188 Besprechungen / Reviews im ausgehenden sechzehnten Jahrhundert darstellt. Hier wie auch in seinem Gesamtwerk geht es Pamuk um die schillernde Stellung der türkischen Identität zwischen Ost und West. Die hybriden türkisch-deutschen Autoren sind dialektisch je schon in diese schillernde Stellung einbeschlossen und transzendieren hiermit den Signifikant «Moslem». Reed College Ülker Gökberk W OLF G ERHARD S CHMIDT : Zwischen Antimoderne und Postmoderne: Das deutsche Drama und Theater der Nachkriegszeit im internationalen Kontext. Stuttgart, Weimar: J.B. Metzler, 2009. 800 pp. € 99,95. Wolf Gerhard Schmidt’s Zwischen Antimoderne und Postmoderne: Das deutsche Drama und Theater der Nachkriegszeit im internationalen Kontext delivers in its scope, depth, and detail an unrivaled account and analysis of German theater from 1945 to 1961. A second volume dealing with the same topic and time period for Austria and Switzerland is projected. When completed, Schmidt’s study will be a systematic and astonishingly comprehensive history of postwar drama in the German-speaking countries. Rather than focusing solely on the usual suspects (Brecht, Borchert, Hacks, Hildesheimer, Kipphardt, Müller, Weiss, Zuckmayer) and no-longer-so-usual suspects (Drewitz, Jahnn, Matusche, Schneider, Strittmatter, Weisenborn, Wolf), Schmidt excels at (re)introducing authors and plays into the postwar discourse that have long been forgotten or never really been known in the first place. Has anyone read the works of Wolfgang Altendorf, Egon Vietta, or Julius Vogel recently? Or Fred Denger’s strangely titled Die heilige Hannah von Auschwitz oder «Es muß noch vieles frisch gestrichen werden» (1945/ 46), or Hedwig Rohde’s Ein anderes Land (1946), which is, according to Schmidt, one of the earliest surviving German plays dealing with the Holocaust, or even Thomas Harlan’s Ich selbst und kein Engel (1958) which will be republished later this year? In the case of Denger’s drama the answer has to be «no» since not a single copy of this never-performed play has survived. Rohde’s play was premiered at the Ruhr-Kammerspiele in 1946 but exists only in the form of a self-published typescript. Thanks to his work as collector and literary historian, Schmidt widens our awareness of authors and plays that did not make it onto the stages of Hamburg, Munich, or Berlin but were performed (or publically read) in provincial theaters. His study makes a strong argument for acknowledging that drama and theater functioned in the 1950s as a privileged place and medium for postwar society to explore and debate social, ethical, and political questions. Starting from a summary of the sociocultural and political context of postwar theater in East and West Germany, Schmidt analyzes the wide variety of performance and staging models in postwar German theaters. With his preference for mathematical terminology, he develops for Fehling, Gründgens, Sellner the notion of «integral theater» - based on their conviction that no single interpretation or staging but only the play of all possibilities in several productions provides interpretive justice to the literary work. Brecht and Langhoff are subsumed CG_42_2_s097-192End.indd 188 CG_42_2_s097-192End.indd 188 23.12.11 22: 06 23.12.11 22: 06 Besprechungen / Reviews 189 under the model of «tangential theater,» meaning that a drama is interpreted from the (one) point where its linear narrative touches the closed (i.e., ‹round›) world of its metanarrative (Marxism). Kortner and Piscator seem to defy Schmidt’s mathematics and are more traditionally categorized as representatives of «engaged theater.» Schmidt then moves from the theater directors and their staging styles to the plays and their narratives. With a proclivity for systematic mapping, Schmidt distinguishes them according to their storylines as narratives of representation, ethics, transcendence, Marxism, and the absurd. In the third part of his study Schmidt orders and discusses plays and authors according to genre and dramatic concept, moving from tragedy to comedy and from Aristotelian models to much more than only Brecht’s epic theater. Even though this method produces some repetitions and despite Schmidt’s penchant for scholarly jargon, this study is a treasure trove of material and insights. Although this book becomes an indispensible resource for anyone dealing with German postwar theater, Schmidt’s main thesis on postwar German culture is less than persuasive. The focus on the numerous facets of German theater is meant to substantiate Schmidt’s more ambitious thesis about our current misconception of the 1950s. While not denying the presence of antimodern undercurrents in postwar Germany, Schmidt positions his study aggressively among recent proposals for a reevaluation of this often ignored period. Rather than being dominated by restorative tendencies in politics and culture, by a repressive silence about the Holocaust and German war crimes, as well as a lack of aesthetic innovation and experimentation, Schmidt declares the postwar era to be truly exceptional in its freedom from ideological prescriptions: «For the first time in German literary history one’s own epoch is being understood as a decidedly post-ideological epoch» (6). Putting the odd couple of Wilhelm II and Lyotard together, Schmidt refrains from elevating «the post-war period as ‹postmodernity avant la lettre› from the depth of oblivion to the place at the sun» (5) only to coin instead the term of a «controlled (Post)Modernity» (16) for the years between 1945 and 1961. While the 1950s are praised for the bold rejection of metanarratives, the 1960s in Schmidt’s view are a period of reideologization and submission to grand narratives. One of the central achievements of 1960s theater - to be instrumental in breaking the silence about the Holocaust and to initiate wideranging debates in the public sphere about German responsibility for this man-made catastrophe - Schmidt decrees to be much smaller than commonly held. Through his analysis of postwar drama, Schmidt sets out to reveal the notion of a German silence about the Holocaust as misleading, as a myth kept alive, among others, by literary historians and cultural critics who never took a closer look at the playing schedules of German theaters in the 1950s. The problem with Schmidt’s theses is at least twofold. He unnecessarily weakens his argument by not critically engaging with counterarguments, and his own evidence sometimes supports precisely these counterarguments. Authors like Frank Trommler and Hans Dieter Schäfer who question the validity of 1945 as a Stunde Null for German literature and stress the restorative tendencies of postwar society are summarily dismissed (20) and Adorno is accused of «epistemological totalitarianism» (205) - a charge based on one distorted quote. A claim like «not every career under the Swastika leads necessarily to ideological deformation» is supposed to carry CG_42_2_s097-192End.indd 189 CG_42_2_s097-192End.indd 189 23.12.11 22: 06 23.12.11 22: 06 190 Besprechungen / Reviews such persuasive power that it is not only repeated twice (on page 2 and 88) but seems to be the reason why Schmidt never looks at Gründgens’ or Sellner’s theater productions in Nazi Germany to support his thesis that their «integral theater» is indeed a postwar innovation and represents a definitive break with their own previous work. Schmidt’s research provides new material for an analysis of the postwar Holocaust discourse in Germany. Instead of supporting his bold thesis of a wide and varied discourse on the German responsibility for the Holocaust (13f.), his evidence lends more support to the chastised previous research that noted the dominance of silence and evasion about the recent past. Schmidt mentions three plays from 1946-47 that supposedly took place inside concentration camps. All three are lost without a single extant copy. It is unknown how they addressed which aspects of the Holocaust. Later plays survived in authors’ archives or as stage manuscripts but were (if at all) rarely performed and never reached a sizable audience. Schmidt’s short descriptions indicate that the camps were often euphemistically represented as forced labor camps and not as sites of organized mass murder. The summarized plots point to rather abstract and evasive narratives of sacrifice and redemption. None of this supports Schmidt’s suggestion that contrary to previous research the Holocaust discourse is «already before 1955 lastingly [nachhaltig] present» (213) in postwar theater. University of California, Irvine Kai Evers R EGINA F ASOLD (E D .): Theodor Storm - Constanze Storm. Briefwechsel. Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2009. 490 pp. € 79,80. Vorgelegt werden hier als Band 18 der Kritischen Ausgabe von Storms Briefwechsel 121 Briefe der Eheleute aus den Jahren 1851 bis 1864. Die Brieftexte umfassen 350 Seiten; schon der Umfang des beigegebenen Apparats belegt, daß sorgfältig editiert wurde. So werden verschollene Briefe aus den vorhandenen Texten erschlossen und aufgelistet (351). Der Kommentar (353-455) in Form von Anmerkungen oder Endnoten (numerisch zu jedem Schreiben) erweist sich als ausführlich und allen Ansprüchen genügend. Das Abkürzungsverzeichnis (457-58) enthält nicht nur Hinweise auf die Standorte der Briefhandschriften, Erstdruck-orte und zu Rate gezogenen Wörterbücher, sondern auch eine Liste der den Stormschen Eheleuten eigenen Kürzel und der Kosenamen der Kinder, z.B. Losche = Karl oder Lite = Lisbeth. Ein Personen- und Werkregister (459-88) sowie ein Verzeichnis der erwähnten Werke Storms (489-90) vervollständigen Fasolds persönliche Beiträge zu dieser Edition. All das ist sehr zu loben. Erwähnen muß man, daß dieses Buch einige Tipp- oder Druckfehler aufweist. Zu den Ersteren gehört wohl «in denen Storm […] über […] sprich[t]» (31). Andere Fehler muß man sicher dem Computer ankreiden, der den eingereichten Text für den Druck anordnete, z.B. die Trennung «und geg-ohrne Pfannkuchen» (80). Manchmal weiß man nicht, ob Storm tatsächlich so schrieb: «Unterwegs thlte Westerhagen mir […] mit» (120). Denn etwas später im gleichen Brief schreibt der Dichter: «[…] die guten Eigenschaften der Mutter getheilt» (122). Auch eine ungenügende Zuordnung CG_42_2_s097-192End.indd 190 CG_42_2_s097-192End.indd 190 23.12.11 22: 06 23.12.11 22: 06