer wieder in diese Rede…. Dann aber wurden sie gedrückt und ganz klein, und einer fragte: «Ja, wenn das so ist, sind wir denn dann auch Menschen oder nur Tiere? » (124) Winkler’s intimidating lecture about German cities, which ends up humiliating his audience, is intended to «teach» the importance of work: «Das alles sollte ihnen vor Augen führen, was man nur durch Arbeit, aber nicht durch Schläfrigkeit erreichen kann» (124). Winkler’s lecture thus aims to discipline highlanders in order to transform lazy children into efficient workers. The disciplinarian aspects of his «Inspektionsreise» are also evident in his demographic and medical work. Winkler counts the number of residents in each village he visits and attends to the residents’ medical needs. His actions recall CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 187 CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 187 29.04.2009 14: 58: 05 Uhr 29.04.2009 14: 58: 05 Uhr 188 Richard Sperber British colonial efforts in Fiji which Thomas characterizes as «a modern and subtle project that proceeded through social engineering rather than violent repression, and appeared essentially as an operation of welfare rather than conquest» (124). Winkler, too, would describe his visits to highlander villagers as welfare. Indeed, he argues that German missionary work preserves traditional indigenous culture: «Von dem Kannibalismus und ihrem Zauberglauben müssen wir die Menschen hier befreien. Sonst aber betrachten wir uns mit Recht als Förderer und Erhalter echter Eingeborenenkultur. An dem Verschwinden vieler Eingeborenen-Sitten ist etwas ganz anderes schuld, nämlich die Kontraktarbeit der Jungen» (So sah ich 119). Winkler blames the contractual labor of young highlanders for the loss of traditional culture because it brings young men into contact with Westerners. By counting the number of residents in each village, Winkler is able to ascertain whether young men have left to work on Australian plantations. Should this be the case, the German missionary may then resort to his manipulation of villagers, as in his lecture on the size of German cities. The goal of this intimidation - and manipulation - is to prevent the mobility of young villagers and to encourage them to devote their energies to the German Protestant mission. The fruits of Winkler’s missionary activities, however, are not obvious. There is no mention of indigenous priests in So sah ich unsere Südsee, nor does Winkler refer to any efforts to train indigenous men into becoming priests. While evidence of evangelization is absent, evidence of German nationalism abounds. Dinglreiter is surprised to find the German national colors in indigenous villages: «Schwarz-weiß-rot sind merkwürdigerweise die Farben, die man ausschließlich in ganz Neuguinea verwendet» (54). In the area of Winkler’s missionary work, i.e., the highlands, Dinglreiter also notes the incorporation of the swastika motif into small bags: «Auch kleine Ziertaschen mit bunter Bemalung fertigen sie an. Dazu bevorzugt man in letzter Zeit das Hakenkreuzmuster, was den Mandatsherren sehr unangenehm ist und sie veranlaßt, einige Deutsche ungerechterweise dafür verantwortlich zu machen. Aber das ist es nicht, die Papua sind selber helle» (143). The Australian administration sees the highlander’s use of the swastika motif as a sign of anti- Australian sentiments and blames Germans for fomenting such sentiments. Dinglreiter insists that Germans played no role in the highlanders’ adoption of this motif. While she rejects the Australian interpretation as politically biased, her argument that the adoption of the swastika marks an independent decision surreptitiously reinscribes politics in the form of missionary education. If Australian officials and German missionaries are the only Westerners who have visited highlanders, and if the Australians condemn the use of swastikas, this motif can only derive from Germans. When Dinglreiter prais- CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 188 CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 188 29.04.2009 14: 58: 05 Uhr 29.04.2009 14: 58: 05 Uhr Slave and Sovereign 189 es indigenous intelligence («die Papua sind selber helle»), she is not referring to an innate predisposition but to the highlanders’ decision to incorporate the swastika motif into their artifacts. Significantly, this decision derives from cross-cultural contact. As a result, Dinglreiter’s notion of highlander intelligence is the product of nurture rather than nature. Independent decision making on the part of the highlander thus betrays the success of missionary education. At the same time, their «progress» beyond the stages of savagery and infancy is uncertain insofar as their resignification of the swastika motif remains unclear. Dinglreiter does not expand on what the swastika means to highlanders. A swastika, of course, is not a typical element of mission discourse, and neither is Winkler a typical missionary. As she arrives in northeastern New Guinea, the captain of her German ship recommends that she contact Protestant missionaries: «Hier kann ich Ihnen die lutherische Mission von Neuendettelsau bei Finschhafen empfehlen. Ihre Mitglieder sind fast alle Parteigenossen und sie arbeiten, soweit das Mandatssystem es zuläßt, in deutschem Sinne» (69). Later, Dinglreiter notices that Winkler and his wife «waren aber auch ganz anders als das, was ich mir bisher unter Missionaren vorgestellt hatte; äußerlich wie jeder andere Mensch gekleidet und innerlich voll jugendlichen Feuers und voll der flammendsten Begeisterung für das neue Deutschland» (99). No longer wearing clerical clothes, this Protestant missionary has shed his religious pretext as he indoctrinates highlanders to work for Hitler rather than God. Despite his incorporation of German nationalism into mission discourse, Winkler has not been entirely successful: while some highlanders have adopted the swastika motif - although one does not know to what effects - others have ignored his German nationalist lectures 15 and incorporated millenarian aspects of his Christian teachings into their cargo cults. By concurring with Winkler that cargo cults derive from Soviet propaganda, Dinglreiter attempts to stabilize Winkler’s mission discourse. As a result, she is never interested in a critical exchange with her missionary guide and quickly denies her own observations if they do not meet his approval. For instance, she notices the abuse of highlander wives by their men and implicitly critiques Winkler’s portrait of highlanders as noble and childlike when she asks, «‹Die Papuafrauen werden von ihren Männern also doch sehr herrenmäßig behandelt? › fragte ich» (138). Winkler immediately responds by drawing attention to the elevated roles of highlander women as the keepers of the gardens. While Winkler’s answer runs for almost two pages, Dinglreiter’s failure to comment on or question his answer shows how she denies a personal observation in order to maintain Winkler’s narrative authority. Likewise, Dinglreiter’s only other critical question does not lead to dialogue. She CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 189 CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 189 29.04.2009 14: 58: 05 Uhr 29.04.2009 14: 58: 05 Uhr 190 Richard Sperber deplores the fact that highlanders wear Western-style clothes and blames the missionaries for the disappearance of loincloths for men and grass skirts for women (116). Winkler rejects this charge, claiming that German missionaries have fought against the use of Western-style clothes (117). He explains the use of such clothes as the highlanders’ desire to imitate Westerners (117). Like communism, Western-style clothes constitute a deleterious «Berührung mit der Zivilisation» (117) from which Winkler must protect highlanders - for example, by counting the number of villagers in order to control population movements. Not only is Dinglreiter fully swayed by his explanation, she also regrets having critiqued German missionaries in the first place. 16 While Dinglreiter’s voice disappears in her exchange with Winkler, So sah ich unsere Südsee also contains thoughts and observations that are not part of her dialogue with the missionary. Her thoughts about another German woman, who lives permanently in northeastern New Guinea, merit close attention because they show Dinglreiter’s discomfort with a woman less submissive than herself. During her «Inspektionsreise» with Winkler, Dinglreiter encounters the sixty-six-year-old German botanist Clemens who researches plants in northeastern New Guinea. Dinglreiter declines her invitation to travel into the highlands together, claiming that such a journey would be physically challenging to her (99). However, she does not mind joining Winkler on his trip which is no less physically challenging. The fact that she twice refers to Clemens as «eine seltsame Frau» (99, 192) suggests that she is not entirely comfortable around her. To some extent, her reservations regarding Clemens are puzzling because Dinglreiter has been independently mobile herself, having traveled extensively on her own. Do Clemens’ botanical research trips into the highlands not exemplify what Dinglreiter claimed for herself in response to a question by an American woman wondering about women’s rights in Nazi Germany, «Ich rede und handle zu Hause, wie ich will» (267)? The important point here is that Dinglreiter’s mobility is conditioned by, and only unfolds in, «zu Hause,» that is, within Nazi Germany or under the tutelage of its New Guinean party representative Winkler. Her self-marginalization in her exchange with Winkler betrays the limitations of Dinglreiter’s notion of action. The sixty-six-year-old independent Clemens, then, is «strange» because she transgresses nationalist boundaries. Given Dinglreiter’s clearly circumscribed radius, it comes as no surprise that she evinces a thinly disguised feeling of superiority when she finds out that Clemens, for once, is immobilized due to seasickness: «Sie lag zusammengerollt und ein wenig armselig in ihrem Bett…. Man fühlte sich beinahe ein wenig erleichtert, daß diese starke Frau doch auch einen wunden Punkt hatte» (191). It is perhaps not accidental that Dinglreiter’s relief occurs on a German copra CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 190 CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 190 29.04.2009 14: 58: 05 Uhr 29.04.2009 14: 58: 05 Uhr Slave and Sovereign 191 ship flying the swastika flag. Clemens, it appears, has finally been tied down by the copra ship as a symbol of Nazi Germany and a symbol for the limited radius of German women in 1938. Dinglreiter’s discomfort with Clemens points to the persistence of a minimal subjectivity on Dinglreiter’s part, i.e., something that is not fully subordinated under Winkler’s point of view. The tension between image and caption in some of the photographs of So sah ich unsere Südsee throws into relief this residual subjectivity. My first example refers to a series of three photographs arranged vertically: the image on the top of the page shows a group of old men, the image in the middle young mothers, and the one on the bottom children. It is not fortuitous that each age group is sitting: Dinglreiter points out that they sat when Winkler counted the number of villagers. Moreover, their seated position made it easy to take pictures: «Die zur Volkszählung versammelten Dorfbewohner boten meiner Kamera reiche Beute. Da hockten sie, nach Alter und Geschlecht getrennt, in Reih und Glied auf dem Boden: die alten verknorrten und grauhaarigen Kanaken neben der vollkräftigen Generation und der lebensfrohen Jugend» (n. pag.). Dinglreiter’s caption articulates mission discourse to the extent that mission discourse contains a temporal narrative ranging from a savage past to a bright future. The stern look on the faces of the «alten verknorrten und grauhaarigen Kanaken» aims to locate savagery in the distant past. The young mothers in the middle of the page adumbrate the bright future and are appropriately named «vollkräftige[ ] Generation.» The life-affirming youth on the bottom of the page are supposed to complete this temporal narrative. Yet, this last image contradicts the claim of its caption. The children do not embody «lebensfrohe[ ] Jugend» because they look as sternly and joylessly as the old men in the photo above. While the smiles on the faces of young mothers indeed advances the temporal narrative of mission discourse, the expressionless faces of the children derails it. This is not the only visual evidence for Dinglreiter’s inability to reproduce Winkler’s mission discourse completely. While the photograph of the old men corroborates mission discourse’s reference to the islanders’ savage past, another photograph in So sah ich unsere Südsee undermines mission discourse’s claim regarding the authenticity of savagery. Winkler defines German Protestant missionaries as «Förderer und Erhalter echter Eingeborenenkultur» (119), but the following image presents indigenous culture as inauthentic. Four islanders stand in the middle of the frame, wearing masks which cover their faces and raising spears; a man sits to their left. Dinglreiter’s caption reads: «Zu Ehren der weißen Missis wird ein wilder Kriegstanz vorgeführt» (n. pag.). To begin with, the half-raised position of the spears suggests that these weapons are carried rather than displayed in any threatening fashion. CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 191 CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 191 29.04.2009 14: 58: 05 Uhr 29.04.2009 14: 58: 05 Uhr 192 Richard Sperber Likewise, the second dancer from the right undermines the illusion of wildness insofar as his mask has slipped off his face. Next, the man on the ground has turned his face away from the four dancers, his empty look betraying a lack of interest in this «wild war dance.» If this oblivious spectator inside the photograph appears used to such tourist spectacles, so does the dancer who is about to lose his facial mask. There is no need to readjust the mask because a less than perfect reproduction of a tribal dance is good enough for tourists. While So sah ich unsere Südsee contains many photos of New Guineans working on copra plantations or unloading cargo, the photo of the war dance has special importance. Whereas images of workers focus on the hybridized space of the coast, the war dance photo takes place in the much less modernized space of the highlands. The mountainous highlands are also the site of Winkler’s mission discourse. The conversion of highlanders into Christians (and German nationalists) hinges on the infancy and innocence of indigenous savagery. In contrast to the slyness of coastal islanders, 17 highlanders are portrayed as morally more stable, more hard working, and, most importantly for mission discourse, childlike. The photograph of the dancers self-consciously performing a tourist spectacle gains its full subversive force once it is contextualized within mission discourse. The dancers’ performance of traditional culture not only blurs the boundary between authentic highlanders and their inauthentic coastal counterparts but also disrupts the temporal narrative of mission discourse. If savage customs like the war dance are not authentic, then mission discourse cannot proceed. The fact that one dancer does not readjust the mask that has slipped off his face not only evokes the slyness of coastal islanders but also the alarming suspicion that there may be other highlanders performing their own cultural past as well as their missionary teachings. In other words, highlanders may not really «mean it» when they declare their Christian identity; likewise, in Winkler’s German nationalist inflection of mission discourse, they may not truly have Germany in mind when they use German national colors or the swastika motif. In sum, So sah ich unsere Südsee contains a tension between its verbal and visual registers. The former is characterized by Dinglreiter’s unceasing attempts to pass narrative authority on to her missionary informant. Putting Dinglreiter’s questions and Winkler’s answers in quotation marks does not prefigure the emphasis on multiple authorship in postmodern ethnography; on the contrary, the use of question marks in So sah ich unsere Südsee parodies the relativization of an informant’s truth claim, as practiced in postmodern ethnography. Dinglreiter, surely, does not intend to relativize Winkler’s claims. To the extent that quotations marks in Dingleiter’s narrative give the CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 192 CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 192 29.04.2009 14: 58: 05 Uhr 29.04.2009 14: 58: 05 Uhr Slave and Sovereign 193 illusion of dialogue and contingency, they obfuscate the lack of heterogeneity on the verbal, or written, register of the narrative. As my discussion of selected photographs has tried to show, it is only on the level of the visual register that Dinglreiter fails to repress her voice altogether. Inadvertently, her camera eye inscribes her «I» and, in effect, destabilizes mission discourse. This paper has focused on the «discursive constraints» (Mills 5) on Karlin’s and Dinglreiter’s narratives. While my discussion has traced the authors’ respective positions within mission discourse, it has also tried to corroborate Mills’s argument regarding the irreducible ambivalence of women’s travel writing, its inability «to adopt a straightforwardly colonial voice» (4). It is important to emphasize this ambivalence because German Cultural Studies has shown a tendency to homogenize representations of colonies in post-World War I texts. For instance, the editors of the collection The Imperialist Imagination: German Colonialism and Its Legacy (1998) claim that «‹Postcolonial› German texts, that is, literature and film produced after the Germans had been forced to relinquish their colonies to the victors of World War I, continued this obsession with Germanness as masculinity, strength, and civilization» (Friedrichsmeyer, Lennox, and Zantop 24). By contrast, Karlin’s and Dinglreiter’s narratives demonstrate that not all representations of colonies had a masculine bias. As Mills has pointed out, late nineteenth and early twentiethcentury «women travel writers were unable to adopt the imperialist voice with the ease with which male writers did» (3). Even the pro-colonial Dinglreiter fails to maintain her focus on the achievements of German missionaries in northeastern New Guinea as some of her photographs inscribe the subversive agency of highlanders. In contrast to the claim by the editors of The Imperialist Imagination, Marcia Klotz’s essay «The Weimar Republic: A Postcolonial State Within a Still-Colonial World» (2005) offers a more enabling conceptualization of post-World War I representations of colonies in German writing. Klotz differentiates between German fears of reverse colonization at the end of World War I and the aggressive reconsolidation of national identity during the Third Reich. It is not difficult to identify Karlin’s narrative with such fears and Dinglreiter’s narrative with such a reconsolidation. Yet, the point of this identification is not to fit their narratives into Klotz’s model but rather to use the ambivalence of their narratives in order to call for new, still more differentiated models. Klotz’s attempt to map «postcolonial» (136) Germany deserves to be complemented by a focus on the contestatory discursive practice of female German travel writing between the wars. CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 193 CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 193 29.04.2009 14: 58: 06 Uhr 29.04.2009 14: 58: 06 Uhr 194 Richard Sperber Notes 1 See the contributions in Kristi Siegel’s Genre, Gender, and Identity in Women’s Travel Writing. 2 «Because of the way that discourses of femininity circulated within the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, women travel writers were unable to adopt the imperialist voice with the ease with which male writers did» (Mills 3). 3 Dinglreiter waxes nostalgically on what she sees as the achievements of the German colonial period in northeastern Papua New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago (1885- 1914): the construction of streets, railroads, schools, hospitals, and plantations; the pacification of islanders; and scientific explorations (So sah ich 93). In addition, Dinglreiter’s main informant, the Protestant German missionary Winkler, quotes an islander in order to provide indigenous corroboration for these achievements: «Einst wurde ein Eingeborener gefragt, was er für das größte Ergebnis unserer Arbeit für die Papua halte. Er gab zur Antwort: ‹Sie hat uns den Schlaf gebracht.› […] Der Eingeborene war Tag und Nacht von Lebensangst und Unruhe erfüllt. Er wagte nicht zu schlafen, denn jede Minute konnte ein Nachbarstamm einbrechen, jede Stunde die Blutrache und der religiöse Wahnsinn des Kannibalismus ihm den Tod bringen» (118). 4 Karlin feels at home both in the Habsburg and British Empire. She calls herself a «former Austrian» (Einsame Weltreise 165) and states her admiration for the «British lion»: «Allerdings, so daheim wie bei Engländern fühlte ich mich nicht; das mag aber dem Umstande entsprechen, daß mir englische Sitten so vertraut wie meine eigenen geworden sind und ich mit wirklicher Hingebung an den britischen Löwen dachte. Wo seine Tatze liegt, da reist die Frau geschützt und meist auch angenehm» (Im Banne 56). 5 «Schließlich war es so, daß sich alle Arbeiterinnen bei wichtigen Fragen, statt an die Vorlady an mich wandten. Selbst der technische Chef, der neue Flugzeuge, andere Typen entwarf, kam zu mir» (Deutsches Mädel fährt um die Welt 30). To be sure, Dinglreiter was no engineer and felt overwhelmed when asked to evaluate mathematical design models: «Das waren reine Berechnungsfaktoren in seinen Entwürfen, von denen ich - als technisch ungeschult - keine Ahnung hatte. Aber um das in mich gesetzte Vertrauen nicht zu erschüttern und vor allem im Interesse von uns Deutschen, an deren Tüchtigkeit man hier nur bedingt zu glauben schien, versuchte ich mit Erfolg, durch diplomatische Antworten mich aus dieser schwierigen Angelegenheit zu ziehen« (30). Dinglreiter’s diplomatic answers serve to assure her employer of German know-how. Likewise, in So sah ich unsere Südsee Dinglreiter conveys German competence to Australian officials. In both cases, her desire to speak for Germans conceals her lack of technical and ethnographic knowledge. 6 In Vibeke Rützou Petersen’s reading of the «new woman,» «female subjectivity becomes a powerful agent for the destabilization and disruption of traditional social order and also the marker of a constantly shifting array of possibilities of the self» (144). 7 As Kaja Silverman has shown, the gaze marks a structure that can be occupied by various subjects. In Karlin’s case, it makes no difference whether white or native subjects gaze at her; the effect of objectification remains the same. 8 Marcia Klotz has argued that German fears of reverse colonization emerged after World War I: «In a world that for centuries had been divided between colonizers and colonized, it seemed to many that Germany […] was now being reckoned among the colonized» (Klotz 141). Although not a German citizen, the German-speaking Karlin embodies the postcolonial predicament of post-War Germany, which Klotz characterizes as «Europe’s CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 194 CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 194 29.04.2009 14: 58: 06 Uhr 29.04.2009 14: 58: 06 Uhr Slave and Sovereign 195 first postcolonial nation in a world trying desperately to maintain the colonial structure that had so long held it together» (136). Karlin’s painful recognition of the gaze of firstclass passengers shows how this former Austrian tried to hold onto the pre-War colonial structure, in particular the Habsburg Empire. 9 For instance, «Leute, die zwanzig Jahre früher auf Neuseeland gewesen, begannen Erinnerungen aufzutischen, ausgerechnet als ich in dieses fesselnde Land kam, und sperrten mir damit den Markt» (Im Banne 41). Or: «[A]ber daß meine ‹Hammersonne›, wie ich meinen Vertreter nannte, so schweigsam blieb, und daß in Europa nichts zu machen sein sollte, wenn ich im Grunde doch etwas leistete, was andere nicht zu unternehmen wagten, das erstaunte mich. Später began es mich zu erbittern» (155). 10 «Das politische Empfinden spielte mit, und […] deshalb ließ ich meine Beiträge an reichsdeutsche Blätter durchlesen, ehe ich sie absandte. Ich wollte nicht, daß man glauben könnte, ich spioniere …» (Im Banne 60). 11 Karlin does not mention non-Western missionaries living in mission compounds. She also appreciates that Catholic missions maintain their distance toward islanders: «Die katholischen Missionen zeichnen sich dadurch vor den protestantischen aus, daß sie die Eingeborenen als Brüder, aber zu leitende Brüder behandeln; daß die Kinder vor allem zum Arbeiten und dann zum Beten und zum Singen angehalten und daß sie nicht aus ihrer Umgebung herausgerissen werden. Die Protestanten behandeln sie als gleichberechtigt, und das macht den Schwarzen höchstens unverschämt» (Im Banne 85). 12 When her father complains, «‹Du trittst aus dem üblichen Rahmen, entziehst dich deinem Weibtum›» (Vier Mädchen 225), Erika replies: «‹Auch geistige Schöpfung ist eine Art von Mutterschaft. Man kann nicht zweien Herren dienen, und ich möchte lieber eine gute Künstlerin als eine schlechte Gattin und Mutter sein›» (225). 13 Winkler’s and Dinglreiter’s references to highlanders («Hochländer») - also called «Bergvölker» or «Papua» - refer to indigenous people in the mountainous highlands of northeastern New Guinea. These people constitute numerous societies which for the most part are not named in So sah ich unsere Südsee. Winkler’s «Inspektionsreise» does not lead to the «discovery» of highland societies as depicted in the Australian film First Contact (1983) which reconstructs first encounters between Australian gold prospectors and highlanders in 1930. As regards the inaccuracy of terms like «Bergvölker» or «Papua,» see the chapter on Dinglreiter in Fischer’s Randfiguren der Ethnologie. The German anthropologist furnishes detailed evidence of the ethnographic poverty, if not irrelevance, of Dinglreiter’s perceptions of New Guineans. 14 Winkler echoes Adelbert von Chamisso’s remarks on hospitality. In his travel narrative, Chamisso distinguishes between hospitable Marshall Islanders and inhospitable Hawaiians, defining the former as culturally authentic and the latter as inauthentic. Chamisso derives the importance of hospitality from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who saw it as an indication of savage nobility. 15 As Dinglreiter recalls other parts of Winkler’s lecture on the size of German cities, «Herr Winkler, der die Katesprache spricht, erzählte weiter von dem großartigen Aufbau Deutschlands seit dieser Zeit. Er schilderte ihnen die Autobahnen und die mächtigen übrigen Bauten, die im Entstehen begriffen sind» (So sah ich 124). 16 «Hier war ich selbst getroffen und nicht wenig überrascht über diese mir völlig neue Aufklärung, denn auch ich hatte die Missionen bisher samt und sonders für viele wenig erfreuliche Zustände bei den Primitiven verantwortlich gemacht» (So sah ich 117). 17 Dinglreiter highlights the coastal islanders’ «Schläue» (105). CG_40_2_s105-200korr.indd 195 CG_40_2_s105-200korr.indd 195 08.05.2009 7: 23: 41 Uhr 08.05.2009 7: 23: 41 Uhr 196 Richard Sperber Works Cited Chamisso, Adelbert von. «Reise um die Welt mit der Romanzoffischen Entdeckungs- Expedition in den Jahren 1815-1818.» 1836. Gesammelte Werke. Vol. 2. Ed. Volker Hoffmann. München: Winkler, 1975. 5-503. Dinglreiter, Senta. Deutsches Mädel fährt um die Welt. Leipzig: Koehler & Amelang, 1932. -. So sah ich unsere Südsee. Leipzig: Koehler & Amelang, 1939. -. Wann kommen die Deutschen endlich wieder? Eine Reise durch unsere Kolonien in Afrika. Leipzig: Koehler & Amelang, 1935. Fischer, Hans. Randfiguren der Ethnologie. Berlin: Reimer, 2003. Fowler, Corinne. «The Problem of Narrative Authority: Catherine Oddie and Kate Karko.» Genre, Gender, and Identity in Women’s Travel Writing. Ed. Kristi Siegel. New York: Lang, 2004. 208-20. Friedrichsmeyer, Sara, Sara Lennox, and Susanne Zantop. Introduction. The Imperialist Imagination: German Colonialism and Its Legacy. Eds. Sara Friedrichsmeyer, Sara Lennox, and Susanne Zantop. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1998. 1-29. Genre, Gender, and Identity in Women’s Travel Writing. Ed. Kristi Siegel. New York: Lang, 2004. Hiery, Hermann. The Neglected War: The German South Pacific and the Influence of World War I. Honolulu: U of Hawaii P, 1995. Karlin, Alma M. Einsame Weltreise. Die Tragödie einer Frau. Minden: Köhler, 1930. -. Im Banne der Südsee. Tragödie einer Frau. Minden: Köhler, 1930. -. Vier Mädchen im Schicksalswind. Berlin: Franke, 1936. Klotz, Marcia. «The Weimar Republic: A Postcolonial State Within a Still-Colonial World.» Germany’s Colonial Pasts. Eds. Eric Ames, Marcia Klotz, and Lora Wildenthal. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2005. 135-47. Lattas, Andrew. Cultures of Secrecy: Reinventing Race in Bush Kaliai Cargo Cults. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1998. Mills, Sara. Discourses of Difference: An Analysis of Women’s Travel Writing and Colonialism. London: Routledge, 1991. Niesel-Lessenthin, Christa. Review of Kleiner Frühling, by Alma M. Karlin. Die Literatur 40 (1937-1938): 243. Pelz, Annegret. Reisen in das eigene Fremde: Reiseliteratur von Frauen als autobiographische Schriften. Köln: Böhlau, 1993. Petersen, Vibeke Rützou. Women and Modernity in Weimar Germany: Reality and its Representation in Popular Fiction. New York: Berghahn, 2001. Silverman, Kaja. Male Masculinity at the Margins. New York: Routledge, 1992. Thomas, Nicholas. Colonialism’s Culture: Anthropology, Travel and Government. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1997. CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 196 CG_40_2_s105-200End.indd 196 29.04.2009 14: 58: 06 Uhr 29.04.2009 14: 58: 06 Uhr