eJournals Colloquia Germanica 45/3-4

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/4.0/121
2012
453-4

The Third Man in Annette von Droste-Hülshoff’s Die Judenbuche: A Real Nobody

121
2012
cg453-40331
The Third Man in Annette von Droste-Hülshoff’s Die Judenbuche: A Real Nobody W ILLIAM COLLINS DONAHUE Duk e Univ ersity Die Judenbuche concludes with what is possibly the most infamous corpse in all of German, if not world, literature. In a recent study intended to lay to rest - once and for all - decades of scholarly speculation regarding the identity of the decomposing cadaver found hanging in the eponymous tree of Droste’s novella, Norbert Mecklenburg would have us concede that it is really and truly Friedrich Mergel after all. 1 Despite the passion of Mecklenburg’s polemic (which if persuasive would take down a generation of prominent critics no less effectively than the story’s immensely successful timber poachers), 2 it fails to convince. And it fails, mainly, because of a certain «nobody.» Or, to put it more precisely, the most recent critical attempt incontrovertibly to identify the principal murder suspect in Droste’s «crime story» (she called it «eine Kriminalgeschichte» before her editor gave it its current title) founders on the figure of Johannes Niemand, whose name literally means «John Nobody.» He becomes the story’s crucial «third man» who, more than any other literary stratagem (in a work equipped with an impressive arsenal of narrative obfuscation), defies the reader’s thirst for closure. In this sense, we could say that he stabilizes the story’s instability. 3 Nobody ensures the mystery of this novella like Johannes Niemand. But that is just the precondition for the manner in which this uncanny figure of the «Third» insistently draws our attention to social arrangements in which natural resources and human relationships are captive to the ends of economic profit, while the execution of «justice» is undermined by self-interest and greed. To employ vocabulary from Droste’s own Catholic idiolect: Johannes Niemand represents an unfulfilled occasion of transcendence and grace. By viewing Niemand in this way, challenging though this may be to a secular age, we can move beyond a number of interpretive dyadic dead-ends. An unsettling figure, he demonstrates the insufficiency of positions represented by either pole of the respective bimodal relationship into which he is interposed. As a hermeneutic irritant, he steps between mother and son (Margaret and Friedrich); uncle and nephew (Simon and Friedrich); village dandy and his nemesis (Friedrich and young Hülsmeyer); between detective and 332 William Collins Donahue chief suspect (the Gutsherr and Friedrich); and ultimately between Christian majority and Jewish minority groups. In each case, this figure opens up a realm of social and religious critique that could not have emanated as clearly or as powerfully from the dichotomous pairings alone. Niemand is useful at a meta-analytic level as well. Once we have carefully examined his function within the narrative, I will switch registers and briefly address the critical literature on the topic of anti-Semitism. 4 For this debate, which I treat at the end of this essay, also tends to polarize readers in a manner that frequently only recapitulates on another level the need for fixed meaning, i.e., if we can never know for sure whether Friedrich Mergel has been masquerading as Niemand in the novella’s crucial final section, then we can at least achieve the hermeneutic satisfaction of «knowing» that the story - and its author - are steeped in anti-Semitism of various kinds. 5 I will argue that by drawing on what we have learned from Niemand - namely that «Christian» and «Jewish» are in this narrative rather unsteady categories and by no means simple opposites - we can come to a clearer understanding of the novella’s hotly debated anti-Semitism. It too, as I will show, is ambivalently «third» in nature: neither merely a blemish nor exclusively an instrument of critique. German literature’s most baffling detective story is really the story of two (and possibly more) murders and for the most part follows the trajectory of one young man, Friedrich Mergel, from his birth to his sudden disappearance from his Westphalian village at the age of eighteen. Friedrich is linked to both murders circumstantially. The victim of the first homicide, the forester Brandis, was leading a patrol one night against a famous band of timber poachers called the «Blue Smocks» (Blaukittel), locals who illegally «harvest» lumber from the forests of the aristocracy. They wear similarly looking apparel to avoid detection, and their indistinguishable attire can stand as just one of the story’s many images of obfuscation - which is often quite consciously intended by those wishing to avoid responsibility, but just as often the result of inherent ignorance, lack of evidence, pervasive prejudice, or superstition. Forester Brandis believes he is hot on the trail of the timber poachers when he encounters a sleepy Friedrich grazing his cattle; Brandis questions Friedrich aggressively - even derisively - and Friedrich responds by claiming to know nothing (which may or may not be true) and then by sending Brandis in the wrong direction, so that he will not meet up with his fellow foresters, who have gone off in the opposite direction. The forester is found dead the next morning, with an axe planted squarely in his skull. Because he was the The Third Man in Annette von Droste-Hülshoff ’s Die Judenbuche 333 last person to see Brandis alive, Friedrich is a suspect, and even his mother, Margret, seems to suspect him (if only briefly); but Friedrich is not guilty of the actual murder, though he is certainly guilty of having lied to Brandis about the path taken by the other foresters. Did he knowingly send Brandis into an ambush? Or did he merely seek to discomfit a man who had just verbally abused him? We never know for sure - and our uncertainty even at this point has in part to do with Johannes Niemand, who, simply by resembling him and being distant from the crime scene, may unwittingly have provided Friedrich with an alibi during the inquest. The second murder, that of the Jew Aaron, occurs some years later, at a time when Friedrich has established himself as a popular and handsome young village dandy. Along with the entire village of B., he is attending a wedding, having a wonderful time showing off to the young women, dancing energetically, singing, and playing music. In a moment of braggadocio, he makes the mistake of showing off his as yet unpaid-for silver pocket watch, drawing the fire of a rival young man by the name of Hülsmeyer, who publicly taunts Friedrich about his debt to the Jew Aaron. As luck would have it, Aaron appears on the scene as if conjured by Hülsmeyer’s gibe, and, in the presence of the assembled wedding guests and to Friedrich’s deep shame, demands immediate payment. Both Friedrich and Johannes Niemand flee the scene. Aaron is found dead shortly thereafter, but this murder too remains unsolved. Friedrich - the chief suspect because of the altercation at the wedding - has fled the village, escaping the Baron’s attempt to surprise him at home. Friedrich is never heard from again - unless, of course, we believe the Baron, who in a cryptic final statement declares that the man who had returned to the village B. after twenty-eight years of «Turkish slavery,» and who had been identified by all (including the Baron himself) as Johannes Niemand, is in fact Friedrich Mergel. «Identifying» the dead man as Friedrich is meant to close the murder case on the tacit assumption that his suicide constitutes a confession of guilt. For, if the Baron is right, then order is restored, crime is punished, justice is done, and the mysterious «Jews’ beech tree» has somehow fulfilled the prophecy that it would lure the murderer back to the place of Aaron’s slaying so that he (the perpetrator) would suffer the same fate as his victim. 6 The Baron’s proclamation is doubly seductive in that it fulfills both an «enlightenment» agenda of identifying and prosecuting culprits, as well as a «supernatural» claim to mete out justice by the mysterious power of the «Hebrew charm» inscribed on the famous tree. 7 Droste no doubt meant her readers to sense the irresistible call of both aesthetic and ethical closure, but to be «haunted» as well by nagging suspicion 334 William Collins Donahue that none of this really adds up. Scholars have documented exhaustively the long list of narrative strategies which, upon closer examination, raise more than a reasonable doubt about the Baron’s final declaration. Of all of these, none is more efficacious (at a plot level) - and none less studied - than the «construct» of Johannes Niemand, a character who by his very name stands out in a story that famously lays claim to «realism» at multiple levels. 8 His name would seem rather to belong to the genre of fable or fairy tale, yet there it is: smack dab in the middle of a «true» story - one, as we shall see, that is allegedly truer than fiction - we encounter a figure whose very name cries out for interpretation, refusing to be marginalized from the narrative, despite his obviously marginal social status. Peter Foulkes rightly points out that Niemand appears to possess some of the traits of the «dreamy» (träumerisch) young Friedrich. But he goes a bit too far, I think, when he suggests «that Johannes and Friedrich are, for part of the story, separate manifestations of the same self» (Foulkes xxvii). 9 This relegates Niemand to a secondary status, to the functional equivalent of Friedrich’s «other self, that of a ragged shepherd boy lost in dream and thought» (xxix). In this reading, Niemand, demoted to the protagonist’s alter ego, is used to explain why people mistook Friedrich for Niemand upon his return as an old man after twenty-eight years of forced labor, which is just another way of flattening the story, rounding its corners, solving its puzzles. The mystery dissolves, in other words, if the man going by the name Niemand in the final scenes, as Foulkes suggests, is really Friedrich (xxix). 10 Yet, in fact, Niemand is a «real» nobody; that is, he has ontological status on par with all other characters of the novella. And this matters, because without it, the story simply loses its punch: we need that fundamental ingredient of any good detective story - the very real possibility of mistaken identity, and with it the challenge to solving the murder(s). Niemand carries the novella, so to speak, at this basic narratological level. Without him we have no «crime story» as envisioned by the author. But what of his deeper meaning for the story? Here we need to attend closely to the scene in which he is introduced to the novella and to those scenes where he makes what is usually an abrupt but prominent appearance. Unlike the other more rounded characters, Niemand is defined by, and continually associated with, privation, humiliation, poverty, and emargination. Unlike Margret, for example, whose character unites the disparate features of loving mother and simple anti-Semite, Niemand is consistently characterized as the underprivileged outsider par excellence in this society. He is, Margret surmises, the bastard son of her brother Simon; accordingly, he bears the «surname» of «nobody» precisely because he has no demonstrable The Third Man in Annette von Droste-Hülshoff ’s Die Judenbuche 335 paternity, and thus cannot inherit Simon’s (then) considerable wealth. Little is known or narrated about him. In fact Niemand is introduced to us just as Simon «adopts» Friedrich in what ultimately amounts to a kind of purchase. Relatedly, though in starker terms, Niemand emerges as the novella’s mobile icon of human commodification: exploited by Simon for all manner of work, yet improperly cared for like the unwanted orphan he essentially is. Margret perceives his real status only gradually: «‹Hebt man dir nichts auf? ›» she asks, as she considers giving him some food; «‹Sprich, wer sorgt für dich? › - ‹Niemand,› stotterte das Kind. - ‹Niemand? › wiederholte sie; ‹da nimm, nimm! › fügte sie heftig hinzu; ‹du heisst Niemand und niemand sorgt für dich! Das sei Gott geklagt! ›» (14-15). In her dawning recognition of someone even worse off than herself (and she is already sinking into desperate poverty), Margret resemanticizes the boy’s name (who, notably, becomes a «child» in her eyes) to direct us not simply to his legal status, but to the material destitution that results from it. It is a crime against the divine order, she exclaims. As a figure of privation and human exploitation, Niemand serves to accentuate similar themes in each of the scenes in which he appears. When we first meet him - one of the novella’s most remarkable scenes - Margret mistakes him for her own son, Friedrich. It is by no means a fleeting misprision; on the contrary, the misidentification continues for some time as she goes back and forth in her own mind (13). The scene draws attention to the way in which Margret is in a sense correct in her very mistake. For the «adoption» of her son Friedrich is at bottom a kind of human trafficking, in which Simon bribes his sister to acquire him. Simon draws attention to her advancing age, and points ominously to her poverty and lack of options, as well as to Friedrich’s much better financial prospects under his tutelage. There can be no missing the fact that this is at heart a financial deal in which Friedrich is reduced to a commodity (very much like Niemand) and Margret, his older sister, to a mere business partner: «So kam es denn dahin, dass nach einer halbstündigen Unterredung Simon eine Art Adoption des Knaben in Vorschlag brachte […] Margret liess sich geduldig auseinandersetzen, wie gross der Vorteil, gering die Entbehrung ihrerseits bei dem Handel sei» (10; my emphasis). The point is driven home later when Friedrich drops in to offer her some of his earnings, which she initially rejects as dirty money, having come from Simon. Though she quickly loses her resolve, her first response is repulsion: «‹Geld vom Simon? Wirf’s fort, fort! ›» (15). The net result of this commercialized «adoption» is her inconsolable misery and loneliness. The most intimate of human relations - between mother and son, between sister 336 William Collins Donahue and brother - have been commodified, and this to her constitutes by far the worst of all her sufferings (15). This is the foundational moment - the «establishing shot» to speak in the parlance of film studies - in which Droste uses the «third man» to highlight themes that will dominate the novella until its climactic end. Niemand breaks open the dyadic relationship between mother and child as well as sister and brother; he is the alien, yet familiar «third» in each relationship, shining a clarifying light upon them all. In a novella known for its obscurity - Foulkes rightly refers to it as «this twilight world» of uncertainties even at the factual level (xxvi) - Johannes becomes a beacon of sustained social critique, alerting us to the fact that even in this preindustrial agrarian idyll of Westphalia, «Handel» frequently means «Menschenhandel,» and that the desire for financial gain can distort and utterly debase human relationships. The wedding scene, which marks the second principal appearance of Niemand, has been much discussed in the secondary literature and can perhaps for this reason be dealt with fairly quickly. 11 The marriage itself, between an elderly rich man and a beautiful young woman, is clearly all about wealth and social status: «‹Du hast nun genug geweint,› sagte er verdriesslich; ‹bedenk, du bist es nicht, die mich glücklich macht, ich mache dich glücklich! ›» (28). With tears in her eyes, the bride assents to the status quo in which marriage is expressed as a financial transaction: «Das Geschäft war beendigt; die junge Frau hatte ihrem Manne zugetrunken» (29) - but not before the narrator contrasts this unhappy union with the ideal of true (and erotic) love from the biblical Song of Songs: «Er stand neben ihr, durchaus nicht wie der Bräutigam des Hohenliedes, der ‹in die Kammer tritt wie die Morgensonne›» (28). Framing this cameo event is the larger narrative involving Friedrich and his adversaries. First it is the young Hülsmeyer, who, as we noted, intentionally provokes Friedrich (competing for the alpha male’s dominance of the younger crowd) by publicly revealing that the very item with which Friedrich intends to impress, the silver pocket watch, is essentially stolen goods. While he does not actually deprive Friedrich of the elegant watch that he has ostentatiously withdrawn from his pocket and dangled for all (especially the young women) to see and marvel at, Hülsmeyer’s challenge does amount to an act of at least metaphorical emasculation: Friedrich is not the man he claims to be because he cannot pay his bills; his value as a man has been slashed, so to speak. The second antagonist is of course Aaron himself, who, it must be said (and this point has not been emphasized sufficiently in the critical literature focusing on the novella’s traffic in anti-Semitism), first attempts to take Friedrich aside and handle things quietly. But Friedrich must show he is a man, and thus refuses with overwrought machismo to The Third Man in Annette von Droste-Hülshoff ’s Die Judenbuche 337 yield the spotlight. As a result he is publicly humiliated (now for the second time) when Aaron demands «laut und vor allen Leuten» (29) the ten Thaler that are already over six months past due. Prefacing, and to some extant overlapping, both of these «masculinity duels» is the incident with poor Niemand, who is again inserted into a context of multiple dyadic interactions that tell their own story - or try to do so, but are pertinaciously interrupted by this third figure. Droste employs him here - as elsewhere - to cast the event in terms of human (d)evaluation based on wealth status, thus adding to these scenes of gender shaming a specific hue that links the events to her larger concern. 12 The reader will recall that just prior to Friedrich’s humiliation, Niemand has been caught in the improbable act of stealing butter from the opulent buffet. On first reading, this act can strike us as a somewhat comic scene - the foolish thief, the shlemiel, who doesn’t understand that he will very likely expose himself (as of course he does when he stands too close to the fireplace and grease is seen dripping from his coat pocket). And his plight certainly does provide some entertainment for the guests. But the narrator - who is so uncertain about many other key events and motivations - steps in to defend this «butter thief»: «Johannes, der arme Teufel, dem zu Hause das Schlechteste gut genug sein musste, hatte versucht, sich ein halbes Pfündchen Butter für die kommende Dürre zu sichern […]» (28). For others, the wedding was just one more big feast, but for him it was a rare occasion of plenty - and one he is only allowed to partake in due to the custom calling for all the village’s inhabitants to be included. His theft was simply an attempt to stave off the coming hunger, when, once again, no one would care for him, an arrangement in which, one could say, the entire village tacitly conspires. 13 For this «stupidity,» he harvests a public beating from his only friend (Friedrich), the very same person who repeatedly claims him as his «Schützling» (protégé). Niemand truly has nobody. Friedrich clearly enjoys his leading role - until, that is, he is upstaged by his clownish, unmannered look-alike. This is why Niemand gets the beating, then, not for the petty thievery. He is punished for stopping the action, as it were - for stealing the show. For he does not in this scene merely introduce the theme of personal shame, which will then be echoed more forcefully in Friedrich’s double humiliation. Rather, his plight suggests more broadly that this is a pervasive, societal form of degradation that judges human beings by their possessions and in the process literally «dis-graces» their humanity. He is particularly well-poised to do this precisely because he is a narrative nobody, a social third, as it were, lacking in rich characterization and dissociated from desires and plotlines that might otherwise distract the reader from this central issue. 338 William Collins Donahue Furthermore, Niemand’s humiliation reminds us, retrospectively, that one of the key reasons for the failure of the first murder investigation lies in the fact that the court, places trust in dubious testimony in large part because it is given by «propertied» (and thus respectable) residents. 14 In this way, Niemand functions as the hermeneutic «clue» to the whole inquest, uniting otherwise disparate events in the narrative and in the process solving the «mystery» of what might seem digressive or even random narration. With the figure of Niemand, Droste elevates conventional detective fiction to social and religious commentary. Indeed, once interjected into the narrative, and reintroduced at key points, Niemand functions as a kind of «black light,» making visible plot elements that might otherwise be overlooked or remain dormant. Returning for a moment to the first half of the novella, for example, we notice now, more clearly perhaps than before, that the key motivation for Friedrich’s famous lie (which sent Brandis in the wrong direction and ultimately to his untimely death) was an imprecation that reduces Friedrich - precisely because of his poverty - to the status of a nobody: «Ihr Lumpenpack, dem kein Ziegel auf dem Dach gehört! Bis zum Betteln habt ihr es, gottlob, bald gebracht, und an meiner Tür soll deine Mutter, die alte Hexe, keine verschimmelte Brotrinde bekommen. Aber vorher sollt ihr mir noch beide ins Hundeloch» (19). Brandis’s extensive verbal abuse of young Friedrich and his mother hardly seems calculated to get the boy’s cooperation, and it certainly keeps us from viewing him (Brandis) as an untarnished hero - amounting to just one of Droste’s many nuanced qualifications in characterization. But the larger point for this discussion links back to questions of wealth, social status, and human value itself, for the narrator has already made it clear that the ownership of the trees in the forest is both contested and legitimately contestable. Those who are charged with meting out local justice, namely the landed aristocracy (and in this case the «Gutsherr» or Baron), are so authorized based solely on their property ownership. The very title in German emphasizes that the status of «lord» (Herr) follows from his possessions (Gut, Güter). Yet these barons are themselves parties to the dispute regarding the proper ownership (and stewardship) of the very natural resources in question, and thus hardly dispassionate observers. Lurking within this narrative is the very conflict Kleist exploits to great comic and sociocritical effect in Der zerbrochene Krug. To understand the administration of «justice» as a privilege of wealth, which may otherwise seem digressive from our focus on Niemand, allows us now to view Brandis not as the unquestioned representative of some kind of disinterested, evenhanded, enlightenment-based legal code (as some in- The Third Man in Annette von Droste-Hülshoff ’s Die Judenbuche 339 terpreters have seen him), but rather as a partisan enforcer of the interests of the propertied class. Brecht will make this point less subtly in Die Mutter (in which the protagonist’s central realization is that the police are really the factory owners’ hired thugs, rather than the impartial protector of all); and Dürrenmatt, too, in his best play, Der Besuch der alten Dame, will make a related point with unforgettable pithiness: «anständig ist nur der, der Geld hat.» Die Judenbuche is perhaps less polemical, but no less powerful in showing how those without wealth and property - those like Friedrich, Margret, and ultimately Simon - become ipso facto social «nobodies.» For Droste, however - and this sets her apart from her more contemporary secular colleagues - this matter possesses a significant theological dimension, posing the question of how God’s green earth should be shared, cared for, and managed. Human value, in this novella at least, is linked closely with questions of divine (dis)order. The story’s climax occurs in those scenes in which Niemand is perhaps most obviously the interjected «third» character. The dyad that structures this part of the story consists of the Baron and Friedrich. When the latter becomes the prime suspect in the murder of Aaron, the Baron leads the police brigade to Friedrich’s house in order to supervise the arrest. This time around, the Baron does not leave the execution of justice to his hapless court recorder Kapp, but rather takes personal charge of the entire murder investigation. Friedrich barely manages to avoid arrest - his bed is still warm when the police arrive - and successfully flees the country. Yet even in his absence, he remains very much the concern of the Baron. For a quarter century the Baron and the missing Friedrich remain firmly associated - even, or especially, when the Baron receives «evidence» that might exonerate his prime suspect. Into this binary configuration steps Niemand, abruptly as always: «Friedrich war hin, verschwunden und - Johannes Niemand, der arme, unbeachtete Johannes, am gleichen Tage mit ihm -» (34). The ostentatious graphic use of the final dash (leading, significantly, to nothing) and the subsequent textual empty space separating this from the next and final passage constitute, as narratologist Dorrit Cohn has shown with reference to other canonical texts, a prominent marker of «pregnant meaning.» 15 We are meant to notice the role of Niemand here - both as an alternate suspect (who thus builds suspense and curiosity), but also in his own right, namely as «the poor, disregarded (or unvalued) Johannes.» 16 At least until the Baron’s final, enigmatic declaration, everyone thinks the old man hanging in the Jews’ beech tree is none other than Niemand, just as there had been an absolutely uncontested consensus on his identity heretofore as the old man who returns after twen- 340 William Collins Donahue ty-eight years from «Turkish slavery» on that fateful cold and snowy Christmas Eve of 1788. To my argument it matters not at all whether this person is «actually» Niemand or Mergel, for he is of course neither «actually»; Droste has very carefully created the obscurity that she productively exploits. Important, however, is that all the intradiegetic figures accept this returnee as Niemand after not a little inspection of his physical attributes (including his neck, by the way), careful reflection, and consultation with the village elders (who would have remembered the two escapees as young men). Why is this so? And why are we so willing (if indeed we are) to flip over to the Baron’s side at the end? Droste has ingeniously lured us into the very prejudicial mindset that is her target of critique. For it somehow «makes sense» within the symbolic economy of the novella that a lonely, poverty-stricken old man be seen as a «nobody» rather than as the former village dandy with so much promise. Accordingly, this «Niemand» (and let us assume for now that he is who he says he is) is treated as someone both easily sidelined and yet quite «usable,» as distinctly fungible. Just as in his youth, Niemand presents himself as a mere messenger for others (a classic third figure) - a task that does not appear particularly well suited to his decrepitude, yet one to which the Baron immediately acquiesces. As a «nobody,» he can make himself useful - that is, of value - only by carrying out the wishes and errands of others. He is the quintessentially heteronomous individual in the Kantian sense, a status indicated, sometimes condescendingly, sometimes compassionately, by the designation «Kind» (child), applied long after this makes any sense from a chronological point of view. 17 Recall that he was first introduced as a figure lacking in «Würde» and in «Selbstständigkeit» (13); these privations appear to match those of the broken and impoverished old man returning on that cold Christmas night. Indeed, he is subordinate, dependent, and fully answerable to the desires of others - especially those of the Baron, who uses Niemand also as a source of cheap entertainment. He meets with him on numerous occasions to hear rousing tales of exotic adventures in the Muslim world far beyond the confines of this rural German principality. But he clearly doesn’t trust Niemand: the latter is good enough for telling a thrilling tale, but far too «simple» actually to be believed. (This echoes the famous passage, discussed below, where the narrator explains that only fanciful fictions - not true stories - satisfy our thirst for divine justice and narrative closure.) In fact, Niemand is held in such low esteem that he is judged not even capable of the degree of agency that mental illness or suicidal tendencies would require: «er war sein Leben lang ein Simpel; simple Leute werden nie verrückt» (39), opines the Baron. The Third Man in Annette von Droste-Hülshoff ’s Die Judenbuche 341 We will never know how Niemand ends up in the Jews’ beech, but we can now understand better why he is brought into such close narrative association with it. Recall that it stands as a memorial to the unsolved murder of the Jew Aaron, but it only stands at all because the Jewish community has bought it from the Baron. This is an aspect of the story that is often overlooked. The Baron, who after all is unable to solve the Jew’s murder, and thus leaves Aaron’s wife’s emotionally charged request for justice unfulfilled, nevertheless has no compunction about accepting 200 Thaler - ten times the price of Friedrich’s silver pocket watch - as payment for the tree. Clearly it is an inflated price: «‹Wollen wir sie doch nicht um gewöhnlichen Preis›» - says an unidentified Jewish community leader, using a kind of «Judendeutsch» or «muscheln» - «Sie boten zweihundert Taler. Der Handel ward geschlossen […]» (33; my emphasis). This illicit gain from Jewish wealth - profiting from the misfortune of Jews - anachronistically evokes what we would, a century later, call «Aryanization.» 18 The Baron, the highest ranking member of the Christian community, has, in passing, essentially put a price on Aaron, and taken money for a memorial he might have granted simply out of a sense of human dignity and compassion. But the death of a Jew - like numerous other intimate acts - is reduced to a business transaction that ensures only that one tree stands prominently on his property; ostensibly this functions as a «Mahnmal» to Aaron’s murderer, but it is no less a beacon of the Baron’s failure to deliver justice. In this way, the novella suggests the quiet but pervasive sense in which Jews in this society amount to «nobodies.» If there is any doubt on this count, one need only consider the deindividualized nomenclature employed for Jews throughout: «the Jew Aaron» (but then so many of «them» are called Aaron, as one of the Baron’s Christian aristocratic cronies reminds us); «the Usury- Joel» (Wucherjoel); «Aaron’s wife» (never given a name like Margret, her Christian counterpart); «their rabbi»; «the Israelites» (Israeliten), etc. All are basically anonymous and virtually interchangeable - as «nobodies» generally are. On this reading, Johannes Niemand’s own body becomes the true cipher of the Jews’ beech tree, rather than the ominous Hebrew inscription that appears to promise retributive justice: «Wenn du dich diesem Orte nahest, so wird es dir ergehen, wie du mir getan hast» (42). The Christian Nobody ironically comes to serve as a surprisingly legible epitaph for both the tree proper and the story itself. But it does so as counterpoint to the Hebrew inscription, rather than as proof of its fulfillment. 19 Indeed this famously disputed corpse emerges as a monument to unrequited justice, a mockery of the oppressed minority’s plea for righteousness, and a painful reminder of the 342 William Collins Donahue extortionist «deal» that, like conscience itself, was to remind the community of its obligation to all, including the «least» among them. To understand the tree’s uncanny «power» in this way - the mysterious sway it possesses over both the figures within the diegesis and the decades of critics who have been drawn to this story - thus does not require us to seek recourse to magic or the supernatural. Equally important in this discussion is the profound «presence of absence» marked by the Hebrew-inscribed tree: for the Jews’ beech now stands alone in a meadow that was once thick with forest. 20 As the camera pulls back, so to speak, we see the great emptiness and understand that the Baron has systematically sold off all the other trees that once surrounded it. This too demonstrates how the Jews’ beech tree unites the disparate internal tales: what for the «Blaukittel» constituted the grave crime (and alleged moral infraction) of timber poaching remains for the Baron a privilege based on class and birth. Dangling from the Jews’ beech like the silver pocket watch from Friedrich’s hands, Niemand’s corpse calls out for another kind of justice. To make my point about the power of the «Third» in this alluring, maddeningly oblique, and still widely read story, I have not given Droste her full due. In attending to the novella’s critique of human commodification as it is poignantly highlighted by the figure of Niemand, one could easily forget that the narrator treats her figures (or most of them) with notable gentleness, kindness, and compassion. Excepting those «Jewish nobodies» and Niemand himself, the narrator is frequently found vacillating, qualifying, providing mitigating circumstances, withholding explicit judgment (or placing it quickly in doubt), contradicting herself, and not infrequently simply falling silent on matters that would be of great importance (at least to a «criminal story») out of apparent humility or simple ignorance. One is in fact reminded of Fontane’s loving depictions of Prussians that intermingle a warm tolerance for human weakness («menschlich allzu menschlich») with incisive social critique - but never one at the expense of the other. This approach is evident particularly in the final portion of the novella that begins with the observance of Christmas Eve and the return of Niemand after the twenty-eight-year hiatus. To be clear: Niemand is no simple «Christ figure.» Droste does not traffic in such easy allegories. But his return as well as his ultimate demise are clearly framed in striking Christian imagery that will require us to view him within that religious context. Thus, on the night commemorating Christ’s birth - literally the «Holy Night» of Christian hymnody - we encounter a homeless man seeking shelter; he is told to go to the local inn, and while it is not quite the case that «there is no room at the inn,» it is true that his poverty, like that of the Holy Fam- The Third Man in Annette von Droste-Hülshoff ’s Die Judenbuche 343 ily’s in the biblical Christmas story, limits his options, and lands him on a bed of straw. The locals are leery of this disfigured stranger and certainly do not welcome this alien intrusion on one of their biggest holidays - despite the fact, of course, that this very holiday should remind them precisely of their religious obligations to the poor, the homeless, and the outcast. The well-known hymn that Droste has them sing (as well as the verses explicitly referred to but not included verbatim in the text) at the stroke of midnight surely casts their fearful, isolationist, and acquisitive behavior in ironic and critical light. 21 But Droste does not let her Christian community fail utterly. Under duress, with notable hesitation, and perhaps with something less than full compassion and generosity, they nevertheless do admit the old man, give him a humble bed, and gradually readmit him to their society, albeit in a partial and fully subaltern status. The Baron, for all his evident shortcomings and willing instrumentalization of this poverty-stricken old man, does at least arrange for modest food and shelter, as he had also done for Margret. Droste’s - like Fontane’s - are humanely mixed figures, neither demons nor angels, neither villains nor heroes. If they fall short, it is not by the externally imposed standard of a judgmental omniscient narrator, but by their own community - and in this case, religious - standards. The Christmas Eve scene is thus both a bit of an idyll - reminiscent of Stifter’s Bergkristall (1845) - and an unmistakable form of communal selfindictment. As we have seen throughout, the villagers’ tendency is to judge human value by wealth and property; in other words, to put a price on something which, in their own religious worldview, is fundamentally God-given. The story of the forest thieves - in which the narrator allows us to consider the aristocratic landholders as equally rapacious as the «Blaukittel» - simply echoes and gives depth to this same theme. Indeed these diverse strands come poignantly together in the Jews’ purchase of the beech tree, as we have observed above. On all of this, Johannes Niemand trains a consistent semiotic beam, revealing the underlying unity of this otherwise rather loosely told story. The novella’s conclusion is particularly infused with religious signification. There is no getting around that. It is not a crucifixion scene per se; the reference to Christ’s passion, while unmistakable, is rendered in what Emily Dickinson might have called a deliberately «slant» manner. Further, there is no reason to believe that the Baron is even thinking along these lines. Nevertheless, he becomes the vehicle (or narrative occasion) for the biblical allusion when he speaks his famous final line: «Es ist nicht recht, dass der Unschuldige für den Schuldigen leide; sagt es nur allen Leuten; der da 344 William Collins Donahue […] war Friedrich Mergel» (roughly: «It is not right that the innocent one should die for the guilty; just tell everyone that this man was Friedrich Mergel»). 22 What we hear in these lines - even if the Baron may be deaf to this meaning - is a reprise of the Christmas Eve technique discussed above. The community, this time in the person of the Baron, is once again engaging in a moment of unconscious self-indictment by distancing itself from its Christian calling at the very moment of its articulation. The refusal to see «Niemand» in the tree constitutes in this sense a renunciation of divine grace, or on the purely human level, a rejection of the possibility that this suicide represents Niemand’s perhaps ill-conceived attempt to atone for the guilt of his lifelong friend, Friedrich. At any rate, the phrase «just tell everyone» suggests damage control or political spin rather than dispassionate empirical deduction. Rather than consider why or how Niemand would come to hang in this tree, the Baron opts for a kind of closure that confirms a worldview in which innocence and guilt can be neatly sorted out and human reason can penetrate the darkest of mysteries. Intentionally or not, it is a decision that reinforces the status quo, with him at the helm. On the one hand, we could say that Niemand’s substitution is a kind of narrative necessity: for only by acquiescing, however ephemerally, in the Baron’s «identification» can we come to see our own authoritarian hermeneutic proclivities. In the face of implacable doubt, we may feel the irresistible pull to accede to the dicta of the powers that be in closing the Iserian «Leerstelle.» 23 There is an additional reason, however, why Droste made the disappearance plausible - if only provisionally. For to leave Niemand there unequivocally - as a sacrificial fellow traveler, trying in some crazy way to atone to the Jews (or to God) for the murder he thinks his friend may actually have committed - would have suggested a moment of efficacious grace that Droste did not wish simply to fiat into narrative existence. That would indeed have constituted what one might call a brand of «Christian socialist realism» by positing the precise (religious) solution to the story’s insistent query. Unlike the Baron, however, Droste opts for indecision rather than definitive removal of Johannes Niemand from the narrative, and while Niemand is surely the figure that makes this indecision possible, he is not to be equated with the author’s strategy of creating a third hermeneutic position that neither nullifies nor synthesizes, but rather depends upon the viability of the other two. 24 Of course, the story itself warns against its own ending. In a moment of striking authorial intrusion («auktorial» in Stanzel’s terms), the narrator cautions that neat endings are apposite of fiction, in which a reader’s carefully cultivated «curiosity» requires unambiguous answers, whereas The Third Man in Annette von Droste-Hülshoff ’s Die Judenbuche 345 true stories (such as hers) tend not to deliver that kind of gratification: «Es würde in einer erdichteten Geschichte unrecht sein, die Neugier des Lesers so zu täuschen. Aber dies alles hat sich wirklich zugetragen; ich kann nichts davon oder dazu tun» (24). 25 While this in itself does not decide the matter, it remains one of the better known strategies (among many others) that keeps the «Niemand option» open to readers. Understanding that Niemand does not simply «exit» the novella by baronial proclamation is crucial on a number of levels. In this final section, I wish to show its relevance for one of the most controversial topics in the prolific secondary literature, namely the manner in which Die Judenbuche exhibits and addresses anti-Semitism. How Die Judenbuche participates in and/ or deploys anti-Judaic and anti- Semitic sentiments has indeed dominated discussions of the text over the last fifteen years. The work of Jefferson Chase, Martha Helfer, and myself in particular illuminates the diverse and variegated ways in which anti-Jewish prejudice is undeniably present here. While I cannot do justice to the long and nuanced discussions here, I would like to highlight two classic - or «ideal» - positions that have emerged as untenable. 26 On the one hand, it has not been possible to fully «exonerate» either the author or the narrative by arguing that each and every specimen of «anti-Semitism» (a word I will use as shorthand for an array of prejudicial positions) is attributable to a critical agenda that systematically targets rather than affirms anti-Semitism. On the other hand, one can not make a convincing case that anti-Semitism is simply a regrettable ideological stain that has no redeemable function in this otherwise extremely sophisticated work. Disagreements turn on such fundamental and key matters as whose anti-Semitism is at issue - i.e., to whom are we to attribute the respective anti-Semitic sentiments - and on the equally crucial question of what constitutes such a moment. In other words, beyond the obvious culprits, what other kinds of behavior, perpetrated by non-Jews, is negatively coded as «Jewish»? What does Johannes Niemand have to say about all this? To put it succinctly, I would say that by attending to him we can move beyond what has become - sometimes against the critics’ own intentions - an interpretive bypass. Niemand does not by any means remove anti-Semitism as a serious interpretive irritant that arises necessarily from a realistic depiction of Jews in early nineteenth-century Germany. Anyone seeking to depict their «true» status, as our narrator assures us is her overall goal in painting this «Sittengemälde,» will of necessity reinscribe the very emargination and discrimination that characterizes Jewish life at this time. And this inevitably runs the risk of appearing «naturalizing» or affirmative. If Jews are to ap- 346 William Collins Donahue pear as the social «nobodies» they actually were, their very depiction as such can appear to be a benediction on the status quo. But if we view this in light of Niemand, then we see that Droste has consistently portrayed Christians as perpetrators of a social and economic hierarchy that systematically distorts human value, relegating those without property, standing or position to an outsider status. The examination of Niemand’s role throughout the novella has shown us nothing if not the manner in which Christian society tries - but repeatedly fails - to naturalize this behavior, and indeed to «bless» it as consonant with the same religious principles it professes. Droste - precisely through the figure of Niemand - shows how these efforts founder, resulting in self-indictment. In this sense, then, it is not Friedrich who is the novella’s «hidden Jew» (pace Helfer), but Niemand who becomes the «Jew» writ large - visible in his vulnerability perhaps precisely because he is not a Jew for whom this would otherwise be «natural.» To some this will constitute an «instrumentalization» of Jews or seem a suspect appropriation of Jewish experience, and perhaps it is both. In any case, it helps us grasp more accurately the predominant modes that govern the novella’s «use» of anti-Semitism. But there is more. By hanging in the tree in apparent expiation for the murder of the Jew Aaron, Niemand reminds us by virtue of his very stylized appellation that the entire process of detection is in a sense misdirected. In a society that views Jews as deserving of whatever random violence they may experience (and here we recall the lesson that Margret teaches young Friedrich: if Hülsmeyer senior really did beat Aaron, then the Jew surely got what was coming to him) - in such a society, one need not really look very far for a plausible perpetrator. Just as Jews prove to be virtually interchangeable in the Christian mindset of this story, so too do Christians become generic as potential perpetrators of anti-Jewish crime. «Niemand» did it: this is as much to say as «anybody» committed the crime. Long before the Baron arrives on the scene to enact the judicial peripeteia, we have actually received a valid verdict - at least in the sense of larger-scale culpability. For this story is not reducible to Friedrich or Aaron no matter how much we wish to think it is. Yet it is not simply in broadening out the circle of suspects to include virtually any member of a Christian society that condones anti-Jewish violence that Niemand fulfills his function as «corrective» to the debate on the novel’s anti-Semitism. He takes us one step further still. For throughout he has been a cipher of underprivilege due in large part to his penury. This has been a constant, the key to his illumination of other scenes and relationships that essentially operate on the same, often tacit, principle. But now it is Niemand The Third Man in Annette von Droste-Hülshoff ’s Die Judenbuche 347 himself who initiates an interpretive peripeteia: by hanging in the Jews’ beech as potential perpetrator, he is powerfully juxtaposed with Aaron in a manner that had hitherto not been the case. And in that intimate configuration we recognize in a flash that it is of course not alone material possessions that determine social standing. Not for all, and certainly not for the Jews. Aaron’s relative wealth failed to purchase him either security or social standing. And the collective wealth of the Jewish community did not buy it justice. Niemand bears witness, so to speak, to the fact that Jews could not buy their way even into this world of commodified human relationships. In this sense, he returns to the Jews what they had given him: In the end - and at the end - he serves to illuminate their particular vulnerability, rather than vice versa. This reading of Niemand thus weighs in heavily upon the «critical» side of the anti-Semitism debate. For example, the limited portrayal of Aaron as a venal moneylender, as well as Margret’s crass assumptions about «Jewish» extortionist lending practices, can now be seen, as I have argued in more detail elsewhere, 27 as part of a larger, critical deployment of anti-Jewish stereotypes. But this is no easy, nor blanket benediction upon the wide array of (what we now see as) anti-Semitic imagery and characterization. Precisely by linking our analysis to this nebulous, vulnerable figure of the «Third,» we can see how easily the critique - like Niemand himself - can be emarginated, or «disappeared» by readers. It remains risky business: not self-evident, but an argument that needs to be made and remade. If this reading fails fully to confirm the «critical» reading of anti-Semitism, neither does it fully support the all-too-easy condemnatory impulse that views the novella’s anti-Semitism as an ideological contaminant - emanating from the author’s own prejudice as well as from the shared values of her time - that has been «secreted» into the narrative. To say this is to modify my own prior work, which, I fear, provides some of the best-known fodder for the view that the author’s own anti-Semitism raises fundamental doubts about her famous tale. 28 This, too, proves to be an untenably reductive view. For if we read from the perspective of Niemand (and the hermeneutic role he plays in the story), it becomes improbable to believe that minor characters, such as the Jews, are meant simply to be normalized and affirmed in their abject status. The unfortunate effect of some scholarship on this matter has been, I would argue, to supply readers (even when they have misconstrued the scholars in question) a faux certainty about the text’s suspect ideology, a kind of certainty that substitutes for that of which they have been deprived regarding the identity of Aaron’s murderer. Some of the eagerness to view Die Judenbuche in this light surely stems from a larger negative view of «tradition» in general (a critical position widely underwritten by Habermas), 29 348 William Collins Donahue and of German realism in particular as a fundamentally deceptive enterprise (sponsored by Robert Holub’s influential Reflections of Realism, and more generally by the Frankfurt School). Reading with Niemand, however, we can see that anti-Semitic depictions are neither spirited into the narrative under the cover of night, nor are they incidental blemishes that can be separated out from an otherwise respectable narrative. Like Niemand, the Jews remain largely on the margins, but nevertheless are on occasion thrust - perhaps distastefully at times - to the center of the narrative. Indeed, they have a great deal in common: For to see Niemand in the tree is inevitably vividly to recall Aaron - for whom the tree was after all «rescued.» Yet while my reading of Niemand is meant to reassess this potent debate in the critical literature by urging us to avoid the Scylla and Charybdis of both «ideal» positions that characterize the anti-Semitism discussion, the real value may lie elsewhere. For the trajectory of Niemand in Die Judenbuche in the end undermines the very distinction between Christian and Jew upon which the narrative otherwise depends. This remarkable figure of the «Third» does not reconcile, dissolve, or resolve the two antagonistic religious traditions. Yet, paradoxically, as the «crucified» Christian outsider, he reflects in his own being the plight of the Jews, even while he illuminates what is distinctive to their exclusion. As a literary construct, and a figure of aesthetic analysis, Niemand is given the uncanny ability to move back and forth between the two opposed camps, to «represent» each (scandalous as this may seem to some), and to capture what is common to both. In short, he does what nobody else can. Notes 1 Mecklenburg suggests that it is a modernist or postmodernist theoretical game we play when we insist that the novella ends with conspicuous indeterminacy; we are reading the novella out of context, he argues, and failing to attend to the author’s carefully planted cues that should lead the properly schooled reader to resolution rather than bewilderment. 2 And this, as the following makes clear, is precisely his intent: «Annette von Droste- Hülshoffs Erzählung Die Judenbuche, seit über einem Jahrhundert ein kanonisches Werk der deutschen Literatur, in über sechs Millionen Exemplaren verbreitet, in viele Sprachen der Welt übersetzt, ist von den professionellen Interpreten permanent und fast ausnahmslos falsch gelesen worden und wird es weiterhin» (11). 3 But this is not simply to hand the victory to Mecklenburg’s opponents. For the function of this third man does not merely serve to confirm a postmodern worldview in which indeterminacy has the final word. Indeed, this «nobody» functions not only to frustrate our deep-seated detection desires (and thereby metaphorically to gesture to broader conditions of epistemological unknowability), but rather to point to a third The Third Man in Annette von Droste-Hülshoff ’s Die Judenbuche 349 way, as I argue below. For a selection of critics who have argued for indeterminacy, see Brown, «The Real Mystery»; Mellen, «Ambiguity and Intent»; Kraus, «Das offene Geheimnis»; Bernd, «Clarity & Obscurity.» Critics who argue (in various ways) for closure and successful detection of Aaron’s murderer are: Raleigh Whitinger, «From Confusion to Clarity»; Larry D. Wells, «Indeterminacy as Provocation»; and Wolfgang Wittkowski, «Das Rätsel.» For an overview of the critical literature on this point see Donahue, «‹Ist er kein Jude›» 44 and 65-66. 4 Despite the polemical nature of much of his study, Mecklenburg helpfully - and for the most part, quite reasonably - summarizes the fairly recent spate of articles examining its association with anti-Semitism (Mecklenburg 109-21). For an assessment of his book, see my review in German Studies Review 33.2-(2010): 449-51. 5 See especially Jefferson Chase, «Part of the Story»; Karin Doerr, «The Specter of Anti-Semitism,» Martha Helfer, «‹Wer wagt es›»; William Donahue «‹Ist er kein Jude›»; Richard Gray, «Red Herrings.» 6 Contrary to normal critical practice, I refer to the title in English as the «Jews’» beech tree (emphasizing the plural possessive) in order to stress the communal meaning (and ownership) of this tree. It is not Aaron’s tree, but the Jewish community’s, paid for at a considerable price. 7 This is a phrase taken from Jane Brown’s pathbreaking article «The Real Mystery,» in which she supports the Baron’s identification of Friedrich by pointing to the Ulysses intertext early in the novella; this, she argues, supports identification of a long-lost loved one via the story of Ulysses and his childhood scar. The only problem with this supposition, however, is that there is no mention of Friedrich ever having had a scar, nor does the Baron make the connection as is overtly the case in Homer when the old nanny recognizes the scar. 8 For a recent example, see Geoff Baker’s «Realism and the Problem of Empiricism in Annette von Droste-Hülshoff’s Die Judenbuche,» which convincingly places the novella in the realist tradition by documenting its pervasive (but not exclusive) use of empiricism, both at the level of plot and of narration/ form. More traditional approaches to the novella as literary realism can be found in Heitmann, McClain, and Silz. 9 Foulkes’s sterling introduction is as valuable as many a freestanding research article, and is one of the few essays to offer an interpretation of Johannes Niemand, though one that I will wish to qualify. All quotations from Die Judenbuche in this essay are from this edition. 10 Foulkes makes rational sense of the «doubling» of Friedrich and Niemand by reducing the latter to part of the former, noting that «the years of hardship and struggle for survival have restored the equilibrium within Friedrich’s personality.» 11 See for example Immerwahr. 12 Friedrich’s full value - including especially his masculinity - is challenged in a manner that consistently measures him in relation to possessions and the accumulation of wealth (cf. 25). 13 As we know from the opening passages of the novella, this is a community with few secrets. The egalitarian bounty of the wedding feast is of course an exception to the general rule of economic stratification and hardship for many of the guests. So, while the marriage functions on the one hand as a kind of x-ray into the priority of economic over romantic relations (see below), the wedding feast itself serves as a temporary reprieve from these very realities - realities that drive a significant part of the population to steal, as we know. The larger social target of the author’s social critique is thus evi- 350 William Collins Donahue dent in this scene as well, of course as in Johannes’s very name: for «Niemand» evokes the etymologically related generic terms «somebody» and «everybody.» 14 It is by no means Friederich’s «partial» testimony alone that leads to an inconclusive investigation into the murder of the forester Brandis. On the contrary, one can speak of a «code of silence» among the farmers (cf. 23). The fact that their propertied status renders them «unsuspicious» is itself a target of the novella’s critique, one that is brought into sharper focus by way of the «third» figure, Johannes Niemand. 15 Cohn would have had a field day with these textual strategies or «graphic markers»; see her article on Kleist’s Die Marquise von O… (1975), in which she analyzes the meaning of the dash, as well as her section from Transparent Minds on Schnitzler’s Leutnant Gustl in which she explicates the use of empty space (though in this case for other reasons, namely the text’s dependence on the protagonist’s «narrated monologue»). 16 «der arme, ungeachtete Johannes» (34). «Ungeachtet» in German possesses a rich valence of meaning, including «unappreciated,» «unvalued,» «ignored,» and «disregarded.» It is a narratological challenge both to replicate this social disregard (by rendering him a relatively minor character) and at the same time to employ him in the manner I am describing here. Droste will face the same challenge in depicting the Westphalian Jews, who are both socially emarginated (as a social fact), yet need to play - however briefly and obliquely - a key role in this narrative. 17 Admittedly, this appellation comes from an earlier phase of Niemand’s life. First spoken by a compassionate Friedrich, and then reiterated by the narrator (14), it is meant to apply to a young man who looks «zum Verwechseln ähnlich» to Friedrich, who precisely at this point in the narrative is described as coming into his manhood. Of course Niemand’s return as a helpless old man can also be seen as a kind of second childhood - as in the famous Sophoclean riddle. 18 For some such «anachronistic» reading is ipso facto illegitimate. On the contrary, I maintain that precisely in dealing with canonical texts that are presented to students (and readers more generally) as supratemporal cultural artifacts, it is crucial to notice how they signify in their «belated» settings. To speak with Agamben, this kind of reading is necessitated precisely because of the text’s claim to «the contemporary.» 19 Here I depart from a longstanding view in the critical literature, perhaps best exemplified by Walter Silz’s still valuable Realism and Reality (1954, chapter 4), that views the Hebrew inscription as a fulfilled prophecy. Silz, however, takes this not as a simple endorsement of «Old Testament justice» but rather as evidence of an existentialist view of a valueless, amoral world. 20 I borrow the term «presence of absence» from discussions of Daniel Libeskind’s Berlin Jewish Museum, a building that in innovative ways conjures Jewish absence in Germany after the Holocaust. The phrase is indebted to Derrida’s notion of the «trace» first discussed in Of Grammatology (1976). 21 Donahue, «‹Ist er kein Jude›» 60. 22 The use of «nur» in this carefully worded formulation deserves fuller explication. Suffice it to say that it functions as the Baron’s attempt to link semantically these two otherwise potentially unrelated statements. The «nur» (literally «only,» but which I am translating as «just» to convey the sense of his attempt to make the second sentence follow from the first) betrays the Baron’s need to play to the crowd, so to speak; that is, to explain the mystery to the villagers. It communicates both a sense of uncertainty/ wonder and pragmatic politics, e.g. something along the lines of: «just give them The Third Man in Annette von Droste-Hülshoff ’s Die Judenbuche 351 something they will find plausible.» There is an echo here, for those attuned to New Testament scripture, of Pontius Pilate’s famous decision to crucify Jesus and release Barabas. He suspects the former’s innocence and knows the latter’s guilt, but acts in accordance with what his subjects will most easily accept, only later to ask famously «What is truth? » 23 Mecklenburg (12) invokes Wolfgang Iser by using the term «Leerstelle» to refer to this passage in the story, though ultimately he endorses only his own manner of bridging this hermeneutic gap rather than recognizing it as a durative problem. 24 Readers attentive to Droste’s religious investments will notice that she is borrowing a triadic structure from Paul, who regularly triangulates «Jews» and «Christians» with the third term «grace.» Paul’s third term does not expunge either pole of the apparent binary, but serves as a third force that both is and is not yet the solution to the opposition. Whereas Paul, particularly in the Second Letter to the Romans, will directly invoke grace, Droste must adapt the narrative/ epistemic structure to poetic ends, which do not allow her the same liberties. Grace for her (and in this novella) is an alwayspresent possibility, but no less a maddeningly elusive third element. 25 This passage, which has played an important role in the secondary literature, refers specifically to the lack of a successful conclusion to the trial for murder of the forester Brandis. Here the official «detective» (Kapp, acting for the Baron) fails to identify the perpetrator(s). The narrator intervenes to insist that the failure of the detectives is not tantamount to a failure of her story; quite the contrary. Critics have understandably taken it, however, as a kind of motto for the entire work. Of course Droste is conscious of the fact that she has fictionalized actual historical events; and surely she was aware of the way in which she (as scholars of a rather pedantic bent have shown at some length) altered her source material. 26 I extrapolate these two «ideal» positions from the secondary literature as an heuristic device to elucidate the core debate; I do not attribute them in this pared-down form to any particular critic. Cf. the array of secondary literature cited in Mecklenburg, 109-21. Nevertheless, the former («critical») position receives memorable articulation in Richard T. Gray (see especially 537), while the latter («ideologically tainted») view has undeniably been fueled by the work of Martha Helfer and myself (see below). 27 See Donahue, «‹Ist er kein Jude.›» 28 Ibid. While this article ultimately advocates a richer, more multivalent approach to the topic, it has too often been reduced to its title, in which I quote an anti-Semitic remark from one of Droste’s letters. I have often regretted the title for this very reason. 29 In the Gadamer-Habermas debate, as Thomas Pfau has argued, Habermas offers a widely influential view of «tradition» as a fundamentally negative phenomenon linked (in his argument) to the rise of Nazism and to the persistence in the postwar period of fascist mindsets. In contrast, Gadamer posits tradition as significantly more capacious, ranging over millennia, and in itself neither good nor bad, but something that needs to be contended with. The individual’s necessary grappling with this more variegated view of tradition may be thought of as a mode of «third» critique, that is, as a corrective to the bimodal assumptions of Habermas. 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