eJournals Colloquia Germanica 52/1-2

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/4.0/011
2021
521-2

Theodor Fontane in the Age of Appearance: Critical Aestheticism in Die Poggenpuhls

011
2021
Stefan Bronner
Fontane’s penultimate novel Die Poggenpuhls shows striking parallels with current discourses on the politics of aesthetics. The author’s most distinct stylistic device is the art of dialogue and its obfuscating potential. At the same time, the reader can observe the shift from a text-based to an image-based culture in Fontane’s writing. Nobility has become a hollow performance due to the decline of its political influence, but the author exposes its true core as its theatrical element as well as the act of fictionalizing and aesthetically elevating one’s life. Regarding the relevance of Fontane’s works today, I compare his visual writing strategy with contemporary German artists who dedicated their poetic strategies to the image, both in the literal as well as the philosophical sense of the age-old Platonic differentiation between Schein and Sein. Andy Kassier and Rafael Horzon’s Nietzschean affirmation of modernity’s concomitant cultural frustrations connects these contemporary German artists to Fontane’s figures. In the midst of the digital revolution we have again reached a period of momentous change. Schein as a new aesthetic mode of being challenges the notion of Sein; realizable by anyone, this aesthetic worldview resists the capitalist narrative, for it operates within the discursive system of art. We can either interpret social media networks like Instagram as the Auseinandertreten von Schein und Sein or see them as a democratic opportunity to create our own aesthetic existence.
cg521-20087
Theodor Fontane in the Age of Appearance: Critical Aestheticism in Die Poggenpuhls 87 Theodor Fontane in the Age of Appearance: Critical Aestheticism in Die Poggenpuhls Stefan Bronner University of Connecticut Abstract: Fontane’s penultimate novel Die Poggenpuhls shows striking parallels with current discourses on the politics of aesthetics. The author’s most distinct stylistic device is the art of dialogue and its obfuscating potential. At the same time, the reader can observe the shift from a text-based to an image-based culture in Fontane’s writing. Nobility has become a hollow performance due to the decline of its political influence, but the author exposes its true core as its theatrical element as well as the act of fictionalizing and aesthetically elevating one’s life. Regarding the relevance of Fontane’s works today, I compare his visual writing strategy with contemporary German artists who dedicated their poetic strategies to the image, both in the literal as well as the philosophical sense of the age-old Platonic differentiation between Schein and Sein. Andy Kassier and Rafael Horzon’s Nietzschean affirmation of modernity’s concomitant cultural frustrations connects these contemporary German artists to Fontane’s figures. In the midst of the digital revolution we have again reached a period of momentous change. Schein as a new aesthetic mode of being challenges the notion of Sein; realizable by anyone, this aesthetic worldview resists the capitalist narrative, for it operates within the discursive system of art. We can either interpret social media networks like Instagram as the Auseinandertreten von Schein und Sein or see them as a democratic opportunity to create our own aesthetic existence. Keywords: Fontane, Rafael Horzon, Andy Kassier, Modernism, contemporary German literature “Aber Kunst, Kunst, darüber läßt sich reden; Kunst ist immer friedlich.” Theodor Fontane, Die Poggenpuhls (GBA I/ 16: 49) 88 Stefan Bronner In his short novel Die Poggenpuhls, Fontane’s relevance to current discourses is particularly striking, be it in the depicted reality of the novel, which is predominantly shaped by women, or the decline of old structures, namely the nobility’s loss of significance, hastened by industrialization at the turn of the century. As witnesses to the ongoing digital revolution we also live in a time of rapid change. We have seen some of the fastest technological advances in the history of humanity, which have altered the core structure of our societies. These changes can be threatening, not only for the poorest but also for the relatively wealthy in the Western world, as loss of living standards is a growing fear for many. Where Fontane witnessed the nobility’s loss of meaning and the rise of the bourgeoisie, we are currently observing the decay of the middle class and a drastically increasing number of people inching towards poverty. Fontane also lived in times of nascent transformations concerning modes of perception, while we are currently living in the midst of a visual culture. The shift from a textto an image-based culture began at the end of the nineteenth century, and Fontane, as a journalist and writer of fiction, delved into this negotiation. The author’s almost messianic, but definitely imaginary concept of aristocracy in Die Poggenpuhls can be read not only as a strategy in identity crafting, but also as a form of aesthetic liberation from a traditionally bloodor class-based understanding of selfhood. Furthermore, in light of the question of how modern Fontane’s works are, I compare his visual writing strategy with contemporary German artists who dedicate their poetic strategies to the image, in a literal as well as in the philosophical sense of the age-old Platonic differentiation between Schein and Sein. Andy Kassier and Rafael Horzon’s Nietzschean affirmation of modernity’s concomitant cultural frustrations as opposed to mourning the loss of orientation connects these contemporary German artists to Fontane’s figures, who are either still in denial or take these fundamental changes with some bitter humor. The Poggenpuhls’ infinite postponement of jouissance, their repetitive narrative operation of creating an ideal of nobility that can never be realized, positions the family within the realm of possibility. Semantic openness, e.g. room for ambiguity; a poetics of narrating one’s own life; oscillations between delusions and fiction, are all intersecting points that can be brought in connection with the post-postmodern writing strategies of contemporary artists like Rafael Horzon and Andy Kassier. While the relationship between Fontane and artists of the 21 st century might seem ahistorical at first sight, they evince similar reactions to socioeconomic and cultural change. With little to almost no plot, Die Poggenpuhls portrays the decline of the old world, its values slowly fading into meaninglessness and giving way to a rising bourgeoisie. At the same time, the reader witnesses a change in storytelling, for “Inhalt und Fabel des kleinen Romans sind so belanglos, daß man sie gut Theodor Fontane in the Age of Appearance: Critical Aestheticism in Die Poggenpuhls 89 und gern als trivial bezeichnen kann” (Müller-Seidel 418). Although the golden age of the Poggenpuhls has clearly come to an end, and many passages suggest the author’s ironic view of the family’s self-perception, it is problematic to agree with the doorman Nebelung’s evaluation of the family as foolish, croaking toads, “Na, so was von Poggen; ich hör’ es ordentlich quaken” (GBA I/ 16: 115). To his ears the family’s speech might sound like meaningless and even condescending “quaken,” an all too common hostility to language, and in a larger sense, art, that does not produce, that allegedly does nothing. Today we can observe an even more radical version of this narrative that has become a general suspicion toward the humanities and disdain for intellectualism. For the Poggenpuhls, however, these “empty” words are one of the last sources of beauty in their increasingly sparse lives, which depend on these pleasures for survival. Introducing the omnipresent leitmotiv of the theater in Fontane’s novels, Walter Müller-Seidel contemplates the curious simultaneous absence and presence of aesthetic sensibility, as he compares the Poggenpuhls’ lives to a performance that lacks substance, a signifié: “Aus den Lebensformen einer Klasse ist das lebendige Leben entschwunden; es ist alles bloß noch Spiel, Rollenspiel, Schauspielerei und Komödie” (421). Going to the theater is not only a ritualized part of their past social life, it reflects the family’s “fictional” approach to the world. The theater visit’s central position within the novel supports the significance of this motif, as does status-conscious Eberhard von Poggenpuhl’s analogy between aristocracy and theater: “Die Schauspielerei wird sozusagen geadelt … . Seit dem 18. Jahrhundert gibt es Beziehungen des Adels zum Theater, die für ihn keine soziale Deklassierung bedeuten” (420). Being an aristocrat entails an obligatory, reciprocal “performance” where one displays the social and material signifiers of nobility and another takes in and ultimately legitimizes the show. Nobility may have become a hollow performance due to its declining political influence; however, this assessment doesn’t do justice to the Poggenpuhls’ poetic potential, namely their art of conversational delusion. In “Funktion des Gesprächs” Willi Goetschel claims with Georg Simmel that neither pure aesthetic play nor the content of conversation in Fontane’s Der Stechlin grasped its main function, which is sociability (Goetschel 117). The family’s “substance” is volatile, ephemeral, always somewhat false, akin to the notion of “glamour” that celebrates surface and spectacle. All is illusion. They might not be anything anymore; they possess no authority beyond the power and passion of storytelling. Fontane documents the persistence of the culture of conversation in the midst of the transformation of societal rules and hierarchies, “selbst dort, wo sie nur noch in komischen Brechungen, das heißt als etwas nicht mehr wirklich Beherrschtes zutage tritt” (Warning 295). Of the Poggenpuhls’ mastery of conversation there can be no doubt. Building imaginative “Luftschlösser” through conversation, 90 Stefan Bronner however, goes beyond the mere function of “Geselligkeit,” for it involves future and identity building. Although dialogue in Die Poggenpuhls also cannot be understood in a dialectic-platonic sense but rather, as an “Addition von Sätzen,” it nonetheless does not function as “Überspielen des Ennuis” (Goetschel 119). John Pizer also considers causerie a “literary style across class lines,” although he associates this particular form of conversation with a “lack of labor-driven, survival-driven, adventure-driven enterprise,” which does not apply to the Poggenpuhls’ situation (Pizer 84). The family struggles existentially but nonetheless engages in a decadent use of language as an aesthetic form of life. Though the bourgeois figures in the novel, e.g. landlord Nottebohm, handmaid Friederike or doorman Nebelung, do not share the Poggenpuhls’ desire to converse, financial means are not the reason for their “Maulfaulheit.” The Poggenpuhl’s secret is neither education nor money but rather “die rechte Gesinnung” (GBA I/ 16: 8). According to Pizer’s reading of Quitt, those figures who engage in elegant conversation, the causeurs, tend to be insensitive dandies. Only the Frenchman who gives the conversations a “breezy quality at times” seems to qualify as one of Fontane’s figures that engage with the surface in an existential way; not to be confused with mere decadent playfulness (Pizer 88). Stripped of their privileges and financial means, the Poggenpuhls’ identity only arises ex negativo, through supposedly not being like the ones they ridicule: In den Generals- und Ministerfamilien der Behren- und Wilhelmstraße war sie denn auch heimisch und erzielte hier allemal große Zustimmung und Erfolge, wenn sie beim Tee von ihren jüngeren Schwestern und deren Erlebnissen in der »seinwollenden Aristokratie« spöttisch lächelnd berichtete. [U]nd der der Generalsfamilie befreundete, schräg gegenüber wohnende Unterstaatssekretär, trotzdem er selber von allerneustem Adel war (oder vielleicht auch eben deshalb), zeigte sich dann jedesmal hingerissen von der feinen Malice des armen, aber standesbewußten Fräuleins. (GBA I/ 16: 9) Therese’s art is a refined malice. Not a particularly likable character, her appeal derives from her ability to captivate her audience with wit and imagination, whereas the parvenus fail to live up to her imaginative standards of nobility. One indicator of this failure is the nouveau riche’s lack of narrative versatility. Her dismissive comment on the “Pseudoadel,” of course, leads back to the changing mechanics of a modern society but, more importantly, reveals an underlying concept of nobility that by nature has to remain within the realm of the imaginary. Old nobility is old nobility, whether it fits with the narrative or not, but Therese’s ideal concept of “nobility” is not limited to this notion of heredity. The Poggenpuhls derive symbolic capital from their aesthetic worldview, which is a Nichts and results from this very loss of meaning. The only Etwas appears between the lines of dialogue, in the imaginative realm. Theodor Fontane in the Age of Appearance: Critical Aestheticism in Die Poggenpuhls 91 Clarissa Blomqvist demonstrates in great detail how meticulous Fontane was as a Stilist, not only in his poetry but also in his novels. Together with his wife (77), the author would revise his works numerous times and make what might seem to be miniscule, last-minute changes in wording, sometimes while the text was already in print (88). The sound of words and their rhetorical effects on the readers’ ears were crucial to his art (84). Since Fontane’s novels consist largely of dialogues and descriptions, especially in his late works Die Poggenpuhls, Graf Petöfy, and Der Stechlin, formal elements cannot be overestimated. The focus of the novels is on the aesthetics of language and on form, which do not concern themselves with advancing the plot or communicating a point. Although Fontane called Die Poggenpuhls a “Nichts,” he expresses contentment about the public’s recognition of his short novel in a letter to Friedländer. In another letter to the literary critic Siegmund Schott, Fontane goes further, stating that Die Poggenpuhls is not even a novel and does not have a plot (von Ammon 147). As Frieder von Ammon points out, the novel’s literary value consists mainly in the beauty of its language. He calls it a “Musterbeispiel für einen entfabelten Roman, mehr noch als der Stechlin” (147). “Demnach wird das Nicht-Vorhandensein einer histoire also durch die Dominanz des discours ausgeglichen: eine bemerkenswerte Verschiebung der Verhältnisse, die man eher von einem Romancier des 20. Jahrhunderts als von Fontane erwartet hätte” (140). This emphasis on discourse rather than plot makes Fontane’s writing style appear more modern. In “Fontanes Rhetorik der einschränkenden Bedingung,” Rolf Parr examines the rhetoric of Fontane’s works from a linguistic point of view. He compares the protagonists’ statements to those of Fontane himself, uttered in letters and notes. Although Fontane’s and his protagonists’ opinions might seem bold at first, he would oftentimes relativize or hedge them to such a degree that the initial thought becomes diluted and vague (73). “Dadurch wiederum wird ein normatives Denken, das nur eine Position, einen Wert, eine Bedingung kennt, der Tendenz nach in Richtung des Denkens einer Bandbreite vieler verschiedener Möglichkeiten aufgelöst […]” (80). Possibility is necessarily and in an ontological sense, empty. The family’s narrative delusions, their lingering in the realm of Schein, the unlimited fictional potential, which manifests itself in the eternal postponing of reality within conversation, make this writing style appear modern. The fact that at the turn of the century the core of truth, in other words, substance, is forever lost counts as much for the Poggenpuhls’ reality as it does for Franz Biberkopf’s. While there is no extensive mourning of this loss, which would, for example, find its expression in a radical language crisis, e.g. in Gottfried Benn’s early poems, the Rönne Novellas or Hofmannsthal’s Lord Chandos Letter, there seems to be some precursor of the postmodernist Nietzschean affirmation in place. The Poggenpuhls stay where and as they are, 92 Stefan Bronner floating in a time that isn’t theirs anymore; they live a groundless existence but find a way to endure through the ars conversationis. The family’s reluctance to adopt a stable ideological stance shouldn’t be confused with indifference toward their social reality or even amorality; in fact, the emphasis on the “how” of his language rather than the “what” stresses the modernity of his writings and suggests a fluidity in his aesthetic perspective on life (Parr 81). Rainer Warning, however, comes to the opposite conclusion, arguing that Fontane’s novels, through the absence of a multiplicity of modern voices, prove that he falls back into traditional patterns. Although Warning’s elaborate analysis of Fontane’s language agrees on the prevalence of the “how” over the “what,” he claims that the aforementioned emptiness equals a pre-modern notion of resistance to substantially discussing (in dialogue) the modern world’s diversity of themes (296). For the Poggenpuhls’, banter is on the one hand “le naturel” and expresses playfulness, but it nonetheless serves the hidden agenda of forging identity within narration, be it via monologue or dialogue. Comparing Fontane’s speech with the protagonists of traditional causerie, he concludes: “Aber seine Causerie hat ihre tradierte Funktion, eben die Kompensation thematischer Verknappung, verloren, und damit bekommt sie einen wo nicht anachronistischen, so doch sentimentalischen Zug” (296). For Warning, Fontane’s novels are monological rather than dialogical in Bakhtin’s sense. They do not show a social diversity of conversation, in which there is a real battle of positions. Sie [die späten Romane] inszenieren eine Gesellschaft, die nicht mehr stratifikatorisch, sondern funktional differenziert ist. Das verlangt - mit Bachtin - nach Dialogizität. Fontanes Umgang mit dieser Dialogizität aber ist halbherzig. Sein Ideal bleibt Monologizität der Causerie. Damit aber verkehren sich die Verhältnisse, die dereinst diese Causerie legitimiert hatten. Im 17. Jahrhundert kompensierte die Ästhetizität des Gesprächs die Knappheit der Themen. Im 19. Jahrhundert aber kann von solcher Knappheit nicht mehr die Rede sein. Und so wirkt denn die Monologizität des Gesprächs eher wie ein sentimentalisch beschworenes Ideal, das die Fülle bedrängender Themen zu verarmen droht. (Warning 305) In this sense, Fontane must be read as a pre-modern writer at best. Novels such as Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz, Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Rilke’s The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, or Mann’s The Magic Mountain unquestionably express the plentitude of themes that Modernism brought forth in its linguistic fullness, but this definition of Modernism seems reductive. In many of these literary testimonies, the very dialogicity that Warning apparently understands - without explicitly defining it - in the Hegelian sense of Aufhebung, the simultaneous dissolution and conservation of negativity, comes to an end or results in a numb and mute simultaneity of disparate elements. The outcome in Fontane, Theodor Fontane in the Age of Appearance: Critical Aestheticism in Die Poggenpuhls 93 namely that the bourgeois characters fail to keep up with the written-off nobility in terms of conversation skills, and Franz K.’s numbness with respect to the world’s complexity are similar: futile monologues, crisis, and speechlessness. One could argue that Fontane’s resistance to expressing this diversity of themes in all its facets and the positive brushing over of things at the end of Die Poggenpuhls and Der Stechlin could be interpreted as an anticipation of the claims of Postmodernism rather than ignoring the changing environment. Furthermore, as we will see later, Fontane’s short text Die Poggenpuhls serves as a good example of the Modernist shift from a text-based to an image-based culture. Dilutions and linguistic retractions are characteristic for many postmodern novels, such as Das weisse Buch by Rafael Horzon and several novels by Christian Kracht, although in a more radical sense. In Fontane’s penultimate novel, two major motifs are brought to the fore: the decay of a lower aristocratic family, including all its ridiculous dimensions, from denial to delusion, but also a certain grace, expressed in the family’s noble way of symbolically coping with this new world. One quality in particular differentiates the Poggenpuhls from all the Schulzes, Nebelungs, and Nottebohms: the art of banter, which includes the poeticization of the world and themselves. Fontane’s concept of a sublime and equally unreal aristocracy consists less of political power or estate and more of a theatrical element. In this sense, his figures are clearly linked to the German canon through their expression of the Romantic ideal of merging art and life. The Poggenpuhls may appear ridiculous at times, especially when the narrator regards them with a subtle ironic tone; however, the characters author their own stories, albeit with discrepancies between the “real” and the imagined situation. The feudal system has lost its already dubious integrity, nobility will never return and it’s not only the reader who recognizes this. The sparse apartment reveals the discrepancy between the family’s heritage and their financial reality, between Anspruch und Wirklichkeit. “Riesenbuchstaben” as a “Versinnbildlichung des Aufsteigertums kontrastieren in den Poggenpuhls mit der Aussicht aus den ‘Vorderfenstern,’ die auf den Matthäikirchhof geht. Die ‘Grabdenkmäler und Erbbegräbnisse’ verweisen auf eine gänzlich andere, auf eine genealogische Form der Akkumulation von symbolischem und sozialem Kapital” (Affolter 43). A solely ironic perspective on an impoverished noble family would ignore the family’s literary potential; instead, the narrator’s moments of sympathy in the midst of ironic distance reveal Fontane’s appreciation for the hard superficiality of aestheticism, its inhumanity and yet its simultaneous potential to express the most fundamental dreams and desires. The Poggenpuhls become dandyesque figures, symbolizing a lost past that never existed in the way it is imagined. Günter Butzer makes a similar observation in his description of Walter Benjamin’s childhood memories of Berlin in the early 1900s as a fictional product of 94 Stefan Bronner trauma and loss, yet no less poignant and thus “real” (152). Instead of a non-linear narration of countless elements that constitute “reality” and in this sense accurately mirror the past, the reader senses the metaphysical essence of the childhood from the flawed perspective of the present (154). In other words, every testimony is always already tainted by the temporal distance of the subject’s position in the present. The story, as a distillate, represents the literary result of this selection process. In actuality, the nobility never existed in the way the eldest daughter of the Poggenpuhl family, Therese, desires. In her imagination, the Poggenpuhls’ aristocracy is a God-given attribute, a right that ennobles and elevates the family; hence, the family has to live up to it, in order not to become “one of them.” Therese and the youngest son, Leo, fuel it with a nostalgic notion of a lost completeness, to which it seems one could return through a kind of incantation or, in a literal sense, talking oneself back into it. In a letter that Therese reads to the family, Leo conjures up better times: Es geschehen nämlich immer noch Zeichen und Wunder, und mitunter ist es mir, als ob der Unglauben und alle solche häßlichen Zeiterscheinungen abgewirtschaftet hätten. Auch der Adel kommt wieder obenauf, und ganz zuoberst der arme Adel, das heißt also die Poggenpuhls. Denn daß wir diesen in einer Art von Vollendung, oder sag ich Reinkultur, darstellen, darüber kann kein Zweifel sein. (GBA I/ 16: 18) The “Reinkultur” is nothing but a passionate linguistic claim, a declaration with no substance, poetically summoned. The poetic quality of Leo’s prediction of a glorious future that will never fulfill itself lies exactly in this empty supposition, which takes on an incantatory tone. Language turns into a promise here, a messianic spell that finds open ears with Therese. The possibility of this future becomes more real for the subject than its manifestation could ever be. Against the backdrop of this fetishization of language, reality could only bring disappointment. A rocky path lined with obstacles is the goal, as in Slavoj Žižek’s description of the masochist’s deferral of desire. Jouissance in Lacanian terms does not result from the actual fulfillment of desire, which would mean reinstating the Poggenpuhls to their rightful rank in society, but rather from the eternal postponement of this realization (96). Utterances, conversations, and delusions must endlessly repeat themselves in an inexorable pull to circle the void. They return in the form of a serial narrative (95). This lack is expressed in Fontane’s mastery of a never-ending flow of words, of aimless conversation, banter, and insinuations (for example those of Therese and Leo) of a brighter future, even in grief and nostalgia. Every time Therese invokes the Poggenpuhls’ glory, past or future, it is as if the words had touched the impossible thing, a purity always out of reach. In Language and Death: The Place of Negativity, Agamben searches for this ineffable essence of language, Theodor Fontane in the Age of Appearance: Critical Aestheticism in Die Poggenpuhls 95 We walk through the woods: suddenly we hear the flapping of wings or the wind in the grass. A pheasant lifts off and then disappears instantly among the trees, a porcupine buries in the thick underbrush, the dry leaves crackle as a snake slithers away. Not the encounter, but this flight of invisible animals is thought. Not, it was not our voice. We came as close as possible to language, we almost brushed against it, held it in suspense: but we never reached our encounter and now we turn back, untroubled, toward home. So, language is our voice, our language. As you now speak, that is ethics. (Agamben 108) Agamben strives to find the “reality of language,” its Real core, by speaking out - in a literal sense - its essence. Its essence, however, is ideal, and can never become real except in death; just like the Poggenpuhls’ struggle for an ideal notion of nobility. To avoid being confronted with its ugly core and to enjoy the high of its accompanying promise, one has to come close to the impossible Real but not satisfy the desire. The encounter with the Real object of desire would end in insanity or the object would turn into the abject. Hence, Agamben must settle for an almost-encounter to be able to gain maximum jouissance. It would be a disaster for the Poggenpuhls if their dreams and fantasies ever became reality. Hence, the situation of the family cannot substantially change without endangering the real Jouissance of the Poggenpuhl narrative. The admiration for Therese’s haughty but enchanting stories about the up-and-coming high society is possible only because the Poggenpuhls have fallen on hard times. Although the eldest brother Wendelin seems to have the most solid career of all the family members, all hopes are pinned on Leo, the youngest son. He is the “Angstkind,” and yet the sisters poeticize his character and choose Leo as their savior. All their “dichten” and “trachten” is focused on him as the embodiment of the family’s dreams. The reality, however, couldn’t look more different; Leo gets into all kinds of trouble, including financial debacles, and he is not the prodigy his sisters’ fantasies would suggest. Despite the family’s precarious situation, in which they are not always certain of their next meal, Leo manages to be self-confident, if not cocky. Hence, his sisters project their hopes onto him, despite knowing that he will probably neither have a meaningful career nor a significant impact in any future battle. Leo, der Liebling aller, war zugleich das Angstkind, und immer wieder zu helfen und ihn vor einer Katastrophe zu bewahren, darauf war alles Dichten und Trachten gerichtet. Kein Opfer erschien zu groß, und wenn die Mutter auch gelegentlich den Kopf schüttelte, für die Tochter unterlag es keinem Zweifel, daß Leo, »wenn es nur möglich war, ihn bis zu dem entsprechenden Zeitpunkt zu halten«, die nächste große Russenschlacht, das Zorndorf der Zukunft, durch entscheidendes Eingreifen gewinnen würde. (GBA I/ 16: 12) 96 Stefan Bronner “Dichten” and “Trachten” are the quintessential words here, for they point to the aesthetically constructed nature of the family’s reality. Every effort is invested in the fictionalization or, to put it in the words of the early Romantics, the poetization of life. “Dichten” addresses the family’s self-narrativization, whereas “trachten” hints at the dynamic of desire and fictionality. It is clear to everyone that Leo will never be successful. In the course of the story, he comes closer to jail than a career in the military. This performance highlights the nominal quality of nobility that is especially apparent when its material trappings are stripped away. Therese, the oldest daughter, is the most unrealistic and poetic figure in Fontane’s short novel. Through the traumatic reality of her impoverished family, her perception of the Poggenpuhls’ aristocracy has shifted from being rooted in fact to being a metaphysical notion. For Therese it is an endless story, a path, and at the same time, a feeling. Nobility resides in the realm of Schein, where signifiers point to each other but not to a signified. In depicting the family’s quotidian life and financial decline, Fontane takes a stand within the age-old philosophical debate of Schein und Sein. He suggests that an interesting life is in fact always theater - or, in this novel, conversation. Lacan’s famous observation that a king, if he really believed that he was a king, would be a fool, is applicable here. The temptation for the king to believe he is a real king is, of course, greater when he holds power. Is he a king beyond his performance? Is there an essence to being a king? Although one is inclined to negate this rhetorical question, we could, with Fontane, answer it with a clear “yes,” for the mere feeling, the endless repetition of the sentence “I am the king,” should be sufficient to fill out this title. In this sense, self-fashioning is the essence of nobility. Die Poggenpuhls and Der Stechlin not only form Fontane’s Alterswerk, they also resemble one another in their tendency to dwell in the flow of conversation. In a well-known letter to Clara Kühnast, Fontane comments on Der Stechlin, Zum Schluss stirbt ein Alter und zwei Junge heiraten sich; - das ist so ziemlich alles, was auf 500 Seiten geschieht. Von Verwicklungen und Lösungen, von Herzenskonflikten oder Konflikten überhaupt, von Spannungen und Überraschungen findet sich nichts … . Alles Plauderei, Dialog, in dem sich die Charaktere geben, und mit ihnen die Geschichte. (HA IV/ 4: 493) Almost nothing happens or changes; nothing comes of the conversations, just a story that will go on forever, and “es lebe der Stechlin.” The conversations will continue, in his name, in his honor. Perhaps Fontane would have embraced the aspects of seriality in today’s social media communication, for the stories of Die Poggenpuhls and Der Stechlin could just as well have never ended. “It’s just words,” is what so-called Macher say, who want to tell us that we should talk Theodor Fontane in the Age of Appearance: Critical Aestheticism in Die Poggenpuhls 97 less and work or create more. The freedom of Fontane’s aesthetic lies exactly in the opposite of the capitalist logic of exploitation: “Don’t act, rather talk! ” True luxury means indulging in aimless, superficial conversation. Even if the Poggenpuhls are poor, the reader can evaluate the family with aesthetic rather than social categories. Anyone can be noble if nobility is an aesthetic concept rather than a class concept. Fontane’s understanding of nobility is similar to the democratizing potential of the digital revolution. In the German countries, the Bildungsbürger are losing more and more ground. Hence, Bildung as an ideal and as a means of maintaining social and financial credit becomes meaningless. For Fontane, nobility is an aesthetic and nostalgic image of a world that never existed but remains aspirational. One could rightfully call the Poggenpuhls or old Dubslav dandies, for they represent a form of aesthetic protest and at the same time a nostalgic reminiscence of the past in times of change. If we look closer at Uncle Eberhard von Poggenpuhl’s bourgeois wife, who provokes Therese’s Standesbewusstsein, we see a liberating and democratic reimagining of nobility. Therese disdains her for her background and her nonchalant ways regarding aristocratic decorum, but also for a subtler motive, which is envy. Although the general has his title, the unworthy aunt brings money into the marriage and thus holds the power. Through time and suffering, namely the hardships of life that the aunt experiences through the lens of a Poggenpuhl, she eventually becomes a true noblewoman in Therese’s eyes. Schein as an aesthetic mode of being challenges the notion of Sein and, hence, the idea that nobility can be bought. Sein belongs to the old world of static factuality whereas Schein represents the expression of a new world that has rid itself of the master signifier. In this case, the bourgeoisie challenges the old hierarchies and the underlying idea of being born into a certain set of rights. One can claim that the discourse of Sein existed only in order to solidify these hierarchies and protect those who happened to be in right place. Schein belongs to the ideal realm, withdraws itself from essentialist thought, and can hardly be translated into reality. Schein can signify a Platonic Trugbild, which would mean that it remains dependent on Sein, for it would misrepresent the real, merely in a flawed fashion. Or regarding language, it could mean a lie, covering up an underlying painful or dangerous truth. However, it can also be fiction, which cannot be evaluated on these aforementioned grounds but only with aesthetic tools. On a philosophical level, it would “represent” the nature (Wesen) of humans more accurately since it does not exclude change. If one is a criminal, it implies that his personality owns criminal traits or energy. Within this logic, this cannot be changed and hence must be either locked away or eradicated. An aesthetic mode of being means being the master of one’s own narrative, and thus change. “I might have once been a criminal but I have 98 Stefan Bronner changed.” This aesthetic worldview can theoretically be realized by anyone and thus destabilizes the capitalist narrative, for it represents the opposite of “meaningful” work. Despite the family’s numerous caprices, their mode of being in the world, which is mainly pretense and talk, is in this sense noble. Social media presents a similar negotiation of reality and identity as well as the democratization of the possibility to create an aesthetic existence beyond class. We can either interpret social media, for example Instagram, as the Auseinandertreten von Schein und Sein or see it as an artistic device to connect images with words in a meaningful way. Looking at Instagram, Schein and Sein are more disparate than ever. One may be poor, but one can still present a convincing imitation of wealth, a plausible simulation of that reality. Filters and photo-editing apps like Facetune encourage us to improve on nature and make life conform to contemporary beauty-ideals. This shows on the one hand a dystopian obsession with aesthetics and also an increasing gap between the rich and the poor, for it creates the tantalizing illusion of bridging the vast discrepancy between the working class and the one percent. At the same time, the medium presents the opportunity for an aesthetic life beyond capitalism. The power to translate fantasy into reality, demonstrated in the striving of social media influencers and celebrities, is one that is most often used to propagate the capitalist system it seeks to bypass. However, contemporary artists and authors such as Andy Kassier and Rafael Horzon have also used tactics informed by Internet culture to critique these neoliberal fantasies. They both fictionalize their lives on Instagram and Facebook in the platforms’ textand image-based, serialized storytelling style. Often these images evoke an exaggerated comic book style. Rafael Horzon’s signature gesture—thumb and index finger poised on the frame of his glasses—imitates and mocks common Instagram-poses of energetic and “successful” entrepreneurs. He is a caricature of himself (Fig. 1, Horzon “Fielmann Ambassador”), never revealing whether anything he expresses is sincere. His captions are both serious and ironic at once. The stories mostly revolve around the same topic: becoming incredibly rich through exaggerated and absurd means so that the stories parody contemporary notions and aspirations of the good life. There are photos of Andy Kassier posing in a gaudy fur coat in the mountains, or wearing a suit made of 100-dollar bills (Fig. 2, Kassier “#reach the #sky”; Fig. 3, “It’s #lonely at the #top”). Rafael Horzon’s post proclaims the opening of 150 giant furniture stores all over Europe, allegedly to drive of a famous Swedish company out of the market (Fig. 4, Horzon “Yes, it’s official”). In contrast to a traditional novel, here readers have to participate in the fantasy by putting together the puzzle-pieces on Instagram. One has to fill in the gaps. Many contemporary artists use social media to construct their author-persona, some in a highly aestheticized and fictionalized form, e.g. Christian Kracht, Theodor Fontane in the Age of Appearance: Critical Aestheticism in Die Poggenpuhls 99 Eckhart Nickel, Andy Kassier, Rafael Horzon, whereas others tell their life-stories with more autobiographical and “realistic” elements, e.g. Nora Gomringer, Thomas Meinecke, Juliana Kalnay, Lennardt Loß, Frauke Finsterwalder, and Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre. Although some artists write in traditional forms in addition to their social media storytelling, many have adopted the platforms as their preferred artistic medium. 100 Stefan Bronner In 2010, Horzon published his debut novel Das weisse Buch with Suhrkamp. Although inspired by his own life, the highly artificial and surreal style of the novel distorted conventions of biography and Bildungsroman, while at the same time drawing from the German canon. Reviews called Das weisse Buch a “Schelmenroman” and were mostly positive in their evaluation (Rühle). Shortly thereafter, Horzon stopped writing, except for some short articles in art magazines, until he built his Facebook and Instagram presence, where he continued his Theodor Fontane in the Age of Appearance: Critical Aestheticism in Die Poggenpuhls 101 Schelmenstücke. For this particular narrative mode, social media might be a better medium than the novel due to its brevity, immediacy, seriality, and the interrelation between image and text. Novels have a beginning and an ending, whereas social media storytelling usually embodies the author’s dream of an endless text. This is reflected in the ending of Die Poggenpuhls, “Das Ende bleibt vielmehr provozierend offen […] : der Roman hört auf, ohne ein rechtes Ende zu haben” (von Ammon 149). Aside from an open and incomplete form, the strategies of these contemporary artists also negotiate life in the inescapability of late-stage capitalism. Traditional status symbols such as big cars, multiple houses, or expensive Swiss watches are being challenged by a new bohemian hedonism that produces digital dandies, individuals who neither want the responsibilities that come with ownership nor the limitations of time and freedom that come with a traditional career. These digital bohemians produce idyllic images of exotic places, beautiful people and expensive clothes, cars, and houses that they don’t own, as well as snapshots of “authentic,” emotional moments that have been carefully choreographed. Recognition from their followers doesn’t always result from the demonstration of deep pockets or a successful career, but merely from the beauty of the photograph, the artist’s creativity regarding taste, as well as their access to luxurious goods and places. At the same time, some of these artists produce glamorous Instagram images as a means to criticize the notion of a perfect life. Andy Kassier’s images on Instagram mock the work ethos of self-proclaimed “digital nomads” who post pictures of themselves working with a MacBook at the beach accompanied by neoliberal “wise sayings.” One image shows him standing in the sea with a laptop propped on his knee just above the water with the following caption: “You need to cool down from the heat. But still focus on your goals. Never not working” (Fig. 5, Kassier “You need to cool down”). Underneath the caption he accumulates relevant hashtags, which serve as ideological buzzwords, such as “worklife,” “awareness,” “freedom,” “yolo.” In another picture, he photoshops himself in a suit, lying in front of a Greek temple. The caption says: I am married to my work, but sometimes you just need a little time to take a breath without your wife. Sometimes you need to take a step back to realize how awesome it actually is. Sometimes you need a break. Do everything you can, but don’t destroy your health for a micro win. Always think macro, what will be in 10, 20, 50 years. (Fig.-6, (Kassier “I am married to my work”). 102 Stefan Bronner The texts underneath his images sound like a mixture of cheap platitudes from spiritual life coaches and manager-millionaires selling their “secrets to success.” In interviews with both Horzon and Kassier, the reader gets glimpses of the truth behind the images and micro-stories but never the full picture. Most of the time, the stories are completely made up or even contradict each other, yet these discrepancies become part of their narrative appeal. Their stories oscillate between documentary and fiction, seriousness and irony. Fontane’s work like- Theodor Fontane in the Age of Appearance: Critical Aestheticism in Die Poggenpuhls 103 wise demonstrates the identification and expression of particular ways of being that he saw emerging. With his antiquated figures displaying qualities of the classic dandy, Fontane hits the nerve of his time. Around the turn of the century, dandies slowly emerge, mostly in big cities in France and Great Britain, e.g. Jean Floressas Des Esseintes from Huysman’s novel À rebours (1884), Dorian Gray and Lord Henry Wotton from The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), and Baudelaire. By introducing a lightness of being into the German canon with sophisticated conversations and banter, Fontane anticipates major postmodern paradigms, such as the deconstruction of the discourse of surface and depth. All of these works share an irreverent and incisive approach to fiction that complicates the German discursive divide between surface and depth, appearance and substance, seriousness and irony. The non-ending of Die Poggenpuhls does not conclude the family’s story but rather implies an ongoing conversation with the same absurdly positive outlook despite ever-declining circumstances. The family will live happily ever after until the sons, Wendelin and Leo, make a name for themselves and the family. Furthermore, the verbs of the last two sentences, “sprechen” and “sagen,” reinforce the importance of speech. Before the reader is dismissed, Manon says, “Ja, meinen Vater, den hatt’ ich vergessen. Sonderbar. Väter werden fast immer vergessen. Ich werde mit Flora darüber sprechen. Die sagte auch ’mal so was” (GBA I/ 16: 121). The family has abandoned the Father, in a temporal and a psychoanalytical sense. The time of the father is long gone, and at the same time, the Poggenpuhls have left the master signifier behind them, which would symbolize a traditional understanding of aristocracy, in favor of a new, fictional one. Fontane fondly freezes his family for eternity. The Poggenpuhls are stuck in a time loop. Although conversation is central to Fontane’s writing strategy, the reader gets a glimpse of a visual writing strategy. His works display the Modernist shift from text to image culture. The author’s style resembles a form of cinematographic writing, as if the reader were being guided through a series of still life portraits. This is most prominent when the narrator describes the Poggenpuhls’ apartment in the first chapter. Diese Großgörschenstraßen-Wohnung war seitens der Poggenpuhlschen Familie nicht zum wenigsten um des kriegsgeschichtlichen Namens der Straße, zugleich aber auch um der sogenannten “wundervollen Aussicht” willen gewählt worden, die von den Vorderfenstern aus auf die Grabdenkmäler und Erdbegräbnisse des Matthäikirchhofs, von den Hinterfenstern aus auf einige zur Kulmstraße gehörige Rückfronten ging, an deren einer man, in abwechselnd roten und blauen Riesenbuchstaben, die Worte “Schulzes Bonbonfabrik” lesen konnte. (GBA I/ 16: 5) 104 Stefan Bronner The narrator’s remark on the wonderful view serves a double purpose: for one, the quotation marks signify that a member of the family uttered this description and, hence, one must read it with caution, for this is, of course, a mocking comment on the Poggenpuhls’ financial situation as well as their attempts to deflect from that fact. More importantly, however, this can be read as an implicit auto-poetic comment on his style for the reader. Making the setting vivid before the reader’s eye, making the characters’ lives visible, seems to be important for the writer; perhaps to make it easier for the reader to dive in this fictional world, perhaps to get the reader on their side. It seems we should identify and become a part of the figures’ world. Fontane conjures a visual image in the reader’s mind as though a camera were panning from the outside to inside, from one side of the apartment over to the other side, showing the giant blue and red letters of the candy company. The “narrative camera” moves on to the inside, starting with the furniture, the rug, over to the curtains, and beyond: [V]on Plüschmöbeln existierte nichts und von Teppichen nur ein kleiner Schmiedeberger, der mit schwarzen, etwas ausgefusselten Wollfransen vor dem Sofa der zunächst am Korridor gelegenen und schon deshalb als Empfangssalon dienenden “guten Stube” lag. Entsprechend diesem Teppiche waren auch die schmalen, hier und dort gestopften Gardinen; alles aber war sehr sauber und ordentlich gehalten, und ein mutmaßlich aus einem alten märkischen Herrenhause herstammender, ganz vor kurzem erst auf einer Auktion erstandener, weißlackierter Pfeilerspiegel mit eingelegter Goldleiste lieh der ärmlichen Einrichtung trotz ihres Zusammengesuchtseins oder vielleicht auch um dessen willen etwas von einer erlöschenden, aber doch immerhin mal dagewesenen Feudalität. (GBA I/ 16: 7) Conducting a thorough analysis of these “filmic” scenes to evaluate the effects on the reader could be fruitful. Although due to their reduced means the family has few possessions, the exaggerated image seems artificial and simplified; this does not appear to be a “real” apartment where “real” people live. The effect of the white mirror with its golden frame does not give the sparse interior of the apartment a feudal appeal, as the narrator states, but rather highlights the discrepancy between their self-image and their reality. The reader can see the sofa, the mirror, the rug, and imagines a single book on a shelf. Everything seems flat and two-dimensional so that one doesn’t become overwhelmed when moving from one image to the next. Finally, the camera pans over to the painting of the old ancestor, which hangs above the sofa. The description in this passage is a sketch, there is no depth, no realistic detail to it. His half sympathetic, half martial glare descends on a flat glass bowl with flowers. Theodor Fontane in the Age of Appearance: Critical Aestheticism in Die Poggenpuhls 105 Über dem Sofa derselben »guten Stube« hing ein großes Ölbildnis (Kniestück) des Rittmeisters von Poggenpuhl […]. Das halb wohlwollende, halb martialische Gesicht des Rittmeisters sah auf eine flache Glasschale hernieder, drin im Sommer Aurikeln und ein Vergißmeinnichtkranz, im Winter Visitenkarten zu liegen pflegten. An der andern Wand aber, genau dem Rittmeister gegenüber, stand ein Schreibtisch mit einem kleinen erhöhten Mittelbau, drauf, um bei Besuchen eine Art Gastlichkeit üben zu können, eine halbe Flasche Kapwein mit Liqueurgläschen thronte, beides, Flasche wie Gläschen, auf einem goldgeränderten Teller, der beständig klapperte. (GBA I/ 16: 8) This last passage evokes the storybook aesthetic of the Wes Anderson film The Grand Budapest Hotel, with its crisp, highly symmetrical shots. The magic of these images lies in their simplicity; few details and a simple composition capture the viewer’s eye and make the image look “cleaner” and at the same time, more artificial. Inspired by this particular mode of description of the small text, one could picture the family sitting in their sparse little apartment with the painting of the ancestor and the other small details as if in a snow globe. Reading these passages as mere ironic comments on the Poggenpuhls’ real situation does not do justice to this aesthetic. Regarding the staged nature of the family’s apartment, Walter Müller-Seidel claims that, just like a Potemkin village consisting of two-dimensional facades, our lives have become film sets. As Petra McGillen notes, In der Medienlandschaft der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts erlebte der Sehsinn eine erhebliche Aufwertung. Insbesondere die langsam steigende Bilderflut der periodischen Presse, die mit dem massenhaften Einsatz des Holzschnitts begann und mit der Durchsetzung der Autotypie noch weiter zunahm, führte zur verschärften Konkurrenz zwischen Schrift und Bild, Lesen und Sehen. Diese Entwicklung berührte die Literatur- und Textproduktion der Zeit insofern, als die Ansprache an die Anschaulichkeit des Schreibens stiegen. Wer für die Presse schrieb, musste Bilder liefern, sei es in Form von Illustrationen oder, wenn das nicht möglich oder erwünscht war, in Form von bildlichen Schilderungen. (36) McGillen studies the sketches in Fontane’s notebooks not as isolated pieces of art but as intertwined with his texts in an emerging style of visual writing. Fontane had to store visual impressions in the most economic way possible to “translate” them into text later (37). “Skizze und sprachliche Notiz teilten sich die Erfassungsarbeit […]” (37). In Fontane’s writing, image and text complement each other, just as text is often inseparable from an image on a website or on Instagram. “Die Zeichnung entlastet also die sprachliche Beschreibung, doch die direkt in die Skizze eingefügten Texte nehmen wiederum der skizzierenden Hand die Arbeit ab” (36). As a journalist and fiction writer, Fontane knew how 106 Stefan Bronner to speak to different readers. As a writer who was cautious about commenting on his own historical moment to avoid simplification or perhaps archaism, social media would have been a medium of poetic potential for him, especially in its symbiotic relationship between image and text. His visual writing style, his appreciation of conversation for its own sake and for its art, as well as his love for theater, make him a writer of Schein rather than Sein. Early scholarship has separated Fontane’s artistic writing from his journalistic craft and overlooked how the two genres meet in his texts. Fontane did not conduct the most radical aesthetic experiments like, for example, Alfred Döblin in Berlin Alexanderplatz� He did not shatter writing conventions like the Expressionists, nor did he portray the human abyss in its naked brutality like the Naturalists. The human tragedy never became too real in his writings, as he only implied it subtly. His aestheticist poetics show, nonetheless, a deliberate critical dimension. Art turns out to be more dangerous than Uncle Eberhard thinks it to be when he says, “Aber Kunst, Kunst, darüber läßt sich reden; Kunst ist immer friedlich” (GBA I/ 16: 49). Another dandy and provocateur, who has never authored a fictional book, challenged his fellow German contemporaries by leaving a body of work that created a public image while evading attempts to attach his art to a stable personal identity. The famed designer Karl Lagerfeld embodies the Romantic ideal of a merger between art and life, telling countless stories with his work, while keeping the source obscure. When asked at the end of Rodolphe Marconi’s 2007 documentary Lagerfeld Confidential, whether anyone really knew him, Lagerfeld answers: It’s difficult for me to answer. I’ve molded peoples’ ideas about me so much that I think it’s almost impossible. I want it to be impossible. Even for the people I love deeply. I don’t want to be real in other peoples’ lives. I want to be an apparition. I appear, then I disappear. I don’t want to have reality in anyone’s life because I don’t want it in mine. That’s the secret of it all. (Lagerfeld Confidential) Works Cited Affolter, Hanspeter. “Und was macht nicht alles einen Namen! ” Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur 43.1 (2018): 25—46. Agamben, Giorgio. “Language and Death: The Place of Negativity.” Trans. Karen E. Pinkus and Michael Hardt. Minneapolis and Oxford: U of Minnesota P, 2006. Ammon, Frieder von. “Der alte Fontane und die Entfabelung des Romans.” Theodor Fontane. Ed. Peer Trilcke. Munich: edition text + kritik, 2019. 140—52. 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