eJournals Colloquia Germanica 42/3

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
2009
423

HANS ADLER AND WULF KOEPKE (EDS.): A Companion to the Works of Johann Gottfried Herder. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2009. 489 pp. $ 90.

91
2009
Beate Allert
cg4230280
280 Besprechungen / Reviews German music). While Interwar Vienna: Culture Between Tradition and Modernity thrives on the interdisciplinary and multi-perspectival approach that an edited volume provides, it would benefit from an editorial conclusion, if only to reiterate and comment further on the connections drawn across the individual contributions and across Holmes and Silverman’s engaging introduction. This slight concern aside, the volume will find a ready readership primarily among scholars interested in the interdisciplinary field of Austrian studies encompassing film and literary studies, music and performance studies, theater history, and political science and history. Arizona State University Daniel Gilfillan H ANS A DLER AND W ULF K OEPKE (E DS .): A Companion to the Works of Johann Gottfried Herder. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2009. 489 pp. $ 90. This book which contains seventeen articles by nineteen contributors is a milestone for international Herder scholarship. It is the first such volume available in English and a historic breakthrough. It meets the goal of the experienced editors, Hans Adler and the late Wulf Koepke, to convey a comprehensive picture of the life and the works of Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803). The editors have dared to tackle an overdue and onerous task in correcting an entire gamut of historical mistakes in previous misrepresentations of Herder. They have engaged a panel of experienced contributors from various disciplines and countries (including the United States of America, Canada, Germany, and Switzerland) to write this monumental but accessible and appealing volume. It is laudable that the editors address the mistakes of outdated Herder reception in their introduction and the contributors follow through in the same vein in their individual articles. The volume, therefore, serves as a corrective to earlier attempts to provide a presentation of Herder and his work as a whole in a field still dominated by the biography of Rudolf Haym (first published in 1877). Although Haym’s work is not without its merits, it unfortunately left a negative impression of Herder and proved a misleading resource for many generations to come. Adler and Koepke comment on Haym: «He depicted Herder as a thinker of the second order, one who already at the age of 21 had lost contact with the avant-garde of the early 1770s, Kant above all» (1). Haym represented Herder through the lens of Kant, who had been Herder’s professor in Königsberg and who claimed «in a malicious review» of the first two volumes of Herder’s Ideen zur Geschichte der Menschheit (1784-91) that Herder merged poetry and philosophy in illegitimate ways. Therefore, it is finally time to make Herder’s work fully understood in its own right. This book does just that. It also corrects the cliché of Haym’s one-sided emphasis on Herder’s role in the Sturm und Drang movement while ignoring his later developments. Adler and Koepke’s volume further challenges effectively Haym’s verdict on Herder’s jealousy of Goethe and Schiller. Adding to the severe misreadings of him by Haym, Herder was even more severely wronged in his reception history through his exploitation by the Nazis who misused his concepts of «Nation» and «Volk» for their own fascist purposes. Arnd Bohm in his contribution on «Herder and Politics» explains that there are «two most CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 280 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 280 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 Besprechungen / Reviews 281 widely held opinions about Herder’s politics» which are «inaccurate» (277). He was neither apolitical, nor was his concept of «Volk» any contribution to the nationalist movements’ of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries undermining of the universalist claims of the Enlightenment. Ulrich Gaier beautifully contextualizes the notions of myth, mythology, and new mythology in Herder’s work, and Stefan Greif explains that «Volk» according to Herder designates all those who are close to nature. I also find Robert Norton’s article «Herder as Critical Contemporary» and Karl Menges’s essay «Particular Universals: Herder on National Literature, Popular Literature, and World Literature» especially informative concerning an entire range of debates surrounding Herder nationally and internationally while positioning him both as an astute critic, theorist, and as an engaging speaker for Humanität. Marion Heinz and Heinrich Clairmont show how Herder connected the concepts of space, time and force, and how he interacted with the representatives of empiricism and idealism at his time in order to propose his own creative epistemology. Herder offers above all a «sensualistic reception of the Spinozist doctrine of amor dei intellectualis» (62). John Zammito makes Herder shine as a wonderfully strong vocal critic of any «Whig history» that imposes itself and its ideology on others. He claims Herder as a founder of the «philosophy of history» and a critic of imperialism. Herder argued that each nation has its own middle point of happiness in itself, just as every sphere has its center of gravity. He thus «naturalized reason» and held the conviction that «there is no categorical divide between nature and human history» (79). Hans Adler defines the concept of «Humanität» with eloquent differentiation, and while applying Cassirer’s notion of Funktionsbegriff against those who so far have interpreted Herder’s concept as if it were a «Substanzbegriff,» he suggests: «We have to step back and change our perspective […]. Herder’s Humanität is not a goal but a problem (that which is laid before, a task from the Greek proballein, German ‹Vorwurf›)» (105). Adler considers Herder’s approach to aesthetics as aisthetics (with an iota, from the Greek aisthánesthai: to perceive through the senses, that is, the logic of the body and the senses), thus offering an anthropological dimension to the field of aesthetics. He further points out that Herder’s concept of «Kraft» (power) was later relativized by the equally important concept of «Maß» (balance, moderation). Steven Martinson gives a brief sketch of Herder’s life and work and highlights his Humanitätsbriefe to show that Herder diagnosed the contempt for other people and times as an «epidemischer Zeit- und Nationalwahnsinn» (madness). Wulf Koepke develops some consequences of Herder’s idea of nemesis or of retribution in the center of his thinking on history while «castigating the hubris of the European civilization» (7). Herder made an anthropocentric turn and his project of an aesthetica naturalis is the key to understanding his relationship to Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume, Berkeley and others. Also, since Herder broadened his view beyond the confines of Europe, he demonstrated an interest in Asian and Native American traditions (instead of dismissing them like Kant) and laid the foundations for the contemporary multicultural approach to culture. Jürgen Trabant sees Herder as the creator of a «philosophy of language» and argues «there is no other thinker or writer - before Wilhelm von Humboldt and later, Ludwig Wittgenstein - for whom language is in the same depth and intensity the CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 281 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 281 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 282 Besprechungen / Reviews center and the subject of human thought and hence of the human being» (118). The volume is rounded out with contributions on Herder’s biblical studies by Christoph Bultmann; on his theology by Martin Kessler; on his aesthetics and poetics by Stefan Greif; his poetic works, translations, and views of poetry by Gerhard Sauder; on Herder as educator and administrator by Harro Müller-Michaels; and on his reception and influence by Günter Arnold, Kurt Kloocke, and Ernst Menze. All of these contributions provide a multifacetted picture of Herder as one of the most important and interesting authors of the eighteenth century. The volume concludes with an extensive bibliography arranged according to topics and a comprehensive index. Camden House has done a fine job in publishing this excellent volume. It is undoubtedly indispensable for future research on Herder, German and European literature and philosophy, comparative literature, and eighteenth-century studies. One can only wish that from now on one no longer has to defend Herder against Kant or Haym. This book will have a vast impact internationally and it has already introduced a new era of Herder scholarship. Purdue University Beate Allert P AUL M ICHAEL L ÜTZELER : Bürgerkrieg Global: Menschenrechtsethos und deutschsprachiger Gegenwartsroman. München: Wilhelm Fink, 2009. 360 pp. € 30,90. Paul Michael Lützeler, the Rosa May Distinguished University Professor in the Humanities and the founder and director of the Max Kade Center for Contemporary German Literature at Washington University in St. Louis, is known for his leadership in the field of contemporary literary studies. This text is the latest entry in his oeuvre that supports that claim, as documented by its public reception. A review in Der Spiegel (44/ 2009) called it «der seltene Fall eines literaturtheoretischen Werks, das lesbar daherkommt und weit über die Fachgrenzen hinausgreift,» and in Die Zeit (30/ 2010) Evelyn Finger noted that, «[i]n einer idealen Welt müsste es eigentlich sogar Pflichtlektüre für Außenminister sein.» Such praise is warranted, as the text is readable, consistent, and informative - a rare accomplishment for today’s scholars of literature. No wonder that Hans Wagener, in a German Quarterly review (83.3 [August 2010]), calls it «so etwas wie eine deutsche Habilitationsschrift» and «eine theoretisch fundierte Studie zu einem zentralen Thema der deutschen Gegenwartsliteratur» (395). Despite this acclaim, however, Bürgerkrieg Global is a rather willful book, seen from the Anglo-American perspective, and one that has actually missed some opportunities. It is an extended set of introductions to germanophone novels that take up contemporary sites where human rights violations and politics have entered the global news. The individual chapters introduce authors whose works deal with conflict zones. Lützeler introduces twelve novels in detail, each in its own chapter: Norbert Gstrein, Das Handwerk des Tötens (2003); Lukas Bärfuss, Hundert Tage (2008); Hans Christoph Buch, Kain und Abel in Afrika (2001); Jeanette Lander, Jahrhundert der Herren (1993); Dieter Kühn, Und der Sultan von Oman (1979); Nicolas Born, Die Fälschung (1979); Christian Kracht, 1979 (2001); Michael Roes, Leeres Viertel CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 282 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 282 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18