eJournals Colloquia Germanica 41/1

Colloquia Germanica
cg
0010-1338
Francke Verlag Tübingen
Es handelt sich um einen Open-Access-Artikel, der unter den Bedingungen der Lizenz CC by 4.0 veröffentlicht wurde.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/31
2008
411

Betting on Providence: Gambling in Lessing’s Minna von Barnhelm

31
2008
Horst Lange
cg4110001
Betting on Providence: Gambling in Lessing’s Minna von Barnhelm HORST LANGE U NIVERSITY OF N EVADA , R ENO Why do rational people gamble? After all, games of chance are hardly winning propositions. Neither do they offer narrative pleasure: a given game’s permutations of combinations of cards or numbers might be virtually infinite in number, but no new hand of cards and no new throw of the dice can possibly come as a new development, or even as a surprise. While a narrative plot might hold a person’s abiding interest, a series of events in which each event is a permutation of every other and follows its permutation with complete randomness certainly does not. So while narratives have the potential to offer a sense of completion, of the sudden emergence of new meaning, or of the transcendence of a set of seemingly limited possibilities, a game of chance never lets us leave the orbit of its depressing premises. Un coup de dés, as Mallarmé observed, jamais n’abolira le hasard. So why do people put so much at stake - their livelihoods, their social identities, the well-being of their families, and their power - by engaging voluntarily in an activity where the only certainty is the impossibility of creating lasting meaning? As I have just argued, the answer cannot lie in the structure of the game itself. It must instead be found in the position which the activity of gambling occupies in the gambler’s social, cultural, and intellectual environment. Let us look, for example, at the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as Thomas Kavanagh has done in his pioneering study Enlightenment and the Shadows of Chance: The Novel and the Culture of Gambling in Eighteenth- Century France. 1 In that era, an aristocrat might have gambled because, by showing great indifference to catastrophic monetary losses, he could demonstrate to the world that his worth - and therefore his identity - was determined by his progeny, not his earthly possessions. 2 Courtiers in the Versailles of Louis XIV might have gambled because the constant losses of large sums of money created - in a logic similar to that analyzed for archaic societies in Marcel Mauss’ Essai sur le don 3 - a vast system of indebtedness which tied them together into a cohesive social group. The eighteenth-century man of feeling might have gambled in order to prove that his worth and identity rested in his infinite capacity for intense emotions, not his financial means. And the nouveau riche, intent on climbing socially in a culture dominated by aristocratic 2 Horst Lange values, might have gambled in order to escape the image of a profit-conscious miser who subjects everything to a rigorous cost-benefit analysis. 4 While all these cases paradoxically suggest that losing - in the eighteenth century at least - was actually part of the point of gambling, there must have been room for people who actually gambled in order to win. Sure, there are always people with superstitions about lucky dice and the like, and Kavanagh might very well be right in suggesting that in the eighteenth century modern probability theory developed out of the desire to combat such superstitions. 5 But in this article I would like to argue that we can very well conceive of an «enlightened» person who knew about the lousy odds and still gambled in the hope of winning. I will submit that Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s Minna von Barnhelm presents a view of gambling that flows directly out of one of the supposedly rational and non-superstitious belief systems of the Enlightenment - the deistic faith in an all-powerful, benevolent providence. For in this text, a man and a woman, both exhibiting the characteristics and virtues of the heroes and heroines of sentimental literature, find their happiness through acts which they describe in terms of gambling and which are, in their own peculiar way, enlightened acts of religious affirmation. On the face of it, Minna von Barnhelm is an anti-war play. The comedy’s main couple, Major Tellheim and Minna, met and were separated during the Seven- Years’ War; now, after the war’s end in the Peace of Hubertusburg, they are trying to reunite by overcoming a number of obstacles thrown in their way during the war’s aftermath. In a rather transparent sense, the lovers’ quest is an allegory, no matter how psychologically acute and socially realistic the play is otherwise. Tellheim, although not Prussian himself, was an officer in the Prussian army. Minna, on the other hand, is a member of one of the most prominent families in Saxony, a country which had to live throughout the war under the harsh occupation of Prussian troops. Tellheim was one of the administrative officers during this occupation, and Minna fell in love with him because he showed compassion in the discharge of his duties and once even gallantly lent the Saxonian estates money with which to pay their compulsory war contributions. Clearly, this means that the marriage of the two should be taken as an allegory of true peace, i.e., of a peace not just in the military sense, but in the sense in which the deep enmities aroused by the war are overcome and recognized as reprehensible. It is important to note, however, that the obstacles to marriage which must be overcome in a whirlwind of plot twists are not really external to the characters; in other words, they are not created by a society damaged by war. The Prussians do not prohibit Tellheim from taking an enemy as his bride, nor Betting on Providence 3 do the two have to elope from Minna’s guardian, Graf von Bruchsall, for although the latter was forced to spend the war years in exile and is therefore anything but well disposed toward Prussian soldiers, he thinks highly of Tellheim’s noble deeds. Rather, the obstacles are internal, and it is probably most accurate to say that the play is not about the war itself, but about the deep wounds - one cannot yet speak of scars - that the war has left in the characters’ psyches. There are in essence two obstacles to a happy ending. First, Tellheim has shut himself off from his fellow human beings. He had lived through traumatic events as a soldier, losing the use of one arm and barely escaping death twice. We learn about the latter when he is being reminded that Werner «einmal den Hieb auffieng, der Ihnen den Kopf spalten sollte, und ein andermal den Arm vom Rumpfe hieb, der eben losdrücken und Ihnen die Kugel durch die Brust jagen wollte? » (III, 7: 60) As if that were not enough, he has lost the ability to justify his sufferings and sacrifice, as becomes apparent when Minna jokingly says that she would have loved him at first sight even if he had been «so schwarz und häßlich […] als d[er] Mohr von Venedig,» whereupon he responds by first sinking into deep thought and then exclaiming, «O ja! Aber sagen Sie mir doch, mein Fräulein: wie kam der Mohr in Venetianische Dienste? […] Warum vermietete er seinen Arm und sein Blut einem fremden Staate? » (IV, 6: 84) 6 His soul is traumatized, his one arm paralyzed, and the Prussian cause, which could justify it all, has been seen as worthless. He tries to master this crisis of meaning by clinging to his soldierly honor, but unfortunately it is challenged by the accusation circulating in the Prussian administration that the money still owed him by the estates of Saxony was actually a bribe. As we can see in his treatment of Just and Werner, he becomes so obsessed with this questioning of his honor, the last redoubt of his identity, that he breaks off, or threatens to break off, all relations to others, even friends, a development that culminates in his refusal to stand by his engagement to Minna, since honoring it would - or so he thinks - draw her into the misery of his existence. 7 Second, Minna creates an additional obstacle. When Tellheim is finally able to see that beyond the honor of a soldier there is also that of chivalry, he is willing to make adjustments to his concept of honor in exchange for marital bliss because he has been told (falsely) that Minna has been disinherited and cast out by her family. But Minna decides, in a fit of proto-feminist fervor, to teach him a lesson. She now pretends to reject him on the grounds that when she was richer than he, he rejected her on the pretext of upholding his soldierly honor, but when she turned out to be poorer, he all but forgot about this honor and suddenly offered her his hand. All she wants from Tellheim is the admission that the values he was championing were unfair to her. How- 4 Horst Lange ever, her little pedagogical comedy-within-a-comedy courts serious disaster, and as the plot develops, it brings her within a hairsbreadth of destroying any chance of marriage. All of this means that the play’s happy ending is completely predicated upon the lovers’ attitudes toward each other and toward the world, not on the attitude of the world toward the lovers. If we only look at how the events of the play unfold, gambling does not seem central to the interpretation of this comedy. But, I would like to argue, we should see it as one of the play’s controlling metaphors. Let us look at the «Riccaut scene» (IV, 2). From the standpoint of a pure plot analysis it is remarkable insofar as it does not seem to serve any real function in an otherwise tightly constructed play. Many interpreters have openly declared it to be unnecessary, and the commentators tell us that it has sometimes been cut from performances. To be sure, there is one important plot development in this scene: Minna learns from a small, but important, bit of information that Tellheim has been acquitted of all charges relating to the money he lent to the estates of Saxony. From now on Minna therefore knows that if no additional obstacle arises and she does not change her approach, the simple passage of time will make Tellheim hers. But in the bulk of the scene nothing happens other than the curious encounter of Minna with a French mercenary officer, Riccaut, who, it turns out, is an inveterate gambler fresh out of money. Revealing himself to be somewhat of a con man, Riccaut skillfully sizes up Minna, recognizes her as a fundraising opportunity, makes her confess to having a weakness for gambling herself, and talks her into entrusting him with a considerable sum of money to be wagered at the gaming table in her name. Mission accomplished, he leaves, never to be heard from again. Since for the rest of the play there is no further reference to this scene and since Lessing could have arranged the plot differently with Minna stumbling upon the important piece of information in some other, more efficient way, it is reasonable to assume that the existence of this scene - the third longest of the entire comedy! - can only be justified if the long conversation between Minna and Riccaut about gambling has a deeper connection to the play’s overall meaning - one which the rest of this article will try to describe. And it is equally reasonable to surmise that the scene calls attention to the fact that Minna herself has decided to gamble. For despite the new-found certainty that she will win Tellheim’s hand in marriage, she does not retire her scheme of teaching Tellheim a lesson right after this scene; as a consequence, she places herself at the risk of losing everything. Furthermore, the very structure of the play establishes the stage itself as a gambling table. Not only do many characters (such as the widow Marloff Betting on Providence 5 and Just) describe in great detail the debts, accumulated in the ups and downs of life, that they owe to other people (in their case, to Tellheim), not only do many characters borrow money from others in order to take advantage of various opportunities, they also constantly carry large sums of money, promissory notes, and precious objects on and off the stage, winning and losing money in the process, often to their own and the audience’s surprise. Most conspicuously, in scene V, 11 Werner places a bag containing the princely sum of 1000 Pistolen in the middle of the stage, and it sits there during the final denouement as if it were a bet to be «won» by one of the characters when the conflict of the play is resolved. And although it is not his money, Tellheim, after having won the «game» by winning Minna’s hand and the Graf’s blessing, casually collects it as if it were now legally his. It is as if this constant and dizzying exchange of substantial amounts of money signals that, yes, all the world is a casino. And finally, in the climactic scene of the play (IV, 6), when Minna and Tellheim have their most far-reaching and revealing discussion of their motives and hopes, of their feelings and misunderstandings - when they try hardest to clarify themselves to each other -, they reflect on the actions they took or should take by describing them in terms of a game of chance: as bets on certain cards in a game of faro or as throws of the dice. Given these indications, we have to assume that gambling is linked to the core concerns of the play. But how? Could it be possible that Minna and Tellheim must gamble in order to come together? Could their marriage possibly be the jackpot won in some kind of bet? In order to answer that question, I will look first at what I would like to call the play’s theology of providence. For providence, like gambling, is a concept deeply embedded in the play. 8 It is clear that the play’s plot rests entirely on a series of highly unlikely coincidences. Only if these interlink in just the right way can the original constellation, with Minna and Tellheim at odds with each other, develop toward a happy ending. 9 What follows are a few of the play’s more important coincidences. The coach in which Minna and her uncle were travelling breaks an axle and Minna must proceed on her own, thus having the chance to meet Tellheim alone. Minna arrives in Berlin on precisely the day when the decision to acquit Tellheim of all charges is made. Of all the hotels in Berlin, she checks into the one where Tellheim had been staying. Of all its rooms, she is given the one he previously occupied - otherwise Riccaut would have never knocked on her door. And the hotelier just happens to show her the engagement ring pawned by Tellheim. Clearly, this cluster of coincidences is 6 Horst Lange so overtly teleological and in complexity and improbability so far above the suspension of disbelief required for every play that it must be understood as providentially designed. In addition, we can find an almost perfect symbol of providence at work in the play, namely the king’s letter that exonerates Tellheim of all accusations. It is essential to the concept of providence that, through all the twists and turns of a given series of events, the happy outcome be, to borrow a phrase from Heidegger, «always already» preordained. By the play’s end, when the letter triggers in its own complex way the reconciliation of the lovers, the audience knows - having pieced together different bits of information from Riccaut and from what happens in the hotel - that all along since Minna’s arrival in the hotel a royal courier has been wandering the streets of Berlin in the attempt to deliver to Tellheim the news that will remove any obstacle to marriage. So on the one hand, the letter is the precondition of the play’s happy end, but on the other, it is «always already» on its way. Apparently, we must conclude, the happy end has been preordained - of course by nothing less than providence. In addition, the concept of providence («Vorsicht» 10 ) makes its appearance at a most prominent place - during the climactic exchange between Tellheim and Minna in scene IV,6. When in a feverish back-and-forth they really get at what is keeping them apart, Minna suddenly accuses Tellheim of a lack of trust in providence. Responding to the bitter laugh with which Tellheim concludes his description of the grave injustice done to him, she says, O, ersticken Sie dieses Lachen, Tellheim! Ich beschwöre Sie! Es ist das schreckliche Lachen des Menschenhasses! Nein, Sie sind der Mann nicht, den eine gute Tat reuen kann, weil sie üble Folgen für ihn hat. Nein, unmöglich können diese üble Folgen dauern! […] Wenn Sie an Tugend und Vorsicht glauben, Tellheim, so lachen Sie so nicht. (IV, 6: 83) According to Minna, there is at the bottom of Tellheim’s crisis, beneath his obsession with honor and his anger at injustice, a theological despair, a loss of faith in the benevolence of the divine. And she does not know how true her diagnosis really is. For earlier in the play, after Tellheim has been kicked out of his hotel room for lack of payment and has spent the night in the streets with his life manifestly hitting rock bottom, he greets the widow Marloff with an open admission of theological dejection: «Sie finden mich in einer Stunde, wo ich leicht zu verleiten wäre, wider die Vorsicht zu murren» (I, 6: 19). If we take these statements seriously, the play can be seen, among other things, as a contest between two competing theological visions. For Minna embraces a theology which stands in opposition to that of Tellheim when she forcefully affirms, in order to lift his spirits, her own confidence in the divine: «Die Vorsicht, glauben Sie mir, hält den ehrlichen Mann immer schadlos» (IV, 6: 84). Betting on Providence 7 My argument has now reached the point where an intimate connection between providential belief and gambling becomes apparent. Sandwiched between Minna’s two statements about providence - her diagnosis of Tellheim’s lack thereof and her own profession of faith therein - there is a passage in which she exhorts Tellheim to embrace a gambler’s attitude: «Bilden Sie sich ein, Tellheim, Sie hätten die zweitausend Pistolen an einem wilden Abende verloren. Der König 11 war eine unglückliche Karte für Sie: die Dame (auf sich weisend) wird Ihnen desto günstiger sein» (IV, 6: 84). This statement requires clarification: how can an Enlightenment heroine argue for the seemingly irrational activity of gambling? Well, insofar as Minna’s optimism holds that he will ultimately be compensated by providence, her exhortation to gamble makes sense in the context of Enlightenment theology: if providence rewards the virtuous, every virtuous man should be able to approach the gambling table with confidence. Even though the odds are against him, he should be confident he will beat them, for providence will have rigged the game in his favor. 12 In the casino, Lessing seems to suggest, the enlightened gambler hears not the white noise of chance, but instead, however faintly, the intoxicating music of divine goodwill. Hidden in the play, there appears to be a theology, and even an ethics of gambling, according to which an unwillingness to bet amounts to a lack of faith in divine providence, and a risk-averse person must live under the suspicion of being an atheist. Dare to gamble, the play’s imperative seems to command, for only then do you show true faith in God. Since therefore the play seems to use gambling as a metaphor for providential trust, we can understand what has been suggested earlier - namely, that the change in Minna’s and Tellheim’s mindsets, the change that brings about the happy ending, is related to gambling. While at first, as I will try to show, both characters have not yet achieved an attitude toward gambling that is compatible with Lessing’s theology of providence, by the end they have. Tellheim, the quarreller with providence, is the one who does not dare to wager. If the stage truly is a gambling table, then, for the longest time, he is the one character who never places a bet. Everybody else is moving money around, but he, although he has plenty, is not. To be sure, in I,6, Marloff, the widow of Tellheim’s former Rittmeister, brings him a considerable sum still owed by her husband. 13 And his former Wachtmeister, Paul Werner, who just sold off his Schulzengericht, offers him the use of the newly acquired fortune (II, 7: 62). But both times Tellheim refuses to accept the money, which, after all, would involve him in the game. Even when things begin to turn in his favor later, he stops short of believing in his luck, for when he hears about the king’s letter of acquittal, i.e., the play’s symbol of providential preordination par excellence, he shrugs off the good news as basically inconsequential: «Man 8 Horst Lange wird mich wollen laufen lassen. Allein man irrt sich; ich werde nicht laufen. Eher soll mich hier das äußerste Elend […] verzehren» (IV, 6: 85f.). Only at the end of the fourth act, after being scolded by Minna for his lack of faith in providence, he again contemplates the possibility of a marriage to Minna and a happy life for himself. Revealingly, his change of mind is marked by a phrase that establishes him as a gambler: «Wenn nicht noch ein glücklicher Wurf für mich im Spiele ist …» (IV, 6: 85). Minna’s mistake stands at the opposite end of the spectrum. Her error is to think she can control, rather than beat, the odds. Instead of simply letting the letter arrive and thus hitting, so to speak, the jackpot, she insists on using this opportunity to teach Tellheim a lesson and switches the rings. But because Tellheim is blinded by his preconceived notions about her intentions, her ploy is bound to fail, and she is destined to lose Tellheim. In short, she is so cocksure about winning that she almost loses everything by trying to manipulate the game. It is highly significant that, just at the point (IV,2) where she sets out to play the trick with the rings on Tellheim, she is smart enough to criticize Riccaut for exactly the mistake she herself is about to commit. Riccaut, one recalls, promised not to lose her money because he would play with particular skill: «Je file la carte avec une adresse […] Je fais sauter la coupe avec une dexterité …» (IV, 2: 75). When she correctly construes this to mean that he will be cheating, he passionately protests: «Comment, Mademoiselle? Vous apellés cela betrügen? Corriger la fortune, l’enchainer sous ses doigts, etre sûr de son fait, das nenn die Deutsch betrügen? betrügen! O, was ist die deutsch Sprak für ein arm Sprak! für ein plump Sprak! » (ibid.) It is one of the great ironies of the play that Minna scolds Riccaut for precisely what she herself is about to do. In the charade with the rings, Minna turns Tellheim into what the gambling partner was for Riccaut, «un pigeonneau à plumer» (ibid.). Like Riccaut, she is also «certain of her fate» because she thinks that she, like Riccaut, has «chained it to her fingers» - in the form of the two rings! Thus, by acting in an affair of the heart the way Riccaut acts at the gaming table, Minna almost manages to thwart the comedy’s seemingly predestined happy ending - through the arrogance of believing that she requires no providential intervention. So while Tellheim does not really believe in providence, Minna does, but for the course of the ring intrigue thinks she can do without its assistance. Only when they readjust their theological attitudes towards providence in the final scenes of the play, only when both adopt the proper attitude toward gambling - bet by all means, rely on providence, but do not believe you can be in control - are the lovers reunited, fulfilling the work of the divine. Betting on Providence 9 Notes 1 Thomas Kavanagh, Enlightenment and the Shadows of Chance: The Novel and the Culture of Gambling in Eighteenth-Century France (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1993). 2 Kavanagh 38ff. 3 Cited by Kavanagh 45f. 4 Kavanagh 51. But see also his discussion of the rejection of gambling by the eighteenthcentury middle class (55ff.). 5 Kavanagh Ch. 1. 6 All references are to vol. 6 of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Werke und Briefe in zwölf Bänden, ed. Wilfried Barner et al. (Frankfurt a.M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1984). 7 A quest for the proper understanding of Tellheim’s concept of honor has always been a staple of the criticism of the play. Recently, Günter Saße has rejected this approach to understanding Tellheim’s behavior by arguing in great detail that Tellheim acts out of a sense of responsibility due to the severe legal consequences which a conviction for bribery would have for him and his new wife. As substantial and new as Saße’s evidence is, I question the validity of the argument, since at the end of IV, 6 Tellheim strongly suspects that they will let him go free, but without restoring his honor. For Saße, this should remove all obstacles to the marriage, but Tellheim still refuses and insists on the restoration of his honor as a precondition. See his Liebe und Ehe. Oder: Wie sich die Spontaneität des Herzens zu den Normen der Gesellschaft verhält. Lessings Minna von Barnhelm (Niemeyer: Tübingen, 1993). 8 The importance of the concept of providence in Lessing has been well recognized by scholarship. However, almost all interpretations take their cue from his theological writings, particularly those of his last years, and fail to give proper due to providence’s role in his earlier poetic productions. Typical of this tendency is the first systematic study of the concept of providence in Lessing, Arno Schilson’s Geschichte im Horizont der Vorsehung: G.E. Lessings Beitrag zu einer Theologie der Geschichte (Mainz: Matthias- Grünewald-Verlag, 1974), where the discussion of the role of providence in the major plays can only be called perfunctory. 9 To various degrees this has been noted by a number of interpreters. The most forceful argument linking the list of coincidences to the concept of providence is Wolfgang Wittkowski’s «Theodizee und Tugend: Minna von Barnhelm oder: Worum es in Lessings Dramen wirklich geht,» Sprachkunst 22 (1991), 177-201. 10 In the 18 th century, it was common to use «Vorsicht» in the meaning of «Vorsehung.» See article «Vorsicht» in Adelung’s Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der hochdeutschen Mundart… Mit D.W. Soltau’s Beyträgen, revidiert und berichtiget von Franz Xaver Schönberger (Wien: B.P. Bauer, 1811). Lessing regularly uses «Vorsicht» in this meaning, particularly in Philotas. 11 A reference to Frederick the Great, whom Tellheim chose to serve as a mercenary officer. 12 In this context one might note that Lessing himself suffered from bouts of gambling addiction. See, for example, Karl S. Guthke, «Der Philosoph im Spielkasino: Lessing’s innere Biographie,» Das Abenteuer der Literatur: Studien zum literarischen Leben der deutschsprachigen Länder von der Aufklärung bis zum Exil (Francke: Bern/ München, 1981). 13 Later, through Werner, we learn that it was the stately sum of 400 Taler (II, 7: 59).