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
KATY HEADY: Literature and Censorship in Restoration Germany: Repression and Rhetoric. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2009. 221 pp. $ 75.
91
2009
Katra Byram
cg4230286
286 Besprechungen / Reviews K ATY H EADY : Literature and Censorship in Restoration Germany: Repression and Rhetoric. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2009. 221 pp. $ 75. The introduction to Katy Heady’s book on censorship in Restoration Germany states the book’s project succinctly: it investigates «the effects of state censorship: that is, censorship exercised by public institutions with the intention of regulating public discourse» (3). This definition of the project sets it against other possible approaches to the phenomenon of censorship. First, it does not operate with broad notions of censorship, as they have appeared from Freud to Bourdieu and theorists of the «New Censorship,» but focuses on censorship by the state. Second, in doing so, it does not track the development of censorship policy or the actions of censorship officials. Rather, the book assesses the impact such censorship had on the literary writing it constrained, considering how authors anticipated, evaded, and responded to censorship practices. The result is a highly informative account that shows the interplay of political and social factors with literary composition and style. Readers of Heady’s well-researched book will learn a great deal not only about the climate of censorship in the German-speaking lands of the 1820s, but also about the literary strategies authors developed to make dissenting or unpopular views palatable to censors and the reading (or viewing) public. Heady draws her conclusions about these strategies from studies of six works by three authors. Chapters 1 and 2 examine works by Christian Dietrich Grabbe, the tragedy Herzog Theodor von Gothland and the comedy Scherz, Satire, Ironie und tiefere Bedeutung. Both were composed in 1822 and published in 1827. In Chapters 3 and 4, Heady discusses texts by the young Heinrich Heine, the Briefe aus Berlin (1822) and Reise von München nach Genua, which appeared as the third volume of the Reisebilder at the end of 1829. Finally, two plays by the Austrian Franz Grillparzer constitute the focus of Chapters 5 and 6: König Ottokars Glück und Ende (1825) and Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen (1831). Despite the different censorial conditions under which these three authors worked, Heady identifies common trends both in the patterns of censorship they anticipated, and in the strategies they used to avoid the stroke of the censor’s pen. First, she concludes that while censorship guidelines were written in «universal» terms, in fact it was possible to violate censorship principles as long as one did not threaten the ruling classes in doing so. Her analysis of Grabbe suggests, for instance, that attacking the Catholic Church was relatively safe in Protestant-dominated Prussia. The remaining conclusions address the strategies that authors developed to circumvent censorial action. Here, Heady again sets her own study off from others: While it has become commonplace to discuss how authors disguised contentious content, Heady identifies tactics that allowed authors to express dissenting or potentially disruptive content outright. In general, these tactics dampened the affective and rhetorical impact of such content within the work as a whole. First, by using abstract terms and refraining from naming particular institutions or practices, authors avoided triggering the censors’ protective action; Heine, for instance, stated his love of freedom quite openly, but dissociated such statements from any reference to the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, or national movements in Germany. Second, various strategies CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 286 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 286 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18 Besprechungen / Reviews 287 minimized the intensity and fervor of potentially volatile statements: Heine’s cultivation of a lighthearted tone and the excision of potentially provocative language by all three authors belong in this category. Third, authors relegated dangerous material «to the margins of audience and reader perception» by dispersing dangerous content amid innocuous material and passing over controversial issues quickly and without comment, as Grillparzer did in his critiques of marriage and married life (200). Finally, Heady sees the authors as compensating for potentially dangerous material by presenting themselves in a positive, non-controversial light in other passages. Heine often flanked direct criticism with statements sympathetic to official policies and views, and Grabbe used paratexts to present himself as a serious literary author. For the most part, the analysis that brings Heady to these conclusions is both subtle and convincing, and it shows great sensitivity to the political and social conditions within which the authors composed their works. Interestingly, because of the varying source material available on each author, Heady uses very different methods in reaching her generalized conclusions. In the case of Grillparzer, successive manuscript drafts, including drafts with the censors’ own markings, allow her to analyze the censors’ concerns by interpreting their choices to strike or emend particular words, lines and scenes. She also reconstructs Grillparzer’s intentions and strategies on the basis of his successive drafts, but she spends relatively little time on such author-focused work. On the other end of the spectrum, the chapters on Heine rely primarily on published texts, although early drafts of Reise do inform some sections. As a result, Heady’s interpretations focus solely on decoding Heine’s intentions and critiques, often in passages Heady herself has identified as potentially dangerous. Finally, the two chapters on Grabbe, which are based on comparisons of the original and published manuscripts and on correspondence between Grabbe and his editor, fall between these two extremes. While they focus on authorial and editorial adjustments to anticipated censorial resistance, they are aimed at explaining the changes tracked through the text comparisons and correspondence. This study will be important for readers who want to understand the literary repercussions of censorship in the German states of the 1820s. For readers new to the topic, the introduction also provides a brief and highly readable summary of censorship practices from the early modern period to the contemporary Federal Republic, although these same readers may miss an overview of censorship scholarship. Finally, although Heady carefully restricts her conclusions to the writers of Restoration Germany, the authorial strategies she distills suggest a point of departure for investigations of how authors in other times and places have attempted to express dissenting, subversive, or offensive views. The Ohio State University Katra Byram CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 287 CG_42_3_s193-288_End.indd 287 28.06.12 16: 18 28.06.12 16: 18
