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/4.0/91
2008
413
PETER C. PFEIFFER: Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach. Tragödie. Erzählung. Heimatfilm. Tübingen: Francke, 2008. 189 pp. € 39,90. / CLAUDIA SEELING: Zur Interdependenz von Gender- und Nationaldiskurs bei Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach. St. Ingbert: Röhrig Universitätsverlag, 2008. 318 pp. € 32. / MARIE LUISE WANDRUSZKA: Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach. Erzählerin aus politischer Leidenschaft. Wien: Passagen Verlag, 2008. € 16,90.
91
2008
Linda Kraus Worley
cg4130263
Besprechungen / Reviews P ETER C. P FEIFFER : Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach. Tragödie. Erzählung. Heimatfilm. Tübingen: Francke, 2008. 189 pp. € 39,90. C LAUDIA S EELING : Zur Interdependenz von Gender- und Nationaldiskurs bei Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach. St. Ingbert: Röhrig Universitätsverlag, 2008. 318 pp. € 32. M ARIE L UISE W ANDRUSZKA : Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach. Erzählerin aus politischer Leidenschaft. Wien: Passagen Verlag, 2008. € 16,90. Three new monographs focusing on Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830-1916) span the interpretive range from a «bewußt altmodisches» book (Pfeiffer 175) to analyses anchored in the social, cultural, and political discourses of the second half of the nineteenth century (Seeling; to a lesser extent Wandruszka). These monographs taken together discern thematic and formal complexities that were all too often ignored during earlier phases of Ebner’s reception as rising, then fallen icon of Austrian Habsburg literature. Citing Martha Nussbaum, Wandruszka emphasizes the ability of literature to help the reader understand, imagine, and empathize with others, all of which are basic requirements of a modern democracy (11). Although Wandruszka’s use of the term «politics» is somewhat vague, her stated goal is to present the «Ästhetik und politische Ethik Marie von Ebner-Eschenbachs […] in ihrer Verschränkung» (13). Of the three monographs under review, Wandruszka’s is the most uneven, primarily due to significant gaps in the secondary literature, shortcomings which lead her to repeat or simply be out of touch with already-established scholarship. The bibliography lists almost no Ebner scholarship from the twenty-first century and is quite spotty with respect to older literature. Although Wandruszka states that Ebner scholarship «wächst ins Uferlose» (11), the field has not grown so large as to be unmanageable. Thus, the first section, «Die Werkstatt,» retells Ebner’s early literary biography, relying heavily on quotes from her diary. Wandruszka seems unaware that this era of Ebner’s life has received a good bit of attention (Rose 1998; Klostermeier 1994; Kord 2005; etc.) and that the diary entries must be read with a critical eye (Gabriel 1997). The second section, «Die Weite der Welt,» focuses on Ebner’s literary constructions of male and female characters, particularly members of the aristocracy, in such key texts as «Er lasst die Hand küssen,» Unsühnbar, and Božena. It is here that the scholarly gaps are most detrimental. For example, Wandruszka posits that the noble woman in «Er lasst die Hand küssen» only wants to do good. This statement is highly suspect after the analyses of Dormer (1976) and subsequent scholars. Gaps such as these are lamentable because when Wandruszka does engage with extant scholarship, she often advances intriguing hypotheses. One example is her contention that Ebner’s turn from drama to fiction is not to be read purely as a sign of defeat and resignation after numerous failures in the theatrical realm, but can be understood as Ebner’s choosing realist prose as a form which allowed her a greater realm of aesthetic and political freedom. This is an insight that has the potential to 264 Besprechungen / Reviews change the way scholars look at Ebner. At the very least, it should stimulate discussion. Wandruszka’s final section, «Eine politische Ästhetik,» posits that Ebner’s experiments with realist literary techniques allowed her to show highly nuanced relationships among characters and to underscore a political «Miteinander-Handeln der Erzählfiguren» (118). Of particular interest in this regard are Wandruszka’s efforts to show similarities between the political world views of Hannah Arendt and Ebner. In Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach. Tragödie. Erzählung. Heimatfilm Peter C. Pfeiffer explores how themes central to Ebner’s work - history, gender, and creativity - thread throughout Ebner’s varied oeuvre and her long creative life. In addition, Pfeiffer proposes to investigate how Ebner pushed established literary forms «um die Spezifik weiblicher Wahrnehmungsweisen und Erlebniswelten fassen zu können» (83). Pfeiffer is at his best in close readings of the stories Agave (1903), «Die Freiherren von Gemperlein» (1881), «Das Schädliche» (1894) as well as Das Gemeindekind (1887). In each chapter, he underscores how Ebner, by combining and re-combining her core themes, succeeded in writing alternatives to extant power constructs in the realms of gender relationships, social hierarchies and aesthetics. Pfeiffer posits that Ebner modified the traditional historical tragedy in «Marie Roland» (1867) in order to create a heroine who interacts with the monumental historical processes of the French Revolution. Pfeiffer’s intelligent discussion of Ebner’s autobiography Meine Kinderjahre (1905) would have benefitted from placing Ebner’s autobiography within the context of other autobiographies written by nineteenth-century women authors. Pfeiffer’s monograph is framed by chapters looking at Ebner’s reception in nontext media. The thoughtful chapter on the iconic image of Ebner ruminates on the prevalent image of Ebner as older, androgynous writer and ties in well with other research examining the probable needs, wishes, and desires of the various reading publics and editors who have chosen the image of Ebner as old woman. The book ends with a chapter looking at three Heimat films directed by Franz Antel loosely based on Ebner’s story «Krambambuli.» Pfeiffer’s considerations add to our understanding of Ebner’s reception, but suffer at times from a preponderance of plot details which tend to obscure his argument. Pfeiffer explicitly states that he intended «die Einsichten zu Ebners Werk, die in der englischsprachigen Auslandsgermanistik entwickelt worden sind, aufzugreifen, mit den Ergebnissen weiter zu arbeiten und die Resultate einem deutschen Publikum nahe zu bringen» (177). Given his intent, the marked absence of or lack of true engagement with scholarship which explores the same or similar texts and general topics (cf., for example, Goodman 1986; C. Steiner 1994; Toegel 1991, 1992, 1993, 1997; Bramkamp 1990; Riehl 2000; Harriman 1985; Worley 1996, 2004, 2008) is a serious flaw and diminishes his achievements. Claudia Seeling’s monograph, Zur Interdependenz von Gender- und Nationaldiskurs bei Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, based on her 2006 dissertation, on the other hand, presents a thorough catalogue and summary of the extant scholarship, although here, too, more spirited engagement with existing scholarship would have been helpful. By reading with a nuanced eye towards gender and national discourses, Seeling leads the reader to a deeper understanding of the complexities in Ebner’s texts. After Besprechungen / Reviews 265 two substantive chapters provide the historical background needed to grasp the interactions of the Habsburg monarchy’s ethnic populations in Bohemia and Moravia, Seeling provides thought-provoking readings of Meine Kinderjahre (1906), Božena (1876), «Bertram Vogelweid» (1896), and «Mašlans Frau» (1901). By consciously integrating the heteroand autostereotypes held by both «Czech» and «German» characters into her analyses of plot, gender and nationality discourses, Seeling creates a highly nuanced picture of Ebner’s multi-layered texts. The reader is invited to rethink commonly held views of Ebner and her writing regarding, for example, the role Ebner’s Czech heritage played in her life and art. Analyses which reveal previously overlooked subtleties are exciting, but they also demand a very high burden of proof. In most cases in Seeling’s monograph this burden is met. Seeling studies Ebner’s varied narrators in terms of their gendered and ethnic subject positions and by so doing can probe possible auctorial criticism of these positions. For example, she makes a solid case for seeing the third-person narrator («Erzählinstanz») of Božena as one who inhabits a male, «conservative German» subject position. Her further contention that the author («Textsubjekt») does not share this position and subtly creates a distance to the narrator in order to reveal the narrator’s deep-seated stereotypes is intriguing, but needs further proof to be entirely convincing. This reservation notwithstanding, Seeling’s work provides a stimulating basis for further studies. All three of the recent books are based on the fundamental assumption that Ebner’s entire oeuvre, created over the span of her long life, needs scholarly illumination. The authors’ conclusions, whether guided by recent theories regarding history, nation, gender, the public sphere, and/ or creativity, are valuable in and of themselves, but also because they will most certainly stimulate new scholarship. University of Kentucky Linda Kraus Worley R ANDALL H ALLE and R EINHILD S TEINGRÖVER (E DS .): After the Avant-Garde: Contemporary German and Austrian Experimental Film. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2008. 352 pp. $ 80. After the Avant-Garde: Contemporary German and Austrian Experimental Film is a timely and well-conceived introduction to an often overlooked area in the field of German Studies, particularly here in North America. Though German-language film has rightfully received increased attention from scholars over the past twenty-five years, as well as a place in most German Studies curricula, little attention has been paid to those artists who toil, often in obscurity, on the fringes of experimental cinema. Artists who, for the most part, remain unknown in the North American context, but whose works both influence and challenge the mainstream cinema in Europe and thus, eventually, in the United States. Randall Halle and Reinhild Steingröver aim to correct this oversight with a timely collection of essays by film scholars and art critics. An informative introduction discussing the avant-garde by Halle and Steingröver is followed by fifteen essays on topics ranging from the works of Birgit Hein, Mi-
