The Environment as Colonizer, Migration as “Überfremdung,” and Satire in Franz Hohler’s “Die Rückeroberung” Brian McInnis Christopher Newport University Abstract: This article examines how Hohler uses satire to shape his environmental argument� The reverse colonization of plants and animals invading the city of Zurich implies that nature responds to human abuses and exertion of power, and each wave of new inhabitants reveals societal weaknesses� I read the narrator’s disquietude over societal solutions to the imposition of the natural world as a conscience of societal environmental policy� Wendy Wheeler’s writing on biosemiotics provides an appropriate frame to view Hohler’s biological system in Zurich as an interdependent and relational information system� I infer Hohler’s environmental politics from the interactions within the story and a digression on the problematic governmental reception of the published volume Die Rückeroberung as it further illuminates Hohler’s environmental vision. Next, this essay explores the historical discourse on migration in Switzerland as an implied bioregional context of the lightly veiled allegory of ‘animal’ colonization in the story� The final section analyzes how the divisive politics of environment and migration potentially place human society at risk� Keywords: Zurich, migration, history, foreigner, Überfremdung, satire, environment, biosemiotics Cabaret artist and author Franz Hohler is known for his incisive critique of politics, society, and the environment� In the popular and anthologized poem “Der Weltuntergang” (1973), the disappearance of a pesty beetle on an island in the South Pacific prompts a string of events that leads to a worldwide environmental apocalypse and underscores the interconnectedness of all life� The rhythmic sound painting argues that human-caused pollution poisoned the beetle with 358 Brian McInnis oil, soot, and sulfur� Destruction of the natural world also harms people (Hohler, “Weltuntergang” 185)� The performance poem prompts a nagging fear that such a self-centered abuse could be done, then ends with the proclamation that the apocalypse has begun (186)� This ballad drives rhythmically to the political conclusion that human negligence threatens the survival of humans and the earth� In addition to print distribution, Hohler read the poem publicly, for example in 1975 wearing a gas mask and hockey mitts during an anti-nuclear demonstration at the activist-occupied construction site for nuclear reactor Kaiseraugst east of Basel (Schilling n� pag�)� This 1975 performance united his opposition to industrial climate degradation with his opposition to nuclear power� In a 2017 interview with the Swiss tabloid Blick, Hohler recalled that the Swiss environmental movement was not taken seriously when the Chernobyl nuclear accident occurred in April 1986 (Odermatt and Marti n� pag�)� At the time, Hohler was filming Dünki-Schott about a quixotic knight fighting against nuclear reactors� In the 2017 interview, Hohler expressed his hope that the next day’s plebiscite for a Swiss exit from nuclear power would succeed� It did (Schultz n� pag�)� Hohler returns to the entwinement of organisms with their ecosystem in the short story “Die Rückeroberung” (1982)� Animals and plants take over Zurich despite human efforts to maintain control of the city� In this essay, I argue the natural world’s reverse colonization satirizes Zurich citizens’ blindness toward their interrelationship with the ecosystem as well as official Zurich policies and popular attitudes toward human migration� The people counter the intruders with force, but also react with folly and ultimately fail to assert human control of the city� The discourses of migration and human environmental isolationism amplify each other in their critique of human attempts to control other people and the environment� In his dystopic vision of Zurich, Hohler suggests a sustained interaction, embrace, and partnering with the environment will be necessary for human survival� This reading complements existing readings of Hohler’s environmental positions by linking them to his assessment of Swiss attitudes toward migration� Hohler’s political engagement with his community shaped the writing and reception of this text� Existing readings of “Die Rückeroberung” emphasize, for example, the text as a model of fantastical literature (Spielmann) or disaster literature (Utz)� Certainly, the story does capture readers through its projection of a future dystopia and its representation of a disaster in full motion, but not narrated to its conclusion� The reading offered here foregrounds the satirical narration in an attempt to illuminate the pervasive abuse of power in environmental and migration policies� Hohler’s story creates a satirical mode that eschews the antique verse forms of Horace and Juvenal� Helmut Arntzen notes that Enlightenment poetics such as Johann Andreas Grosch’s Die Regeln der Satyre aus ihren Gründen herge- Environment as Colonizer, Migration as “Überfremdung,” and Satire in Hohler 359 leitet (1750), Johann Bernhard Basedow’s Lehrbuch prosaischer und poetischer Wohlredenheit (1756), and Friedrich Schiller’s Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung (1795/ 1796) removed the verse requirement for satire in favor of a concentration on the overall effect of the critique (Arntzen 352-55)� Schiller categorized satirical literature among sentimental (modern) forms and required that satirical texts present their moral reflection as a representation, i�e�, in play as an expression of freedom (355)� This is one of the schools that continues to define contemporary theory of satire� More generally, Arntzen avers, satirical literature stems primarily not from the imagination, but an indignation about preposterousness, retrograde circumstances, or negativity (347)� A satirical text replaces a representation of the real world or one’s consciousness with a preposterous other� In “Die Rückeroberung,” this involves indignation about ineffective political and social leadership� The narrative is situated not in the foibles of city council minutiae, but in the governmental and societal misdirection in response to an improbable animal and plant invasion� In its methods and its topics, satirical writing forms an oppositional system (Arntzen 346)� In Hohler’s Zurich dystopia, this critical perspective begins with the unnamed first-person narrator who models critique and guides reader discovery of the “news from nature�” Finally, satirical writing makes empirical, historical, and metaphysical contradictions visible through literary representation (Arntzen 363)� One way the satirical tone of “Die Rückeroberung” functions to reveal contradictions is by prompting reconsideration of official and popular Zurich responses to migration� A more in-depth investigation of satire in the story follows, but first a note on the relation of humans to the ecosystem� One focus of the satire in “Die Rückeroberung” is the human self-separation from the environment� Throughout this essay, I refer to Wendy Wheeler’s conception of biosemiotics to underscore Hohler’s assertion that human and nonhuman lives intimately interconnect� Drawing on Jesper Hoffmeyer’s argument in Signs of Meaning in the Universe (1996), Wheeler avers that from its smallest cellular level, all life is involved in signification, for example the differentiation between self and other that drives cell division, actions of the immune system, or interactions between cells or multicellular beings (Wheeler, Whole Creature 123)� Biosemiotics acknowledges explicit interactions that shape individuals internally as well as the intersubjectivity that characterizes the individual/ environment relationship (120-21)� Humans in Hohler’s story do not generally acknowledge these connections, but the satirical narrative makes them accessible to the reader with the implication that Zurich society must be changed� Wheeler also references the semiotic theory of Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) to argue that biosemiotics views biological systems as relational information systems (Wheeler, “Biosemiotic Turn” 271)� The ecosystem is no longer viewed as 360 Brian McInnis mechanical or fixed, as many Zurich administrators and citizens in “Die Rückeroberung” do, but as intersubjective and dynamic (272)� This new interpretive paradigm re-establishes connections between individual and place and enables renewed ethical reflection� Individual wellness no longer means solely economic flourishing, but includes emotional wellness and the wellness of the ecosystem (Whole Creature 34, 156)� Hohler’s satirical call to action envisions such greater wellness within the ecosystem� In the following, I examine how the satirical narrative mode presents Hohler’s environmental argument� The reverse colonization implies that nature responds to human abuses and exertion of power, and each wave of new inhabitants reveals societal weaknesses� I read the narrator’s disquietude over societal solutions to the imposition of the natural world as a conscience of societal environmental policy� In the following section, I infer Hohler’s environmental politics from the interactions within the story and a digression on the problematic reception of the published volume Die Rückeroberung as it further illuminates Hohler’s environmental vision. Next, this essay explores the historical discourse on migration in Switzerland as an implied bioregional context of the lightly veiled allegory of ‘animal’ colonization in the story� The final section analyzes how the divisive politics of environment and migration potentially place human society at risk� In surveys and interviews collected in Franz Hohler: Texte, Daten, Bilder (1993), Hohler describes his take on inspiring readers and deploying satire� Storytelling and reading serve as an impulse to think� He thus enjoys engaging an audience in collective storytelling in order to reveal to them the possibilities of the imagination and their capacity for problem solving: “um zu zeigen, dass Phantasie kein Privileg zu sein braucht und dass die Leute auch selbst imstande sein können auf eine Herausforderung eine Antwort zu finden” (Bauer and Siblewski 53)� The author aims to engage individuals in reflection and to drive changes in thought from individual responses to his work (51)� Hohler writes to be understood by a broad audience, but refuses to be limited by naive readers who fail to understand concepts such as irony (60)� He deploys satire as one of a multiplicity of communicative modes to promote thinking (57)� Satire enables readers to engage painful truths and problems: “Satire macht es möglich, über das, worüber wir eigentlich weinen und brüllen müssten, auch lachen zu können� Sie eröffnet die Möglichkeit, zu einem Problem einen neuen Zugang zu finden� Satire ist daher Verführung zum Nachdenken” (60)� A mocking tone can make difficult discussions and new approaches possible� However, many people refuse to engage satire and it is not as popular as other narrative modes (60)� Satire occupies a kind of outsider position appropriate for its goal to teach: “Satire hat ihren Platz nicht auf den Frontseiten, sie kommt nicht zu den besten Environment as Colonizer, Migration as “Überfremdung,” and Satire in Hohler 361 Sendezeiten im Fernsehen, vielleicht ist das auch nicht der angemessene Platz� Satire nimmt den Klappsitz ein im großen Welttheater” (61)� The critique in “Die Rückeroberung” features the indirectness and gentleness characteristic of Horatian satire� The text evokes more indignation than laughter� In particular, the story mocks human ignorance of systems theory and biocultural interdependence� It calls into question citizens’ domination of the city space and architecture and disregard for the animal immigrants� The story illustrates willful ignorance of possible damage to the animals/ humans through the practices of exclusion� Though the overall tone is one of indignation, the story also features episodes of irony and humor� The satirical narrative in Hohler’s story “Die Rückeroberung” expresses indignation over knowledge about the human-nonhuman relationship, general environmental policy, the hegemonic human attempts to maintain control of human domains, and the sublimation of intuition in dealing with these challenges� The story implies that nearly all humans in the story-demonstrate insufficient knowledge about the environment and human-nonhuman interaction� The police force exhibits a certain ineptitude when it consults the zoo director instead of a wildlife manager for advice on how to corral and remove the large deer herd (8)� The police force also proves unable to corral the deer in the lakefront park (8), anticipate their movement within the city (9), or eradicate them when they are corralled in the parking garage (10-11)� The authorities wrongly attribute the slaughter of one of the deer to a pack of dogs, until a veterinarian and wildlife biologist team determines it was killed by a pack of wolves (12-13)� Similarly, the people of Zurich generally operate on the prejudicial misconception that they must maintain control of their ecosystem� From the beginning of the story, humans display a limited capacity to interpret and understand their nonhuman neighbors� The story displays annoyance over the larger societal response to the imposition by the eagles and the general human detachment from the ecosystem� Human beings in the story rely on scientific and pragmatic epistemologies that imagine the animals as objects in the human space, instead of as coinhabitants of a shared place� The ornithology clubs create a running list of eagle nest locations, generating basic data about the infusion of birds into the ecosystem� The biologists investigate the new nesting habits of the eagles and identify no reason (i�e�, no precedent) for eagles to seek permanent habitat in the cities� The city government votes to tolerate the eagles with the quixotic hope that they reduce the city’s rat population, and thereby address a human problem� City officials encourage citizens to protect their pets which the eagles may otherwise target (6-7)� This data gathering and self-preservation represents common statistical, behavioral, and administrative models of knowing� None of the responses con- 362 Brian McInnis sider potential human causes to the perceived raptor invasion or aim to provide a systemic approach to the coexistence and survival of humans and other species� Yet as early ecocritic William Rueckert noted, the first law of ecology states that everything is related to everything else (108)� The broad populace is not attuned to its place in the web of life� The narrator proves more engaged with the environment and more open to exploring and acknowledging the human need for their fellow inhabitants than other Zurich residents� The narrator represents a rare Zurich citizen who is curious and reflective enough to identify and analyze the contexts and connections of the eagles’ appearance� He identifies the eagles as new on the scene; he knows that they have not been regular inhabitants of the city� His views out the window include an openness and inquisitiveness� Upon seeing the first eagle on his neighbor’s roof, he attempts to rationalize why it might be there� He initially considers that it may have escaped a zoo or an aviary, but then acknowledges that such human-oriented, objectifying displays would normally feature birds with clipped wings to prevent their escape� By contrast, the first eagle has not only flown to the top of a house, but departs to ride the currents, gliding high above the city (Hohler, “Rückeroberung” 5-6)� The narrator is clearly observant, curious, knowledgeable about his space, enworlded� He serves as a model which invites the reader to adopt his ecological viewpoint� In narrating the reintroduction of several of the animals to Zurich, the story projects indignation over human sublimation of intuition� This restricts the human ability to adapt, despite the fact that the larger ecosystem requires it� The first-person narrator’s neighbors wait to respond to the eagles perched on their roof because they do not know what to do (6)� While the homeowners contemplate how to proceed, the first-seen eagle brings a mate and they build a nest and settle in� By contrast, the narrator contemplates what might have led the eagle to the neighbor’s house, intuits that it neither escaped an aviary or got lost, and tries to make sense of its presence on the neighbor’s roof and gliding above the city (5-6)� When deer antlers appear on the Bellevue, one of the busiest squares in Zurich, many residents rationalize this unique occurrence as a prank (7)� No one in the city bothers to investigate how recently they were shed or whether the animal that left them might be nearby, in part because game wardens have not recently seen an animal that large� Similarly, officials initially fail to sufficiently analyze what has disemboweled a deer, and attribute the kill to dogs (13)� However, the canton veterinarian views this pronouncement skeptically, consults with wildlife biologists, and infers that a wolf pack made the kill� Thus the narrator and scientists who seek to understand the wildlife draw on instinct to help interpret the visitors’ behavior, while the police officers and larger populace are often satisfied by a simpler answer� The narrator, canton Environment as Colonizer, Migration as “Überfremdung,” and Satire in Hohler 363 veterinarian, wildlife biologists, and the forest ranger pay closer attention and reflect more meaningfully on the wild animal behavior and the interdependence of humans and nonhumans� The satirical narrative displays indignation over the outmoded environmental policy that works to maintain human control of the ecosystem� Though the city authorities choose to tolerate the eagles, they vow to remove subsequent invaders, including deer, wolves, bears, snakes, and plants� The governmental and civilian attempts to re-exert control over the mammals involves machine guns, sharpshooters, knives, and maroon shell fireworks� The humans rely on force to overcome and remove the animals and plants� The townspeople fight to maintain the status quo separation of human and nonhuman actors� The story guides the reader to infer Hohler’s environmental politics� One outtake is that humans repress messages from the environment, as noted above with the appearance of the eagles on the narrator’s house, or the large antler rack left at a major traffic center� The Zurich citizens also do not want to hear the nonhuman world’s general message that the human and nonhuman lives clash because of an imbalance in the occupation of space and interaction with the other� As each new wave of species arrives in Zurich, the humans react with force� In the case of animals noted above, this means guns� In the case of the invasive oversized plants, city leaders apply herbicides� Both strategies fail to re-establish human control of the city� Instead of bullets and chemicals, which Hohler might deem dangerous for organisms beyond the intended targets, he would likely advocate for a more system-based solution� A further point of criticism lies in the exploitation of the environment to gain energy resources, specifically oil� During the police force’s special operations mission to trap and exterminate the deer herd in the Urania parking garage, shooters hit a deer and a gas pump, so that blood and oil flow together into a pool on the garage floor: “Eine einzige Hirschkuh verirrte sich in den unteren Ausgang und wurde von einer zornigen Garbe erfaßt, zugleich mit der Tanksäule, so daß sich das Blut des erlegten Tieres mit dem auslaufenden Öl zu einer rotbraunen Lache vereinigte” (11)� This metaphorical representation of the human violence enacted against the deer to remove it from the city and against the earth to extract oil for energy and petroleum products calls humans to account for their abusive exercise of power� Hohler’s environmental activism shaped not only the pro-environmental message of the story, but also its reception� The author published the story “Die Rückeroberung” in an eponymous collection in 1982� In November of that year, when the Zurich Arts Council’s (Kulturförderkommission) Working Group on Literature recommended Die Rückeroberung for the canton Zurich’s annual literature prize, a Zurich government official refused to sanction the selection� 364 Brian McInnis The official cited Hohler’s critique of the cantonal government, especially its support of nuclear energy, as the reason to diverge from the Arts Council’s suggestion (Bauer and Siblewski 161)� Hohler had continued to protest the construction of the Kaiseraugst nuclear plant, including at a performance before a large audience at the facility on 1 August 1982� The Zurich government thus effectively censored Hohler’s free speech and the book for his public critique of government energy policy� The author became an intensified focal point of politics when the members of the Working Group on Literature unanimously resigned and awarded him an alternative prize� Other recipients of the cantonal awards donated a portion of their prizes to fund a monetary award for Hohler from cantonal funds (Bauer and Siblewski 19)� In this way, Hohler achieved recognition from colleagues for his book� At the alternative awards ceremony, the author donated his prize money to create a fund for older artists and modeled aiding community members in need (21)� He demonstrated membership in that community and compassion for other members� This extended the intersubjective vision of living with the community that he had foregrounded in “Die Rückeroberung�” An additional chapter of this text’s political message proceeds from the discourse of the animal and plant reverse colonization that forms a thinly veiled critique of the canton Zurich’s divisive politics of migration� The story’s allegory represents migrants to Zurich as eagles, deer, wolves, bears, and snakes and therefore as animals, as distinctly other� Switzerland welcomed significant numbers of migrants throughout the 20th century in order to have a sufficiently large workforce to support the country’s industries� The fictional migrants appear in groups like the national groups of foreign workers who traveled to Switzerland� The story illustrates fears that the migrants will stay indefinitely since the animals and plants appear and then settle in� There is no sense that they will leave� Hohler’s strategy of representation takes the risk of critiquing the homogeneous definition of Swiss identity and exclusive policies against migrants precisely because this is satire� There are multiple possible readings of the story, and the entertaining yarn and the possible critiques attract a variety of readers with potentially different interests� Readers may be entranced by the creative design of animals establishing control of a major world city and the thriller-like complication of humans battling ensuing waves of immigrant animals and plants� The narrative initially drives the reader to seek an answer to the question of whether Zurich citizens will retain control� Later in the story, the intensification of the conflict propels the reader to learn whether the citizens will even survive� The deployment of satire means that this text can be enjoyed for its imitation of a cinematic thriller or as an homage to the spaces and quirks Environment as Colonizer, Migration as “Überfremdung,” and Satire in Hohler 365 of the author’s home city and its residents� The tale extends beyond a parody because it reveals faults in the Zurich governmental responses to the crisis and implies that they should be corrected� The text performs a complicated combination of the ecosystem’s justified revenge on human abuses and highlights Swiss xenophobia toward migrants in the dramatization of colonization� Satire enables readers to consider this paradox and related critiques or focus their reading on the drama’s entertainment� The first-person narrator plays a significant role in activating reader reflection� In the introduction, the narrator connects readers to the action through a personal address that establishes a basis for empathetic participation in solving human dissociation with and abuse of the environment� From the beginning, he models judgment and the application of reason, for example in the critical practice of reading the ecosystem to identify the golden eagles� The narrator guides the reader in a similar kind of critical reflection through his critique of Zurich officials’ failure to corral the deer with fences or lasso-swinging police officers and of citizen disregard for children’s deaths in traffic� By the end of the story, the narrator describes how the city administration’s initiative to eradicate the invading plants shifts from extensive applications of herbicide to clear-cutting� The ivy, petasites, and giant ferns block some roads and railways as well as hotels, construction sites, and homes, thereby restricting transport, commerce, and daily life� These developments underscore nature’s potential threat to people� After guiding the reader to reflect critically, the narrator leaves the denouement unresolved� This narrative strategy presents readers the opportunity to shape the outcome of the conflict between nature and humans� The appeal through fiction is likely more broad and effective than an essay or governmental report� The story implies links between the effects invading organisms and human immigrants exert on Zurich citizens� The eagles ride the updrafts swirling around the Hotel International, symbolically linking themselves to a central city district and to an international identity (Hohler, “Rückeroberung” 6)� The deer are personified in their “Stadtbesichtigung” of the Bellevue, Limmatquai, and Central (9-10)� When the herd spreads through the Paradeplatz, the bankers, furriers, and jewelers lock their doors and exterior roller blinds out of fear of the “brown bodies,” the other that unceasingly pass their shops: “Am Paradeplatz verriegelten die Großbanken ihre Portale, die Bijoutiers und Pelzhändler ließen ihre Rollläden über ihre Türen rasseln und blickten angstvoll aus den Schaufenstern auf die braunen Leiber, die sich unaufhaltsam vorbeidrängten und die Straße in ihrer ganzen Breite ausfüllten” (10)� At the showdown between deer and police at the Parkhaus Urania, the mixing of blood and oil represents the interwoven fates of the Swiss citizens and the animal migrants (11)� When they disperse, they are again personified as moving in small groups “wie nach einem 366 Brian McInnis Plan” (11)� The migrants exhibit group behaviors that stand out to the Swiss like those of human immigrants� They socialize within their group of eagles (6), deer (8-11), and wolves (13); gather food in group-specific ways (deer 8; wolves 13, 15; bears 16); and elicit unusual screams of fear (cats hunted by eagles), produce mating calls (bucks), and spar with their knife-like antlers in the street (12)� A bear is anthropomorphized as serving himself at a deli (16)� Families view children as endangered, disenroll them from the schools, and move to other communities like white city dwellers who move when their neighborhood becomes more ethnically diverse (17)� Businesses hire new employees to ensure that their profit forecasts are not reduced by the encroachment of the invading plants (18)� The eagles, deer, wolves, ivy, and other immigrants hold their ground and become members of the local community (19-20)� Most actions by the waves of animal immigrants reveal their persistence and echo the survival instincts characteristic of successful human migrants� The allegory of the immigrant invasion suggests that migrants also threaten the safety of Swiss residents� Swiss commuters huddle in streetcars and drivers shelter in closed-windowed cars or building entryways amid waves of deer� The humans recede from the flow of animals: Die Verwirrung war groß� Die Tramwagen stauten sich, ohne daß sich die Passagiere getrauten, auszusteigen, die Automobilisten versuchten ihre Wagen auf das Trottoir zu steuern, einige ließen angesichts der nahenden Herde ihr Auto mitten auf der Straße stehen und flüchteten in einen Hauseingang, andere kurbelten ihre Scheiben hoch und blieben sitzen, sie verschwanden in den Tieren wie ein Stein in den Fluten� (9) The narrative deploys the simile of a flood washing over a stone in a river to describe the envelopment of Zurich citizens by “deer�” When “wolves” appear later to hunt the deer, they also attack and kill a Swiss resident of Yugoslav descent, thus “immigrants” attack other “immigrants” (13)� “Snakes” attack citizens who go about their daily life and reach into a newspaper vending machine, retrieve luggage from train station luggage storage, and cook at home (16-17)� The allegory projects how immigrants change school enrollments and prompt housing shortages in adjoining districts (17)� The influx of new migrants further necessitates that the city assign employees to control and clean up after them (12, 18)� This story is about humans changing and fighting to retain mastery of the environment, but also of migration� The imposition of the plants and animals represents the environment demanding human acknowledgment and equality in the ecosystem� It also represents migrants who largely coexist with Zurich residents without incident� The human violence directed toward the environment and the migrants unites the two readings� Environment as Colonizer, Migration as “Überfremdung,” and Satire in Hohler 367 The allegory accentuates the joint discourses of the environment and migration with the preposterous police responses to the migrant “deer” population� The city creates a special forces unit to fight the “deer” because they do not leave the city: “Man schickte deshalb einige Männer nach Amerika, wo sie von Cowboys im Lassowerfen ausgebildet wurden” (12)� Once trained, the police officers deploy this outdated migrant “deer” containment measure, but remain ineffective in removing migrants from the city� The narrator dryly quips that though the lasso-throwing police officers add flair to city life, the “animal” migrants and additional dangers persist: Aber auch ihnen gelang es nicht, die Hirsche aus der Stadt zu vertreiben� Man gewöhnte sich einfach an das Bild eines durch eine Einbahnstraße preschenden Hirsches, der zu Pferd von einem lassoschwingenden Polizisten verfolgt wurde� Das hat auch etwas Schönes, gewiß, und auf eine Art ist es eine Bereicherung des Stadtlebens, aber irgendwie ist mit diesen Tieren auch der Schrecken wieder eingezogen� (12) Zurich city officials are out of touch in their attempts to manage the imbalance in the ecosystem and the influx of “brown bodies” into Swiss society� The story’s humor turns on the ineptitude of administrative and individual decisions� The cowboy-trained, horseback-riding deer hunters are grotesque� The author’s euphemistic description of this as a “Bereicherung” of city culture with country touches expresses his ironic disgust at its ineffectiveness� The narrator also responds in a grotesque fashion to the city leaders’ obsessive response to the wolves’ slaughter of one boy but their disregard for the annual loss of multiple children to traffic: “Daß jedes Jahr ein paar Kinder unter den Autos starben, daran hatte man sich gewöhnt, das war eben ein möglicher Tod in der Stadt, aber daß Kinder von Wölfen zerrissen werden, das sollte nicht vorkommen, nicht in einer Stadt wie Zürich” (14)� The pre-emptive celebration of the forester’s elimination of thirty-three wolves could be viewed sardonically when the wolf kills continue (15)� The narrator may be mocking the woman who gets bitten when trying to kill a snake with a spatula (17)� Overall, outrage supersedes laughter� The story presents indignation over the very real situation of crippling environmental change and morally dubious human responses� This narrative suggests that Zurich officials and residents pursue exclusionary practices to keep the migrants (non-Swiss persons allegorized as animals) at bay� Wendy Wheeler argues that humans exist as co-dependent and co-evolving in their ecosystem, and that they and their co-citizens of the ecosystem communicate and evolve in tandem (Whole Creature 135-36)� The confrontations in “Die Rückeroberung” suggest a similarly intersubjective and semiotic relationship characterizes hu- 368 Brian McInnis man interactions with their ecosystem� Particularly perilous is the allusion that “brown bodies” are less than other Swiss bodies, that they are subhuman� The story calls out the allegorical demotion of non-Swiss bodies as unconscionable, unethical, and unsustainable, since the Swiss ultimately also face a tenuous chance of survival when they oppose the other� A complicated history of economic, political, and cultural struggle between conservative and left-leaning interests shape Hohler’s discourse on migration� Beginning in the 1950s, Swiss industry grew rapidly and workers increasingly left the agricultural sector to enter the expanding industrial and service sectors (Church and Head 229; Maissen 287)� Workers achieved wage growth that at times eclipsed GDP growth and enjoyed significant public investments in transportation infrastructure, education, and unemployment insurance (Church and Head 230-31)� Postwar Swiss economic growth necessitated increased immigrant labor and drove societal conflict� Non-native workers frequently took low-wage jobs (230)� The largest contingent came from Italy and worked in industry, construction, and tourism (Maissen 291)� Workers also came from Germany, France, Austria, and Spain, with smaller numbers from Yugoslavia, Portugal, and Turkey (D’Amato 180)� They included 10,000 Hungarians welcomed after the 1956 uprising and Tamils fleeing the Sri Lankan civil war in 1979 (Church and Head 235, 245)� Between 1950 and 1970, the non-Swiss minority increased to rates significantly higher than in other European industrialized countries, from 6�1 percent to 17�2 percent (Maissen 291)� The influx of new wildlife populations in Hohler’s story prompts governmental and societal actions to control and significantly limit the animals, much like Swiss groups argued against increased immigration in post-WWII Switzerland� Swiss antagonism toward non-Swiss workers began with semantics� Popular labels for international workers included Fremdarbeiter and implied a greater distance to them than the German term, Gastarbeiter� Swiss trade unionists argued for more restricted immigration in the 1950s (Church and Head 239)� Beginning in the mid-1960s, as the Swiss government shifted its immigration policy from approving short-term visas for rotating groups of workers to integrating the international workers, these workers solicited greater support� They promoted their needs in unions, lobbied for family unification in Switzerland, and argued for integration of international children into regular Swiss school classrooms (D’Amato 180)� Such requests and the perceived growth in the numbers of international workers prompted renewed opposition to Überfremdung� Hohler criticizes politicians in “Die Rückeroberung” because they take some of the most exclusionary actions toward migrants� In Swiss politics, the 1960s saw some conservative parties oppose immigration� Initially, industrialist James Environment as Colonizer, Migration as “Überfremdung,” and Satire in Hohler 369 Schwarzenbach, a Zurich representative in the National Assembly, led the party Nationale Aktion gegen die Überfremdung von Volk und Heimat (NA) with proposals to reduce the number of foreigners to 10 percent of the population (by ca� 400,000) and to place a permanent quota on non-citizen residents (Church and Head 239; Maissen 292)� This proposal was narrowly defeated in 1970� Schwarzenbach left the party, founded the more centrist Republikanische Bewegung, and again proposed two anti-foreigner initiatives, but in 1971, these also failed (Church and Head 240)� Right-leaning politicians regrouped and in 1981 defeated the left’s Être Solidaire initiative to better treat foreign workers (245)� Numerous print publications produced overtones that colored social perception of the immigration debate, and two books are particularly relevant in the context of Hohler’s “Die Rückeroberung�” Albert Bachmann, an editor of the Swiss soldier’s field manual Das Soldatenbuch (1958), cast his 1969 book Zivilverteidigung as the civilian complement to the field manual. It promotes civilian capabilities to defend the independence of Switzerland amid perceived danger (Bachman, Zivilverteidigung 5)� It argues that every people (Volk) competes with others for preeminence and can be threatened internally and externally (13)� It defines Swiss identity through freedom and Christianity, through attachment to place, family, community, and belonging (14, 163)� At the same time, it warns readers to recognize the imposition of foreign propaganda, especially totalitarian ideologies, and to counter those ideologies with Swiss freedom of the spirit, judgment, and personal responsibility (163)� The text plays through defensive scenarios for nuclear, biological, chemical, and psychological warfare, and guides reader actions and perceptions� It even promotes surveillance of the adversary by federal officials and individual citizens, which implies citizens spying on other citizens (185)� It projects a particularly conservative Swiss posture that could have led some immigrants to feel unwelcome� The Eidgenössisches Justiz- und Polizeidepartement (EJPD) sent a copy to every Swiss household in October 1969, ca� 2�1 million copies in German, French, and Italian (Löffler 174)� The text was widely available and present in public discourse� In the context of “Die Rückeroberung,” Zivilverteidigung mandated increased militarization of civil society and underscored Swiss identity formation through practices of inclusion and exclusion� Alfred Häsler’s Das Boot ist voll: Die Schweiz und die Flüchtlinge, 1933-1945 (1967) also significantly shapes the debate about who belongs to the Swiss community� The book memorializes Swiss stories describing the removal and interception of foreign refugees during the Nazi dictatorship� The volume incorporates material from the EJPD; private archives of Jewish organizations, churches, and individuals; and Carl Ludwig’s report Die Flüchtlingspolitik der Schweiz in den Jahren 1933 bis 1955. It provides an important record of Swiss 370 Brian McInnis governmental and civilian actions during the Nazi period, but limited analysis� Ludwig and Häsler historicize Swiss use of the term Überfremdung that characterizes the debate about migrant workers in post-WWII Switzerland� In a 1914 report from the Department of Political Affairs to the Bundesrat that evaluated perceived Überfremdung, foreigners comprised 14�7 percent of the population in 1910� Yet this varied regionally, and some cities had larger foreign populations, in Basel 37�6 percent, in Geneva 42 percent, and in Lugano 50�5 percent� The migrants were largely neighbors: Germans and Italians, with fewer French and Austrians� In response to the perceived substantial migrant cohort, the report only recommended an intensified naturalization process (Ludwig 56-57)� The texts by Häsler and Ludwig provide weighty evidence of efforts to maintain perceived notions of Swiss identity from 1933 to 1945� On 31 March 1933, the director of the EJPD, Bundesrat Heinrich Häberlin ordered that refugees should only be granted temporary residency in order to prevent permanent settlement of “wesensfremde Elemente” (Häsler 15, 327)� In an address before the Neue Helvetische Gesellschaft on 3 April 1937 in Zurich, Häberlin’s successor, Dr� Heinrich Rothmund, warned of the need to restrict increasing Überfremdung of Swiss society� He identified the sources of the Überfremdung as a misguided liberal worldview and irresponsible indifference (Häsler 15-16)� Häberlin’s and Rothmund’s policies aimed primarily to prevent immigration of European Jews, who, with the threat of expanding Nazi Germany, found Switzerland’s history of freedom, democracy, and neutrality, and the engagement of Swiss refugee organizations promised a better hope for safety and survival than their home countries� Überfremdung became a politicized term deployed to preserve homogeneous ideals of Swiss society� From at least 1937, it functioned as an anti-Semitic word that sought to emotionally justify measures to prevent Jewish immigration� After World War II, the term was reactivated to describe non-native workers that helped drive Swiss prosperity� In 1970, the foreign population reached 17�2 percent (Church and Head 230)� This was similar to the 1910 number of 14�7 percent, but Überfremdung shaped public debate to a greater degree in 1970� Überfremdung threatens the imagined communities in Hohler’s story� The publication of Häsler’s book in 1967 at a peak of migrant labor points to another phenomenon as well� At the time, Überfremdung shaped public discourse, but Das Boot ist voll attests to the fact that Swiss society may not have fully processed the outcome of its immigration policies in the lead up to and during World War II� Thousands of Jews and political refugees were turned away at the Swiss border, or for those who made it into the country, they were returned to the border, where many fell victim to Nazi detainment� Many did not survive� The Swiss bureaucrats who enacted and enforced wartime refugee Environment as Colonizer, Migration as “Überfremdung,” and Satire in Hohler 371 policy and the Swiss people who did not effect changes to political leadership or to the policy contributed to the deaths of thousands of refugees� Other factors, such as Swiss officials’ concern over the possibility of a Nazi invasion, complicate this history� Nonetheless, the conservative principles that sought to preserve Swiss identity in the 1930s - a judgment that non-Swiss Jews were foreign to Swiss nature - and the principles that sought to preserve Swiss identity in Bachmann’s view of Swiss identity in the 1960s - Switzerland as a Christian nation shaped by democratic freedom and attachment to place, family, community, and belonging - shared an impetus to preserve a perceived notion of Swiss identity� Häsler’s book participated in a Swiss version of Vergangenheitsbewältigung. The book continued to have resonance into the 1980s, when director Markus Imhoof released a dramatized version as an award-winning film in 1981� Hohler’s representation of the police force and politicians as militarized and predisposed against migrants echoes the complicated history shaped by Überfremdung, the EJPD, post-WWII Fremdarbeiter and immigrants, political discourse, and Bachman’s molding of Swiss identity� In “Die Rückeroberung,” Zurich governmental responses to the immigration of fauna and flora evolve from toleration to elimination� The city initially endures the population of migrant eagles because they hunt indigenous rats (Hohler, “Rückeroberung” 7)� In a similar fashion, city officials at first try to manage and relocate the deer herd from the park (8, 12)� Those goals are shortlived, however, as the deer exit the hastily erected electric park fencing and snarl motorized and foot traffic (8-10)� Any disruption of pedestrians, street cars, automobiles, and trucks eventually means a disruption of commerce� The migrant deer’s tangling of traffic and business combined with popular alarm at the concentration, movement, and uncontrollability of “brown bodies” prompts the city to escalate its position and shoot the hungry but passive migrants (10)� Once the wolves arrive and kill a child in addition to deer, the city approves licensed hunters to kill the migrant wolves, eagles, and deer (14)� Civilian responses to the migrant animal populations also turn savage� At the beginning of the story, city dwellers observe eagles and fear the deer� With the wolf attack on the child at school, numerous parents escort their children to school with their government-issued assault rifle, modeling violence as the appropriate response to migrants (14)� This opposition to the animals is accentuated when a forester successfully lures thirty-three wolves to their death, and the city celebrates the achievement by allowing pubs and restaurants to remain open all night with some offering free beer (15)� Gun violence and a successful attack on the migrant animals earn the ambush organizer fame and all citizens a celebration� City and civilian responses to the migrant animals escalate to militarization� 372 Brian McInnis Both groups prove eager to maintain control over the migrants as opposed to living with them� The dystopian narrative questions the goal of human control of the biological ecosystem� While the new species invade human spaces and clash with people, occasionally causing a death, the animals do not at first endanger the citizens� The narrator’s initial investigations of the events hint at the idea of cohabitation, at humans needing to take the chip off their shoulder regarding their supremacy and to share Zurich with the migrant eagles, deer, wolves, snakes, and bears in their environment� The broader Zurich population gradually exhibits increasing hostility toward the animal migrants� An additional menace of fast-growing ivy and other plants threatens humans to a greater degree� The plants limit human mobility, access to homes and workplaces, and safety by providing cover to predators� In combination with the animals, the ivy and plants pose a threat that many people cannot endure (17-18)� This is a worst-case imaginative representation of Überfremdung that questions the viability of forceful opposition to new city residents, whether person, animal, or plant� The ecosystem’s opposition to humans is mythically prefigured in the parking garage deer hunt� According to the myth of Uranus, he is the first-born child of Gaia and represents the addition of a masculine element to the world� Uranus produces many children with his mother Gaia and bans them to the depths of the earth in Tartarus� Gaia becomes angry at this imprisonment, equips her children with a sickle, and encourages the male progeny to attack their father� Chronos leads the revolt by castrating Uranus, and the children supersede their father in importance (Stapleton 207)� In Hohler’s story, the humans assume the role of Uranus and isolate the deer in the “Parkhaus Urania�” The environment (Gaia) resists by leading the deer in an escape from their detention in the parking garage (11)� The deer and other members of the ecosystem, including the wolves, bears, snakes, ivy and petasites (Gaia’s children) figuratively castrate humans and severely restrict their efforts to maintain control of the ecosystem� The city’s human inhabitants rely on past experience to plan their reassertion of control over the invasive plants and animals� They fail to reconsider the relationship between human beings and the environment� When the ivy threatens to overrun the city, cut off access to other communities, and even overrun the roads, the city workers resort to applying heavy doses of herbicide (Hohler, “Rückeroberung” 20)� But this has no effect on the plants and is potentially hazardous to the human residents� It illustrates the divide between the community’s habituated ineffective interactions with the environment and the necessity for new ideas and policies� The narrator doubts that a planned clearing of plants during the winter will be successful (20)� Environment as Colonizer, Migration as “Überfremdung,” and Satire in Hohler 373 The colonization of the city by the animals and plants provokes sociological changes among the city’s residents� A number of these changes have already been noted� There are additional police officers aimed at keeping the animals at bay and eliminating them� The city and companies train new corps of gardeners to battle the ivy that daily grows from the garden to the street and threatens to stop all transport and commerce (18)� The citizens -including the eight-yearolds - embrace carrying weapons as a means for self-protection, and thus embrace a personal militarization that mirrors the militarization of governmental agencies� Human losses to wolves and snakes prompt trauma, and many citizens lack the resiliency to psychologically cope with these changes (14)� Zurich citizens take reactive positions to the impositions by other nonhuman members of the ecosystem and become increasingly violent and psychologically scarred� Additional changes to ways of life indicate a regression of cultural systems in Zurich that represent a greater threat to humanity than cohabitation with other plants and animals� The residents restrict their movements out of fear that the ivy will provide cover for the wolves, snakes, bears, and deer that could endanger human safety� As the police force and city agencies become embroiled in responding to colonization, they protect citizens less� Robberies and vigilante justice increase� In this context, emigration exceeds immigration� The ivy is only removed from the exit ramps leaving the city and not from those coming into the city (19)� The hotel, early in the story marked as a symbol of civilization, is overgrown by ivy, and the construction cranes on the new supermarket are abandoned (20-21)� Thus the economic engines of travel and commerce, of construction and food sales, are brought to a standstill, and the network of culture appears to lack a means of survival, let alone development� This is a strong warning that human society as Swiss citizens know it is at risk� In conclusion, the satire “Die Rückeroberung” critiques Zurich environmental and migration policies as ineffective, with Zurich representing broader Swiss society� The story suggests that environmental policies need to be more holistic� Humans must read and interact with the signs by other members of the ecosystem in a manner that acknowledges their right to peacefully coexist� The text argues for the necessity of intersubjectivity between human and nonhuman actors in order for both to share the earth as a common home� The narrative also hints that migrants in Swiss society endure a problematic existence because of governmental and societal conceptions of Swiss identity and foreigners� A reading of the story in tandem with the history of migrants in Switzerland suggests that Swiss policies of exclusion toward migrants are culturally determined by unprocessed historical prejudices� Hohler uses the oppositional system of satire to call for a reckoning among Swiss government officials and citizens for more inclusive policies toward the environment and human migrants� The “news 374 Brian McInnis from nature” suggests that human interactions with nonhuman residents of the ecosystem must be intersubjective and further the wellness of all� Works Cited Arntzen, Helmut� “Satire�” Ästhetische Grundbegriffe� Ed� Karlheinz Barck� Vol� 5� Stuttgart: Metzler, 2003� 345-64� Bachmann, Albert, and Georges Grosjean� Défense civile. 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