Cultures of Performance, Gender, and Political Ideology in Fontane’s Vor dem Sturm SEAN FRANZEL U NIVERSITY OF M IS SOURI AT C OLUMBIA «Die Geschichte schmeichelt selten.» (Vor dem Sturm 174) Set during the Napoleonic occupation of Prussia, Theodor Fontane’s first novel lends itself to analysis in light of recent scholarship that reconsiders the negotiation of politics, gender, and subjectivity across a diverse range of public and private sites of literary performance in the Romantic era. 1 Though it would be anachronistic to read Vor dem Sturm as a cultural-historical document of the Romantic era itself, 2 it is instructive to ask how the novel processes various discourses from and about this period precisely through situations in which literary language is directed at listening audiences. 3 From literary clubs and dramatic readings to university auditoriums and country churches, scenes of performance question and condition myths of decisive national political action frequently ascribed to the so-called «Befreiungskriege.» Questions about patriotic discourse in the Romantic era cut to the heart of the peculiarity of the novel and its plot. With the novel centered on the family of a Prussian Junker, it is the patriarch Berndt von Vitzewitz rather than his son Lewin who becomes the carrier of a radical national political ideology. Though his guerrilla insurrection against Napoleon ends in failure, Berndt personifies a radical partisan position with which broad swaths of the German intelligentsia flirted around 1810. 4 At a time when the young were increasingly becoming the practical and ideological core of new movements such as the Turnbewegung or the Burschenschaften, it is significant that Lewin and his friend Tubal are precisely not the primary carriers of a new politics, but instead are often more concerned with literary pursuits and amorous intrigues than with public events. The incomplete intergenerational transmission of Berndt’s partisanship casts doubt on its historical importance: his is one of many partial perspectives on the historical crisis in Prussia rather than the distillation of its ideological essence. Indeed, the juxtaposition of contrasting points of view is an important feature of this Vielheitsroman, 5 as the reader is encouraged to evaluate history, politics, and aesthetics by comparing different characters, an interpretive activity that the narrative encourages but only makes partially explicit. 12 Sean Franzel In this context sites of performance are central. The narrative repeatedly lingers with individual characters’ aesthetic experiences, depicting how they connect their personal lives to larger political concerns through literary events. For example, a performance of William Tell - dramatic material at the heart of the convergence of aesthetics and politics around 1800 - sets into relief differing reactions to Napoleonic occupation. Elsewhere, Prussian soldiers read personal memoirs of battle aloud and occasion various forms of literary and political reflection. The narrative questions the effectiveness of literary performance as national political inspiration by taking the reader through the inability of certain figures to translate personal aesthetic experience into viable political action or to transpose national political conviction into meaningful reform of Prussian society. Furthermore, depictions of literary performance facilitate Fontane’s exploration of the entanglement of gender roles with political ideology, a critical feature of his entire oeuvre. 6 Set during an era when new discourses of soldierly masculinity were a key part of national political agitation, 7 the novel depicts Lewin and Tubal’s reading group’s pursuit of an aesthetics that privileges masculine heroism, and yet it is telling that these two men’s assimiliation of this gendered ideal is only partial and unstable. In addition, sites of amateur and professional female performance explore the public and private roles of women in Prussian society. In particular, I argue that female performance in the novel (in particular as embodied by the figure Marie) represents an unrealized social space in which women might have played a more substantial public and social role. As in other Fontane novels, gender relations are clear symptoms of larger cultural and political issues. Of course, with a storyline that sidelines the bourgeoisie and that ends with the Junker’s son’s private domestic happiness «after the storm,» various critics have accused the novel of harboring a conservative account of the Prussian past. 8 But there are grounds for arguing that the representation of cultures of performance in Vor dem Sturm enables Fontane’s subtle critique of the interrelation of politics, aesthetics, and history in nineteenth-century Germany. The novel’s first volume introduces the reader to the «Dorfgemeinschaft» of Hohen-Vietz with Berndt’s family at its center. In turn, this first part closes with a letter from Tubal, a family friend who attends the newly founded Berlin University with Lewin and is half-heartedly courting his sister Renate. The reader is introduced to their literary «Klub» Kastalia, as Tubal reports to Lewin from Berlin about the group’s impromptu Christmas meeting (one of the first of several key reports in the novel). 9 In a sense, this letter/ report is a conventional narrative device, linking distinct geographic locations and fore- Cultures of Performance, Gender, and Political Ideology 13 shadowing future events. That said, its depiction of literary performance sets the social milieu of the reading group in relation to broader political events and stages the interconnection of aesthetic experience and personal concerns, two basic themes of the novel. The social space of the Kastalia group is coded as Romantic, not least through the explicit self-understanding of the mostly (though not exclusively) aristocratic participants. 10 Scholars have argued that Kastalia draws on the Tunnel-Gesellschaft, a well-known Berlin literary club from the midnineteenth century of which Fontane was a member, but is is also clear that the group shares certain similarities with other male-dominated reading clubs and salons of the Romantic era such as the christlich-deutsche Tischgesellschaft. 11 Though later Kastalia meetings deal more with current events, here Tubal is presented as consciously unpolitical. Through little more than an aside, the reader learns that the holiday gathering takes place against the backdrop of the political crisis facing Prussia at the end of 1812, as Tubal relates how his and and Lewin’s fathers - active and retired civil servants in the Prussian state, respectively - are likewise in Berlin, and «sie politisiern viel, vielleicht zu viel» (115). This oblique reference to political urgencies reveals this report’s limited and partial nature. For Tubal, the carefree life of the student/ critic is barely related to the realm of serious political action. His letter deals almost exclusively with «die jüngste Sitzung der Kastalia» (114). In this way, the reader becomes aware of events taking place in an unspoken background. Tubal’s lack of interest in politics cuts to the heart of the narrative structure of Vor dem Sturm, which deliberately offers only partial perspectives and forces the reader to actively fill in contextual and historical gaps herself. The depiction of the evening centers on the student poet Hansen-Grell and his recitation of a ballad on a «norwegischen Sagen- oder Märchenstoff» (113), several stanzas of which are included in Tubal’s letter; the ballad form is typical of nineteenthcentury cultures of declamation and literary performance (before turning to the novel, Fontane’s primary literary activity was in this genre). 12 The group receives both the ballad’s content and its recitation with great enjoyment. The scene of performance is also a scene of criticism, as audience members comment on Hansen-Grell’s style of presentation and the form of the ballad. In contrast to the anonymity of the print public sphere, a small group setting enables meaningful and direct exchange between literary producers and recipients. This mode of production is typical of literary circles and reading groups throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth century. The depiction of this group might be seen to draw on the Early Romantic utopia of a literary critical conversation among friends, though this is an ex- 14 Sean Franzel clusively male discursive space (in contrast to certain early Romantic tendencies towards more progressive gender inclusion). The gendered nature of this cultural space is important when examining how characters’ personal interests are intertwined with the representation of this collective event. Not only is Tubal’s letter a form of self-staging for the benefit of Lewin and his sister, but his repeated references to the Polish nobleman Bninski adds another level of playful intrigue: as we later learn, Bninski is Lewin’s rival for Tubal’s sister Kathinka. This is a social space in which men compete for attention and recognition, trying to outdo each other’s literary and romantic triumphs. Women remain on the outside, at best privy to the events second hand, not as equal participants. This intertwining of the collective with the personal remains central to depictions of sites of performance throughout the rest of the novel. As we will see, literary aesthetic experiences repeatedly bring Tubal and Lewin back to their own emotional landscapes. After Lewin’s disapproval of Berndt’s vision of partisan uprising earlier in the first book (29) - more about this shortly - Tubal’s letter underlines intergenerational incongruities in political and personal habitus. While book three returns to this metropolitan setting, book two remains in the provinces, taking the reader a short distance from Hohen-Vietz to Berndt’s sister Amelie’s residence, Schloss Guse. The second book culminates in a dramatic reading of Antoine-Marin Lemierre’s Guillaume Tell (1766), which is performed by two women. Here, women play a central, active role in literary life, suggesting that Lewin and Tubal’s Romantic circle might be missing out by not including them. Furthermore, this episode places the relation between politics and aesthetics front and center: a disagreement between Amelie and Berndt over the merits of Lemierre and Schiller’s versions of Tell contrasts cultures of performance of the ancien régime with the ideology of partisan uprising. The novel’s deployment of the Tell material is quite subtle. All too familiar with this drama’s longstanding role in nineteenth-century stagings of political community, 13 Fontane cleverly filters his depiction of the provincial aristocracy through the staging of Lemierre’s Tell. The staging of a prerevolutionary piece by a second-rate French author in Napoleonic Prussia is a narrative masterstroke: the tyrannicide of the Tell material allows Fontane to depict a milieu in which a visceral hatred of the French empereur cuts across politics and taste, uniting Francophile proponents of the ancien régime and anti- French nationalists alike. Before analyzing the performance itself, I want to explore how the Tell material is woven into the broader narrative. Just as the New Year’s Eve perfor- Cultures of Performance, Gender, and Political Ideology 15 mance at Guse is about to begin, Berndt outlines his plan for «Insurrektion des Landes zwischen Oder und Elbe» (254) to General Bamme, a member of Amelie’s social circle and a later leader of the failed guerrilla attack. This discussion culminates in their pact to undertake potentially treasonous actions to the end of «die Volksbewaffnung à tout prix, also mit dem Könige, wenn mögich, ohne den König, wenn nötig« (254): «es kann uns den Kopf kosten; aber ich für mein Teil finde den Einsatz nicht zu hoch. Ich bin der Ihre, Vitzewitz» (255). Bamme’s oath-like commitment to insurrection inevitably resonates with the subsequent Tell performance and serves as an Ersatz for the Rütli oath scene that is missing in Amelie’s staging of the material. As we will see, the figuration of political community so central to Schiller’s drama (with which a German readership could not but be familiar) is enacted here off Schloss Guse’s in-house stage, allowing the logic of the Tell material to resonate beyond the proper literary performance. In other words, the larger narrative «Schillerizes» the Tell material, framing the dramatic reading through a deployment of the figure of the Rütlischwur. The reader is encouraged to make links in story and theme that neither individual figures nor narrative voice make explicit. The small residential «Theatersaal» of Schloss Guse (which seats around 20 audience members) is characteristic less of urban theaters around 1800 than of the residential theaters of the ancien régime. One is reminded of the theater performance in book three of Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, though the performance at Schloss Guse is much less elaborate, employing only five musicians and two performers. This is a rather modest quasi-public prestigious space in which the patronage of the hostess remains front and center. While events before and after the performance highlight the actions of men, the dramatic reading itself is coded as a female undertaking of both professionals and amateurs. Amelie presides over the performance, choosing the material and playing a role in the artistic direction. 14 At the core of the dramatic reading are monologues by Tell’s spouse, Cléofé, performed by a traveling French actress. Additionally, the Lemierre reading is preceded by a prologue read by Tubal’s sister Kathinka. Conspicuously missing, however, is one of the remaining central female figures, Marie, the confidant of Renate and later love interest of both Tubal and Lewin. Marie was adopted by a Hohen-Vietz family after arriving in the community as a child. Her parents, who subsequently died, were traveling entertainers («fahrende Künstler» [64]) and Marie herself was a young virtuoso in song and declamation (65), not unlike the Mignon figure in Wilhelm Meister. 15 Obliged to leave this life of performance behind, Marie becomes integrated into the community and is educated together with Lewin and Renate, though she is not welcome in Schloss Guse’s more rigidly aristocratic space, a fact that I will argue has larger symbolic significance. 16 Sean Franzel After a musical overture the reading begins with Kathinka’s prologue: dressed à la grecque and declaiming with great poise («als ob die Bretter ihre Heimat wären»), she speaks as Melpoméne, the muse of song. This neo-classicist text greets individual audience members personally, introduces the travelling French actress, and offers a dedicatory nod to the countess Amelie. The prologue has a personalizing function, creating an intimate space of enjoyment in which guests and hostess alike are named and praised, again, a typical feature of this kind of early nineteenth-century performance. The narrative underlines this mixture of aesthetic experience and personal self-staging by presenting individual responses to Kathinka’s actions, tarrying longest with Lewin, who reflects not on the content on Kathinka’s words but on the potential failure of their courtship. Her ease and self-control on stage is a harbinger of her wanting more than the comfort of a modest family life postulated as social norm by the provincial aristocracy: «‹Sie kann alles, was sie will›, sagte er zu sich selbst; ‹wird sie immer wollen, was sie soll? ›» (259). For Lewin, Kathinka’s performance demonstrates an «Übermut» (259) that is threatening to him, thus reiterating a mistrust of female performance common in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. 16 Lewin’s «Vorausahnung» that their courtship might fail also obliquely foreshadows the union of Lewin and Marie: after all, Marie is the «schöne Seele» who abandons her performative skills. We might conjecture that unlike Goethe’s Mignon figure, Marie avoids an early death through integration into a more stable social environment, and yet it remains to be seen at what cost she abandons her childhood talents. That said, the fact that Lewin alone articulates this unease with female performance relativizes the universal validity of his attitude. After all, he encounters the event through his personal concerns. The visiting French actress Madame Alceste’s subsequent performance dispels all doubt that the narrative frowns universally on actresses, setting up an important distinction between professional and amateur actress: «An die Stelle der jugendlichen Gestalt in Weiß trat eine alte Dame in Schwarz […] die die Kostümfrage mit äußerster Geringschätzung behandelt hatte» (259-60). Relying less on youthful appearance than on her talents as a veteran actress, Alceste proceeds to capture her audience’s attention with ease: «In jedem Worte verriet sie die gute Schule, und bei Schluß dieser dritten Szene durfte sie sich ohne Eitelkeit gestehen, daß sie ‹ihr Publikum in der Hand habe›» (260). It was quite common around 1800 for actresses to travel and perform as freelance artists in solo or group performances. 17 The Alceste character is interesting in this respect because she was trained in classical French acting in prerevolutionary France, and her freelance career is a result of the geographic scattering of her patrons. Acting Cultures of Performance, Gender, and Political Ideology 17 in a high «Stil der großen Tragödie» and avoiding «jedes falsche Echauffement,» this figure represents a measured neoclassicism. 18 The climax of Alceste’s dramatic reading comes in a surprise departure from the program, as the actress changes costumes and appears on the stage as Tell himself to recite the «Schlußworte des Dramas, die, hier und dort über das Schweizerische hinausgehend, als ein allgemeiner Hymnus auf die Befreiung der Völker gedeutet werden konnten» (260). Now dressed in masculine drag as a «Jägergestalt,» Alceste sets in motion the defiant language of insurrectionary action. This rhetorical intensification is only heightened by that fact that the actress switches from French to German, yet more proof of her professional skills. Suggestions of the rhetoric of the contemporary anti- Napoleonic uprising are obvious, even despite the prerevolutionary nature of play: the line «Soldaten sind wir all’» unmistakably resonates with the call for a general «Volksbewaffnung,» and a nationalist rhetoric of collective community dominates («Denn stärker als die Freiheit, waren wir»). The reader cannot but overlay the Tell material onto the anti-Napoleonic movement and is implicitly directed back to the pact between Berndt and Bamme. The narrative thus relates the performance to the themes and events of the novel, though less on the level of the conscious artistic direction of the reading. The partisan pact takes on increased importance due to its proximity to Tell, which likewise gains in suggestiveness due to the historical context in which it occurs. This deployment of the Tell material is further reinforced with the debate that follows. Proud of her theater’s success, Countess Amelie goes so far as to assert that even second-rate French authors such as Lemierre are better than their first-rate German counterparts. As an example, she claims that Schiller’s Tell is much too melodramatic and «opernhaft,» in effect a departure from the measured affective register of neoclassicism. At this point her brother steps in, taking issue with the assertion of the «Überlegenheit des französischen Geistes.» Berndt’s first move is to claim that Lemierre was unable to occasion any lasting emotional ties between his work and the French people. Through the notion of Herz, Berndt puts forth something of a national political Rezeptionsästhetik - Lemierre occasioned superficial, pleasurable affective responses in the «Herzen» of his French audiences, 19 but did not have a deep or lasting effect. In contrast, Schiller is the Dichter seines Volkes, doppelt jetzt, wo dies arme niedergetretene Volk nach Erlösung ringt. Aber verzeih Schwester, du weißt nichts von Volk und Vaterland, du kennst nur Hof und Gesellschaft, und dein Herz, wenn du dich recht befragst, ist bei dem Feinde (265). 18 Sean Franzel Schiller gives «Balsam- und Trostesworten» in times of crisis, above all in «unser[em] Tell» (265), and yet the poet’s claims upon a specifically German affective disposition are lost on Amelie and all other proponents of the ancien régime. Along with redeploying a semantics of Herz, Berndt puts the dramatic reading’s rhetoric of «we» back into circulation: those with a feeling for «Volk» and «Vaterland» will have it reinforced and intensified by «our» Schiller, while those who don’t will only be pleasantly entertained by the aesthetic representation of an insurrectionary politics, taking the «we» of Tell as a strictly aesthetic construct. And yet, by lingering with conflicting aesthetic experiences and political predilections, the novel presents the notion of a unified German political community as little more than a chimera - the «we» that Schiller’s drama is to perform is fragmented, partial, characterized more by Vielheit than by Einheit. After taking his sister to task, Berndt apologizes to Madame Alceste for his disparaging remarks, explaining that he spoke «nach [seinem] Herzen, nicht nach der Forderung gesellschaftlicher Konvention» (266). If the bon mots of salon discussion are a form of self-staging, Berndt performs a kind of «speaking from the heart» that has larger ramifications for the novel. Along with reinforcing dichotomies of heart and convention, German and French, radical nationalist and aristocratic conservative, this episode shows how cultures of performance occasion the articulation and/ or intensification of contrasting ideological positions. The reader is also aware in this context that Berndt’s «heart felt» anti-French sentiments result from a clear mixture of the personal and the political: it was, after all, a confrontation between him and a visiting French officer days after the battle at Jena that precipitated the sudden death of his wife, herself a member of a French aristocratic family long in the service of the Prussian military (24), and it is Lewin’s fond memory of his mother telling of her own father’s heroics in conventional warfare that frames his earlier disinclination - a lack of «Herz» 20 ! - to join his father’s insurrection. Berndt’s reaction to his sister likewise takes us back to the status of gendered sites of performance and the ambivalent role of women in this novel: does the fact that his actions serve as bookends of this chapter condition the importance or efficacy of female sites of performance? On the one hand, it is striking that Alceste inhabits the character of Tell on stage, performing the role of the masculine partisan. This might suggest that women have a public role to play through theater and other aesthetic venues, at least insofar as they are professionals. 21 At the same time, Lewin’s response to Kathinka and Berndt’s dismissal of his sister make greater female participation unlikely in this milieu. For Berndt, the aesthetics of «Schloss Guse» are too tied to the quasi-public prestige of a provincial aristocracy, while for Lewin, the erotics Cultures of Performance, Gender, and Political Ideology 19 of female performance elicit unease and should have at most (if at all) a decorative function in domestic family life. Because these are the last substantial female performances in the novel, the further implications of positive female intervention are unclear. And yet I would argue that the reader is encouraged not to take Berndt or Lewin’s reflections as the final word. For one, the novel’s multiperspectival structure suggests that individual characters’ views are partial and incomplete. Likewise, the absence of Marie - apart from Madame Alceste, the one person coded by the narrative as a «natural» female performer - signals to the reader that this particular society’s relationship to cultures of performance is based on certain exclusionary mechanisms. Marie’s absence signals a realm of female performance that this society does not sanction but that symbolizes, perhaps, an unrealized alternative world. The novel’s third book sketches a broad social tableau of metropolitan Berlin, including the modest salons of the petty bourgeoisie and public markets where anti-Napoleonic broadsheets are read aloud. Lewin’s leisurely student life takes him to the university lectures of Savigny and Fichte, two important bourgeois voices in the political debates of the time. We encounter Fichte reading his thinly veiled political lectures on the «Begriff des wahrhaften Krieges,» which coincide with the news that Yorck had defected to Russia out of opposition to Prussia’s alliance with France. And yet it is striking that so much of the third book focuses on Lewin and his colleagues, who are «all die Zeit über weniger mit der Kapitulation [Yorcks] als mit der Kastaliasitzung beschäftigt gewesen» (332). Political and military crises are represented primarily through the filter of the reading group. More so than the first book, the third book focuses on Kastalia’s fascination with a gendered literary aesthetics of inspiration. In this way, the preoccupations of the novel’s main characters serve as symptoms of broader historical constellations that the narrative only roughly sketches: rather than bringing Romantic youths to the front, literary readings bring the front to the Romantics’ living rooms. The first of two Kastalia meetings in this book occurs in Lewin’s personal apartment, and is a private gathering for invited members and guests (here not more than 15 people). The literary reading opens with two poems before shifting to personal memoirs of the Napoleonic wars. We once again encounter the poet Hansen-Grell, who reads a ballad entitled «General Seydlitz» about the famous Prussian general under Friedrich the Great, written in a lyrical mode that is reminiscent of the highly popular military/ patriotic «Befreiungslyrik» of the time (see Hagemann). This poem sketches episodes from the general’s life in short suggestive verses, culminating in Seydlitz’s death in battle. The 20 Sean Franzel group’s positive reaction is not least «ein vollgültiges Zeugnis von der kavalleristischen Zusammensetzung» of the group (as Hansen-Grell notes afterwards), for many of those in attendance are cavalry officers (343). War and heroism continue to be central motifs of the next two contributions, the first of which is presented by a visitor to the group who fought against Napoleon in Spain and is a colleague of Heinrich von Kleist. This officer’s sober prose account of skirmishes and their aftermath entitled «Erinnerungen aus dem Kriege in Spanien» combines a report-like style with a more personal, emotional tone that describes the author learning of his brother’s death in battle and his interment of the corpse. 22 The group responds with somber respect, and Lewin’s rival Bninski mentions that he fought at the same locations, though for the French army. 23 Bninski’s comments illustrate the international composition of armies typical of European warfare at this time, and his expression of camaraderie across battle lines is typical of a traditionalist military ethos far removed from the totalizing friend-foe distinction of partisan warfare. This episode discloses the complicated nature of soldierly life at this historical moment including the competing claims upon individuals’ allegiances and motivations. In a departure from the vehement anti-French tone of other well-known Romantic literary circles, the Kastalia group does not adhere to a militant nationalism nor to an aesthetics that would promote it. In contrast to Berndt’s Schiller enthusiasm the «we» established here is a cosmopolitan soldierly brotherhood across dividing lines of political allegiance or nationality 24 (Lewin’s earlier linkage of his preference for conventional warfare and «open» soldierly honor to fond memories of his traditionally aristocratic mother should likewise resonate here as a sign of some support amongst Kastalia members for upholding Prussia’s allegiance to France, if only out of principles of soldierly obedience [29]). This reading brings images from the front into domestic spaces in a way similar to newspaper or journal reportage. Bninski’s remarks authenticate these «kaum verschwundene Bilder» (352), as listener and reader are transported for a moment from the more limited social milieu of the Kastalia group. In contrast to Tolstoy’s War and Peace (1869), 25 which weaves battle scenes directly into the action of the novel, here the front lines filter into people’s lives through literature and media. Exposure to images of war occurs at a distance through a narrative frame. This framing establishes performance as a site where the thematics of war and soldierly virtue are experienced collectively, and yet where distance to the actual events is always maintained. The second of two «Tagebuch- und Erinnerungsblätter aus Spanien und Rußland» is presented at a déjeuner hosted by another member of the group. Unlike the first soldier-reader, the second presentation tells of service in Cultures of Performance, Gender, and Political Ideology 21 the Napoleonic army, relating experiences of the famously bloody battle at Borodino. The description closes after an almost ten-page description of the heated battle, and the narrative notes that «an ‹Borodino› knüpften sich hundert Fragen, und von Merrheimb [the presenter] […] blieb der Mittelpunkt des Kreises» (383) as he describes the occupation of fire-ravaged Moscow and other important events. As above, this site of collective reading and discussion brings broader historical events to figures not directly involved in them, reproducing historical reporting and its circulation among later reading audiences on a text-internal level. The second and last Kastalia meeting closes with two distinct scenes of reaction to the memoirs. The first reaction is voiced by a first-person «wir,» an indistinctly personified narrative voice that emerges only very sparingly throughout Vor dem Sturm. Momentarily abandoning the more typical, often ironic omniscent third-person narrative, the narrative voice notes how it is involved in and affected by the confusing events of the Napoleonic era, such that relatives or friends can be part of or share sympathies for opposing armies, as with the two guest presenters: aber die Verhältnisse lagen damals in Preußen und ganz besonders in seiner Hauptstadt so eigentümlich, daß solcher Vorliebe ohne die geringste Besorgnis von einem Anstoß Ausdruck gegeben werden konnte. Niemand wußte, wohin er sich politisch, kaum, wohin er sich mit seinem Herzen zu stellen hatte, denn während unmittelbar vor Ausbruch des Krieges dreihundert unserer besten Offiziere in russische Dienst getreten waren, um nicht für den ‹Erbfeind› kämpfen zu müssen, standen ihnen in dem Hilfskorps, das wir ebendiesem ‹Erbfeinde› hatten stellen müssen, ihre Brüder und Anverwandten in gleicher oder doppelter Zahl gegenüber. Wir betrachteten uns im wesentlichen als Zuschauer, erkannten deutlich alle Vorteile, die uns aus einem Siege Rußlands erwachsen mußten […] waren aber weitab davon […] daß uns eine Schilderung französischer Kriegsüberlegenheit, an der wir, gewollt oder nicht gewollt, einen hervorragenden Anteil hatten, irgendwie verletzlich sein können. (383) This rhetoric of «we» indexes yet is distinct from the more unambiguously patriotic «we» deployed earlier by Berndt. Along with establishing a position of spectatorship, this «we» establishes a German/ Prussian narrative voice that situates the actions and emotions of an earlier age within a national-historical continuum: «back then, we Germans/ Prussians faced this or that crisis» etc. Likewise, this rhetoric configures readers as recipients of performance, reportage, or «Bilder» from the historical past, thus inserting the reader into the complex situation of being affected by stories of war. It is striking in this context that Fontane does not take the reader through more nationalist constructions of political community, leaving the notion of Napoleon as «arch-enemy» in relativizing quotations. Examples of these ideologies from the Romantic era 22 Sean Franzel as well as from Fontane’s own lay ready at hand, to be sure. This «we» - a we that includes the Kastalia group, occupants of the Prussian capital at the time, and Germans more broadly - is striking precisely because of its ambivalence and complexity, encompassing a plurality of experiences (again returning to the trope of Vielheit) rather than an exclusionary unified ideology. The second scene of reception reintroduces a mildly ironic tone, returning to the individual perspective of our «hero» Lewin: «Lewin hatte noch die Vorlesung im Sinn, die nicht als Schlachtbeschreibung, wohl aber als Schilderung überhaupt einen großen Eindruck auf ihn machte» (384). Revealing once more his unpolitical nature, Lewin reacts to the story of the Russian front primarily as literary object. He experiences the reading first and foremost as an impulse for literary creation, not as inspiration to enlist. Returning home, the lecture still resonating in his thought and feelings («Es klang ihm noch im Ohr, als er die Treppe zu seiner Wohnung hinaufstieg» [384]), Lewin opens up a book of French popular songs and is moved to translate a rather trite «Kinderreim.» Wanting to prepare something for the next Kastalia session, he responds to the readings strictly within this closed social circle, applying his inspiration to a childish rhyming exercise rather than to a more meaningful mode of social or political effectiveness. 26 This scene of a narrowly literary reception dramatizes Lewin’s aestheticist tendencies. The upheaval of the Napoleonic era is brought into the quasi-private realm of the reading group, and leads to explorations of soldierly virtue, yet these moments of reportage and affective circulation take Lewin back to the realm of poetry rather than politics. In contrast to Berndt, Lewin - «unpolitisch und seiner ganzen Natur nach unabhängig vom Moment» (392) - does not draw political lessons from the cultural sphere. Fontane’s depiction of the Kastalia group subtly rewrites the national political myth of decisive German resistance to Napoleon. Both scenes of reception highlight indecision rather than unambiguous commitment. Berndt’s certainty of where his Herz belongs stands in contrast to the incommensurability of political and aesthetic spheres with Lewin and Tubal. The novel’s depiction of the reading group relativizes emphatic Romantic nationalist attempts to circulate patriotic pathos through literature (as writers such as Achim von Arnim or Heinrich von Kleist might have had it), both by constructing a more nuanced «we» of national-historical continuity and by foregrounding Lewin’s immaturity. Though other members of the Kastalia group go on to be enthusiastic participants in the partisan uprising, Lewin is not the new man around whom a new national political community might be constructed, not a model of a productive public engagement, not an embodiment of a masculine ideal that signals cultural and political rebirth. 27 Cultures of Performance, Gender, and Political Ideology 23 As Kathinka remarks to Lewin before eloping with Bninski, «Du bist ein Kind» (420). Now one might think that subsequent events of the novel - the partisan attack, Lewin’s capture by the French, and his escape at the cost of Tubal’s life - could represent both figures’ outgrowing an apolitical, aestheticist lifestyle. Indeed, Lewin’s fate gets caught up in the politics and (more importantly) erotics of war, 28 as his engagment to Marie occurs on the heels of his escape from French imprisonment. But looking good in a uniform does not necessarily represent a significant change in character. 29 In closing I would like to argue that despite Lewin and Tubal’s participation in Berndt’s uprising, one final site of performance supports viewing their characters as essentially unchanged from their earlier unpolitical selves. This is a relevant issue because an interpretation of the novel as a whole rests on the status of its characters’ varying levels of involvement in the failed partisan project. Why is the «Volkserhebung» - something that subsequent nationalist histories of the era so often hail as a national political success of almost mythological importance 30 - depicted as a failure, and why, again, is this filtered through a scene of performance? Though commentators have disagreed to what extent the narrative relies on Lewin’s character development, most agree that this novel’s aesthetic coherence does not depend upon the progression of one main character, as with a Bildungsroman. 31 Indeed, we might say that the lack of any single character’s Bildung as narrative motor corresponds to the novel’s multiperspectival filiation of historical narrative. Undoubtedly prominent, Lewin and Tubal are deliberately depicted as limited in their observational ability and their symbolization of the historical epoch as a whole. The »lack of maturation» narrative strand serves to undercut the dominant nineteenth-century mythos of the »German people rising to the task and defeating Napoleon,» opening up space for conflicting or counter-narratives to arise. The final site of performance under consideration occurs in the Hohen- Vietz church, where the local pastor, Seidentopf, holds a patriotic sermon several days before the partisan attack. 32 Modelled on a sermon by Friedrich Schleiermacher, the text at times even draws on exact formulations from Schleiermacher (see Faure). Here we have another important reference to Romantic cultures of performance: Schleiermacher’s patriotic sermons were reprinted throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as founding documents of national political resistance. The narrative focuses considerable attention on this oratorical event. Included in the sermon is a recitation of the pamphlet «An mein Volk» by the Prussian king, which calls upon the German people to take up arms. The nar- 24 Sean Franzel rative describes the audience’s response to this pamphlet being read aloud as a process of figural collectivization: «Nun aber ging [ein Gebet] wie Leben durch die Versammlung, aller Köpfe richteten sich auf» (529). Die Wärme seines Vortrags lieh auch den einfachen Sätzen Bedeutung und Leben, und eine Wirkung gab sich zu erkennen, wie sie bei dem Einzellesen daheim niemand an sich erfahren hatte. Besonders waren es die Worte, die von der Vaterlandsliebe und der in Zeiten der Gefahr immer an lebhaftesten bewährten Anhänglichkeit an den König sprachen, denen die Versammlung mit sichtlicher Bewegung folgte. (530) As in the reading of Guilliame Tell, oration sets patriotic pathos into circulation. In this provincial church the desire to resist the French has finally been sanctioned by the Prussian elite, allowing patriotic and monarchist affinities to overlap. However, the first irony of this scene is that most of the primary agents in the partisan resistance (Berndt included) are not among the audience and thus not part of the figural collectivity instantiated by the congregation. Several days before the decisive action only Lewin and Tubal are present. It is noteworthy that the narrative prevaricates as to why Lewin and Tubal are not with the others, why they and they alone attend the sermon: «Nur Lewin und Tubal blieben zurück, vielleicht weil die Sitzplätze des Wagens nicht recht ausreichten, vielleicht auch, um an einem so wichtigen Tage wie der heutige den herrschaftlichen Chorstühl nicht unbesetzt erscheinen zu lassen» (529). This uncertainty from an otherwise well-informed narrative voice signals that more is at stake than an incidental decision on the part of those involved. The reader is invited to entertain her own conjectures as to why these two remained behind, encouraged, in other words, to take the step from the level of plot to that of thematic/ symbolic development. Is it because the two young men still aren’t entirely behind the uprising? Is it because they wanted one last aesthetic experience before battle? At the very least this narrative aside underlines intergenerational differences: it is the former participants in Friedrich the Great’s army who are leading the partisans in the field, not the Romantic youths. A second irony comes as the narrative shifts focus to Tubal’s utter distraction amidst the inspiring sermon. His attention flits around the church, taking in trivial objects during the handling of ostensibly serious issues. The narrative probes with gentle irony as to the origin of this distraction: Aber woher das alles? Hatten die Seidentopfschen Worte doch eines tieferen Tones entbehrt? O nein. Aber auf ihrem unausgesetzten Gange zwischen dem Grabdenkmal und dem Kruzifix waren seine Blicke Marie begegnet. Das war es. […] Er sah das blasse, feingschnittene Profil, und sah es, bis er nur noch sah und nichts mehr hörte als die vorwurfsvolle Stimme in seinem Innern, die leise seine Blicke begleitete. (532) Cultures of Performance, Gender, and Political Ideology 25 Tubal is torn between his emotional involvement with Renate and his attraction to Marie, combining youthful indecision with the instincts of a bachelor (a major plot device of Fontane’s historical novel about 1806 Prussia, Schach von Wuthenow). Tubal does not focus on the image of the female love object as an inspiration for patriotic action as the «Luisen-Kult» of other Romantic thinkers would have it. Instead, Tubal’s preoccupation with Marie occasions guilt over his conflicted private attraction to both Marie and Renate. As before, Tubal and Lewin’s focus on the personal in moments of the figuralization of political community indicates an inability to translate private experience into public engagement. It is also striking that Tubal becomes conscious of his attraction to Marie precisely during a scene of performance. Does her allure come from the fact that she represents an alternate affective and aesthetic mode, a form of performativity that Tubal or Lewin wish to be a part of or control? Does Tubal translate the potential for figural involvement in a national political community into his desire for Marie, and if so, what does this tell us about her later integration into the aristocracy as Familienmutter, the institutionalization, if you will, of the break with her past life as child performer? Or does the combination of Tubal and Lewin’s literary pursuits and their attraction to Marie suggest an unrealized alternative world in which all three could have channeled their private desire into the creation of viable public personalities? Though this passage and the novel in general give us little to work with for such a reading, Marie’s background cannot but be a suggestive yet elusive component of the novel’s depiction of cultures of performance. Whatever the status of these conjectures, it is clear from this scene that Tubal and Lewin’s aesthetic fixation on the personal to the neglect of the public and political is treated with a critical, ironic tone. To be sure, Tubal dies while trying to rescue Lewin, but his death is rendered grotesque and meaningless by its circumstances. 33 The constellation of characters at the end of the novel leaves little room for positive carriers of an engaged politics or culture, Romantic or otherwise, as the restoration of unpolitical domesticity sidelines all meaningful bourgeois or progressive noble involvement. Amidst the symbolic disintegration of the patriarchal society of the ancien régime, it is the father rather than the son who articulates a new, yet ultimately ineffective militarily based political vision. That said, it is precisely Lewin’s passive tendencies that make him a prime candidate for continuing the Junkertum into the Restoration. If we take Lewin’s position at the end of the novel not as a conservative allegory of the fleeting insignificance of the national movement but as a subtle diagnosis of what went wrong, we are encouraged to conclude that his figure is not up 26 Sean Franzel to the task of ushering in the new. In this way, Fontane undermines one of the central myths of the «Befreiungskriege,» namely that a national political pathos was generated at this time that broad sectors of society would sustain through to the unification of 1871. Fontane tempers both liberal and conservative accounts of the period as a transformative historical moment. Symptomatic of this critique is the novel’s ambivalence about sites of national political performance from the Romantic era: Fichtean and Schleiermacherian oratory fails to occasion substantial societal change, Schiller’s republican pathos remains in the realm of the schönen Schein, and Hansen- Grell’s «Befreiungslyrik» inspires little more than childish rhyming. Neither Lewin nor Tubal profit from the aesthetic education available to them. They both pursue literary life for the sake of a heightened experience of an emotional landscape that rarely moves beyond the personal and private. In this way, I have argued that it is precisely scenes of performance that relativize the myth of the young as the carriers of a new national politics. The novel reveals the weaknesses of discourses of politics, gender, and aesthetics organizing nineteenth-century Prussian society, a central component of Fontane’s entire oeuvre. It is worthwhile to close, I would suggest, with some final conjectures about the figure of Marie. Veneration of and desire for this young woman by nearly all the male figures recur almost obsessively throughout the novel. Though the idyll of family domesticity could signal an uncomplicated resolution of her fate - as she fills the affectively central position that Lewin’s mother/ Berndt’s wife occupied before her symbolically charged death -, might we not read the relegation of her talents to the tasks of Familienmutter to be tinged with some kind of remorse? Or alternately, is there not some kind of sadistic pleasure 34 that readers flirt with if they cultivate emotional investment in a happy plot resolution in provincial familial Biedermeier rather than in some sort of realization of Marie’s «schöne Seele» through performance? Though I can only reiterate the conjectural nature of these questions, it seems that the figure of Marie serves as a point of convergence for the misguided aesthetic experiences of both male and female characters in the novel. Her integration into Junker life is taken as a sign of gradual egalitarianism, a gust of the «Westwind» blowing (some) ideals of the French Revolution eastward (633), but just as the narrative encourages contemplation about what could have been had Lewin and Tubal embraced a new national politics, it also suggests that Marie’s life could have taken a different and - at the very least - more exciting direction. Cultures of Performance, Gender, and Political Ideology 27 Notes 1 Many thanks to Mary Helen Dupree and Martha Kelly for their feedback on initial versions of this article. 2 «Fontanes Roman ist wahrscheinlich weder ein Werk der beginnenden Moderne noch ein historischer Roman über die gefeierte Erhebung Preussens. Von Anfang an spielt er mit verschiedenen Zeiten, vermischt er unterschiedliche Epochen, interpretiert er Gegenwart an vergangenen Modellen und belebt Vergangenheit mit dem Lebensstoff gegenwärtiger Krisen» (Aust, Theodor Fontane 41). 3 As in most of Fontane’s works, Vor dem Sturm stages frequent discussions about art and aesthetics, and yet literary cultures are not woven into the novel’s narrative fabric simply through causerie, critical or otherwise. Here I take issue with Osinski and Zuberbühler’s one-sided privileging of discussions («Gespräche») as the primary way that the novel negotiates the relationship of literature and politics. See also Goetschel on causerie in Fontane. 4 On the logic of partisan warfare see Schmitt. Additionally see Kittler for a reading of the indebtedness of Kleist’s literary aesthetics to the logic of the partisan. Scholars have noted that Fontane models aspects of Berndt’s character on the historical person August Ludwig von der Marwitz, a conservative Prussian general who was instrumental in forming the partisan resistance. There are considerable differences, however, between the two: Marwitz was a vehement opponent of the Stein-Hardenberg reforms, while Berndt is a more liberal figure (if only slightly), as evidenced by his acceptance of the mésalliance between Lewin and Marie. On the relation of Marwitz and Berndt, see, among others, Keiler. 5 A term that Fontane himself used to describe his historical novel (see Aust, «Nachwort»). 6 Brandstetter and Neumann describe this feature of Fontane’s work in his historical novel Schach von Wuthenow thus: «Und eben die Strategien und Konzepte dieser Verschränkung, der Frage nach der individuellen und staatlichen ‹Identität› im Spiel zwischen Frauen- und Männerrolle, sind das Thema von [Schach]» (250). 7 See Hohendahl, «The New Man; » Hagemann; and Frevert on nascent discourses about the new man around 1800 amidst the collapse of the Prussian political system and of the patriarchal order of the ancien régime. See also Simpson on the gendered «erotics of war» in German Romanticism. 8 Along with Lukàcs, Wünsch and Keiler make the most sustained argument in this direction. Lukàcs faults Fontane in his first and last novel (der Stechlin) for letting too much subjective affective connection to Prussia get in the way of his social and political critique, an argument with which this article clearly takes issue. Here, I follow Hohendahl’s argument that representations of the nobility in Fontane should be understood first and foremost as part of a formal, literary aesthetic constellation rather than as sociohistorical documentation or prescription: «die Darstellung des Adels in Fontanes Romanen erweist sich […] als ein literatur-immanentes Problem. Man versteht die gesellschaftlichen Konflikte und Differenzen vorab als Signaturen, die textverweisenden Charakter haben und sich nicht notwendig mit der Wirklichkeit decken» («Konvention und Tendenz» 264). 9 See Humphrey on the importance of reporting in Vor dem Sturm. 10 Later we learn that Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué was a former attendee and that some participants were acquaintances of Heinrich von Kleist. 28 Sean Franzel 11 On the history of the Tischgesellschaft see Nienhaus. Typical of many eighteenthand nineteenth-century social groups, Kastalia meets in a public tavern though later meetings occur in private residences. See Nienhaus on how such groups fall in between private and public modes of sociability. 12 In his essay «Die alten englishen und schottischen Balladen,» Fontane traces the form back through Romanticism and Sturm und Drang to early English and Scottish balladry. See Zuberbühler on how Fontane interprets aspects of Romantic literature in light of the ballad as «Romantic» form. 13 In a review of a Tell performance in 1870, one month after Prussia declared war on France, Fontane writes glowingly of the staging of Schiller’s play at a moment of national political importance: «Es ist herkömmlich geworden, in großen nationalen Momenten unseren nationalen Dichter zum Volke sprechen zu lassen. Ein Glück, daß wir ihn besitzen, daß seine vor allem spruch- und gedankenreichen Schöpfungen uns, für alles, was kommen mag, bereits einen geprägten, längst Allgemeingut gewordenen Ausdruck überliefert haben, der zu rechter Stunde seine ursprüngliche Frische zurückgewinnend, neuzündend in alle Herzen schlägt» («Rezension» 56). 14 The Romantic figure Faulstich is also involved in the writing and directing of this performance. However, I would disagree with Zuberbühler’s assessment that Faulstich’s involvement marks this space as «aristokratisch-romantisch» (57). The social milieu of Guse and its neo-classicist aesthetics outweighs any «Romantic» modes that the Novalis afficianado might have brought in. In contrast to other places in the novel, here, the would-be Romantic poet operates entirely within earlier patron-client modes of literary production typical of the ancien régime. 15 One is also reminded of Henriette Hendel-Schütz, an actress who rose to fame in the late eighteenth century as a child-actress prodigy and played prominent roles in many of the major theater houses of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century. See Dupree. 16 See Arons on constructs of «natural» femininity and «unnatural,» theatrical subjectivity used to exclude women from sites of public performance. 17 See Esterhammer on travelling female poets/ improvisers. 18 On female performance as site for critique of neo-classicist aesthetics, see Dupree. 19 «Er kam und ging. Er hat keine Spur hinterlassen […] er mag das Herz seiner Nation berührt haben, aber er hat es nicht getroffen» (264). 20 «Ich kann nicht anders. Das was du vorhast, und was Tausende der Besten wollen, ist gegen meine Natur. Ich habe kein Herz für das, was sie jetzt mit Stolz und Bewunderung die spanische Kriegsführung nennen. […] Ich bin für offenen Kampf, bei hellem Sonnenschein und schmetternden Trompeten. Wie oft habe ich in Entzücken geweint, wenn ich auf der Fußbank neben Mama saß und sie von ihrem Vater erzählte […]. Ja, ich will Krieg führen, aber deutsch, nicht spanisch, auch nicht slawisch. Du weißt, Papa, ich bin meiner Mutter Sohn» (29). 21 Of course, nothing in the novel suggests the more radical variant of partisan warfare that has women serving as soldiers, a logic that writers such as Kleist did not shy away from. 22 Recalling Fontane’s activity as a war reporter in covering the Franco-Prussian war of the 1870-71. Again see Humphrey. 23 «Ich kenne die Plätze, von denen Sie uns gelesen: kaum verschwundene Bilder sind mir wieder lebendig geworden. Was Freund, was Feind! An gleicher Stelle die gleiche Gefahr. Ich bitte, Sie daraufhin als einen mir teuer gewordenen Kameraden begrüßen zu dürfen» (352). Cultures of Performance, Gender, and Political Ideology 29 24 Woodford makes a similar point about how Vor dem Sturm critiques Gründerzeit nationalism, focusing most of her attention on Fontane’s depiction of Brandenburg as a hybrid cultural space. 25 It is likely that Fontane would not have read Tolstoy’s masterwork at the time of writing Vor dem Sturm. 26 «Der Bäcker bringt ein Kuchenbrot,/ Der Schneider einen Mantel rot,/ Der Kaufmann schickt ihr, weiß und nett,/ Ein Puppenkleid, ein Puppenbett» (386). 27 This failure of a male figure to embody viable public action in a time of political crisis is the central theme of Fontane’s other historical novel about the Napoleonic era, Schach von Wuthenow. 28 See Simpson for an exploration of the intertwining of erotics and war in Romantic aesthetics. 29 As his sister notes, «Der Säbelhieb über die Stirn kleidet ihn gut; der weiche Zug, den er hatte, ist nun fort; Marie findet es auch» (636). 30 See Jablkowska for a reading of Fontane’s criticism of the myths of Prussian nationalism from this period in Schach von Wuthenow. 31 As Keiler argues,«Trotz heftiger innerer Bewegung der Figuren bewegen diese nicht eigentlich die Geschichte» (103). 32 Here I leave out cultures of memorialization around 1800, to be sure another important site of performance in the novel. Two important moments of this occur in the fourth book in the context of gravestones: Hansen-Grell’s, on the one hand, and Renate’s on the other, the simple words of which - «Renate von Vitzewitz» - bring the novel to a close . On the significance of gravestones, see Aust, «Nachwort.» 33 Tubal becomes something of a martyr for his disloyalty, getting shot by the French in the process of returning into the crossfire to save the family dog, the epitome of loyalty. This passage and the scenes surrounding the partisan uprising are, in my opinion, some of the weaker and more contrived of the novel, though ironically some of the most wellreceived among contemporary readers of the novel. 34 See Breithaupt’s compelling argument about a «sadistic» lack of empathy for the main character felt by readers of Effi Briest and the implications of this kind of sadism for the structure of reader identification/ empathy in realist fiction. Works Cited Arons, Wendy. 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