eJournals Colloquia Germanica 51/2

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/4.0/61
2020
512

Sites of Remembrance: Cultural Memory and Portrayals of the Past in Des Knaben Wunderhorn and Kinder- und Hausmärchen

61
2020
Jaime Roots
Fairy tales can be understood as a vehicle for the construction of national identity. Through Pierre Nora’s concept of sites of memory, the Grimms’ Kinder- und Hausmärchen and Arnim and Brentano’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn create a virtual space in which a German cultural identity can be articulated in spite of territorial division and Napoleonic conquest. The design of these collections reflected the desire for a coherent national culture, and, as material artifacts, the collections constituted a site of memory production serving cultural and national identity that would outlive historical events and generational transitions.
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Sites of Remembrance: Cultural Memory and Portrayals of the Past in Des Knaben Wunderhorn and Kinder- und Hausmärchen Jaime Roots Washington and Lee University Abstract: Fairy tales can be understood as a vehicle for the construction of national identity. Through Pierre Nora’s concept of sites of memory, the Grimms’ Kinder- und Hausmärchen and Arnim and Brentano’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn create a virtual space in which a German cultural identity can be articulated in spite of territorial division and Napoleonic conquest. The design of these collections reflected the desire for a coherent national culture, and, as material artifacts, the collections constituted a site of memory production serving cultural and national identity that would outlive historical events and generational transitions� Keywords: fairy tales, Märchen, Grimm, Herder, Brentano, von Arnim, sites of memory Cultural texts change with the changing context of a changing present, and it is precisely the cultural texts that are subject to the most radical editorial modifications. ( Jan Assmann, Religion and Cultural Memory 124) Nineteenth-century Germany was a time of renewed attention to beliefs and traditions of bygone eras. This extended to a movement of historical preservation often focusing on Gothic structures which ostensibly linked contemporary Germans to their past (Hagen 29). It likewise saw the rise of philology where scholars set to discover the origins of language, as well as history being formed as an academic discipline (Peterson 289). It is unsurprising then that, during a time so focused on the rediscovery and preservation of an ancient past, of tangible and documented representations, the collection of folksongs and folklore flowered. Indeed, some intellectuals saw little to no difference between folk stories and history� In Deutsche Mythologie (1835) Jacob Grimm writes, “Sage und geschichte sind jedwedes eine eigne macht, deren gebiete auf der grenze in einander verlaufen…” (iii). History, then, was presented as retained within the folk stories� At the turn of the nineteenth century, folktale and folksong collection had already become popularized through multiple publications such as Friedrich Nicolai’s Eyn feyner kleyner Almanach (1777), Johann Karl August Musäus’s Volksmährchen der Deutschen (1782—1786), Christiane Benedicte Naubert’s (at publication anonymous) Neue Volksmährchen aus mündlichen Erzählungen gesammelt (1787), the anonymous Ammenmärchen (1791—92), and Mährleinbuch für meine lieben Nachbarsleute (1799) among others. Though collection around this time was influenced more specifically through the work of Johann Gottfried Herder and his collection Volkslieder nebst untermischten anderen Stücken (1779)� Herder in fact coined the term Volkslied and demonstrated here his idea that comparing literatures of different nations could be instructive (Niekirk 56—58). In his collection he includes not only Nordic and Native American folksongs, but also poetry from celebrated writers such as Shakespeare and Goethe. This diversity was justified by an emphasis on their common origins of creation within collective tradition. That tradition, he maintains, is open to stimulation from different cultures (Lampart 171). Herder, the godfather of collecting songs as part of a cultural tradition and a cultural memory, influenced and inspired German Romantics to collect and preserve folksongs. And though Romantics used Herder’s term of the Volkslied, they importantly adapted and modified it so that it no longer referred to an international collective of the Volk as its foundation but functioned primarily as a term with strong national connotations (Niekirk 58)� Folksong and folktale collection surged during the Napoleonic occupation. There was an immense effort and desire by many scholars and writers to define the distinct outlines of a specifically Germanic culture by offsetting it, in particular, against Classical civilizations (Norton 1) in direct response to the Napoleonic invasion and domination. The growing need to identify and defend this distinctly “German” culture became tied to political efforts as many strove to prove that Germany was much more than a geographical location—but a place of sophistication and culture all its own, often by creating tension between German culture and French influence (Norton 7). Germans struggled with a sense of identity through these turbulent years of conquest and control (Peterson 287) in which Deutschtum was not just ideologically, but also literally under threat. Collections such as Achim von Arnim (1781—1831) and Clemens Brentano’s (1778—1842) Des Knaben Wunderhorn (1805—1808), and Jacob (1785—1863) and Wilhelm Grimm’s (1786—1859) Kinder- und Hausmärchen (1812—1857) are a 184 Jaime Roots Sites of Remembrance 185 direct response to the imposed French influence and take part in the search for evidence of historic roots as writers and intellectuals sought for answers of how to define German culture. Within their collections, Brentano, Arnim, and the Grimms claim to work towards reviving an ancient, but seemingly ever-present cultural memory of the people preserved within the songs and stories of the folk—one which described the German people as emancipated and unified under a single culture. If this cultural memory could be revived, the past as represented in their collections could be instrumentalized to serve as a foundation for the present and future of German culture. There was little popular-academic history at the time, and many German intellectuals sought to popularize it in other ways—often through historical fiction or other stories that had ties to the past. It was through more literary adaptations such as historical fiction as well as collections of folktales and legends that most Germans learned of historical events (Peterson 289). Indeed, around 1800 the term history had a change in meaning. Previously just an abstract concept, it was now viewed increasingly as closely connected with politics and economics causing a major turning point in European thinking. Reality itself came to be seen as more insecure and thus unpredictable: signs indicative of an intellectual crisis. And accordingly, the problem of coping with this emerging perception of the historical world came to dominate philosophical thinking in Germany around 1800 (Lampart 173—75). In the face of such cultural and historical uncertainty, Brentano, Arnim, and the Brothers Grimm present their collections as unifying symbols—texts which quite literally proclaim to have recovered a lost history of the German people. Since their publication, Des Knaben Wunderhorn (Wunderhorn) and Kinder- und Hausmärchen (KHM) have emerged as massively influential representations of the German folksong and fairy tale respectively 1 and thus major sites of transforming a German cultural memory and its representation of the past. Such histories which focused on the unity of language and culture as important for a nation rather than physical borders were especially welcomed during a time of continued political change and shifting borders. As Cristina Bacchilega notes, “the fairy tale… magically grants writers/ tellers and readers/ listeners access to the collective, if fictionalized past of social communing…. Though it calls up old-time wisdom, the fairy tale grants individuals the freedom to play with this gift…” (5), and in their transformations, Arnim, Brentano, and the Grimms play with the songs and tales within their collections to create printed editions—tangible reference to the Germanic past. Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano in Wunderhorn as well as Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in KHM attempted to convey a logical, linear connection of the “Golden Age” of the Germanic past to their nineteenth-century present, actively seeking to cultivate 186 Jaime Roots a cultural memory of a Germanic past free of foreign influence by situating their written collections as literary sites of memory—a symbolic representation of a community’s memorial heritage. In this article, I focus on the specific role of literature as a site of cultural memory. In the face of such cultural uncertainty and with the absence of established representative institutions of a unified nation, I propose that the collections Wunderhorn and KHM serve as alternative forms of representation. Thus they serve as representatives of a virtual nation by focusing on the primacy of language, culture, and heritage as binding forces over that of physical territory. Published with opportune timing during the defeat of Prussia (1806 and the publication of the first volume of Wunderhorn) as well as boundaries being redrawn and redefined (1815 and the publication of the second volume of the first edition of KHM), these two collections worked to create and establish a unifying cultural memory and therefore the illusion of a unified history. During a time when the concept and role of history was developing, the collections seek to establish history itself. As Pierre Nora states, only in a regime of discontinuity is such a feat possible (17). After briefly introducing the collections as sites of memory, I first investigate how the past was instrumentalized in the collections to promote and strengthen nineteenth-century intellectual views of a proud and independent Germanic cultural past. The collections reinterpret history, and even language use, for their own purposes through the restoration of songs and tales to establish the existence of a lost history� Secondly, I examine how the folktales and songs within the collections seek acculturation through forming clear boundaries around what it means to be German. In this process, “forgetting” or erasing markers of inconsistencies in a linear narrative are of utmost importance in creating the perception of a seamless transition from past to present. The collections work to create and establish a memory, indeed a supposedly missing history, and to “materialize the immaterial” (Nora 19) within their pages, encouraged by the belief that the German people had forgotten who they were and where they came from. Thus they sought to provide physical artifacts to promote their interpretation of history. These four collectors certainly worked to consolidate a national identity throughout their collections by linking behavior and folk beliefs to contemporary bourgeois norms. Part of this aim, as others have noted, was an attempt to emancipate German culture from the monopolies of classical and French influence. 2 Jack Zipes writes that the Grimms sought to link folktales with the cultivation of bourgeois norms, and to foster the development of a strong, national bourgeoisie which was rising in power (Fairy Tales 59—60). Likewise, Sites of Remembrance 187 Arnim in particular has been described as doing “little to hide [his] nationalistic undertones” in Wunderhorn (Fortmann 248). Yet in addition to these important reasons for the frequently heavy-handed editing and rewriting which took place in the two collections, we should recognize the characteristics of sites of memory as motivations for the often radical transformations the two collections underwent: fear of cultural oblivion in the light of change, perception of lack of continuity between past and present, and the belief that a physical object can resuscitate a fading past. In presenting their published editions as rescuing or preserving a national, cultural identity, the collectors demonstrate a fascination with what Pierre Nora has termed lieux de mémoire, or sites of memory, as they worked to establish their collections as preserving a unifying and cohesive link to between past and present. These sites where “memory crystallizes and secretes itself” are used as a means to help a society connect with a national, cultural memory as well as a means of establishing historical continuity (Nora 7). In the preface of the 1812 edition of KHM, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm remark, “[e]s war vielleicht gerade Zeit, diese Märchen festzuhalten, da diejenigen, die sie bewahren sollen, immer seltener werden…” (vii). The Grimms observe that new generations were far less concerned with myth and tradition than they were with moving forward into the modern world. “Freilich,” they write further, “die sie [die Märchen] noch wissen, wissen auch recht viel, weil die Menschen ihnen absterben, sie nicht den Menschen” (vii). Thus the folktales are presented not just as a link to the past, but as a sort of crystallization of a fading memory. The Grimms describe a scenario in which the past is not fading into oblivion due to forgetfulness, but rather the deaths of tradition bearers. The tales, and thereby the old traditions must then be preserved before they are lost forever. Whether memory sites are objects such as statues or texts or other means of memorializing the past such as rituals, the catalyst for their production comes either from a real or perceived break in continuity. They represent a period in which people perceive that “memory [has] been ‘torn’” (FitzGerald 85). The Grimms use fading folk stories as representatives of this torn memory, and indeed stories themselves have been described as the “primary devices” by and with which communities define themselves ( Jackson 55). In their preface, the Grimms describe the urgency they feel to preserve folktales and folk beliefs in written form as they see themselves living in a time when these stories, and thus traditions, were no longer commonplace, making it more difficult to define their communities� Likening the past to ancient trees, Arnim writes, “O mein Gott, wo sind die alten Bäume, unter denen wir noch gestern ruhten, die uralten Zeichen fester Grenzen, was ist damit geschehen, was geschieht? Fast vergessen sind sie schon unter dem Volke, schmerzlich stoßen wir uns an ihren Wurzeln” (Wunderhorn 188 Jaime Roots 438). Here this “painful,” torn memory is in need of revival. The trees, representatives of the traditions of the past, have disappeared and people merely stumble on their roots, the last connection with this memory of the past. Nora writes further that sites of memory come into existence due to the belief that the past could be resuscitated if only an effort of rememoration were made (16) and yet this very act of resuscitation concedes that the memories they attempt to defend are threatened and no longer a part of everyday life (12). In a time so invested in creating national histories and narratives, it is important to look how poetic and narrative strategies worked to establish and create a memory of the past. In one respect, Brentano states that he and Arnim specifically avoid any “modern” songs in their collection which they consider to be “alles waß im 17. 18. und 19. Jahrhundert liegt…” (Werke 574) to give their collection the appearance of a representation of the past. Yet in another, Arnim and Brentano specifically note that in the collection of their Volkslieder, they have rewritten and changed the songs in their collection. It was seen as not only completely natural, but also entirely necessary to revise and change the songs in their collection. Their attempt to create a unifying artifact preserving a German history was one they viewed as both a historical as well as a creative enterprise (Lampart 177). They write that they can no longer distinguish between the content of the “old songs” and what has been updated either by them or by others in more modern times. Arnim writes, “[e]s würde uns jezt fast unmöglich seyn durch Zeichen, wie einige gewünscht haben, anzudeuten, wo die Restaurazion anfängt und das Alte aufhört” (Wunderhorn 483)� As Arnim notes, the restored versions, with all changes that have been made, have now become the representatives of the Germanic past they were seeking to establish. There is no longer any way for them to determine what has been restored and what was a part of songs as they were collected—nor did they perceive of this indistinguishable nature of their collection to put into question the validity of their project. The restored songs in their collection then serve as a symbolic transformation of Brentano and Arnim’s claim to return the songs of the past. The way in which the past is preserved, and in turn reinterprets elements of a collective history, seeks to locate an emotional core of the past and connect it with ideals of the present (Slyomovics 1). In his postscript to the first volume of Wunderhorn, Arnim does not hide his intent to connect this literary representation of the past through emotion: “Sey ruhig gutes Publikum,” Arnim writes, “dabei kannst du noch das Heil deiner schlafenden Seele… suchen” (442). The collectors note, however, that for the anthology to achieve their goal of serving as a representative of the past, the songs must be presented as one cohesive object seeking to mend the torn connection to a cultural memory rather Sites of Remembrance 189 than as collection of individual, but perhaps unrelated songs. The collection is one which inspires an “immediate visuality,” one which encourages the reader to read the poems at random, focusing on some poems while bypassing others (Fortmann 248)� Wunderhorn then, was not meant to rely on individual songs, rather the songs should support the overall vision of their publication. In doing so, they specifically compare the terms “restoration,” the process of bringing something back to its original state and “instauration,” renewal and repair after decay or dilapidation. Brentano writes that [a]lle Restauration darf nicht individuell sein, sonst wird es Instauration und zwei Genien, die sich die Hände reichen, und deren einer die Hand verlohren, sind nicht restaurirt, wenn ich hinten meine Hand durchsteckte, ebenso wenig, wie in eine gemahlte Leda ohne Schwan, jemahls ein lebendiger Schwan sie verlieben wird. (Freundschaftsbriefe 486) Here Brentano posits the difference between instauration and restoration, though he does so idiosyncratically. He writes that restoration is the ultimate goal of their collection and claims that instauration is an artificial and contrived attempt. Brentano likens instauration to an attempt to make an imposter, or a newly written song, pose as an ancient song of the people. He also notes their perceived downfall of instauration—that they see it as occurring only on an individual level. Here he utilizes the term of restoration to make claims about their collection as a whole; that only a completed project of Volkslieder can truly restore a cultural memory. It is clear from his remarks above that the individual songs are not of importance rather their participation in presenting a unified cultural memory of the past. Brentano and Arnim, as well as the Grimms, believed that their songs and tales would not be influential if they remained within a vacuum - they also required a collective, social framework. Without a social framework, they would have no resonance in their readers’ lives and thus would not be able to be established as a cultural memory. Brentano wrote to his friend Wyttenbach of the role of the folksong in society: Ich zweifle nicht, daß mein an Sie erlassenes Zirkular das, was ich wünsche, waß ich allein brauchen kann, genugsam erklärt hat, das einsame Lied des gemeinen Volks, wodurch es ewig gerührt und erquickt wird, das Lied, welches heilig ist, weil keine Literatur und keine Liederatur, kein Student, kein Spaßmacher, kein moderner Bänkelsänger es gebracht hat, sondern weil es wie eine ewige Sage, die Amme mehrere Generationen war…. (Werke 573) 3 For Brentano and Arnim, the cultural memory preserved in their collection of Volkslieder is the “ewige Sage” and the “Amme mehrere Generationen.” The past 190 Jaime Roots is not truly torn from the present, he seems to say here, it only appears so. Yet memory sites come to be in an attempt to resuscitate a memory which no longer spreads itself naturally; they linger between a memory which is not quite alive, but not yet dead (Nora 12). With their collection, Arnim and Brentano aim to help spread such a memory of the folksong again throughout German-speaking lands. Arnim writes, seeming confident that the songs were somehow waiting to be brought back to the people: “Es ist, als hätten wir lange nach der Musik etwas gesucht und fänden endlich die Musik, die uns suchte! ” (Wunderhorn 462)� Fact and fiction are no longer important distinctions in the creation and spread of a cultural memory� Indeed, Jan Assmann writes that such a distinction no longer makes sense when discussing cultural memory. What does become of great importance is an emotional connection to define a people (Religion 179)� And as seen in the comments from Arnim and Brentano above, an emotional connection was of utmost importance in the “restoration” efforts. With their restoration efforts, Arnim and Brentano effectively molded and shaped how this past would be perceived by their readers through at times subtle, through often significant, changes, deletions, and additions to songs in their collection� And as the founding anthology of German songs (Warner, No Go 24), the publication of Wunderhorn made an enduring impression not just on Romantic, but even contemporary conceptions of the German folksong. For the purpose of their collection, it was necessary to update the songs to Arnim and Brentano’s conception of the Volkslied and thus, supposedly, making them more enjoyable for their audience to consume. As an example of some of the changes Arnim and Brentano made, I take one song found in Wunderhorn in which they update orthography. They remove dialect from the song and render it in a clean Hochdeutsch in order to give their collection the appearance of unity. The following song is taken from Johann Gottfried Herder’s Stimmen der Völker in Liedern (1775). Herder’s “Dusle und Babele” begins: Es hätt’ e Buur e Töchterli, Mit Name hieß es Babeli, Es hätt’ e parr Zöpfle, sie sind wie Gold, Drum ist ihm auch der Dusle hold� “O Hauptmann, lieber Hauptmann mi’, I will mi dingen in Flandern ni! ” Der Hauptmann zog die Seckelschnur, Gab dem Dusle drei Thaler drus. (263) Brentano and Arnim’s version, “Dusle und Babeli,” reads: Sites of Remembrance 191 Es hätte ein Bauer ein Töchterli, Mit Name hieß es Babeli, Es hätt ein Paar Zöpfle, die sind wie Gold, Drum ist ihm auch der Dusle hold� “O Hauptmann lieber Hauptmann mein, Ich will mich dingen in Flandern ein.” Der Hauptmann zog die Seckelschnur, Gab dem Dusle drey Thaler draus. (Wunderhorn 291) Even changes as slight and technical as those listed above can significantly alter the reception of a song. Arnim attests to presentation being of utmost importance in how a song is remembered. He writes, “ein schönes Lied in schlechter Melodie behält sich nicht…” (Wunderhorn 437), suggesting as well that his alterations are merely changing melody, and thus the reception of an already beautiful song, rather than its content—and many of their changes were encouraged by their sense of aesthetically pleasing songs (Loges 317). Initially, Brentano suggested separating songs collected from northern and southern regions into two separate volumes. Though a systematically justifiable division, Arnim opposed this idea as he envisioned the collection as encompassing the entire German tradition (Lampart 180). Befitting his cultural politics, the collection should represent a united culture and that required uniformity even in orthography. In another song in their collection “Fastnacht” (74), two stanzas are omitted from the end of the source text entitled “Ein Reyen, von eyner Jungkfraw” from Friedrich Nicolai’s Eyn feyner kleyner Almanach (see Nicolai 152)� Brentano and Arnim often omitted lines or stanzas to songs in their collection. In a letter to Brentano, Arnim writes, “[ich] erschrecke über die ewige Wiederholung” and writes further that he has “manches excerpirt” (Freundschaftsbriefe 419)� He likewise notes of other songs: “Ich sammle fleissig an Lieder,-…wir müssen es machen wie mit Miniaturpinseln, aus tausend nur eines und aus den neuen tausend der Art wiederum nur eines” (Freundschaftsbriefe 268)� Arnim and Brentano certainly did not strive to fill their collection with exact renditions of songs, seeking rather to make their presentation more cohesive. Yet memory sites, as attempted preservations of a cultural memory, are ultimately unconcerned with presenting the past as it really was, rather what becomes of essential and constituent importance is how the past, present, and future can come to be linked together (Buikema 188). Thus in an effort to create cultural coherency, the tales and songs contained in Wunderhorn were adapted as an object blind of any breaks in cultural values or expectations throughout 192 Jaime Roots time—one that attempts to portray an altered and modified German history to serve as an artifact of cultural memory� Folktales and songs play an important role in acculturation as they work to form and reflect the tastes, manners, as well as ideologies of societies (Zipes, Fairy Tales ix). Edited and compiled during Napoleonic invasion and domination, Arnim, Brentano, and the Grimms sought to draw clear boundaries around a German identity. They sought to establish a cultural artifact which laid claim to presenting clear, continuous documentation of German cultural unity throughout history. The editorial activities of the collectors can often be described as omitting foreign, and most often specifically French influences. As sites of memory, the past as portrayed in the collections is instrumentalized to fit with a particular worldview, accommodating only those facts and stories which suit this narrative (Nora 8). Therefore, any details that did not fit within the image they were attempting to create, must be removed. The tale “der Wolf und die sieben jungen Geislein” in KHM shows the boundaries the Grimms sought to build as the past was depicted based on their interpretation of a Germanic cultural memory� “Der Wolf und die sieben jungen Geislein” tells the story of a mother goat who must leave for the day to gather food for her children� She warns them of a wolf who lives in the area who will surely try to trick them to gain access to the house and eat them. After three attempts, and after the wolf has softened his voice and powdered his paws to make them white (so as to resemble the color of goat hair), the seven little goats open the door and all but one are eaten. The mother returns, hears of what has taken place from her remaining child, and cuts open the belly of the wolf who was sleeping nearby. Her children, unharmed, jump out. She then places rocks in his stomach and due to the weight, he drowns in a well once he awakens� There are many changes between the 1810 unpublished Ölenberg manuscript and later published editions of the tale. Yet it is the deletion of dialogue spoken in French that appears most prominent. As many of their storytellers and collectors were well-educated, they were fluent in French and would have had access to French chapbooks which were both popular and widespread at the time (Vaz da Silva 403). A tale told in both languages would have been easily understood by their storytellers, as well as the Grimms’ bourgeois readership—and yet any mention of French is taken out of the published version. Likewise, the Grimms acknowledged the source of the tale to be the Hassenpflug family; a family of French Huguenot descent. The Hassenpflug girls gathered their tales from French servants and governesses in addition to those passed down through family narration� Sites of Remembrance 193 In the 1810 version, as the wolf seeks a miller to put flour on his feet so that he can trick the children, the tale reads: Der Wolf begab sich also zu einem Müller u. sagte: Müller streu mir Mehl auf meine Pfote. Und als sich der Müller weigerte, so drohte er ihm mit Freßen u. der Müller mußte es thun. (meunier meunier trempe ma patte dans ta farine blanche! - non non non non—alors je te mange). (19) The use of French is completely omitted from the published 1812 edition. The careful editing out of any reference to the French language or heritage shows an effort to free the folktales in the collection from French and Napoleonic dominance—and likewise, theoretically, the German people as well. Thus their tales, as a claim to a literary link to a cultural memory of the ancient, Germanic past, present a depiction of a Germany emancipated from the “monopoly of… French superiority” (Warner, Once Upon 55)� Sites of memory are perpetuated by what Nora terms the “cult of continuity” and the assumption of being able to determine exactly to what and whom a society owes its existence (16). These sites are ultimately deeply concerned with the present but look to the past to justify cultural ideas and customs. In order to emancipate their contemporary culture from French influence, the past is likewise emancipated. Indeed, this seamless transition from past to present is a myth of sites of memory, and with them cultural memory, as the emphasis of continuity and coherency does not concern itself “with the past as such, with ‘what actually happened,’ but only with what it means for the present and how [the past] continues to exist in [the present]” (Assmann, Religion 180)� It is important for the aims of their collection that the past be portrayed as free from foreign influences as their aims for the present were to portray a strong, unifying depiction of a distinct German culture and heritage. With aims similar to Arnim and Brentano’s update to “Dusle und Babeli,” tales in KHM were updated to encourage a more widespread reception and circulation. Though as the collectors attempted to create a link to a Germanic past, their changes can be seen as insights into the role sites of memory as representatives of a cultural memory play in how a society’s past comes to be represented and “remembered.” In Wunderhorn, Arnim describes a break in progression from past to present as having catastrophic repercussions. The past in Brentano and Arnim’s collection, similarly to the Grimms’ KHM, is portrayed as moving in a line which runs from past to present and any break in that line is presented as wrong or unnatural (Murphy 32). Arnim writes that the danger of no longer knowing past traditions is that one no longer remembers who he or she is: “…manches Volk kannte seinen eigenen Namen nicht mehr, und… da sah man, daß die anderen 194 Jaime Roots eigentlich nur noch Namen waren” (Wunderhorn 446). In Arnim’s interpretation, the inability to remember has taken on two distinct forms. First: the total loss of memory, so severe that people no longer even know their own names. With respect to the German people, they can no longer recall the old traditions which were carried from one generation to the next through song and story� The second result of forgetting past traditions is that while some people may still remember themselves as “German,” the name is now hollow and contains no real substance or meaning. Their collection is presented as a necessity, a way to stop or slow what they perceived to be a culture in decline, what Brentano terms “das gewaltsame Vordringen neuer Zeit” (Werke 530), and a way to serve as a physical, cultural marker of this supposedly continuous cultural history. What Arnim expresses in his discussion of the importance of names is a poetic aim at inspiring a renewal or rejuvenation of a tradition he perceives as lost or nearly lost to time (Fortmann 252)� When a cultural memory is no longer a living, commonplace memory throughout a society, sites of memory serve as places where this memory can be created, shaped, take root, and survive and the comments from Arnim and Brentano show their acute awareness of this� Yet though it may at first seem paradoxical, cultural memory depends absolutely on the ability to forget. Cultural memory needs to be able to be easily communicated as well as remembered and thus events and recollections are compelled to be translated to the current cultural norms. If a story is to live on in a group, it must have the meaningfulness of a significant truth for the community at present (Assmann, Cultural 24). Relevance is important for the longevity of a tale or song as, if they succeed in maintaining relevance, they will stick in the minds of their readers and listeners (Zipes, Irresistible 5)� In this way, a process of “forgetting” inconsistences and discontinuities is crucial to providing and creating the perception of a linear narrative. Maurice Halbwachs writes that a person who remembers an event contrary to its popular, contemporary conception, “is in certain respects like a person suffering from hallucinations who leaves the disagreeable impression among those around him” (74). When one takes an older song or story, as the collectors claim to do in their collections, and reconstructs or repurposes it to serve as a site of memory, the older context is inevitably forgotten because it likely presents inconsistencies and “disagreeable impressions” with respect to the beliefs and attitudes of the present. Those aspects of the past which fit with the worldview being presented—here a presentation of an emancipated past—are continually reinforced and “reminded” (Anderson 201), accommodating only those facts which suit it, and those which do not are obliged to be forgotten. The changes Arnim, Brentano, and the Grimms made to their tales show an aim to direct the tales towards the expectations of their perceived readers and Sites of Remembrance 195 thus, for the Grimms, representing the past as one which was free from overt or even crude sexual reference—purging from their collection any references to sexuality or depictions of incestuous desire (Tatar 10). Jacob Grimm, for example, maintained that tales like “Die Hochzeit der Frau Füchsin” (KHM 38) were originally free from any sexual innuendo and were only later tainted by sexual reference. “Ich wollte in die Seele dieses Märchens hinein schwören,” he writes, “dass es rein und unschuldig sei. Wer anderes hineinlegt, legt eine sündliche Ansicht hinein… Obiges Märchen ist mir eins der allerliebsten und mir aus meiner Kindheit am lebendigsten” (qtd. in Rölleke and Schindehütte 227). Jacob’s comment can be seen as serving two purposes. First, he is maintaining the claim that the tales in their collection come from the simple Volk, that the people of the Germanic past are innocent and pure. These tales are worth including in their rememoration project not only because they contain crucial links to the Germanic past, but also because they bear so much similarity to the nineteenth century bourgeois sensibilities—important due to their project of the “cultivation of bourgeois norms” (Zipes, Fairy Tales 60). The second purpose of Jacob’s comment is to demonstrate the appropriateness of the tales for children, as the Grimms received sharp criticism detailing the inappropriate nature of their collection for young audiences (Rölleke 1170). Jacob contends that the tale he experienced as a child is appropriate for other children since the Urfassung of the tale as he imagines it, was as pure and innocent as the Germanic Volk themselves� 4 The content of cultural memories are often entirely arbitrary (Assmann, Religion 3), what is of importance and what Grimm evokes here, like Brentano and Arnim above, is the emotional significance of such a memory and what it means to the identity of the German people. Yet, as Assmann points out, “writing… does not in itself provide continuity. On the contrary, it brings with it the risk of oblivion, or disappearance under the dust of time…” (Cultural 85). The collectors seemed to be aware of this paradox of writing down tales and songs, of documenting a memory of the ancient past, as each collection challenges the reader to reclaim what are described as fading memories� To function as sites of memory, the collections work to make these memories a part of daily life for their bourgeois readers so that they do not become lost forever in the editions that tried to revive them. Though the cultural memories that may evolve from them would not be sites of memory, the texts themselves, as sites of memory, aim to produce these lasting memories. Preserved in text, the collectors use the songs and tales to invigorate a unifying identity for the German people by evoking an ostensibly ever-present, but little acknowledged cultural memory� Throughout their anthologies, each collector claims that the past they are seeking to portray cannot become a part of contemporary society without the 196 Jaime Roots aid of their deserving readers. In a plea to their readers, the Grimms write, “wir übergeben dies Buch wohlwollenden Händen, dabei denken wir überhaupt an die segnende Kraft, die in diesen liegt, und wünschen, daß denen, welche diese Brosamen der Poesie Armen und Genügsamen nicht gönnen, es gänzlich verborgen bleiben möge” (1812, xxi). A site of memory can exist only if there is a will to remember, and if the imagination invests this will with a “symbolic aura” (Nora 19). In producing their collections, Arnim, Brentano, and the Grimms work to demonstrate this symbolic aura as a link to the past and thus an expression of Germanic identity� In KHM’s prologue and Wunderhorn’s conclusion, they strive to impart their own will to remember the past onto their readers. In Wunderhorn, Arnim writes that was der Reichthum unsres ganzes Volkes, was seine eigene innere lebende Kunst gebildet, das Geweben langer Zeit und mächtiger Kräfte, den Glauben und das Wissen des Volkes, was sie begleitet in Lust in Tod, Lieder, Sagen, Kunden, Sprüche, Geschichten, Prophezeihungen und Melodien, wir wollen allen alles wiedergeben… (473) According to the collectors, this past belongs to the people and without being retold with the help of tales and songs, their collections will never be able to bring about a revival of a cultural memory as they portray it as existing: the tales and the history contained within them will merely sit in books and slowly be forgotten, and thus the sites of memory will not have properly functioned. The will to remember must be passed from the collections to their readers, yet the texts serve as the foundation on which the past may be remembered. The goal then, for the collectors, is that the memory will come from their collections, their created sites of memory, to become a living cultural memory. Astrid Erll writes that “in the course of a ‘memorial history’ (that is, the history of how events or persons are recalled by social communities) it is to a great degree the mode of remembering which effects changes in the shape and meaning of the past” (163). With their collections serving as literary sites of memory, these men sought to portray a cultural memory which depicted the cultural past as supportive of their contemporary aims to unite the German people—as Brentano notes: their goal was a “Bekanntmachung des vaterländischen Schatzes” (Werke 532). By bringing this awareness to their reading public, the collections are presented as a means to mobilize the people not only to return to their roots, but to utilize the collections as sites of memory as a means to reclaim what they perceived to be a nearly lost collective memory. Nora writes “when a memory is no longer everywhere, it will not be anywhere unless one takes the responsibility to recapture it” (16). Inevitably the songs and tales in these collections were manipulated and edited to support the Sites of Remembrance 197 specific worldview of their collectors. Sites of memory are ultimately “hallucinations” (Nora 17) of the past rather than accurate, historical depictions though the collectors presented them as such. A crisis of memory is a crisis of identity (Kansteiner 184). By seeking to have German people imbibe a sense of a proud, unified cultural past in place of the fragmentary and disconnected nature of their present through the aid of their collections, the four collectors sought to solve the crisis of identity by solving the crisis of memory. Their projects were not just ones of consolidating a national identity, though this undoubtedly played a large part, but of creating and supplanting cultural memory. Nothing binds people more tightly than the need to defend against an external foe (Assmann, Cultural 133), and the collections came to be during an opportune environment for such a recreation of memory to take place. The collectors produce cultural artifacts of unity in the face of uncertainty and generate a literary event to take the place of absent historical documentation. It is through the investigations of the collectors’ presentation of an artifact of an ancient cultural memory, their published collections, that we can see one of the roles of literature and its power to recreate the past through cultural memory. Notes 1 See for example Ernst Schade, “Volkslied-Editionen zwischen Transkription, Manipulation, Rekonstruktion und Dokumentation. ” Jahrbuch für Volksliedforschung 35 (1990): 44—63; Heinz Rölleke and Albert Schindehütte. 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