Kleist’s «Bombenpost»: The Subject, Place, and Power JOHN B. LYON Univ ersity of Pittsburgh Kleist’s essay «Nützliche Erfindungen,» which appeared in two parts in the Berliner Abendblätter of 1810, highlights a significant change in communications technology of his era, namely Samuel Thomas von Sömmering’s 1809 invention of an electro-chemical telegraph. 1 Prior to Kleist’s essay, there had been a number of experiments with electrical and electro-chemical telegraphs, but a universally accepted telecommunications system had not yet been established. 2 It took Samuel Morse’s 1837 patent of the electric telegraph to change this, with the first public telegraph in the United States implemented in 1841. 3 During the 1840’s, telegraph lines appeared in German lands too (although the Germans did not adopt Morse’s code at first), and by the end of the century, they stretched across Germany. 4 Kleist’s essay appears in the Berliner Abendblätter as electronic communications technology first emerges. In the first section of the essay, titled «Entwurf einer Bombenpost,» the editor lauds the speed of communication via telegraph, so that two friends in distant cities can respond to each other «ehe man noch eine Hand umkehrt» (Kleist 593). 5 He then bemoans the limitations of the medium; specifically that the telegraph can send only brief messages and cannot convey packages or large objects. To remedy this inadequacy he proposes a «Bombenpost,» for which one would place artillery stations at requisite distances from each other in a series, load packages into artillery shells, and then shoot them from one station to the next. The result, according to the editor, would be «den Verkehr auf den höchsten Gipfel der Vollkommenheit zu treiben» (594). In the second portion of the essay, an anonymous Berlin author responds to the proposed «Bombenpost» in a letter to the editor. He criticizes both telegraph and cannonball communication technology, suggesting that a speedy transfer of information would increase the amount of messages with negative or unwanted content. Instead he proposes an alternative postal service of oxen or foot messengers that, in slowing delivery, would increase the quantity of welcome news. The editor, reacting to the fictional reader’s letter, rejects the latter’s persiflage and irony and asserts in contrast his own desire to serve humanity in general and business interests in particular; shares of stock in his new invention will be available soon. CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 113 14.07.15 20: 41 114 John B. Lyon Kleist authors both sides of this exchange, 6 lending a theatrical quality to this debate: his piece performs the roles of both advocate and opponent of the new technology. Thus, the essay is as much about the performance of opposed arguments as it is about their content. Accordingly, one should not read Kleist as wholeheartedly advocating either a «Bombenpost» or an «Ochsenpost,» as some scholars have. 7 Instead, this exchange should be read as Kleist’s reflections on changes in communications technology and what these changes highlight about the relationship between language, thought, and the media that convey them. A careful analysis of these essays demonstrates Kleist’s keen awareness not only of the potentials and pitfalls associated with electronic media, but also of the changing status of humans and their relationship to power in an increasingly connected electronic world. As in all of Kleist’s texts, the subtleties of his language reflect important themes in the text as a whole. Whether in punctuation («Die Marquise von O…»), rhyme (Penthesilea), wordplay (Der zerbrochne Krug), or complex syntax («Der Zweikampf»), crucial details of the text often depend on linguistic nuances. And so it is surprising that previous analyses of this essay focus more on historical content than on Kleist’s language. I thus begin with an analysis of Kleist’s language in order to draw out issues that other analyses have overlooked. In particular, the pronouns in these essays reflect contrasting attitudes towards the new technologies. They emphasize the stakes in the debate over new communications technologies and the impact of these technologies on both the individual subject and its relation to a larger collective. On the one hand, the editorial voice of the Abendblätter (I refer to him as «the editor» hereafter) tends, as one might expect, either towards impersonal speech, as evidenced in the frequency of the impersonal pronoun «man,» or collective, authorial speech, as evidenced in the pronoun «wir.» Both extremes undermine the significance of the individual subject. For example, the first word of the initial essay, «Man,» refers to the inventor of the electro-chemical telegraph. This inventor, Samuel Thomas von Sömmering, is never named. Only in the second sentence of the text, after a first sentence of nearly one hundred words, does the editor refer to «dem Erfinder dieser Post,» but not by name, only by his function as inventor. The editor’s tendency to elide the personal and particular in favor of the collective and the general is evident throughout the remainder of the first essay, where the personal pronouns «wir,» for the editor, and «man,» for those who use the «Bombenpost,» predominate. The only exception occurs early in the opening sentence of the essay, where a first-person singular pronoun, «ich will sagen,» disrupts the editor’s collective, impersonal style. This is the only occurrence of the first- CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 114 14.07.15 20: 41 Kleist’s «Bombenpost»: The Subject, Place, and Power 115 person singular pronoun in the initial section, however, and by contrast it draws attention to the predominance of impersonal third-person pronouns and collective first-person plural pronouns. Similarly, when the editor describes an exchange via telegraph between two friends, he includes the second-person singular pronoun in the question, «wie geht’s dir? », but elides the first-person singular pronoun in the answer, «recht gut.» The pronouns in this first essay underscore the editor’s tendency to efface personality and individuality for the sake of impersonality and the collective. This tendency becomes clearer when contrasted with the second essay, the letter written by the anonymous Berlin author (referred to as «the author» hereafter). It begins with the address «Mein Herr! ,» asserting with its first-person singular possessive adjective a singular subject in contrast to an individual (the «Herr») who is addressed as an abstract or formal collective. The following sentence begins with the pronoun «Dieselben,» reasserting the formal plural. Yet the anonymous author of the letter returns to a firstperson singular subject with the pronoun «mir» not long thereafter. The author counters the impersonality and formality of the editor with a personal, immediate tone. This is evident in his description of the electronic messages. In contrast to the brief «recht gut,» void of any pronoun, offered by the editor as the friend’s answer to the inquiry «wie geht’s dir? ,» the Berlin author describes other potential answers that include personal pronouns and possessive adjectives: […] so, so! oder: mittelmäßig! oder: die Wahrheit zu sagen, schlecht; oder: gestern nacht, da ich verreist war, hat mich meine Frau hintergangen; oder: ich bin in Prozessen verwickelt, von denen ich kein Ende absehe; oder: ich habe Bankerott gemacht, Haus und Hof verlassen und bin im Begriff in die weite Welt zu gehen […]. (594) Not only does the content and tone of these responses differ («so, so! oder: mittelmäßig! oder: […] schlecht»), but the author also lists personal experiences attached to personal subjects. At least five first-person singular pronouns appear in these few lines, a striking contrast from the first essay in which only one appeared in the entire essay. And again, when the Berlin author describes the types of responses the same inquiry might elicit via a slower postal system (pulled by oxen or carried on the backs of foot messengers), he lists: […] je nun! oder: nicht eben übel! oder: so wahr ich lebe, gut! oder: mein Haus habe ich wieder aufgebaut; oder: die Pfandbriefe stehen wieder al pari; oder: meine beiden Töchter habe ich kürzlich verheiratet; oder: morgen werden wir, unter dem Donner der Kanonen, ein Nationalfest feiern […]. (595) CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 115 14.07.15 20: 41 116 John B. Lyon Again, singular first-person pronouns and possessive adjectives proliferate. The result is that this part of the second essay enacts what the first essay tries to elide, namely, the presence of the individual subject in the process of communication. At the end of the essay, however, as he proposes his «Ochsenpost,» the Berlin author transitions from the personal first-person singular to the more formal first-person plural «wir,» which the editor used in the first essay. The editor, in his response to the letter, likewise uses only the first-person plural. He concludes the essay with two sentences where the subject is first an abstract «es,» and then an impersonal «Prospektus» and a «Plan»: Auch in dem, Gott sei Dank! doch noch keineswegs allgemeinen Fall, daß die Briefe mit lauter Seufzern beschwert wären, würde es, aus ökonomischen und kaufmännischen Gesichtspunkten noch vorteilhaft sein, sich dieselben mit Bomben zuzuwerfen. Demnach soll nicht nur der Prospektus der Bombenpost, sondern auch ein Plan, zur Einsammlung der Aktien, in einem unserer nächsten Blätter erfolgen. (595) The «es» of the first sentence and the nonhuman subjects of the final sentence («Prospektus» and «Plan») resonate with the anonymity and impersonality at the beginning of the first essay («Man hat […] einen […] Telegraphen erfunden»). The editor returns to the impersonality and formality with which he began. In the course of these two essays, then, Kleist shifts not only between two speakers, but also between anonymity («Man hat»), individual subjectivity («ich will sagen»), a formal collective («schlagen wir […] vor»), back to subjectivity («ich»), a formal collective again («wir»), and impersonality. These shifts in pronouns suggest that Kleist finds more significant changes in the invention of the telegraph than just the speed of communication. For Kleist, the development of electronic communication and communication networks accompanies a shift in the relationship between the subject and society, between individual and collective. Stated differently, the violence intimated by the cannonball postal system is not coincidental. With the discussion of a «Bombenpost,» Kleist suggests that changes in communication technology change more than just the means of communication, that they also do violence to our experience of ourselves and of the world. Kleist’s brief text, then, serves as a bellwether of historical and cultural change and highlights three areas of significant transformation: the status of the subject, the relationship to place, and the nature of power. Rather than pass judgment on these changes, Kleist identifies the implications and complexities involved with each, foregrounding the tensions that are implicit in the new technology. CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 116 14.07.15 20: 41 Kleist’s «Bombenpost»: The Subject, Place, and Power 117 Kleist’s use of pronouns in these essays indicates that with the advent of electronic communication, the relationship between the subject and society is changing. Before the telegraph and specifically during the eighteenth century, postal communication - the letter in particular - became the guarantor of interiority and individuality. The letter was the genre par excellence for the personal narrative, as evidenced by the popularity of the epistolary novel during the eighteenth century in Europe. Goethe’s Werther and Sophie von La Roche’s Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim, influenced by English and French precursors (i.e., Richardson, Montesquieu, and Rousseau), popularized this genre in Germany. Accordingly, Bernhard Siegert attributes the rise of literature in the eighteenth century to the postal system: „Das Schöne verdankt sich der postalischen Epoche. Im An(sich)halten und Prolongieren der Post gibt es Literatur« (Siegert 18). Literature in the eighteenth century, specifically literature based in personal narratives, created an aesthetics of individuality. Kleist recognizes that precisely this kind of literature is at risk with the development of the telegraph. For although the essays in «Nützliche Erfindungen» appear to dwell on the length of messages that can be sent by telegraph, closer inspection reveals that it is not only the length of the messages, 8 but also their content that is at issue. The editor, in describing the telegraph, portrays an exchange where one party asks «wie geht’s dir? » and the other responds, «recht gut.» It portrays communication as inquiring about and asserting a simple state of being. The editor would replace a literature based on personal narratives of becoming with a communication technology focused on states of being. The author of the letter, however, introduces complexity into this model of communication. In the passage cited earlier, he offers other possible responses, the first of which are states of being («so, so! oder: mittelmäßig! oder: die Wahrheit zu sagen, schlecht»). But he then shifts from describing states of being to relating brief narratives («oder: gestern nacht, da ich verreist war, hat mich meine Frau hintergangen; oder: ich bin in Prozessen verwickelt, von denen ich kein Ende absehe; oder: ich habe Bankerott gemacht, Haus und Hof verlassen und bin im Begriff in die weite Welt zu gehen»). The author describes actions that are temporal - each implies a longer narrative - and that would produce complex emotional states (betrayal, anxiety, and loss). In other words, the author reasserts subjective experience through narrative, thus countering the editor’s efforts to replace epistolary literature and the concept of subject that accompanies it. He not only counters the new technology of the telegraph with the older technology of an oxen postal service or foot messengers, but he also contrasts a mode of communication that CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 117 14.07.15 20: 41 118 John B. Lyon values narrative and subjectivity with one that conveys instantaneous snapshots of being and thereby eclipses a complex subject (as evidenced in the response «recht gut»). This new medium eclipses the subject not only in an abstract and literary sense, but also in a physical sense. For centuries the postal system in Germany relied on coaches that could carry both people and letters. The telegraph offered a medium, however, that conveyed only symbols, not people. As Bernhard Siegert writes: Vom 17. bis zur Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts wurde Zeichenverkehr portoökonomisch in der gleichen Weise an der Geographie gemessen wie Körperverkehr, einfach weil beide durch dasselbe Transportmittel ins Werk gesetzt wurden. Dieselbe Postkutsche konnte sowohl einen Brief als auch einen Schreiber unterbringen. Subjekt der Briefaussage und Subjekt der Briefäußerung fielen unter das Gesetz ein und derselben Verkehrsanstalt. (21) The advent of the telegraph separated signs from bodies. Language lost its physical aspect. There was neither written text on paper nor a speaker uttering sounds. The telegraph thus implies language distinct from speakers. The editor in Kleist’s essay notes: «so hat doch auch diese Fernschreibekunst noch die Unvollkommenheit, daß sie nur, dem Interesse des Kaufmanns wenig ersprießlich, zur Versendung ganz kurzer und lakonischer Nachrichten, nicht aber zur Übermachung von Briefen, Berichten, Beilagen und Paketen taugt« (Kleist 593). Telegraphic post thus lacks a physical component. The editor’s suggestion of an artillery postal system to remedy the inability to send packages indicates that this new system is incompatible with humans: one can shoot objects, but not people, along a relay of artillery stations. The author’s counterproposal of an oxen postal service or foot messengers, in contrast, reintroduces the possibility of human transport into the postal system. Humans could either carry or be carried by the post. Stated otherwise, the author reasserts the physical presence of the subject into communication precisely where the editor excludes it. The editor also excludes the individual subject by highlighting collectives. He speaks repeatedly of the benefits of this technology in terms of larger groups («das bürgerliche als handeltreibende Publikum» [593] and «das Heil des menschlichen Geschlechts» [595]). His endeavor overlooks the individual in favor of larger social and economic groupings. The author, in contrast, responds about the benefits «für einen solchen Mann» (594) and for «das Publikum» (595), where he refers not to a bourgeois and capitalistic public in general, but specifically to the public reading the Berliner Abendblätter, that is, a literary reading public. If the Berlin author asserts a collective, it is a collective united by literature; otherwise he speaks of individuals in relation CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 118 14.07.15 20: 41 Kleist’s «Bombenpost»: The Subject, Place, and Power 119 to the new and old technologies. The author asserts an individual, literary subject in opposition to the elided subject or the abstract collective proposed by the editor. The telegraph elides not only the subject, but also the subject’s relationship to place. For Kleist, the telegraph is a revolutionary medium, not only technologically, but also experientially. He thus presages the observations of contemporary media scholars and sociologists who highlight the impact of electronic media on our experience of place. As Edward Relph writes, mass communications «directly or indirectly encourage ‹placelessness,› that is, a weakening of the identity of places to the point where they not only look alike but feel alike and offer the same bland possibilities for experience» (Relph 90). And Joshua Meyrowitz writes that electronic media «lead to a near total dissociation of physical place and social ‹place.› When we communicate through telephone, radio, television, or computer, where we are physically no longer determines where and who we are socially» (Meyrowitz 115). Meyrowitz sees the invention of the telegraph as the first step in this dissociation: «The invention of the telegraph caused the first break between information movement and physical movement. For the first time, complex messages could move more quickly than a messenger could carry them. With the invention and use of the telegraph, the informational differences between different places began to erode» (116). Similarly, Marshall McLuhan notes that «Electronic media […] abolish the spatial dimension, rather than enlarge it. By electricity, we everywhere resume person-to-person relations as if on the smallest village scale» (McLuhan 255-56). Electronic communication also transforms political space. David Nye contrasts the reception of the telegraph in nineteenth-century America with its actual results. On the one hand, «the ‹universal communication› of the telegraph was celebrated as a force that would help realize ‹manifest destiny› and bind the nation together.» On the other, «the telegraph did not hinder the coming of the Civil War, and one might even argue that its rapid reports of events, such as John Brown’s raid, fanned the flames of sectarian conflict» (Nye 133). In other words, the telegraph represents a contradiction: on the one hand, it appears to connect people and point towards a more democratic society. On the other, it erodes the distinctions that establish place and heightens the distinctions between people, fostering conflict and revolution. With the term place, I draw on a distinction between place and space from phenomenology. In his monograph, Place and Space (1977), the geographer Yi-Fu Tuan states that «Place is a special kind of object. It is a concretion of value, though not a valued thing that can be handled or carried about easily; it is an object in which one can dwell.» He sees place as more than space. CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 119 14.07.15 20: 41 120 John B. Lyon Whereas «space is experienced directly as having room in which to move» (Tuan 12), place suggests human interaction and connection to a particular environment. As Tuan writes: «When space feels thoroughly familiar to us, it has become place» (73). Space is an impersonal setting for movement, but not relationship; place is familiarity, particularity, and the experience of connection to a locale. Such a notion of place is at risk during Kleist’s era. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, legal reforms in Prussia changed individuals’ relationship to place. These included the edict of 11 October 1807, expanded in 1811, that allowed Prussians the freedom to pursue most any profession (with the exception of the few professions that affected public welfare). This not only reduced the control of guilds over professions, but also did away with the distinction between rural and urban labor (Thienel 23). And an edict of 14 September 1811 began a reform process that culminated in the Prussian Agrarian Reform of 1850. These various reforms freed farmers from hereditary obligations of various types to landowners, allowed farmers with hereditary leases to acquire land for themselves, and others without hereditary leases to receive monetary remuneration for the land to which they had been bound. All other obligations to feudal lords and landowners - whether of service, corvée, or taxes - were done away with. All duties to land and to feudal lords were framed now in terms of money instead of heredity (24). The tendency of these reforms was to free workers from connections to a specific place and to make place a tradable commodity instead of an obligatory bond. Place was no longer a locus of connection, but was a space to pass through or a commodity to exchange. 9 The changing nature of place evident in these examples was linked to changing communications technologies. The development of the telegraph in the course of the nineteenth century connected people to each other while simultaneously loosening their connections to place. Speed and the overcoming of distance were the chief accomplishment of such technologies. For example, Kleist describes the magical impact of the telegraph, how with it, a person binnen Zeit eines halben Tages, gegen geringe Kosten von Berlin nach Stettin oder Breslau würde schreiben oder respondieren können, und mithin, verglichen mit unseren reitenden Posten, ein zehnfacher Zeitgewinn entsteht oder es ebensoviel ist, als ob ein Zauberstab diese Orte der Stadt Berlin zehnmal näher gerückt hätte […]. (Kleist 593) For Kleist, the speed of communication is like a magic wand that eclipses distance. The editor prioritizes time over space with the term «Zeitgewinn,» suggesting that the reduced time is more valuable than the lost experience of place. He ultimately effaces difference between places. Or as Wolf Kittler CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 120 14.07.15 20: 41 Kleist’s «Bombenpost»: The Subject, Place, and Power 121 writes, «er sah, dass ein Medium, welches Nachrichten mit Lichtgeschwindigkeit überträgt, den ganzen Globus in einen homogenen Raum verwandeln würde […]» (Kittler, «Bombenpost» 81). The telegraph threatens the differentiation between places by merging them together as if by magic. The telegraph overcame place for the sake of increased speed. Paul Virilio’s essay, Speed and Politics, written during the Cold-War era, analyzes this phenomenon through a discussion of high-speed military technology. Virilio traces the development of military technology, specifically nuclear missiles, towards pure speed, divorced from material space and a final geographic goal. Technology produces speed that lacks temporal reference and destination. With such weapons, geographic location and trajectory assume secondary importance in relation to «the speed of the moving body and the undetectibility of its path» (Virilio 135). As a result, the problem of speed falls back upon humans - the speed of reaction time and political decision necessary to send bombs (100) - and thus imprints the violence of speed on the human psyche. As Virilio asserts, «The danger of the nuclear weapon, and of the arms system it implies, is thus not so much that it will explode, but that it exists and is imploding in our minds» (150). For Virilio, it is no longer the weapons systems themselves that do violence as much as it is their speed that threatens violence. Their speed perpetrates a type of psychic violence on humans and changes how we experience the world. Kleist’s association of the telegraph with a «Bombenpost» resonates with Virilio’s discussion of speed in terms of weapons. The implication is that the focus on speed is inherently bound to a type of violence. Just as Virilio notes that speed of motion becomes an end in itself to the exclusion of any destination, so does Kleist observe that the speed of communication becomes an end in itself to the exclusion of significance and meaning in communication, and ultimately, of connection to place. Kleist’s representation of the telegraph recognizes the revolutionary potential of high-speed communications technology for literature and the subject. Yet he also recognizes that this new technology brings with it a wholesale transformation of the fundamental categories of experience. The telegraph changes our experience of place. Kleist’s editor reacts to this threat of displacement by pairing the militaristic «Bombenpost» with the telegraph; the author then posits the «Ochsenpost» or foot messenger as their retrograde counterpart. The «Ochsenpost» or foot messengers slow down communication to such a degree that one remains aware of the space the message traverses. The Berlin author’s alternatives to the telegraph are an effort to reassert a sense of connectedness and relationship to place that gets lost in the new electronic medium. CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 121 14.07.15 20: 41 122 John B. Lyon The conflict between the editor and the author is thus not only a conflict about technology, writing, and the subject, but is also a conflict about place. This is evident in the editor’s response to the author, where he writes: «Dem Einsender obigen witzigen Schreibens geben wir hiemit zur Nachricht, daß wir uns mit der Einrichtung seiner Ochsenpost, oder seines moralischen und publizistischen Eldorados nicht befassen können« (Kleist 595). The editor links the author’s proposed oxen postal and foot messenger systems to Eldorado, a legendary city of gold in South America. He thus suggests that the author’s arguments are bound to an idealized yet outdated notion of place. And so, in this essay, Kleist stages the conflict between two approaches to place, one that would hold on to a personal connection to place, a relationship that, however idealized, is based on differentiation experienced at a pedestrian speed, and an impersonal connection to place, where place is homogenized as an obstacle to overcome for the sake of time. With the changing nature of the subject and the changing nature of place comes a changing relationship to power. The proposal of a cannonball postal system evokes military power and war. By proposing the cannonball postal system as a complement to the telegraph, Kleist implies that violence and the telegraph belong together. Hans Magnus Enzensberger makes a similar observation when he asserts: «Das offenbare Geheimnis der elektronischen Medien […] ist ihre mobilisierende Kraft» (Enzensberger 160), that is, the power to mobilize a revolutionary populace. And Wolf Kittler argues that, Lange vor der Verlegung transatlantischer Kabel […] hat [Kleist] begriffen, dass der elektrische Telegraf den ganzen Erdball zu «einer Welt» verschaltet, in der das, was am Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts als kleiner lokaler Guerilla-Kriege begann, sich zu Konflikten ausgeweitet hat, die zwar mit niedriger Intensität, aber in globalen und planetarischen Räumen ausgefochten werden. (Kittler, «Bombenpost» 100) Kittler connects the speed of communication to localized guerilla warfare and ultimately to global warfare. Enzensberger and Kittler, like Virilio, see the speed of electronic communications in military terms, and Kleist’s association of the «Bombenpost» with the telegraph suggests that he saw the same. Speed of communication threatens existing powers with the potential of a rapidly unified populace. This stands in contrast to the postal system, which began as an instrument of the state for official communication between regents. Even when the postal system was made available to regular citizens, it was done so in a way that would allow government oversight and control of communications. Although occasional directives such as the Prussian postal order of CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 122 14.07.15 20: 41 Kleist’s «Bombenpost»: The Subject, Place, and Power 123 10 August 1712 officially preserved postal secrecy, it was all too common to find «Schwarze Kabinette» that would violate this secrecy in the interests of the state. And as much as the postal system gave the power of self-expression and intersubjective communication to a broad public, the state also used this power to subject the same public to surveillance and control. Bernhard Siegert writes: Der Absolutismus stellt den Leuten Wörter und den Wörtern ein Medium zur Verfügung, um die Leute erstens von sich reden zu machen, zweitens ihre Reden kontrollieren zu können und drittens durch das auf ihre Reden erhobene Porto den Aufwand des Staates für diese Kontrolle finanzieren zu können […]. Institutionell heißt das, dass die Post dem Polizeywesen zugerechnet wird. (Siegert 14) Siegert asserts that the postal system offered individual expression in exchange for political control. Yet with the invention of the telegraph, the use of communications for political control encountered a new challenge. The speed of communication flattened hierarchies and undermined autocratic power. As Marshall McLuhan notes: There is a collapse of delegated authority and a dissolution of the pyramid and management structures made familiar in the organization chart. The separation of functions, and the division of stages, spaces, and tasks […] tend to dissolve through the action of the instant and organic interrelations of electricity. (McLuhan 247) And again: The natural dynamic of the book and, also, newspaper is to create a unified national outlook on a centralized pattern. All literate people, therefore, experience a desire for an extension of the most enlightened opinions in a uniform horizontal and homogenous pattern to the «most backward areas,» and to the least literate minds. The telegraph ended that hope. It decentralized the newspaper world so thoroughly that uniform national views were quite impossible […]. (257) Whether in organizational structures or in the mass media, electronic communications undermine hierarchies and subvert uniformity. And so the telegraph is a revolutionary medium, not only in Kittler’s and Enzensberger’s observations that it enables rapid communication among subversive individuals, but also insofar as it disrupts hierarchies and unifying power structures such as the nation. In this regard the «Bombenpost» functions as both a double compensatory mechanism for the telegraph: first to fill «eine Lücke» in conveying packages, but also, as a compensatory mechanism for the state, transferring power over electronic communications from a potentially revolutionary populace back to state authority. An extensive chain of artillery stations stretched across the countryside could fend off disruptions CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 123 14.07.15 20: 41 124 John B. Lyon to centralized power that the new technology might enable. It represents an implicit threat of violence to the populace. The nature of power that a telegraph or postal system would support is a fundamental subtext in Kleist’s piece. The editor and the author speak of two different organizations of power, each connected to artillery. The editor refers to a supranational power grounded in economic interests. This is evident at several points throughout his text. Nowhere does he refer to the nation or a political organization. Instead, he speaks of larger collectives («das bürgerliche sowohl als handeltreibende Publicum» [Kleist 593] and «das Heil des menschlichen Geschlechts» [595]) and geographical regions («innerhalb der Grenzen der vier Weltteile» [592] and «wenigstens innerhalb der Grenzen der kultivierten Welt» [593]). The unifying factor for these collectives and regions is financial, for the editor repeatedly asserts the needs of commerce: the telegraph is «dem Interesse des Kaufmanns wenig ersprießlich» (593), the Bombenpost will help with «Beschleunigung und Vervielfachung der Handelskommunikationen» (593), the Bombenpost would function «gegen geringe Kosten» (593), and even if the communications were filled with nothing but complaints, «würde es, aus ökonomischen und kaufmännischen Gesichtspunkten noch vorteilhaft sein, sich dieselben mit Bomben zuzuwerfen» (595). The artillery postal system serves commerce first. Its relationship to a political organization is unclear. In other words, for the editor, economic interests dominate political interests, and this primacy must be reinforced with the violence represented by the cannons. In contrast, the Berlin author also refers to cannons, first in rejecting the cannonball postal system, and second, when he lists the hypothetical contents of communications carried by the oxen post or foot messengers. One of these states: «morgen werden wir, unter dem Donner der Kanonen, ein Nationalfest feiern» (595). The author connects the contents of his proposed communications systems to a national celebration. This is somewhat incongruous in Kleist’s era, considering that Germany was not yet a nation and that a national structure comparable to that of other European states did not yet exist. Yet the author longs for a nation and associates artillery and force more with a nation than with economic purposes. He references «das Publikum» as the beneficiary of the oxen post or foot messengers, but he does not define this «public» in economic terms, in contrast to the author who spoke of «das bürgerliche sowohl als handeltreibende Publikum.» It is not certain to exactly which public the author refers: the reading public of the Berliner Abendblätter, the general Prussian populace, or some other definition of a «public.» But it is clear that he does not define that public in economic terms as the editor does. Instead, he indicates that this public would rather hear CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 124 14.07.15 20: 41 Kleist’s «Bombenpost»: The Subject, Place, and Power 125 news about national festivals, the marriage of one’s daughters, the successful overcoming of debt, and construction of a house («mein Haus habe ich wieder aufgebaut; oder: die Pfandbriefe stehen wieder al pari; oder: meine beiden Töchter habe ich kürzlich verheiratet» [595]), decidedly domestic concerns. In contrast to the editor’s appeal to a collective defined by ever-expanding business opportunities, the Berlin author responds with a national, even domestic alternative. Cannons celebrate a sense of national unity and domestic security, not financial interests that would transcend both local and national communities. The contrast between the editor’s and author’s positions reflects a conflict inherent to the new electronic communication technology, namely a conflict between a supra-national, economic-based view of power and a national power, grounded in domestic concerns. With this exchange in the Berliner Abendblätter, Kleist highlights the implications of electronic communications technologies. Because Kleist writes both sides of the exchange, it is difficult to identify either the editor or the Berlin author as exclusively his voice. On the one hand, the author’s playful tone is more endearing and easier to identify with than the editor’s earnestness and formality. On the other, the author’s resistance to technological innovation makes him seem more retrograde, even provincial. And so, in writing both sides of the exchange, Kleist aligns himself with neither, but instead, he stages the conflicts between these two positions, suggesting that these tensions are inherent in electronic communication technologies. He identifies these conflicts as pertaining to: the understanding of the subject - an individual, literary subject in opposition to the elided subject or the abstract collective; the experience of place - a personal connection to place based on differentiation experienced at a pedestrian speed, and an impersonal connection to place, where place is homogenized as an obstacle to overcome in order to save time; and the structure of power - a conflict between supranational economic interests on the one hand and domestic interests and the nation state on the other. Each of these conflicts resonated with significant transformations in German culture during the early nineteenth century: the literary vs. the political subject, transformations in place with the waning of feudal society, and the emergence of both capitalist and nationalist interests. Kleist’s essay points to these problems without proposing a solution. As such, his essay highlights the telegraph and, by extension, electronic communications as a site of unresolved tension. Electronic communications technologies both engender such tensions and offer a medium in which they can play out. Kleist’s essay of 1810 both describes and enacts the tensions inherent in burgeoning electronic communication technologies. CG_45_2_s113-208_End.indd 125 14.07.15 20: 41 126 John B. Lyon Notes 1 See Kittler, Die Geburt des Partisanen 395 and Kleist, Sämtliche Werke und Briefe (Vol. 3) 1181. Sömmering’s telegraph preceded Morse’s by at least two decades. 2 See Kittler, «Bombenpost» 92-96 for a more detailed discussion of the Chappe telegraph system. 3 See Winston 26-29 for a brief summary of the implementation of Morse’s telegraph. 4 For a thorough history of the development of the telegraph in Germany see Wessel. 5 Parenthetical references to Kleist cite Kleist, Sämtliche Werke und Briefe, Vol. 3. 6 See Kleist, An Abyss 247 and Kleist, Sämtliche Werke (Vol. 3) 1181. 7 At least one scholar maintains that Kleist’s proposal was wholly serious. See Kittler, Die Geburt des Partisanen: «Und auch sein Vorschlag einer Bombenpost war ganz gewiß kein Scherz» (396). 8 See Kittler, «Bombenpost» for a more detailed discussion of the length of telegraphic messages. 9 See Lyon 32-71 for a more detailed presentation of this argument. Works Cited Enzensberger, Hans Magnus. «Baukasten zu einer Theorie der Medien.» Kursbuch 20 (1970): 159-86. 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