Germany and the Imagined East [1 ed.] 9781443804196, 9781904303589

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Germany and the Imagined East

Germany and the Imagined East

Edited by

Lee M. Roberts

CAMBRIDGE SCHOLARS PRESS

Germany and the Imagined East, edited by Lee M. Roberts This book first published 2005 by Cambridge Scholars Press 15 Angerton Gardens, Newcastle, NE5 2JA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright ©2005 Lee M. Roberts and contributors

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN 1-904303-61-7

TABLE OF CONTENTS Part I: Eastern “Germanies” ............................................................................................. 1 Dis-membering and Re-membering the GDR: Material Culture and East Germany’s Self-Reflexive Memory in Good Bye, Lenin! Wendy Graham Westphal.................................................................................... 2 Making New Enemies: How Slavs Replace Turks in G. W. Pabst’s Der Schatz Michael Huffmaster........................................................................................... 16 Liegt Böhmen noch am Meer? Ingeborg Bachmann’s Landscapes as Utopian Constructs Sarah Painitz...................................................................................................... 23 The Secrets of the Kazabaika: Ethnic and Geopolitical Scenarios in Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s Venus in Furs Anne Dwyer....................................................................................................... 32 Part II: Eastern Europe..................................................................................................... 49 Habermas and his Yugoslavia Tomislav Zelic................................................................................................... 50 Imagining the East: Some Thoughts on Contemporary Minority Literature in Germany and Exoticist Discourse in Literary Criticism Maria S. Grewe.................................................................................................. 69 Inviting Barbarism: Nietzsche’s Will to Russia Nicholas Martin ................................................................................................. 80 Part III: The Near East and Nearby .................................................................................. 95 Orientalism, Expressionism, Imperialism: Bruno Taut’s Competition Design for the “House of Friendship” in Istanbul Didem Ekici....................................................................................................... 96 Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Between Persia and Greece Azadeh Yamini-Hamedani .............................................................................. 113 “Crouching Tiger” and Hidden Desires: Exotic Danger in Waldemar Bonsels’ Indienfahrt and Thomas Mann’s Tod in Venedig Sukanya Kulkarni ............................................................................................ 125

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Part IV: The Far East ....................................................................................................... 141 “So that Asia can become great”: The Representation of Eastern Cultures in Fritz Lang’s Die Spinnen (1919) Richard John Ascárate ..................................................................................... 142 The Orientalist Reflection: Temporality, Reality, and Illusion in Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde Francesca Draughon ........................................................................................ 159 Brecht and the Chinese Experiment in Theater Imogen von Tannenberg.................................................................................. 174 Imaginary Terrain of German Orientalism: The Image of Japan in Die Gartenlaube, 1854-1902 Hoi-eun Kim.................................................................................................... 184

LIST OF IMAGES 3-1 3-2 3-3 4-1 4-2 4-3 4-4 4-5 4-6 4-7 4-8 4-9 4-10 4-11 4-12 4-13 4-14 4-15 4-16 4-17 4-18 4-19 4-20 4-21 4-22 4-23 4-24 4-25 4-26 4-27 4-28

Bruno Taut’s House of Friendship page 110 Bruno Taut, sketch of the grand central hall 110 Hans Poelzig, House of Friendship Proposal 111 Stills from Edison’s recording of Native American dance 145 Incan city framed and surveyed 148 Naela the High Priest 148 Naela prepares to sacrifice Lio Sha 148 Glimpses into Kolonialhalle at the German Colonial Exhibition 150 Glimpses into Kolonialhalle at the German Colonial Exhibition 150 Kay Hoog’s study 150 African weapons and shield, Buddha and Egyptian statue 150 Spiders’ headquarters 151 Kay Hoog in pawn shop of Chinese quarter 151 Exotic Others in catalogue of 1896 German Colonial Exhibit 152 Depiction of exotic Others in Die Spinnen 152 Exotic Others in catalogue of 1896 German Colonial Exhibit 152 Depiction of exotic Others in Die Spinnen 152 Exotic Others in catalogue of 1896 German Colonial Exhibit 152 Depiction of exotic Others in Die Spinnen 152 Encoded message from the Spiders 153 Ivory sliver with a mysterious symbol 153 Scene from Kay Hoog’s travels 153 Scene from Kay Hoog’s travel 153 Bookshop 154 Carl Spitzweg’s Der Bücherwurm (1850) 154 Kay Hoog in salon car of South Mexican Railroad 156 Allusion to Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture 166 Transformation of dance-like theme 167 Pedal point in double bassoons 170 Recitative-like phrase in solo violin 170 Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Baroness Elisabeth Bachofen-Echt 173

PREFACE I emphasize…that neither the term Orient nor the concept of the West has any ontological stability; each is made up of human effort, partly affirmation, partly identification of the Other. That these supreme fictions lend themselves easily to manipulation and the organization of collective passion has never been more evident than in our time, when the mobilizations of fear, hatred, disgust, and resurgent self-pride and arrogance—much of it having to do with Islam and the Arabs on one side, “we” Westerners on the other—are very large-scale enterprises.1 -Edward W. Said

The passage above is from the preface of Edward W. Said’s 25th Anniversary edition of Orientalism (2003), but it serves well to illustrate the guiding principle behind the Twelfth Annual Interdisciplinary German Studies Conference, “Germany and the Imagined East,” held on March 13-14, 2004, at the University of California, Berkeley.2 Although East and West presently seem charged with the same energy as North and South during the American Civil War, this conference focused not on drawing specific boundaries, like the infamous Mason and Dixon line, but on examining the countless perceptions of East-West relations. It seems altogether appropriate that German Studies take up this question, for twentieth-century Germany witnessed within its own national borders the power of West-vs.-East mentalities. For many in the West, Germany represented a shield against the Soviet East; for their counterparts on the other side of the Wall, Germany was a barricade against the capitalist West. Whichever side one found oneself on, however, Germany was the middle country, the place that belonged to neither side completely. But Germany was not always as simple to find on a map as the lands on either side of the former divide between the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic. Adalbert Stifter’s protagonist says at the end of the nineteenth-century novella Brigitte: “In Spring I took up my German [deutsch] clothing, my German [deutsch] walking stick and wandered toward the German 1

Said, Orientalism, xvii. Heartfelt thanks go to The Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities, The Institute of European Studies, and the German Department of the University of California, Berkeley, for their generous support of this conference. 2

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[deutsch] fatherland” (My translation).3 As Brigitte takes place largely in presentday Hungary, the clothing and stick referred to as “deutsch” distinguish the narrator’s possessions from the eastern variety. The location of this German (“deutsch”) fatherland is less clear, however, as Germany (Deutschland) did not exist politically until 1870/71. Stifter’s wanderer probably took “deutsch” simply to mean “where German language is spoken,” which would include present-day Austria (Österreich), the eastern part of the German-speaking realm nearest to Brigitte’s Hungary. Today solidly a part of the political map of Europe, Germany is arguably a portion of an imagined cultural sphere called the “West,” but some claim that Germany has been a part of the West for only a short time. Complementary to Said’s Orientalism, Ian Buruma’s and Avishai Margalit’s Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies (2004) presents the so-called Occidentalist perspective, in which the West appears as a world without human feeling, increasingly hungry for material comforts. Like Orientalism, Occidentalism “strips its human targets of their humanity.”4 Within Buruma’s and Margalit’s argument, Germany played a role in the creation of this image of the Occident. They write: [It] is clear from the writing of German nationalists in the 1920s and 1930s that their view of the West was of an old world, effete, money-grubbing, selfish and shallow. The danger, in their eyes, was that the seductions of this old world were corrupting and enervating young Germans who should be fighting for a glorious future. Only their sacrifice in a storm of steel would save them from being ruined by the banality of the West.5

Not so long after the end of World War II, when writers in Gruppe 47 attempted to recreate a German language without the taint of Nazism, vestiges of earlier ways of thinking were still prevalent. Buruma and Margalit explain the sort of notions of the East that may still have had a hold on post-World War II German consciousness: German heroic propaganda [,] different from its counterpart in Western Europe, [proposed] the idea that Germany was different, the Reich in the middle, culturally distinct from the West, beyond the civilizing borders of the old Roman Empire. This is what made Konrad Adenauer, the conservative but unromantic German politician from the western Rhineland, mutter “Asia” every time his train crossed the Elbe into Prussia.6

3

Stifter, Brigitte, 64. Buruma and Margalit, Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of its Enemies, 10. 5 Ibid., 58. 6 Ibid., 53. 4

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Adenauer, a Westerner with possibly Orientalist opinions, thus is implicated in the creation of the conceptual division between the Orient and Occident. But he was perhaps merely part of a system of expression that conceived of the East in such terms. These views may seem jarringly similar to present-day friction in the Middle East, but differences between the East and West have not always been depicted so negatively. As early as 1786, Gottfried August Bürger’s Baron von Münchhausen told German readers of his bizarre adventures in Russia, which the Baron described as a wondrous place more interesting than anything found in the French West. I will not bore you, gentlemen, with idle talk of the constitution, the arts, sciences and other oddities of this magnificent capitol of Russia. Instead, I will keep to greater and more noble objects of interest, namely to knightly deeds and praiseworthy behavior, which fit the nobleman far better than a bit of dusty Greek or Latin or any snuff boxes and fancy things from French intellectuals, and the like (My translation).7

Of course, we know better than to mistake the Baron’s word for anything real, but his point might be clear to anyone embroiled in the debate over literary models: the East has virtues different from but equal to those of the West. In the nineteenth century, when Germany had entered the race for colonies, Theodor Fontane wrote Effi Briest, a novel that treats most explicitly problems inherent in societal ideals, especially pertaining to marriage. In this fiction we find evidence that Germany had discovered a larger world around its empire. The protagonist Effi marries the debonair Baron Innstetten and moves to Kessin in the German-speaking East, where she is surrounded by people of varied backgrounds and ethnicities. Her first reaction to the new world is both shock and interest; upon seeing a man in a fur hat and coat, she remarks: “He looked like a Starost…although I must admit that I have never seen a Starost” (My translation).8 Effi’s understanding of her surroundings draws on some scant knowledge of the Slavic East, in which the so-called Starost, a sort of village official in Polish, exists; in this respect, she is an Orientalist. But she finds the East exciting, nonetheless, from the Japanese screen, which she imagines might be in a home in the East,9 to her enthusiasm for the Slavs in the region.10 Despite her seeming openness towards the world, however, Effi is frightened by a small picture of a Chinese man, and she dreams that it comes to life and visits her bedroom one night. She admits: “A Chinese person always is somehow creepy [gruselig]” (My 7

Bürger, Bürgers Werke in einem Band, 232-3. Fontane, Effi Briest, 203. 9 Ibid., 191. 10 Ibid., 203-4. 8

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translation).11 Although Effi is still within German-speaking territory, her sentiments illustrate Buruma’s and Margalit’s point that some conceived of the Prussian East as Asia, something frightfully foreign. As a land in the middle, as Germany has often been called, its literature contains an astounding number of references to the East. Hermann Hesse’s The Journey to the East (Die Morgenlandfahrt) is a prime example. The narrator, cleverly called H.H., recounts his experiences in a secret league that endeavors to travel to the East, a place that holds for each person something different but always valuable. For the narrator, the East promises the unparalleled beauty of Princess Fatima. For others, the East holds such treasures as a thing called tao or a fabled snake with special powers. For all, the East promises something extraordinary. The narrator explains: “[A]t certain stages of our Journey to the East, although the commonplace aids of modern travel such as railways, steamers, telegraph, automobiles, airplanes, etc., were renounced, we penetrated into the heroic and magical.”12 As the tale unfolds, the unusual nature of the narrator’s East becomes apparent. So much of the heroic and magical experience is just a figment of the League members’ imagination in a place that is not so far from the journey’s starting point. Indeed, the first great phenomenon in the journey takes place in a chapel in a region called Spaichendorf, obviously still within German-speaking territory. Herein, perhaps, we find the true nature of the narrator’s East, a fictitious world created with the myths one finds at home. The narrator admits even that the journey is “only a wave in the eternal stream of human beings, of the eternal strivings of the human spirit towards the East, towards Home.”13 How, you might ask, can the East be home to this narrator from the Germanspeaking West? The answer is simple: This East, both familiar and foreign, is a literary invention. The narrator travels in a group that encounters during the journey various other members of the League, and “[each] one of them [has] his own dream, his wish, his secret heart’s desire, and yet they all [flow] together in the great stream and all [belong] to each other, [share] the same reverence.”14 The journey defies space and time, permitting visits with both actual historical personages in ancient China and fictitious characters in German literature, but each of the experiences is, for the reader, only a glimpse into the mind of the narrator. Journey to the East is the narrator’s attempt to write a history of the League, but the result is little more than a narrative used to make sense of his life. While writing, the narrator realizes: “In order that something like cohesion, something like causality, that some kind of meaning might ensue and that it can in some way 11

Ibid., 205. Hesse, Journey to the East, 6. 13 Ibid., 13. 14 Ibid., 23-4. 12

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be narrated, the historian must invent units, a hero, a nation, an idea, and he must allow to happen to this invented unit what has in reality happened to the nameless.”15 Almost a demonstration of psychoanalysis, Journey to the East is, as a text, the medium through which we readers can acquaint ourselves with the narrator. That is, we learn in this tale more about the narrator than about the East; he is his own East. Our Journey to the East and our League, the basis of our community, has been the most important thing, indeed the only important thing in my life, compared with which my own individual life has appeared completely unimportant. And now that I want to hold fast to and describe this most important thing, or at least something of it, everything is only a mass of separate fragmentary pictures which has been reflected in something, and this something is myself, and this self, this mirror, whenever I have gazed into it, has proved to be nothing but the uppermost surface of a glass plane.16

As a reflection in the surface of a mirror, the narrator sees in his own story that his journey through life was a path to self-discovery. Self-discovery seems a most fitting way to categorize such present-day writers in German as Yoko Tawada, as her themes often involve some aspect of selfcritique in connection with an exploration of the Other. Tawada’s work resists traditional methods of literary classification, however. Like so many writers of non-German descent writing in German, she stands on the border of the national and the foreign. German film maker Wim Wenders wrote in the preface of Where Europe Begins (2002) the following comments on Tawada’s book Talisman: “Yoko Tawada…has written this complex, subtle intelligent and poetic book in German [!]…At the same time, this is definitely not a ‘German’ book, if I may put things in simplistic terms. No one else but a Japanese woman could have had these experiences.”17 While Wenders’ words seem to make sense, one must wonder how exactly he means them. Why could only a Japanese woman have had such experiences? Perhaps Wenders tapped into a discourse alive from as early as the nineteenth century, when Friedrich Nietzsche made similar claims about an alternate, eastern experience of the world in Beyond Good and Evil (1886): The strange family resemblance of all Indian, Greek, and German philosophizing is explained easily enough. Where there is an affinity of languages…everything is prepared at the outset for a similar development and sequence of philosophical 15

Ibid., 47. Ibid., 48. 17 Wenders in Tawada, Where Europe Begins, XI. 16

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Did Nietzsche and Wenders draw the same conclusion: That the Ural-Altaic experience—in this case, Japanese—must be different from the so-called IndoEuropean experience? It is a question for scholars to consider. Most recently, Todd Kontje’s German Orientalisms (2004) appeared, ushering in this new direction in German Studies, which will seek to elucidate the complex tangle of metaphors used in the German-speaking world to grasp the so-called East. Kontje writes: Geographic locations…have symbolic connotations….It is one thing to say that Germany lies in central Europe and another when Thomas Mann says that Germany is “das Land der Mitte” (the land of the center) that must find a balance between Western rationalism and Eastern mysticism. Geography, at least as it is conventionally understood, dwells in the realm of facts; symbolic geography, in contrast, is the province of the literary imagination.19

“Germany and the Imagined East” takes part in the same trend in research, one that seeks to situate the German-speaking world into a series of discourses on the Self and the Other. Similar to both Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, research on Germany’s imagined East will highlight how easily artistic and everyday expression can impose a hierarchy on the world that otherwise might not exist. Kontje demonstrates this very point most aptly, explaining how German civilization moved toward an intellectual colonization of the East: One can bring the benefits of civilization to non-European peoples—or impose civilization on them by force—but one cannot turn “natives” into Germans. Or can one? Beginning in the late eighteenth century, German ethnographers, historians, and linguists began to view themselves as the direct descendants of an “Aryan” culture originating in the Caucasus or in the mountains of northern India, as distinguished from the Semitic culture of the Middle East. From this perspective, the Germans had no need to conquer and colonize eastern lands, for they were already part of a greater Indo-European whole. The politically fragmented Germans could thus adopt a high moral ground in condemning the violent conquests of other colonizing nations, while quietly absorbing selected portions of the Middle East and Central Asia into a pan-German Kultur.20

18

Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 27-8. Kontje, German Orientalisms, 1. 20 Ibid., 8. 19

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While most of the essays in this collection address neither Kontje’s IndoEuropean question nor Nietzsche’s concept of Ural-Altaic philosophy, they do offer a spectrum of views that elucidate the wealth of the topic, Germany and the Imagined East. Divided according to four geographic regions, the essays each treat an aspect of German culture in relation to a perceived East. Part I, “Eastern Germanies,” features the former German Democratic Republic and Austria. An examination of both film and literature, these essays treat the problems of German reunification, as well as the threat of a multifaceted Other and the concept of national borders in Austria. In Part II, “Eastern Europe,” three essays analyze the connections in literature, philosophy and politics between the German-speaking world and former Yugoslavia, Romania and Russia. The essays in Part III, “The Near East and Nearby,” visit a range of connections between Germany and Turkey, ancient Persia, and India. From architecture to philosophy to literature, these essays underscore the various ways in which East and West have both threatened and complemented each other. Finally, in Part IV, “The Far East,” the examination of intercultural exchange spreads beyond the linguistic boundaries once called IndoGermanic to include the German perception of China and Japan. These final four essays combine views on film, literature, history and music in a multidisciplinary collage that invites scholars from all departments to explore just how varied EastWest relations have been. As any discipline is also part of the discourse of its time, “Germany and the Imagined East” illustrates that German Studies have evolved to encompass Germany on a world scale. No longer simply the study of a national literature unaware of the many perspectives it affords its fellow countries and disciplines, German Studies are quickly becoming a field that reaches beyond traditionally established borders to place the “Germanies” into a global context. Just a little more than eighty years ago, Oswald Spengler published The Decline of the West (1918-23), in which he explained the historical development of the so-called West and made predictions about its future. While some scholars have argued that Spengler did not intend his title to be taken fatalistically, some in both the imagined West and the imagined East have reacted as if both hemispheres were locked in constant struggle. Similarly, Robert D. Kaplan has written in the introduction to the 2004 translation of Taras Bulba, Nikolai Gogol’s tale of the fearsome Cossacks, that we “need more works like Taras Bulba, to better understand the emotional wellsprings of the threat we face today in places like the Middle East and Central Asia.”21 Kaplan’s words will ring true to many in the world, but perhaps it is also time that we grasp the East and West not as opposites but as complementary sides of the same coin. To accomplish this, it will take committed scholars and enthusiastic students in dialogue on a topic that perceives 21

Kaplan in Gogol, Taras Bulba, xii.

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the incredible power of expression not as a vehicle for guessing how future relations will develop but as a discursive tool with which we can actively shape our lives. WORKS CITED Bürger, Gottfried August. Bürgers Werke in einem Band. Weimar: Volksverlag, 1962. Buruma, Ian, and Avishai Margalit. Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies. New York: Penguin Press, 2004. Fontane, Theodor. Sämtliche Werke. Vol. 7. München: Nymphenburger, 1959. Hesse, Hermann. The Journey to the East. Translated by Hilda Rosner. New York: Picador, 1956. Kaplan, Robert D. “Introduction.” In Taras Bulba, by Nikolai Gogol, xi-xxi. Translated by Peter Constantine. New York: Random House, Inc., 2004. Kontje, Todd. German Orientalisms. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. 1966. Reprint, New York: Vintage Books, 1989. Said, Edward W. Orientalism. 25th ed. New York: Vintage Books, 2003. Spengler, Oswald. Der Untergang des Abendlandes:Umrisse einer Morphologie der Weltgeschichte. 2 vols. München: Beck, 1922-23. Stifter, Adalbert. Brigitte. 1970. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1994. Tawada, Yoko. Where Europe Begins. Translated by Susan Bernofsky and Yumi Selden. New York: New Directions, 2002.

PART I: EASTERN “GERMANIES”

Dis-membering and Re-membering the GDR: Material Culture and East Germany’s Self-Reflexive Memory in Good Bye, Lenin! Wendy Graham Westphal When the Wall fell fourteen years ago, the former German chancellor Willy Brandt prophesied optimistically: “Jetzt wächst zusammen, was zusammen gehört.”1 At the time, few probably anticipated that the non-material differences between East and West would be so tenacious and that integration on a social level would prove as difficult as it has been. While some Easterners embraced their new country with open arms and never looked back, others began the complex process of self-examination. Rather than completely forsake their past and welcome the changes and westernization of the East, many East Germans began to retrospectively identify themselves even more strongly with their common history. A type of wide-spread nostalgia particular to East Germany, dubbed Ostalgie, arose. This Ostalgie was and is expressed through a longing for the everyday aspects of their former lives in the GDR. 2 “Ossi Partys” with Honecker lookalikes, GDR games and the cult-like revival of East German products are manifestations of this development. Popular media and “serious” literature both soon followed on the heels of this trend. A few examples will help illustrate the resonance the contemporary memory of the former GDR has gained among the public: In the fall of 2003, for example, television broadcasting companies such as ZDF, Sat 1, MDR and RTL reacted to (and marketed) the feelings of nostalgia with hugely successful shows entitled “Die DDR Show” or “Die Ostalgie Show”. These shows included appearances from former East German entertainers and athletes, children dressed up in FDJ uniforms and also featured GDR products. This popular trend has since found its way into German music, film and literature. Songs like the eastern group “niemann’s” 2001 1

Friederike Eigler and Peter Pfeiffer, eds., Cultural Transformations in the New Germany: American and German Perspectives (Columbia: Camden House, 1993), 42. 2 See Daphne Berdahl, “‘(N)Ostalgie’ for the Present: Memory, Longing, and East German Things,” Ethnos 64, no. 2 (1999): 192-211; Martin Blum, “Re-making the East German Past: Ostalgie, Identity, and Material Culture,” Journal of Popular Culture 34, no. 3 (Winter 2000): 229-53; Paul Cooke, “Performing ‘Ostalgie’: Leander Haußmann’s Sonnenallee,” German Life and Letters 56, no. 2 (April 2003): 156-67; Claudia Sadowski-Smith, “Ostalgie: Revaluing the Past, Regressing into the Future,” GDR Bulletin 25 (Spring 1998): 1-6.

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hit “im osten” and films like Sonnenallee, Helden wie wir and, most recently, Good Bye, Lenin! attest to the public’s enduring fascination with the artistic portrayal of the way the GDR is remembered. Of these films, Good Bye, Lenin! has enjoyed the most success and has even been called one of the most successful German films of all time.3 Although the popular media’s attention span is generally short, the fact that the literary world has staked its claim on this topic means that it warrants an in-depth scholarly examination.4 After the Reunification, the difficulties surrounding the social integration of East and West Germans became apparent. As the friction between East and West increased, some Westerners indelicately joked that the Wall should be rebuilt. The most recent development which illustrates the East-West antagonisms is the founding of the political party, “Die Partei”. “Die Partei” was founded by the editor of the satirical magazine, Die Titanic, and its purported political goals clearly reflect the satirical slant of the magazine. Its slogan: “Baut die Mauer wieder auf” is not suggested as a serious alternative but indicates that mutual resentments still exist even fifteen years after the Fall of the Wall. 5 While Wolfgang Becker did not rebuild the Wall in his film, Good Bye, Lenin!, he did create a symbolic “island” in which the values of the GDR continued to exist (the film poster proclaims unequivocally: “Die DDR lebt weiter – auf 79 qm!”). The protagonist, Alex (played by Daniel Brühl), attempts to symbolically prolong the existence of the GDR for his critically ill mother (played by Katrin Sass), who is a strong believer in the socialist ideals of her country. At the outset of the film, Alex’s mother has a heart attack and falls into a coma. In a Rip-van-Winkle manner, she “sleeps” through the Fall of the Wall in 1989 and the first eight months of its immediate aftermath. In order to shield his mother from the upsetting news of the Reunification once she has awoken, Alex creates a series of news broadcasts with his West German friend and co-worker, Denis. In their three newscasts, Alex and Denis “re-write” history in order to explain the changes that his mother has noticed. The appearance of Coca-Cola advertisements, the massive 3 In the spring of 2003, Good Bye, Lenin! drew 6 million German viewers into the cinema and was subsequently honored with numerous film awards for the best European film (including nine German “Lolas”, the French “César”, the Spanish “Goya” and a nomination for the “Golden Globe”). 4 The coming-to-terms with the social and political changes in the East during and following 1989 has taken on various forms of expression in the rapidly growing genre now known as Wendeliteratur, or Reunification literature. Although I have not yet come across the term “Reunification film,” I think this designation suitably describes “Reunification literature’s” cinematic cousin, and I will use it in this sense in this paper. 5 “Baut die Mauer wieder auf!” = Rebuild the Wall! “Die Partei” was founded on August 2, 2004 by Martin Sonneborn, editor of the Titanic, and a group of West Germans. According to Sonneborn, the party had approximately 2,000 members as of September 25, 2004.

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influx of West Germans in East Berlin and even the Reunification itself are re-told in the newscasts in a way which restores some dignity to the memory of the events surrounding the Reunification. Thus, Wolfgang Becker turns the tables on the West Germans’ joking threat to rebuild the Wall. Instead of creating a “prison” to which the “Jammer-Ossis” are “sent back” by Westerners, he creates a symbolic “refuge” where the lost feelings of solidarity, self-worth and stability can be re-lived and remembered. The memory of East Germany is itself undergoing a formative process. In the new context of the post-Reunification society, past events are currently being reevaluated and re-contextualized. In general, I will show that the recollections of the GDR (as they are portrayed in Good Bye, Lenin!) have shifted from the public to the private sphere of memory. In the current transformation of the memory functions, the East German “public” or “cultural” memories have been de-valued and the symbols of more personal, “communicative” memories have taken their place. The material culture of the GDR (i.e., former East German products) therefore serves as a vehicle for the expression of new communicative memories. Ironically, the East German material culture is used to represent non-material motifs like the human de-valuation (unemployment and loss of feelings of selfworth) that followed the Reunification in the East. East German material culture has been chosen to symbolize the past because of the parallels between the “life cycles” (their de- and re-valuation) of the East German products and of the biographies of the East German citizens themselves. Moreover, the narration of the everyday aspects of their East German socialist lives and the material culture that accompanied it is itself a characteristic of the “communicative” memory. This shift in mnemonic techniques reflects the former East Germans’ need to distance themselves from the negative aspects of their political past while at the same time reinforcing their common identity and thereby countering feelings of inferiority in the face of Western dominance. My study draws on the research of Maurice Halbwachs and Jan Assmann and their theories of “collective”, “cultural” and “communicative” memories. Before I begin my analysis of the memory shift in Good Bye, Lenin!, however, it will be necessary to take a brief look at what exactly is meant by these terms. In his study Das kollektive Gedächtnis (The Collective Memory), Maurice Halbwachs claims that memories are selected and sustained not just by individuals, but also by certain groups. 6 This he calls a “collective memory”. Moreover, he shows that even private memories cannot be separated from the societal influences in which the individual lives. As a result, memories of 6

Ironically, the most significant work on social memory had almost itself become a victim of “academic forgetfulness.” It was Jan Assmann who, in 1986, revived the discussion of this work. See Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen (Munich: Verlag C.H. Beck, 1997), 45.

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both historical and personal events can change according to the current values and priorities of the group that remembers them. He writes: “Auf diese Weise verblaßt langsam die Vergangenheit, so wie sie mir früher erschien. Die neuen Bilder überdecken die alten.”7 In this sense, the current portrayal of the memory of the GDR is itself also a construct, despite the tendency to “document” the past by building the narratives around historical facts.8 An example from the film Good Bye, Lenin! which nicely supports Halbwachs’ findings is Alex’s description of his project. At the end of the movie, Alex admits that the “GDR” he creates for his mother is not what it was “really” like, but is actually better than the original: Das Land, das meine Mutter verließ, war ein Land, an das sie geglaubt hatte. Und das wir bis zu ihrer letzten Sekunde überleben ließen. Ein Land, das es in Wirklichkeit nie so gegeben hat.9

In his attempt to reconstruct everything that had melted away after the Wall fell, Alex (like Maurice Halbwachs) realizes that the past cannot be recaptured. Thus, memories of the past are as much constructs as the room Alex creates for his mother. Towards the end of the movie, when Alex reports that the GDR is granting “refugees” from the FRG political asylum, he again has to admit: Irgendwie musste ich zugeben, dass sich mein Spiel verselbstständigte. Die DDR, die ich für meine Mutter schuf, wurde immer mehr die DDR, die ich mir vielleicht gewünscht hätte.10

For Alex in Good Bye, Lenin!, the news broadcasts for his mother and the recreation of a room filled with GDR furniture (which is in the literal sense what Aleida Assmann calls an Erinnerungsraum or a “memory room”) are attempts to come to terms with the Reunification and the dream of the utopia that can never be fulfilled. Aleida Assmann adds to Halbwachs’ findings in her recent work on memory: “Aber die Erinnerungen stabilisieren nicht nur die Gruppe, die Gruppe 7

Maurice Halbwachs, Das kollektive Gedächtnis (Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke Verlag, 1967), 59. 8 Interestingly, a paradox has arisen between the Reunification literature and film’s desire to “historicize” itself with documenting photographs, video and newscast clips and references to historical events or dates (This tendency can even be observed in completely fictional texts). At the same time, the Reunification works are aware of the subjectivity of their recollections. 9 Wolfgang Becker, Good Bye, Lenin! [the screen book to the movie], ed. Michael Toteberg (Berlin: Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf Verlag, 2003), 131. 10 Ibid., 104.

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stabilisiert auch die Erinnerungen.” 11 One can view the recent publication of narratives about the GDR as fulfilling the latter role, i.e., that of the group stabilizing the memories, since certain aspects of life in the GDR are frequently remembered (the East German Alltag and its material culture) and other aspects (such as political ideology or indoctrination practices) are not at all central collective memory themes. More recently, Jan Assmann has expanded upon Maurice Halbwachs’ theory of collective memory in his book Das kulturelle Gedächtnis. Jan Assmann differentiates between two sub-divisions of collective memory: “communicative” and “cultural” memories, which he sees as bipolar elements in the memory framework. 12 The communicative memory represents the person-to-person narration of recent events which the individual personally experienced. Since the individuals are the “memory carriers,” Jan Assmann suggests that the lifespan of the communicative memories is limited to a period of approximately forty to eighty years. Once the carriers of the memories have died, new communicative memories replace the old ones. 13 Jan Assmann labels the narration of these remembered events “‘Geschicht[en] des Alltags’, eine ‘Geschichte von unten’”. 14 It is these “stories of the everyday” and the narration of everyday material culture which have come to dominate the literary and cinematic memory of life in the GDR. Jan Assmann goes on to contrast these more “organic” communicative memories with the much more formal “cultural” memories. He argues that cultural memories represent ideas and beliefs which the group has carried beyond the temporal limits of the personal memories. They are sometimes mythical or religious beliefs (like the celebration of Christmas or other historically-based religious or political holidays) which the group has institutionalized although there are no personal memories of the events in question. He writes that the cultural memory stabilizes the long-term identity of the group and adds: “Das ist keine 11 Aleida Assmann, Erinnerungsräume: Formen und Wandlungen des kulturellen Gedächtnisses (Munich: Verlag C.H. Beck, 1999), 131. 12 “Der Polarität der kollektiven Erinnerung entspricht also in der Zeitdimension die Polarität zwischen Fest und Alltag, und in der Sozialdimension die Polarität zwischen einer wissenssoziologischen Elite, den Spezialisten des kulturellen Gedächtnisses, und der Allgemeinheit der Gruppe.” Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen (Munich: Verlag C.H.Beck, 1997), 55. 13 “Das kommunikative Gedächtnis umfaßt Erinnerungen, die sich auf die rezente Vergangenheit beziehen. Es sind diese Erinnerungen, die der Mensch mit seinen Zeitgenossen teilt. Der typische Fall ist das Generationen-Gedächtnis. Dieses Gedächtnis wächst der Gruppe historisch zu; es entsteht in der Zeit und vergeht mit ihr, genauer: mit seinen Trägern. Wenn die Träger, die es verkörperten, gestorben sind, weicht es einem neuen Gedächtnis.” Ibid., 51. 14 Ibid., 51.

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Alltagsidentität.” 15 Jan Assmann describes the main difference between the communicative and cultural memories as the cultural memory’s reliance on ritualized ceremonies. He writes that: “Der Hauptunterschied gegenüber dem kommunikativen Gedächtnis ist seine Geformtheit und die Zeremonialität seiner Anlässe.”16 The rigid adherence to the celebration of formalized ceremonies helps sustain a collective identity which transcends the everyday relationships. Thus, national and religious identity is reinforced through the propagation of cultural memories. Using Good Bye, Lenin! as an example, this paper will show that the recollections of the GDR are currently shifting from the general sphere of cultural to communicative memories and that the material culture of the GDR is the vehicle through which this shift is carried out. These definitions represent what Jan Assmann sees as the two types of memory frameworks. The exclusivity of these two definitions and their temporal limitations, however, restrict the examination of memories that do not fit neatly into one group or the other. While Jan Assmann does not explore the “gray” area between cultural and communicative memory continuum, his description of the two as the outermost poles allows us to consider recollections that have elements of both cultural and communicative memories, while still working within his general framework.17 As part of an effort to legitimatize its existence as a sovereign state, East Germany invested a great amount of energy in the attempt to create its own “cultural” memory. These efforts include the ceremonial celebration of state holidays (parades), raising of political heroes to an almost mythical status through public memorials (of historical figures like Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Ernst Thälmann, Karl Marx and Lenin) and the official cultivation of the “myths” surrounding the “founding fathers” of the GDR. While the political fostering of these types of memories was temporally limited to the forty years that East 15 “Das kulturelle Gedächtnis richtet sich auf Fixpunkte in der Vergangenheit. [...] Vergangenheit gerinnt hier vielmehr zu symbolischen Figuren, an die sich die Erinnerung heftet. Die Vätergeschichten, Exodus, Wüstenwanderung, Landnahme, Exil sind etwa solche Einnerungsfiguren [...]. Auch Mythen sind Erinnerungsfiguren: Der Unterschied zwischen Mythos und Geschichte wird hier hinfällig. Für das kulturelle Gedächtnis zählt nicht faktische, sondern nur erinnerte Geschichte. Man könnte auch sagen, daß im kulturellen Gedächtnis faktische Geschichte in erinnerte und damit in Mythos transformiert wird. [...] In der Erinnerung an ihre Geschichte und in der Vergegenwärtigung der fundierenden Erinnerungsfiguren vergewissert sich eine Gruppe ihrer Identität. Das ist keine Alltagsidentität.” Ibid., 52-53. 16 Ibid., 58. 17 Jan Assmann’s temporal limitation of the cultural memories is problematic, since some governments attempt to create a cultural memory of themselves and succeed, even though the memories do not extend into the distant past.

8

Dis-membering and Re-membering the GDR

Germany existed, they nevertheless contain characteristics typical of what Jan Assmann calls “cultural” memories. Following the Fall of the Wall, the cultural memory of the GDR was no longer politically supported and the fact that aspects of the cultural memory are not central to the Reunification works suggests that these “memories” were either not internalized or were rejected by the GDR citizens. Consequently, communicative memories of common experiences in the everyday East German world dominate in the artistic portrayal of life in the GDR. This memory shift signifies a dual need for the former East Germans: the need to distance themselves from their political past (and its cultural memory) while at the same time asserting their collective distinctiveness (Eigenart, Jan Assmann) in the face of the West, through the cultivation of collective communicative memories of the everyday life in the GDR. The film Good Bye, Lenin! depicts this shift away from the cultural memory and towards the everyday, communicative memories. The viewer is already prepared for this transition by the film’s title: Good Bye, Lenin! The use of the English term “Good Bye” informs the audience that the cultural memories of the East are not just being cast off, but they will be replaced by a westernized (or even Americanized) identity. In the film, “Lenin” stands not only for his own person and doctrines, but represents all “founding fathers” of socialist or communist states and their ideology. As I previously mentioned, the raising of these and other historical figures to almost mythical status by East German propaganda, was part of the state’s efforts to create a cultural memory of itself. Thus, the farewell to these political figures represents the farewell to the cultural memories for which they stood. The scene from which the title is drawn is the mother’s heavily symbolic encounter with the dismantled statue of Lenin. Upon leaving her apartment for the very first time, she is confronted with the statue of Lenin that is being flown away. The images and music of this scene are permitted to speak for themselves, as there is no dialog. Lenin, dangling on ropes from the helicopter, is flown down the street. As he approaches the mother, his outstretched arm seems to beckon to her. Then, as he passes, the unreturned greeting becomes a farewell. In the “moment of silence” created in this scene, the entire former East German society (for which the idealistic mother stands) becomes aware of the de-valuation of symbols of the GDR’s cultural memory and bids farewell to Lenin and the ideological and political aspects of their lives. Jan Assmann states that the communicative memory consists principally of “Geschichten des Alltags.” In contemporary representations of East Germany, it is precisely these stories of the “everyday” which dominate the artistic portrayal of life in the GDR. Everyday life was intertwined with the material culture of the former republic and thus unambiguously strong bonds to products manufactured in the GDR are expressed in many Reunification works. However, these products do not just serve as “props” in creating a realistic portrayal of their lives. Rather, the

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memory of the GDR’s material culture is one of the vehicles through which the memory shift from the cultural to the communicative memory is taking place. Since their disappearance (and, in some cases, subsequent reappearance) following the Wende, GDR products have been decontextualized: their original “use-value” has given way to a “symbolic-value”. East German products now serve as mnemonic devices which strengthen the group’s collective tie to a communicatively remembered past. Individuals partake in a collective identity through their connection to common symbols or souvenirs of this shared past.18 The souvenirs of East German material culture do therefore not just represent the shift of collective memories to the sphere of communicative memory through its physical representation of the “everyday”. The actual personal narration of the products’ meaning is a characteristic of the communicative memory. Susan Stewart, a scholar of material culture, explains that the relationship between the souvenir and narration is deeply intertwined: We need and desire souvenirs of events that are reportable, events whose materiality has escaped us, events that thereby exist only through the invention of narrative.19

Thus, the material culture of the GDR does not just represent the shift to the sphere of communicative memory through its physical representation of the “everyday”. Moreover, the actual narration of the products’ meaning is itself a characteristic of the communicative memory. Since the public monuments of the GDR (which were in part symbols of a cultural memory) have largely disappeared, the desire to maintain a physical connection to the former society has moved from the public realm to the private, or from the cultural to the communicative, through the souvenir. Good Bye, Lenin! is a textbook example of this shift. By collecting “souvenirs” of the GDR and re-creating his mother’s East German bedroom, Alex moves souvenirs from a country which no longer exists into the private sphere. Regarding the realm in which the souvenir exists, Susan Stewart explains that the souvenir represents a: [...] transformation of exterior into interior. The souvenir reduces the public, the monumental, and the three-dimensional into the miniature, that which can be enveloped by the body, or into the two-dimensional representation [...].20 18

Aleida Assmann, Erinnerungsräume, 132. Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), 135. Italics mine. 20 Ibid., 137. 19

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Dis-membering and Re-membering the GDR

The slogan on the posters that advertised the film summed up this transition from the public to private realm with the promise “die DDR lebt weiter – auf 79 qm!”. This movement is reflective of the memory shift from the cultural to the communicative memory spheres. The mother’s apartment is an artistic construct in which the GDR products continue to exist as both actual consumer items and symbols of a lost way of life (or as reality, for the mother, and symbols of the communicative memory, for others). Good Bye, Lenin! engages with and highlights the duality of the product signification. This duality of meaning points to the transition that the memory processes are undergoing in the East. The material culture’s central role in relaying memories of the GDR is evident in Good Bye, Lenin!. In the film, Alex’s epic search for the East German Spreewaldgurken (or even an old jar with the label still affixed!) is both a running gag and a symbol for how completely the East was won as a market for Western goods. With loving care, Alex fills empty GDR jars with Western products in an attempt to convincingly re-create East Germany for his bedridden mother. When Alex and Laura move into an apartment that has been abandoned by East Germans who emigrated to the West, Laura’s joy at discovering a working telephone in the apartment is exceeded only by Alex’s ecstasy at finding a supply of Tempobohnen, Globus Grüne Erbsen and Mokka-Fix Gold in their original packages! In the movie, the material culture unequivocally stands for the non-material aspects of their lives that were lost in the tumultuous years following the Reunification.21 Just as the products of the former East stand for the socialist country, the products of the West stand for capitalism and the Western economic conquest in the East. The Coca-Cola advertisement that is hung across the street from the mother’s room symbolizes the unstoppable invasion of Western consumerism. In an attempt to account for the presence of the advertisement, Alex explains in his news report that “der originäre Geschmack von Coca-Cola [wurde] bereits in den 50er Jahren in den Laboratorien der DDR entwickelt.”22 Alex’s mother responds in astonishment, “Coca-Cola ist ein sozialistisches Getränk?”23 Alex’s attempt to rewrite history thus begins with the re-evaluation of their own material culture. 21 In addition to the high unemployment (which still affects over 20% of Easterners), East Germans especially lament the loss of solidarity and of social contacts (which were encouraged in work-related social groups) that were a part of their lives in the GDR. Furthermore, studies have shown that many former East Germans are plagued by feelings of inferior self-worth (which is often tied into the re-structuring of institutions and the subsequent unemployment in the East) and consequently perceive themselves as secondclass citizens in the reunited country. 22 Becker, Lenin, 79. 23 Ibid., 79.

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The reference to products, both Eastern and Western, plays a central role in other Reunification works, as well. In Thomas Brussig’s novel Sonnenallee, the uncle from the West “smuggles” Western candy and coffee into the East on his visits to the family. In the autobiographical work Zonenkinder, Jana Hensel laments about how the products of the East were quickly replaced by those of the West: Statt Otto & Alwin-Bildchen sammelten wir Überraschungseier, statt Puffreis aßen wir Popkorn, die ‘Bravo’ ersetzte die ‘Trommel’, und statt an verregneten Sonntagnachmittagen Kastanienmännchen zu basteln, Bierdeckel zwischen die Speichen unserer Fahrräder zu montieren oder Mau-Mau zu spielen, saßen wir nun vor Monopoly oder lasen Micky-maus.24 Why has Reunification literature and film chosen to focus on the products as their symbols for the past? While I cannot extensively explore this question here, I will briefly point out several possible reasons. On the most superficial level, everyday consumer items were the common denominator for East Germans and are as such especially well-suited to serve as universal symbols of a common identity. The lack of selection meant that the consumer’s bond to the goods was focused on a few products (rather than strewn amongst twenty or thirty different brands.) Additionally, the physical appearance of the products’ packaging, which often remained unchanged over decades also recalls the lost stability that existed in the GDR.25 Furthermore, the detailed knowledge of the physical qualities and peculiarities of the various products (what Martin Blum calls the “product biographies”) reminds the easterners that their everyday knowledge was previously valued (and of great 26 pragmatic use) and counters their feelings of inferiority. Consequently, the discarding of these products stands for the loss of East German identity and for the rising feelings of inadequacy. More than just the characteristics of the products themselves, I posit that the nostalgia for the products also calls to mind the social relationships and the work involved in attaining or “earning” harder-to-get products. I am referring to the social relationships 27 28 (“Vitamin B”) that were necessary to obtain Mangelwaren—or so-called “Bückwaren.”

24

Jana Hensel, Zonenkinder (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2003), 20. See: Martin Blum, “Re-making the East German Past: Ostalgie, Identity, and Material Culture,” Journal of Popular Culture 34, no. 3 (Winter 2000): 229-53. 26 A concrete example of this tendency can be found in the board and card games (such as “Kost the Ost”, “Es geht seinen Gang” or “Überholen ohne einzuholen”) which were produced following the Reunification and which “test” the players’ knowledge of East Germany and East German products. The questions to the games are such, that the average West German can generally not win. Thus, the games create a forum in which the East Germans can feel like the “winners” and in which their unique knowledge of life in the GDR (and its products) is rewarded, rather than discredited. 27 Matthias Biskupek, Was heißt eigentlich DDR? (Berlin: Eulenspiegel Verlag, 2003), 3941. 25

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Dis-membering and Re-membering the GDR

Consequently, the products of the GDR are not just intimately tied to the individual’s own biography, but also to the individual’s relationship with others in the GDR. Thus, the memories of the products of the GDR are examples of communicative memories in that they 29 represent “Erinnerungen, die der Mensch mit seinen Zeitgenossen teilt.” In addition, Daphne Berdahl speculates that there is a relationship between the need for a Gedächtnisort (memory place) and the Ostalgie for the GDR material culture: In the context of profound displacement following re-unification, reflected in the popular saying that we have “emigrated without leaving [home],” Ostalgie can be an attempt to reclaim a kind of Heimat (home or homeland), albeit a romanticized and hazily glorified one (Huyssen 1995).30

Therefore, having lost their Heimat in the public sphere following the Reunification, East Germans try to restore what is lost by collecting souvenirs of their past in the private sphere. Finally, the use of consumer products to create and stabilize an after-the-fact East German identity mobilizes Western values and thus reflects a type of ironic resistance. By harnessing the values of Western consumerism and applying them to Eastern products, former East Germans throw the consumerism (that was new in the East) back into the West’s face, albeit with an unexpected twist: the products represent a socialist and not a capitalist system. What all of these explanations have in common is the relationship between the individual and the product. Ultimately, it is the recollection of the personal biographies that the products stimulate that gives the material culture its significant role in the recollection of the GDR. Reunification literature and film draws upon this personal bond to symbolize the human transformations of de- and re-valuation following the Fall of the Wall. The contemporary Japanese-German writer Yoko Tawada states that: “Die Fragmente, aus denen man sein Leben rekonstruieren könnte, müssen im Müll gesucht werden.”31 Tim Putnam and Valerie Swales posit in “Between Keeping and Not-Keeping” that the throwing-away of objects is a reflection of personal, emotional changes: Beyond their immediate functions, objects articulate psychic and social life, and both personal and cultural transformation involves changes in objects and in how they are kept. The “putting-away” or “not-keeping” of objects is therefore an 28

Stefan Sommer, Das große Lexikon des DDR-Alltags (Berlin: Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, 2003), 94-95. 29 Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis, 50. 30 Daphne Berdahl, “‘N(O)stalgie’ for the Present: Memory, Longing, and East German Things,” Ethnos 64, no. 2 (1999): 202. 31 Yoko Tawada, “Der Sammler und der Tod: Bruce Chatwins Utz,” in Sammeln-AusstellenWegwerfen, ed. Ecker, Stange and Vedder (Königstein/Tanus: Ulrike Helmer Verlag, 2001), 190.

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inescapable and sometimes painful aspect of self-transformation, accurately described as a feeling of being cut off from part of oneself.32

Good bye, Lenin! illustrates the verity of both statements since the film is based on portrayal of the devaluation and revaluation of East German products, which consequently symbolize the de-valuation of their users’ lives through unemployment and the accompanying feeling of inadequacy. In the East, the Reunification brought many Western goods, which were frequently of superior quality and which certainly carried a stamp of superior status. As a result, almost all Eastern goods were replaced bit-by-bit with Western goods. With this transition, the Eastern products were unwanted, were thrown away, and became waste. In Good Bye, Lenin! the drastic devaluation of all Eastern goods and its symbolic relationship to losses at the human level is poignantly depicted. In his never-ending search for a Spreewaldgurken jar, Alex roots through the garbage dumpsters outside his apartment building. An elderly neighbor, Herr Ganske, thinks he is searching for food and makes the connection between the throwing away of Eastern goods and the new standing of the East Germans clear for the viewer: “So weit haben die uns schon. Dass wir im Müll rumfischen müssen.”33 When Alex asks Herr Ganske if is he has a jar of Spreewaldgurken, the man immediately replies by informing Alex about his personal problems: “Tut mir leid, junger Mann. Ich bin selbst arbeitslos.”34 In this scene, the relationship between the devaluation of material goods and the new (inferior) standing of the East Germans in the soon-to-be reunited Germany is clearly depicted. The search through the garbage is also symbolic of the Easterners’ struggle to salvage aspects of their previous identity that they had considered casting off after the Reunification. In another scene, Alex’s mother reveals that she has hidden her life savings of 30,000 East German Marks in the living room cabinet. In horror, Alex realizes that the cabinet is standing on the sidewalk among other discarded furniture for the Sperrmüll. Alex searches frantically through the drawers of the cabinets lining the street until he finally finds the money. Like the discarded furniture, though, the money of the East, which is directly symbolic of the East Germans’ life-long labor for the state, also proves to be worthless since the bank’s exchange deadline has already passed. Enraged, Alex throws the money away, thus perpetuating the revaluation-devaluation circle. Only through Alex’s efforts to rebuild an East German microcosm for his mother does it become clear how 32

Tim Putnam and Valerie Swales, “Between Keeping and Not-Keeping,” in SammelnAusstellen-Wegwerfen, ed. Ecker, Stange and Vedder (Königstein/Tanus: Ulrike Helmer Verlag, 2001), 281. 33 Becker, Lenin, 56. 34 Ibid., 56.

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completely the East has changed and how quickly the Eastern way of life was discarded. The disposal of the GDR’s material culture is therefore symbolic for the East German’s feelings of inadequacy following the Reunification. Where does Alex look for the East? In the garbage. In his efforts to recreate the GDR, Alex re-values its material culture. By extending this re-valuation process to East German individuals as well, Alex attempts to give the GDR citizens back a feeling of self-worth that many had lost. The cycle of de-valuation and re-valuation on a human level is exemplified in the movie by Alex’s encounter with the East German Cosmonaut Sigmund Jähn. Sigmund Jähn was the first German in space and was a national hero for the East Germans. The film begins with a scene from Alex’s childhood, in which he watches the television broadcast of Sigmund Jähn’s flight into space in 1978. In this scene, which uses actual documentary footage, Jähn is clearly depicted as a hero figure for both the young Alex as well as for the entire country. The subsequent transformation of Sigmund Jähn’s social position in the film from cosmonaut to taxi driver thus contrasts radically with his former standing as a national hero. On leaving the hospital one night, Alex sees Sigmund Jähn standing next to his taxi and reflects: Da war er. Idol meiner Jugend. Wie ein beschworener Geist aus meiner Kindheit. Sigmund Jähn. Er gab keine Autogramme. Redete nicht zu Pionieren über die Geheimnisse des Universums, die Freiheit in der Schwerelosigkeit oder die Unendlichkeit des Kosmos. Er fuhr nur ein kleines, stinkendes Lada-Taxi.35

In the movie, Sigmund Jähn is ashamed of his new situation as a taxi-driver and at first denies that he is the former cosmonaut. His loss of pride and feeling of self-worth is representative for the de-valuation that many East Germans felt. To combat these feelings, Alex constructs a world in his news broadcasts in which the East Germans maintain their dignity during the Reunification process. Sigmund Jähn serves as the centerpiece of this symbolic re-valuation process. At the film’s climax in the final news broadcast, Alex has Sigmund Jähn replace Erich Honecker as secretary general of the GDR and in a grand gesture, it is Jähn who opens the border to the West. Through his simulated newscasts, Alex gives the East Germans back a piece of their dignity and symbolically re-instates cultural heroes like Sigmund Jähn. The fate of Sigmund Jähn in the movie is a fictional construct which stands for the transformation of the individual’s status in the reunited Germany. The film convincingly depicts the changed standing of the East Germans after the Wende, and its use of documentary evidence (such as actual news clips) to support the 35

Ibid., 114.

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memories lends the interpretation of the past credibility. In reality, however, Sigmund Jähn did not end up as a taxi driver after the Reunification, but rather enjoyed a very successful career working as an advisor for both the Russian Education Center for Cosmonauts and the European Space Agency. Consequently, the re-writing of this national hero’s personal history reflects the unavoidable subjectivity involved in the contemporary reevaluation of collective memories. In conclusion, the memory of the GDR is undergoing a formative process as the cultural memories of East Germany as a political power are replaced with communicative memories of the East German Alltag. The nostalgia for former East German products transcends a mere longing for the tastes, scents and feel of the East Germans’ past. Rather, there exists a close bond between the users and the product itself. The narration of the symbolic value of the GDR’s former material culture serves as the vehicle through which the communicative memory is currently being expressed. The devaluation and revaluation of the products therefore symbolizes the changing position of the East German citizens as they try to define their new identity and establish their place in the reunited Germany.

Making New Enemies: How Slavs Replace Turks in G. W. Pabst’s Der Schatz Michael Huffmaster The year was 1923 when Austrian filmmaker G. W. Pabst made his directing debut with a film called Der Schatz (The Treasure). The title has a double meaning in German. As both the designation for a cache of wealth and a term of endearment for a loved one, the word suggests a dialectic made explicit in the film’s original subtitle, Ein altes Spiel um Gold und Liebe. In the history of the film’s reception it seems most commentators have simply accepted the interpretation implied by the title and understood the work as a quaint parable about the enduring value of love over greed and materialism. Granted, such a reading is plausible, if rather superficial; however, one sequence of scenes occurring about ten minutes into the film ruptures briefly the fablelike narrative, thus complicating such a facile understanding: A turban-clad man on horseback surveys a ravaged countryside with houses smoldering in the distance. A man darts behind a rock and crouches in hiding as more horsemen in turbans race past him. A slow stream of peasant refugees flees the devastation, taking sheep, cows, and horses with them. On the ground by an overturned cart lies a corpse, beside it a lone child. These fleeting but graphic images stand out from the entire rest of the film. Inserted into a diegesis set sometime in the nineteenth century, they depict the seventeenth-century invasion of Austria by the Ottoman Turks. A couple of contemporary reviews mention the scenes in passing but see the “Türkenbilder,” as they call them, mainly as “monumental” attractions, adding merely entertainment value.1 Subsequent critics have tended to ignore the images altogether, focusing on various other aspects of the film.2 But the historical moment recalled in the scenes was a major turning point in European history, an event that has come to be understood as constitutive of Austrian identity and that has consequently become 1

Film-Kurier, February 27, 1923; Der Kinematograph, March 4, 1923. Lotte Eisner, The Haunted Screen: Expressionism and the German Cinema, trans. Roger Greaves (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969), 171-5; Sigfried Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947), 167; Ulrich Georg, Karl Prümm, interviews in Die Schatzsucher, dir. Holger Stern (KirchMedia, 1999). 2

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laden over the centuries with symbolic import. That Pabst would revisit this moment in 1923 calls for analysis and explanation. One scholar, Bernhard Riff, does address the Turkish motif in Der Schatz, though not specifically the scenes in question. Riff refers to the film’s opening shots, which show a bellfounder’s house—the main setting for the story’s action— followed by a close-up of the inscription above the building’s front entrance: “Rebuilt in the year 1683 after the Turks were expelled from the land.” Linking these shots with the ones at the film’s conclusion depicting the house’s destruction, Riff asserts that the Turkish trope mobilizes an anti-Semitic message: The seemingly harmless descriptive phrase had distinct contemporary connotations. In the early twenties, Catholic and anti-Semitic circles in Austria were fond of equating the traumatic ‘plague of the Turks’ of an earlier era with the present-day “plague of the Jews”…Quite suggestively, the house will burn down twice in the course of The Treasure: once as the result of Turkish invaders; a second time, as a result of the material greed so often projected onto the Jewish populace.3

While undoubtedly a valid observation, Riff’s explanation of the Turkish theme in Pabst’s film relies solely on assumptions concerning external factors. It accounts for neither the graphic nature of the representation of the motif in the sequence of scenes in question nor the particular placing of the images within the narrative. A closer look at the Turkish trope as deployed in these harrowing scenes, and specifically at the concrete geographical references within which it is embedded, suggests quite a different reading. For the intended allusion, I believe, is not to Jews but rather to Slavs. In 1923, I argue, Der Schatz recalls the seventeenth-century Ottoman invasion of Austria, reactivating the familiar trope of “die Türken vor Wien,” in order to cast blame on Slavs for the destruction of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after World War I and to construct Slavs as the new arch-enemy from the East. SHIFTING ALLIANCES, CHANGING ENEMIES The expulsion of the Turks from Austria in 1683 set in motion the gradual disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, a circumstance that led to profound shifts in the prevailing power relations in Europe. From this point on, Mathieu Lepetit notes, Austria found itself in a position to engage as a major player in Central 3

Bernhard Riff, “Patterns of Obsession and Opposition in The Treasure,” in The Films of G. W. Pabst: An Extraterritorial Cinema, ed. Eric Rentschler (New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press, 1990), 26.

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Making New Enemies

European history. The defeat of the Turks at Vienna marked the start of a twohundred-year-long expansion that led the Habsburgs (in the Balkans at least) as far as Bosnia and Herzegovina. That is why, Lepetit claims, the moment subsequently came to be understood as such a cornerstone of Austrian identity.4 For the purposes of my argument, however, it is important to note that not only Austria, but also Russia profited from Turkey’s defeat in 1683. Indeed, Russia actively contributed to the decline of the Ottoman Empire through a series of conflicts during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries known as the RussoTurkish Wars. Steadily Russia gained territory and influence at Turkey’s expense, first in the Caucasus and later in the Balkans. It was partially through these successes that Russia managed to consolidate its own position as a major European power. Throughout the period Austria and Russia remained for the most part allies against their common enemy, the Turks. But the decisive turning point in relations between the two states came with the outcome of the last Russo-Turkish War in 1878. This victory resulted in such increased power for Russia in the Balkans that Austria-Hungary (in concert with Great Britain) cried alarm, and the Congress of Berlin was called to renegotiate the terms of peace. Russia’s influence in the region could not be greatly diminished, however. The creation of the newly independent Slavic states of Serbia and Montenegro, for example, served Russia’s interests. For Austria-Hungary, the most consequential result of the revised peace arrangements was its assignment to occupy and administer Bosnia and Herzegovina. 5 From this point on, the Balkans became the site of irresolvable tension between the two major powers. It was here that war erupted—first the Balkan Wars and finally the Great War—and thus it was here that the Eastern threat (from the Austrian point of view) was reconstituted. Concomitant with Russia’s rise to the status of great power, the movement known as Pan-Slavism gained momentum in the late nineteenth century. While advocating the political and cultural unity of all Slavs, the idea simultaneously worked to incite nationalist independence movements among the various Slavic populations of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.6 Thus as Russia became increasingly 4

Mathieu Lepetit, “Die Türken vor Wien,” in Deutsche Erinnerungsorte, ed. Etienne François and Hagen Schulze (Munich: Beck, 2001), 1:394-5. 5 For detailed treatment of these events, see for example M.S. Anderson, The Eastern Question, 1774-1923: A Study in International Relations (London and Melbourne: Macmillan, 1966); Rene Albrecht-Carrie, The Concert of Europe (New York: Walker, 1968); and Dimitrije Djordjevic and Stephen Fischer-Galati, The Balkan Revolutionary Tradition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981). 6 A classic study on this subject is Michael Boro Petrovich, The Emergence of Russian Panslavism, 1856-1870 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1956); see also Sandor Kostya, Pan-Slavism, ed. Anne Fay Atzel (Astor, Fla.: Danubian Press, 1981).

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perceived as a threat to Austrian interests, all Slavs began to merge in the Austrian collective consciousness into the new common enemy. Austria’s reaction to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand—to declare war on Serbia though the murder was originally thought to have been a plot by the Russian secret service and only much later determined to have been the work of Serbian nationalists—perhaps best illustrates this desperate and confused conflation. It is my contention that Der Schatz recapitulates this development. At a time when Turkey no longer constituted a threat to Austria—indeed, the former archenemies had been allies against their Slav opponents only a few years earlier in World War I—Pabst’s film reactivated the trope of the seventeenth-century Ottoman invasion with a purpose: to remap the role of dreaded enemy from the East onto Slavs while casting blame on them for the destruction of the Habsburg Empire. How the film accomplishes this is the focus of what follows. MAKING NEW ENEMIES Pabst’s hallmark as a filmmaker is his characteristic use of continuity editing. Described by commentators as “seamless,” his cuts achieve a fluidity that has the effect, as Eric Rentschler claims, of dissolving borders. 7 In Der Schatz the technique is employed within a framework of parallel montage corresponding on a thematic level to a simplistic dualism.8 In the first act, for instance, scenes of the oppressive atmosphere at the bellfounder’s house alternate with images of the sociable, light-hearted wayfarer at the country inn. Subtly inserted into this conspicuous pattern of oppositions, however, are specific references to the geographical location of the action. This information is then yoked to the images of devastation and misery depicting the seventeenth-century Turkish invasion, and it is this particular sequencing of geographical and historical references that works to reconstitute the enemy. The specific information in question is preceded by an outdoor scene at the front entrance to the bellfounder’s house, where the inhabitants have come to have a rest after dinner. The initial shot of this scene is long, clearly framed to include the inscription above the door commemorating the building’s reconstruction after the expulsion of the Turks in 1683. Next comes a medium shot of the bellfounder’s daughter and his older journeyman. Visibly annoyed by the man’s gibberish, the 7

Eric Rentschler, “The Problematic Past: An Auteur Directed by History,” in The Films of G. W. Pabst: An Extraterritorial Cinema, ed. Eric Rentschler (New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press, 1990), 2-3. 8 Bernhard Riff, “Patterns of Obsession and Opposition in The Treasure” in The Films of G. W. Pabst: An Extraterritorial Cinema, ed. Eric Rentschler (New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press, 1990), 26.

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Making New Enemies

young woman says to him, “What an odd fish you are, Svetelenz.” This first intertitle of dialogue in the film represents the first time the name of a character is introduced, and it is an unmistakably Slavic name, with the characteristically Slavic consonant cluster, “sv.” As the name is spelled out explicitly in black and white, there can be no doubt as to its bearer’s origins. This identification, in light of the figure’s representation thus far (and indeed, throughout the film), would also resonate with common contemporary stereotypes of Slavs as primitive or less developed on an evolutionary scale. Following this exchange the scene switches location back to the country inn, where the next character in the film, the jovial traveler, is named. In contradistinction to the first character identified, his name is distinctly Germanic, and its presentation following the Slavic name fits within the pattern of dualisms that governs the film’s structure as noted above. The young man pulls out a letter. A close-up reveals the identity of its addressee while also providing the first precise information in the film with regard to location: “Goldsmith’s Apprentice Arno with Master Himmelmayer in Graz.” This indicates the traveler’s point of origin, at least. Then, following a medium long shot of the young man boasting, “That’s me,” there comes a close-up of the body of the letter itself, a commission requesting he come ornament a bell. The letter is signed, “Balthasar Hofer, Bellfounder in Marburg an der Drau.” This second bit of information as to location, together with the earlier geographic specification of Graz, conveys much more than just the traveler’s destination.9 A CONTESTED BORDER10 Marburg an der Drau (the Drava River) is a town in southern Styria, the second largest in the region after Graz. Only about thirty-five miles apart, Graz and Marburg both lay within Habsburg Austria at the time Der Schatz is set, in the nineteenth century. But when the film was produced and released, a new international border separated the two towns, and Marburg was now officially called its Slovene name, Malibor. The recently-established border was that 9 It is worth noting here that the film differs conspicuously in this respect from the literary source on which it is based, a 1910 novella of the same name by the popular Austrian author Rudolf Hans Bartsch. The opening sentence gives the setting merely as “a little town on the Drava River.” Moreover, this “little town” is the only one mentioned in the story, with no second location coming into play, as is the case in the film. 10 This section heading is intended as an homage to Kristin Kopp, whose work on the German-Polish border inspired the line of inquiry pursued here. Kristin Kopp, “Contesting Borders: German Colonial Discourse and the Polish Eastern Territories” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2001).

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between the Republic of Austria and the newly-founded Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. The border dividing the two states had been a site of extreme instability at the end of World War I. In November 1918 Slovene troops invaded Carinthia, neighboring province to Styria, and managed to push as far north as Völkermarkt, north of the Drava River. In December, against the advice of the federal government in Vienna, Carinthia’s provisional assembly voted to take up arms, and in early 1919 civilian militias were formed, which succeeded in winning back some territory. The ceasefire reached in mid-January was then broken in April by the Slavs, and fighting continued until May, when another armistice was agreed upon. The brief peace was shattered yet again when Yugoslav troops invaded Carinthia a final time, but they soon withdrew on the order of the Supreme Council of Allied Forces. Following the cessation of armed hostilities, the treaty of St. Germain designated the border areas as plebiscite districts, divided into a southern zone occupied by Yugoslav troops and a northern one occupied by Austria. Until the plebiscite was held in October 1920, nearly a year and a half later, a fierce propaganda war was waged in the areas in question. When the majority of voters in the southern zone decided in favor of remaining within Austria, the plebiscite in the northern zone (where there was a much smaller Slovene minority) was called off. With this, the border that had been so hotly contested, initially through armed conflict and later through diplomacy and propaganda, was finally fixed.11 When Der Schatz, less than two and a half years later, takes Arno from Graz to Marburg, his trajectory crosses a real-world boundary that does not exist in the diegesis. Rather than effacing a border, as Eric Rentschler observes of Pabst’s editing techniques, the sequencing here actually evokes a recently established international border. The tacit reference to this new border carries powerful connotations of the tremendous loss of territory Austria suffered as a result of the war, of the destruction and misery of the war itself, and of the violent conflicts over the border during the war’s aftermath. If, however, the veiled suggestion of the border alone were insufficient to evoke the trauma of the recent war, the graphic images of devastation and flight that immediately follow make such associations unavoidable. As the destruction depicted here is perpetrated by the Ottoman Turks, its employment in connection with the references to Slavs functions to reconstitute the Eastern threat. The sequencing underscores that the bellfounder’s house is located in a part of Austria once destroyed under Turkish rule and now controlled by Slavs—the group whose aspirations toward independence sparked the war, which 11 For an in-depth discussion of this history, see Martin Wutte, Kärntens Freiheitskampf, 1918-1920 (Klagenfurt: Verlag des Geschichtsvereines für Kärnten, 1985).

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Making New Enemies

ultimately led to the dissolution of the Austrian Empire. The effect achieved is a genuine remapping of the role of enemy. This identification of the Slavs as the new Turks, the new arch-enemy from the East, is then cemented at the film’s dramatic culmination, when the Slav Svetelenz runs amok and tears down the central pillar of the house, causing its destruction one last time, as the Turks had done centuries before. 12 The image of the building’s walls caving in on one another depicts a literal collapse, a Zusammenbruch, evocative of the fate of the Habsburg Empire, or Haus Österreich, as it was also known for centuries.

12 This is also, incidentally, a major difference from the film’s literary source, where the bellfounder’s house is not, and never was, destroyed.

Liegt Böhmen noch am Meer? Ingeborg Bachmann’s Landscapes as Utopian Constructs Sarah Painitz In 1957, at the height of her fame, Ingeborg Bachmann stopped writing poetry.1 Over the following years, she only sporadically returned to the genre that had made her famous, writing a few poems including, in 1964, “Böhmen liegt am Meer.”2 A further seven years after composing this poem Bachmann wrote the last text she actually completed before her death, the story “Drei Wege zum See,” the narrative concluding the collection Simultan. It is these two “last” texts, in which Bachmann envisions the eastern locations Bohemia and Slovenia as imaginary landscape-constructions, which focus my discussion here. Just as these two texts delineate turning points in Bachmann’s life, the delineation of geographic space these works perform in their representation of landscape and topography marks the texts themselves as imaginary and utopian territory. In conflating geographical and textual spaces, Bachmann casts the Bohemia of “Böhmen liegt am Meer” as a utopian landscape: a place for which the speaker of the poem longs but which remains unattainable. In “Drei Wege zum See,” the Slovenia the protagonist longs for is unreachable as well: as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, it is an imaginary landscape constructed of a lost past. “Böhmen liegt am Meer” is a poem of 24 lines in which the lyric speaker reflects on a traumatic emotional experience in her past. The reader is taken on a kind of journey, following the speaker’s invocation of a series of geographic landscapes including Bohemia, the bottom of the ocean, and Italy. Simultaneously, we trace the emotional development of the speaker through her plunge into despair, and subsequent reemergence from the depths of destruction to a new sense of hope. This maneuver, in which emotion is mapped through landscape, creates an overall feeling of instability, development, and change. The beginning of the poem evokes 1

Bachmann’s celebrity is perhaps best captured by the fact that Der Spiegel, West Germany’s leading news magazine, ran a cover story on her in 1954, only one year after she had published her first volume of poetry. Her work, as well as her personal life, remained in the public eye until her death in 1973. 2 Although Bachmann wrote numerous poems in 1964, she has called “Böhmen liegt am Meer” not only her last poem, but also her only poem after 1957. For more on “Böhmen liegt am Meer” as Bachmann’s last poem, see Sigrid Weigel, Ingeborg Bachmann. Hinterlassenschaften unter Wahrung des Briefgeheimnisses (Vienna: Zsolnay, 1999), 31920 and 355. References to Weigel’s book hereafter cited in text as IB.

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Liegt Böhmen noch am Meer?

a tenuous sense of safety, which is immediately called into question through the conditional sentence structure: “Sind hierorts Häuser grün, tret ich noch in ein Haus. / Sind hier die Brücken heil, geh ich auf gutem Grund” (1-2). 3 The uncertainty of this conditional syntax turns into death and despair with the line “Ich will nichts mehr für mich. Ich will zugrunde gehn” (9). From this point of absolute hopelessness and desperation, however, the speaker transports us to the bottom of the ocean with “zugrund – das heißt zum Meer, dort find ich Böhmen wieder” (10). Here, in the place in which land and ocean meet, she rediscovers Bohemia, and with it a new source of strength and hope: “Zugrund gerichtet, wach ich ruhig auf. / Von Grund auf weiß ich jetzt, und ich bin unverloren” (11-12). The movement from tentative safety, to total despair, to a new sense of hope, is construed as an organic, unified process through the repetition of the word “Grund,” which etymologically links these three moments of emotional development. In the sense of solid ground, “gutem Grund,” it evokes associations of soundness and safety. In “zugrunde gehn” and “zugrund gerichtet” this sense of safety is destroyed by death. This meaning of “zugrund” is called into question when the meaning changes in the next line to allude to the bottom of the ocean with “zugrund – das heißt zum Meer.” Here Bohemia seems to give the speaker a new inner sense of calm and certainty which comes “von Grund auf,” from the speaker’s innermost core. Geographic space becomes an explicit topic in the poem with the verb “grenzen”: “Grenzt hier ein Wort an mich, so laß ich’s grenzen” (5). Surprisingly, it is not land that is described as bordering against something but rather “ein Wort.” Thus, the word, that is, language, is apparently equated with land. The next line situates Bohemia at the ocean, as already announced by the title. Bachmann “borrows” the image of this landscape from Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, in which he situates Bohemia at the ocean.4 The paradox of moving Bohemia from its land-locked geographical location to the ocean results in both the “Wort” and Bohemia denoting a kind of fantasy world, an imaginary place. In this imaginary place, Bohemia can simply be moved to the ocean if one wishes to do so, and the “Wort” can stand in for an entire imaginary language-land. A sense of uncertainty

3

All quotations of “Böhmen liegt am Meer” are from Ingeborg Bachmann, Werke, vol. 1, ed. Christine Koschel, Inge von Weidenbaum, and Clemens Münster (Munich: Piper, 1978). Subsequent references will be noted in the text by line number. 4 About the genesis of the poem Bachmann said: “Man hat mich gefragt, und es war natürlich eine große Ehre, aber ich habe es abgelehnt, ob ich ein Gedicht schreiben könnte, stellvertretend für die deutsche Literatur, für das Shakespeare-Jahr in Stratford-on-Avon. Ich habe geschrieben: Nein, das kann ich nicht. Dann ist mir etwas aufgefallen, nur ein einziger Satz von Shakespeare, nämlich: ‘Böhmen liegt am Meer’” (quoted in IB, 356).

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infuses these lines as well, as everything seems to be in flux. While Bohemia still lies at the ocean (“liegt noch am Meer”), it might not remain there for much longer. Bohemia becomes more prominent in the second half of the poem in connection with the notion of a lost home. When she speaks of sailors and unanchored ships, in such lines as “ein Böhme, ein Vagant, der nichts hat, den nichts hält” (23), Bachmann evokes a traveling, vagabond, bohemian lifestyle. Having lost all, just like the “Liebesmüh” (3) from the beginning of the poem, the speaker can no longer reach the land of her choice, Bohemia, but only see it from the ocean: “vom Meer, das strittig ist, Land meiner Wahl zu sehen” (24). The speaker is homeless, for it is impossible for her actually to arrive at the land she desires. Instead of arriving, she perpetually borders on the land, just as she borders on the language which was first introduced in the beginning, and is reiterated toward the end of the poem: “Ich grenz noch an ein Wort und an ein andres Land, / ich grenz, wie wenig auch, an alles immer mehr” (21-22). The relationship between the speaker, the word, and the land – that is, the subject, language, and the world – is defined by bordering, “angrenzen.” Things bordering on each other are, of course, next to each other and can by definition never overlap. If the relationship of language and the world is one of borders, the speaker realizes, they can never adequately correspond with each other. Sigrid Weigel, in her recent book on Bachmann, sums up this problematic relationship between language and the world: Da Wort und Welt niemals zur Deckung kommen, zielt das Vertrauen in die Worte nicht auf ihre Referenz oder Repräsentation von Wirklichkeit, sondern auf ihre Wirkung als poiesis, auf sprachliche Kreation. Diese Funktion der Sprache bedeutet, daß das Ich sich niemals im Besitz von Welt und Sprache befindet, sondern in die Stellung des Angrenzens verwiesen bleibt (IB, 362).

Bachmann comes to the same conclusion that language and the world can never adequately correspond with each other, and thus the fictional world always remains clearly distinct and separate from the “real world” it represents, in her fragmentary novel Der Fall Franza. In this text her thoughts once again return to geographical space, when she considers the relationship between the “real” Vienna, the one that actually exists in the world, and the fictional Vienna she has created in her novel: Und da sich beweisen läßt, daß es Wien gibt, man es aber mit einem Wort nicht treffen kann, weil Wien hier auf dem Papier ist und die Stadt Wien immerzu woanders, nämlich 48Û 14’ 54’’ nördlicher Breite und 16Û 21’ 42’’ östlicher Länge, und Wien hier also nicht Wien sein kann, weil hier nur Worte sind, die

26

Liegt Böhmen noch am Meer? anspielen und insistieren auf etwas, das es gibt, und auf anderes, das es nicht gibt….5

Concluding her thoughts on this matter, the narrator states: “Denn die Tatsachen, die die Welt ausmachen—sie brauchen das Nichttatsächliche, um von ihm aus erkannt zu werden” (FF, 12). This last sentence provides a context in which we might situate the speaker in “Böhmen liegt am Meer”: Just as the real world, “die Tatsachen, die die Welt ausmachen,” can only be perceived and understood from the vantage point of the fictional world, “das Nichttatsächliche,” so too the speaker’s Bohemia remains unapproachable; it can only be viewed from the ocean. The speaker’s desire for the land, her striving toward it, can never be fulfilled. This striving, however, is the quintessential characteristic of Bachmann’s concept of utopia. For Bachmann, utopianism—which can also be thought of as the absolute, the ideal, or the impossible—is significant in its directionality. It is not the arrival at utopia, the attainment of a goal, which is important; indeed, this arrival is impossible. Rather, utopia is something we must all strive for, something we long to achieve, and it is exactly this striving which constitutes the essence of utopianism. Bachmann herself clearly articulates this idea of utopia as a dialectic between possibility and impossibility in her essay “Die Wahrheit ist dem Menschen zumutbar”: Der Wunsch wird in uns wach, die Grenzen zu überschreiten, die uns gesetzt sind .… Innerhalb der Grenzen aber haben wir den Blick gerichtet auf das Vollkommene, das Unmögliche, Unerreichbare, sei es der Liebe, der Freiheit oder jeder reinen Größe. Im Widerspiel des Unmöglichen mit dem Möglichen erweitern wir unsere Möglichkeiten.6

Thus, it is the utopian space of Bohemia—both as geographical location and as poetic act—that becomes this utopian goal which the speaker/poet longs for but can never reach. In “Drei Wege zum See” geography is similarly cast as a utopian construct. In a separate paragraph that heads the story proper, Bachmann states, “der Ursprung dieser Geschichte liegt im Topographischen.”7 But here, landscape gains another dimension as it protrudes into the past when time and space coincide. The plot revolves around Elisabeth Matrei, a successful photojournalist, who returns to her childhood home in Carinthia to visit her father. During her stay, Elisabeth spends 5

Ingeborg Bachmann, Der Fall Franza. Requiem für Fanny Goldmann (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1997), 11. Hereafter cited in text as FF. 6 Ingeborg Bachmann, Die Wahrheit ist dem Menschen zumutbar: Essays, Reden, kleinere Schriften (Munich: Piper, 1990), 76. 7 Ingeborg Bachmann, Simultan (Munich: Piper, 1998), 119. Hereafter cited in text as S.

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most days going for long walks through the woods, hiking on paths she knows well from her childhood days. She wants to visit the lake she had frequented as a child, but her attempts at reaching it are repeatedly thwarted. Elisabeth cannot reach the lake, because all paths leading there have been blocked, quite literally, by construction sites. On these long “Wanderwege” Elisabeth reviews her life – her professional career and her personal relationships – thus retracing her “Lebenswege.” Analogous to the speaker of “Böhmen liegt am Meer,” Elisabeth’s travel through geographic space here too becomes an exploration of her own memory and psyche. During one of these walking-tours she gazes out toward the lake and then toward the southern horizon: [Sie] schaute kurz auf den See hinunter, aber dann hinüber zu den Karawanken und weit darüber hinaus, nach Krain, Slawonien, Kroatien, Bosnien, sie suchte wieder eine nicht mehr existierende Welt, da ihr von Trotta nichts geblieben war, nur der Name und einige Sätze, seine Gedanken und ein Tonfall (S, 154).

By invoking the name Trotta, Bachmann alludes, of course, to Joseph Roth’s novels Radetzkymarsch and Die Kapuzinergruft. By “importing” a Trotta into her own story – Franz Joseph Eugen Trotta, whom Elisabeth describes as her “große Liebe” – Bachmann adapts Roth’s broad historical and social development to the more intimate space of individual self-discovery of her own narrative. Thus, Bachmann’s statement, “der Ursprung dieser Geschichte liegt im Topographischen,” metonymically situates Elisabeth’s personal search for the right path to the lake to the geographic realm of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, its futile struggle for national identity, and its ultimate collapse.8 Bachmann portrays Trotta, and, to a lesser extent, Elisabeth, as homeless in the sense that they do not have a true “Heimat.” Trotta, although he lives in Paris, “war in Paris nicht zuhause und dann zuletzt in Wien auch nicht” and speaks of himself as being “exterritorial” (S, 200). Although Elisabeth lives a glamorous lifestyle in cities such as Vienna, Paris, New York, and London, we learn that these places pain her. Because she constantly travels for her work, she is described as “ein Mensch, der abfuhr, reiste und immer weiter reiste” (S, 198). Elisabeth recognizes that she and her brother are foreigners no matter where they go:

8

For more on the interconnections between Bachmann’s and Roth’s writings, see Sigrid Schmid-Bortenschlager, “Die österreichisch-ungarische Monarchie als utopisches Modell im Prosawerk von Ingeborg Bachmann,” Acta Neophilologica 17 (1984): 21-31; and Almut Dippel, “Österreich – das ist etwas, das immer weitergeht für mich.” Zur Fortschreibung der “Trotta”-Romane Joseph Roths in Ingeborg Bachmanns “Simultan,” Mannheimer Studien zur Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft, vol. 5 (St. Ingbert: Röhring, 1995).

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Liegt Böhmen noch am Meer? Was sie zu Fremden machte überall, war ihre Empfindlichkeit, weil sie von der Peripherie kamen und daher ihr Geist, ihr Fühlen und Handeln hoffnungslos diesem Geisterreich von einer riesigen Ausdehnung gehörten, und es gab nur die richtigen Pässe für sie nicht mehr, weil dieses Land keine Pässe ausstellte (S, 124).

The “periphery” from which Elisabeth and her brother come is Carinthia, the southernmost part of Austria at the border with Slovenia. But the periphery she speaks of here also pertains to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, that “Geisterreich von einer riesigen Ausdehnung.” Slovenia, in the very south of the Empire, is the home of Trotta’s ancestors, and it is this area Elisabeth looks out toward during her hiking trips through the Carinthian woods, searching for a world that no longer exists – the world of Roth’s novels. Although this “Geisterreich” has ceased, it still haunts the Austrian mind, continuing to loom large in the Austrian identity. Both Bachmann and Roth understand the Austro-Hungarian Empire as a construct, part historical fact, part fiction, together making up a mythical, legendary world. The two authors achieve this view of the Empire from different perspectives. In his novel, Roth specifically sets out to question historical fact and the supposed objectivity of history. 9 Bachmann, on the other hand, places her protagonist Elisabeth in the same position as the speaker of the Bohemia-poem: longingly looking toward the land she desires, but can never reach. Just as the Bohemia of “Böhmen liegt am Meer” is a utopian construct, so too is the Slovenia of “Drei Wege zum See” a mythical construction, a mixture of history and legend, fact and fiction, a lived past and a literary representation. For Elisabeth, relegated to the periphery of Carinthia, the Slovenia she desires remains unattainable. Both Bachmann and Roth privilege the area of the border as a place which offers the unique vantage point of being on the outskirts, yet not on the outside, and looking toward the center, as the example of the Bohemia-poem shows. It is from the periphery, the area where borders are constantly renegotiated, that identities—both personal and communal—as well as spaces, are constructed and imagined. Most of Radetzkymarsch takes place in the periphery of the Austro9

I read Radetzkymarsch as a vehicle for Roth to explore his interest in the past. In his novel, Roth shows history to be a partly factual, partly fictional construction. The portrayal of life in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the descriptions of military rituals, the bureaucracy, the streets of Vienna, the chaotic early days of the First World War, and, above all, the interior monologue and narrative perspective of Emperor Franz Joseph, all contribute to an unusual mixture of fact and fiction. That the questioning of historical facts is a central concern in the novel is shown early in the text through the episode surrounding the portrayal of the battle of Solferino in a school textbook. Here the text clearly questions our perception of history. Historical facts turn out not to be facts at all, but rather constructed stories which must be continuously questioned and reinterpreted, depending on the storyteller’s point of view.

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Hungarian Empire; Vienna, the imperial capital, plays a minor role. Two regions in the geographic outskirts are important for Roth: Slovenia, as the place of origin of the Trotta family and as the place Carl Joseph Trotta longs to return to in his imagination, and Galicia, as the location of the town on the Russian border in which most of the narrative takes place. Galicia, the easternmost part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, is a geographic space that Bachmann evokes frequently in her writing, most prominently in Der Fall Franza. In that novel Bachmann creates a connection, an equation even, between Carinthia and Galicia. In the first section of the narrative, entitled “Heimkehr nach Galicien,” Franza returns to her childhood home in Carinthia when fleeing from her masochistic husband in Vienna. Just as Elisabeth, Franza returns to Carinthia as the place of childhood, and just as in “Drei Wege zum See,” the journey home becomes a journey through memory, both individual memory and cultural memory. The Slovenia and Galicia of the Trottas as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire becomes a space of history infused with cultural memory. Slovenia and Galicia therefore allow the past and the present to be depicted simultaneously. Weigel has aptly named topographic representations that enable the depiction of time and history within space “Gedächtnisschauplätze”: “Das zeitliche Nacheinander des Erzählens und das Kontinuum des Fortgangs im Begriff der Geschichte können darin aufgebrochen werden, um statt dessen eine Gleichzeitigkeit von Jetzt und Gewesenem herzustellen” (IB, 352). Bachmann’s deliberate displacement of geographic areas, her casting of landscapes as “Sehnsuchtsorte,” (IB, 399) expand the meaning that geographic space carries into the temporal realm to include history, myth, and even utopia. This conflation of space and time in “Sehnsuchstorte,” the gestures of longing which both Elisabeth and the speaker of “Böhmen liegt am Meer” exhibit, might be understood as a kind of nostalgia, which the OED defines as the “sentimental longing for or regretful memory of a period of the past, especially one in an individual’s own lifetime; (also) sentimental imagining or evocation of a period of the past.” I would argue, though, that neither Roth nor Bachmann are viewing the Austro-Hungarian Empire through the lens of nostalgia.10 They are not interested in resurrecting the world of the Habsburgs, but instead, in understanding that world as something irretrievably lost. It is this loss, and the mourning associated with this loss, that constitutes the crucial gesture of both Bachmann’s and Roth’s view of the Empire. And of course it is that loss that motivates “Böhmen liegt am Meer” and that enables the rebirth of its speaker who, having lost love, emerges from an 10

Especially in regard to Radetzkymarsch, my reading here goes against the traditional reading of the novel as a sentimental and nostalgic swan song of the Monarchy, which frequently overlooks Roth’s sharp social criticism, especially in regard to the army and the rigid military lifestyle.

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Liegt Böhmen noch am Meer?

excruciating mourning process to newfound strength: “Zugrund gerichtet, wach ich ruhig auf. / Von Grund auf weiß ich jetzt, und ich bin unverloren” (11-12). Similarly, Elisabeth, twenty years after having lost her “große Liebe” Trotta, finds a sense of inner calm when, at the end of the narrative, she remembers “[die] Stimme Trottas, die sie seit fast zwanzig Jahren im Ohr hatte, und sie glaubte nur mehr ihrer Stimme und auch den ganz anderen Stimmen ihrer Trottas, die sich diesmal nicht gegen sie richteten” (S, 210). Elisabeth has incorporated Trotta, or perhaps the memory of Trotta, into her own self. And by making him part of herself she achieves peace with the painful past he symbolizes. In these two texts, Bachmann thus suggests how the process of mourning is also the process of healing. Exploration of geographic space has seemingly become a journey of selfdiscovery. In these two “final works,” Bachmann casts her own texts as places of yearning and desire. Precisely because arrival is impossible, hope and longing never stop. Nonetheless, with “Böhmen liegt am Meer” Bachmann deliberately ended her celebrated career as “die Poetessa.”11 In 1973, only a few months before her death, Bachmann had this to say about her last poem: Es ist für mich das Gedicht, zu dem ich immer stehen werde. Es ist gerichtet an alle Menschen, weil es das Land ihrer Hoffnung ist, das sie nicht erreichen werden .… Deswegen hört für mich dort auch alles auf. Es ist deswegen auch das letzte Gedicht was ich geschrieben habe. Ich würde nie wieder eines schreiben, weil damit alles gesagt ist (quoted in IB, 320).

These few sentences speak volumes. Bachmann herself understood “Böhmen liegt am Meer” as radically universal and intimately personal at the same time. In it she addresses all people. “Böhmen liegt am Meer” is “das Land ihrer Hoffnung” that they will not reach. With this poem, Bachmann universalizes the experience of desire and longing, creating a global community populated by all whose hopes will be frustrated with complete certainty. But the tone of certainty in this statement is caught up in a strange tension: the grammatical subject “es” can refer to either the poem of the previous sentence or to the land of hope in this sentence. I would argue that this undecidability is deliberate; the text is, for Bachmann, the land of hope. Indeed, she situates the poem in a prominent position within her own personal life, when she designates it as “das letzte Gedicht was ich geschrieben habe.” The certain frustration and failure with which Bachmann confronts her 11

“Der Tod der Poetessa” is the title of an article commemorating the 75th anniversary of Bachmann’s birth, written by Klaus Amann and published in the Austrian newspaper Der Standard on June 24, 2001. By using the term “Poetessa,” Amann evokes Bachmann’s popular image as a “poetic princess.”

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readers and herself seems to lead directly to the end: The poem, that land of hope, is the one with which everything ends. And, for Bachmann, because everything that can be said has been said with “Böhmen liegt am Meer,” there is no point in her continuing to write poetry. Bachmann, in “Böhmen liegt am Meer,” reached the border of language, that point from which she can go no further, from which all that is left is the vision that language can never attain. It is the end of poetic yearning. This statement can, then, perhaps shed some light on Bachmann’s turn to prose works of fiction. With “Böhmen liegt am Meer” Bachmann draws a final line. It is her “Schlußstrich,” delineating this poem as the pinnacle of her career as a poet, “weil damit alles gesagt ist.”

The Secrets of the Kazabaika: Ethnic and Geopolitical Scenarios in Leopold von SacherMasoch’s Venus in Furs Anne Dwyer The “specific constellation of masochism,” writes Gilles Deleuze, is made up of “disavowal, suspense, waiting, fetishism and fantasy.”1 Deleuze arrives at his influential analysis of masochism via a psychoanalytic reading of the novel that has come to stand as the Urtext of the perversion, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s Venus in Furs (1870). In his essay, Deleuze repeatedly mentions the intense focus on ethnicity that shapes Sacher-Masoch’s work: In the language of Masoch’s [sic] folklore, history, politics, mysticism, eroticism, nationalism and perversion are closely intermingled, forming a nebula around the scenes of flagellation.2

And yet, Sacher-Masoch’s ethnic or linguistic background remain little more than a slightly hazy exotic element in Deleuze’s analysis. He does not examine in depth the implications of Sacher-Masoch’s ethnic posturing either for the literary text or for the unfolding of the masochistic scenario.3

1

Gilles Deleuze, “Coldness and Cruelty,” in Masochism (New York: Zone Books, 1991), 72. 2 Ibid., 10. 3 Recently, a paradigm shift has taken place in Sacher-Masoch studies, as scholars have moved from psychosexual interpretations of “masochism(s)” to readings that focus on Sacher-Masoch’s cultural position and his relationship to various Slavic cultures and literatures. My paper draws on both critical approaches. For readings of Sacher-Masoch in Slavic and Galician contexts, see Maria KáaĔska, Problemfeld Galizien in deutschsprachiger Prosa 1846-1914 (Wien: Böhlau, 1991) as well as articles by the same author; Larry Wolff, introduction to Venus in Furs, by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, trans. Joachim Neugroschel (New York: Penguin, 2000); Michael C. Finke, “Sacher-Masoch, Turgenev, and Other Russians,” in One Hundred Years of Masochism: Literary Texts, Social and Cultural Contexts, ed. Michael C. Finke and Carl Niekerk (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000), 119-37; Aleksandr Etkind, Sodom i Psikheia: Ocherki intellektual’noi istorii Serebrianogo veka (Moskva: ITs-Garant, 1996); Larissa Cybenko, “Grenzverwischungen und Grenzübergänge: literarische Prozesse in multikulturellen Regionen Europas am Beispiel der Prosa Leopold

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Indeed, the complex geopolitical and ethnic environment of Venus in Furs seems at times to be drowned out by the all the other colorful elements in SacherMasoch’s set design: colors, paintings, sculpture, clothes, and architecture all play a flashier part. But the geography of late nineteenth-century Europe and the rise of an understanding of nationhood based on ethnic criteria are at least as crucial to the setting of this novel’s fantasy as its mirrors and sculptures.4 By taking a closer look at the overdetermined and multilingual names of people and things in the novel, I attempt to activate the geopolitical and ethnic narratives embedded in Venus and Furs and consider how these scenarios provide one setting for the novel’s psychosexual fantasy.5 Of particular interest are the opaque linguistic origins of the text’s primary fetish object itself: the heroine’s Kazabaika (glossed by the narrator as a “fur-lined coat”). This Kazabaika, as well as the many narratives it both hides and evokes, illustrates just how tightly questions of linguistic, ethnic, geopolitical, and psychosexual origin are intertwined in this text. Moreover, the Kazabaika von Sacher Masochs,” in “Und gehen auch Grenzen noch durch jedes Wort”: Grenzgänge und Globalisierung in der Germanistik: Beiträge der Tagung der Österreichischen Gesellschaft für Germanistik in Ljubljana 2000, ed. Anton Schwob (Wien: Edition Praesens, 2001), 87-100; Larissa Polubojarinova, “Sacher-Masoch und die Slawen,” in Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, ed. Ingrid Spörk and Alexandra Strohmaier (Graz: Literaturverlag Droschl, 2002), 223-50. 4 In Nations and Nationalisms Since 1780 (Cambridge: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1990), Eric Hobsbawm identifies 1870-80 (the decade after the publication of Venus in Furs) as the time in which nationalism emerged in Europe as a political phenomenon based on claims to ethnic and linguistic identity, rather than on a more stateoriented “principle of nationality” much debated by liberals in the first half of the century (esp. 101-130). One scholar notes that the popularity of Sacher-Masoch’s work suffered under the influence of geopolitical events and increased German nationalism in the Hapsburg Empire. After Austria’s military defeat by Germany in 1866 and Ausgleich of 1867 (in which the Dual Monarchy was established and Hungary gained significant autonomy from Vienna), German-speaking readers increasingly viewed Sacher-Masoch’s Slavic sympathies as politically dangerous and his erotic preferences as symptoms of Slavic degeneracy. In the 1850s, in contrast, these same preoccupations were perceived as pleasantly exotic. Kai Kauffmann, “Slawische Exotik und Habsburger Mythos: Leopold von Sacher-Masochs Galizische Erzählungen,” Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 52, no. 1 (2002): 175-90. 5 My emphasis on the “setting” is informed by Jean Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis, who argue that fantasy is not the object of desire, but its setting. “In fantasy the subject does not pursue the object or its sign: he appears caught up himself in the sequence of images. . . he cannot be assigned any fixed place in it. . . . As a result, the subject, thought always present in the fantasy, may be so in a desubjectivized form, that is to say, in the very syntax of the sequence in question.” “Fantasy and the Origins of Sexuality,” in Formations of Fantasy, ed. Victor Burgin, James Donald, and Cora Kaplan (London: Methuen, 1986), 26.

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The Secrets of the Kazabaika

allows insight into the role that narratives of ethnic and political miscegenation play in the theories of psychosexual origin that were later developed by SacherMasoch’s countryman Sigmund Freud. The biographical setting Before I turn to the Kazabaika, let me mention the central role that ethnicity and geopolitics play in the life, work and imagination of Sacher-Masoch. Born in 1836 in Lemberg, Galicia (now Lviv, Ukraine) to a mother with some Ruthenian heritage and an Austrian official of Bohemian descent, Leopold likely grew up speaking Polish and Ruthenian.6 After the Galician uprisings of 1846, in which Sacher-Masoch’s father was instrumental in putting down the largely Polish rebellion against the Hapsburg regime, the family moved to Prague, and later to Graz. Sacher-Masoch first won literary acclaim for his “Galician stories”—quasiethnographic tales of his homeland in which “social violence was never very far below the surface of masochistic passion.”7 One of the more intriguing aspects of Sacher-Masoch’s life is his ethnic identity and elaborate project of selfmythologization. He referred to himself as a “Galician Russian,” an “Austrian Russian,” or simply a “Slav.” The press of the time variously speculated that he might be a Slovene, a Czech, a Pole, a Jew, or at least a traitor to the Russian Tsar.8 Politically, Sacher-Masoch identified as an Austrian patriot whose “national creed” was “Slavic” and whose “political creed” was “Austrian.” 9 This Austro-Slavic identity and political stance became an object for derision in the German-language press, as exemplified by this anonymous response to a letter by Sacher-Masoch: Das [a previously published article] hat den Herrn Sacher-Masoch in Harnisch gebracht, und zwar in den Harnisch einer ganz neuen Nationalität, der galizischen Russen – wie sich die Ruthenen nennen, wenn sie schwarzen Frack und Glacéhandschuhe tragen. Manche hatten längst mit einiger Neugier gefragt, welcher nationalen Abstammung der mit allen erdenklichen Volksstämmen kokettirende doppelnamige Herr eigentlich selbst sich erfreue, und konnten darüber keine klare Auskunft erlangen. Er schrieb ausschließlich auf Deutsch gegen die deutschen Interessen und feindete die deutsche Grammatik an, indem er 6

Ruthenian is one term used until the early twentieth century to designate what we now know as Ukrainian. 7 John K. Noyes, The Mastery of Submission: Inventions of Masochism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press), 8. 8 For contemporary polemicists who loosely assigned “nationalities” to Sacher-Masoch, see Michael Farin, ed. Leopold von Sacher-Masoch: Materialien zu Leben und Werk (Bonn: Bouvier, 1987), 334, 342, 352. 9 Ibid., 338.

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sie ruthenisch radebrechte. Er hatte sich hie und da als Pole gerirt, und sogar persönlich zu dieser Nationalität bekannt; aber in seinen Schriften . . . die Mordund Gräuelthaten, die an den unglücklichen Polen verübt wurden, mit der Gesinnung und Anschauung eines Metternich’schen Polizeimannes beurtheilt’. – Kurz er suchte seine Nationalität, wie Japhet seinen Vater.10

This respondent’s gall is directed less at the “Slavic” nationality of SacherMasoch, than at what he or she perceives as ethnic and social imposture: the report plays up the notion that Sacher-Masoch embodies some apparently unwholesome mix that resists proper classification, a theme that will return in my reading of Venus in Furs. Yet while the German-language Austrian press (and the author himself) insisted that Sacher-Masoch was not “German,” it is also important to keep in mind that he was hardly a typical Ruthenian representative of Galicia: the vast majority of Ruthenians were poor, uneducated peasants. Indeed, critics have convincingly argued that Sacher-Masoch’s “Slavic” identity had as much to do with self-promotion and a desire to succeed on the literary market as it did with his actual life experience.11 Taking pleasure in words Ethnic and geopolitical scenarios that resonate with Sacher-Masoch’s biography and autobiographical fictions are also embedded in the very words of Venus in Furs. In the opening frame narrative, Sacher-Masoch hints at the significance and at the materiality of the words in his novel: “Ja, ich bin grausam,” Venus declares in a dream, “weil Sie schon an dem Worte so viel Vergnügen finden—und habe ich nicht recht, es zu sein?” (12).12 Indeed, there are a number of words that seem to carry particular currency in this text’s economies of pleasure, and they are as much a part of the luscious, excessive setting as the many paintings and sculptures that saturate the text. One such category of words is that of nonGerman names of places, people, and things. Much like the visual art in the novel, these foreign words freeze multiple narratives into a single signifier.13 The signifier 10

“Japhet, der seinen Vater sucht,” in Farin, 341-42. For an insightful discussion of Sacher-Masoch’s self-styling as a “Slav,” see Polubojarinova. Wolff also notes that Sacher-Masoch’s national and sexual identity were “very much conditioned by his imagination” (xiii). 12 All references to the novel, hereafter cited in the text by page number, are to Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Venus im Pelz: mit einer Studie über den Masochismus von Gilles Deleuze (Frankfurt/Main: Insel, 1980). 13 For an excellent reading of these visual elements and the act of seeing in Venus in Furs, see Suzanne R. Stewart, Sublime Surrender: Male Masochism at the Fin-de-Siècle (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), 58-88. 11

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The Secrets of the Kazabaika

that most spectacularly exemplifies this practice is the primary fetish object itself, the infamous fur-lined coat that Sacher-Masoch calls a Kazabaika. First, however, let me briefly analyze the Slavic names of the two protagonists and a few other markedly non-German words in the text. The names of Severin von Kusiemski and Wanda von Dunajew tell multiple and conflicting stories of origin that become legible only with some knowledge of Slavic languages. Both characters are marked as hybrids. Severin’s first name offers both Latin and Slavic etymologies (evoking “severity” and “the north,” (respectively.) His last name Kusiemski may evoke the Polish verb kusiü, which translates as to tempt or to seduce.14 Both of these words underscore Severin’s role in the masochistic relationship: though he represents the “Northerner” who supposedly understands nothing about love, he actively seduces Wanda into her role as the cruel woman. Wanda, whose first name is distinctly Polish, is the namesake of a Cracovian princess of myth who threw herself off Castle Hill to avoid being married to a German prince. She is associated with Sarmatianism— both in the sense of intense Polish patriotism and of the history of the Amazon warriors.15 Since the Renaissance, Polish noblemen had traced their origins back to the ancient Sarmatians and developed an entire ideology of Sarmatianism, which included wearing oriental-style clothing and—notable in the context of Venus in Furs—ermine-lined capes. The historic Sarmatians, an Iranian nomadic people, are surmised to have inspired the Greek tales of the Amazons—a narrative that is reinforced by the “Amazon’s traveling dress” (73) that Wanda wears before she dons the fur-trimmed Kazabaika. Wanda’s last name, however, sounds morphologically Russian, rather than Polish, and bears fluvial associations with the Danube river. The mouth of the Danube river, Russian territory at the time the novel was written, is where the original Sarmatians and Amazons were said to have made their home.16 To add an additional twist to the problem of origin, both Wanda and Severin act out different ethnic and social identities at various stages in their journey. From the outset Severin rather comically oscillates between his role as a passionate and autocratic Galician landowner and a pedantic German: 14

Wolff also points out a possible real-life inspiration for Severin’s name, the Ruthenian political leader Mikhail Kuzemsky (xv). 15 In “A Childhood Memory and Reflections on the Novel,” Sacher-Masoch identifies his ideal cruel woman as “both my creation and the true Sarmatian woman.” Masochism, 273. 16 Nowa encyklopedia powszechna PWN, vol. 5 (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN SA, 1998), s.v. “sarmatyzm”; Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, s.v. “sarmatian,” http://search.eb.com/eb/article?tocId=9065786&query=sarmatian&ct=eb (accessed September 25, 2004). The “distinctly Russian” morphology of Wanda’s surname, as well as its fluvial associations have also been noted by Polubojarinova (244).

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Er zeigte für einen galizischen Edelmann und Gutsbesitzer . . . eine auffallende Nüchternheit des Wesens, einen gewissen Ernst, ja sogar Pedanterie. Er lebte nach einem minutiös ausgeführten, halb philosophischen, halb praktischen Systeme, gleichsam nach der Uhr, und nicht das allein, zu gleicher Zeit nach dem Thermometer, Barometer, Aerometer, Hydrometer, Hippokrates, Hufeland, Plato, Kant, Knigge und Lord Chesterfield; dabei bekam er aber zu Zeiten heftige Anfälle von Leidschaftlichkeit, wo er Miene machte, mit dem Kopfe durch die Wand zu gehen, und ihm ein jeder gern aus dem Wege ging. (13-14)

The local Galician assessment of Severin as a “gefährlicher Narr” (13) confirms that he does not fit into any single cultural system. While Severin’s ambivalence has as much to do with his character as his setting, Wanda’s ethnic identity changes in a more direct relationship to her environment and to the increased intensity of the masochistic relationship as it is regulated by the contract signed by the two lovers. First associated with classical Greece, then marked by certain attributes of Polish patriotism, she becomes upon her arrival in Italy firmly “Russian,” or a member of “the race of Catherine the Great” (82). Of course Catherine, the German princess turned Russian oriental despot, herself illustrates the contractual acquisition of ethnic character. 17 Moreover, the choice of Catherine—who was, after all, instrumental in partitioning Wanda’s Polish homeland—as the object of Severin’s desire emphasizes the inextricability of sexual and political violence in the masochistic scenario. The geopolitical narrative is reinforced when Severin dresses up as a distinctly Polish servant to the now Russian Wanda, thus evoking the subjugation of Poland to its neighbors: “...[Wir] gingen aus, Wanda in ihrem Tuchkleide, ihrer russischen Mütze, ich in meinem Krakauerkostüm. Wir erregten Aufsehen” (82). Via their telling names and the roles they play, Wanda and Severin hint at elaborate and multiple genealogies and embody sexual and political histories of violence and miscegenation. While their figures destabilize notions of ethnic or national origin, they also draw on a range of ethnic stereotyping to explain the roles they play at any given time. The names of the characters are not the only markedly non-German words in the text. There are also a number of object that are marked by linguistic and cultural hybridity. The knout hanging on the wall of Severin’s study on his Galician estate is called a Kantschuk (16). This is a Russian or Ukrainian word, derived from Turkish. The same is true for the Baschlyk (101), a head covering worn by Wanda. In Turkish, this word also refers to bridal money given to the

17

Etkind, Finke, and Wolff also point out the irony in Sacher-Masoch’s choice of the hybrid Catherine to represent the cruel Slavic woman.

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The Secrets of the Kazabaika

groom by the bride’s family. 18 These Turkish-derived “Slavic” objects fulfill several functions. Most obviously, they add an extra element of exoticism and orientalism to the text’s Slavic ambience and resonate with the novel’s Turkish theme (a proposed trip to Constantinople that never materializes). But as doublyforeign, imported words that deal with questions of violence, sex, and economic exchange they also gesture towards their own origins and speak of a past which includes often violent encounters of different cultures. The Kazabaika’s stories Perhaps the most intriguing foreign object in the text is Severin’s primary fetish, the Slavic-sounding Kazabaika, which the narrator glosses as a “fur-lined coat.” At first glance, it seems to follow the same pattern as other “Slavic” objects in the text by adding an element of exoticism to the text. Unlike the Kantschuk or the Baschlyk, however, this word is not to be found in dictionaries of the languages evoked in the novel.19 Before addressing the possible linguistic origins of the word, let me first look at the Kazabaika as what it pronounces itself to be. At least since the sexological writings of the nineteenth century, fur has entered public consciousness as a very common object of fetishization. According to Freud, such a fetish represents the disavowal of the mother’s castration (it is an “Ersatz” for the woman’s penis) and is chosen according to the last thing the child sees before he receives the “uncanny and traumatic” knowledge of the mother’s castration: “Pelz und Samt fixieren— wie längst vermutet wurde—den Anblick der Genitalbehaarung, auf den der ersehnte des weiblichen Gliedes hätte folgen sollen.”20 A similar story of origin is also offered by Sacher-Masoch as an explanation for his own obsession with furs: he allegedly observed a romantic tryst between his aunt and her lover and was then punished for spying.21 Venus in Furs tells essentially the same story, but the actual primal scene has been vacated from the literary text. However, the “fear of 18

Thanks to Deniz Göktürk for pointing out this meaning of the Turkish bashlik to me. I have searched Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, Turkish, French, Belarussian, Yiddish, and German dictionaries and have canvassed Slavs and Germans of many backgrounds for potential sources for the kazabaika. So far, the word has seemed familiar to no one. I therefore conclude that the kazabaika is either an invented word, or a dialectical variant that would have been inaccessible to most any reader at the time of publication. The kazabaika also makes appearances in other texts by Sacher-Masoch, including his quasi-documentary report of the 1848 Pan-Slavic Congress, which he published in France in 1888. M. SacherMasoch, “Choses Vécues,” Revue Bleue, no. 8 (1888): 248-52. 20 Sigmund Freud, “Fetischismus,” in Gesammelte Werke, 6th ed. (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1991-1998), 14: 314-15. 21 “A Childhood Memory,” in Masochism, 274-75. 19

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castration” element of Freud’s narrative is interesting to me only inasmuch as it also lies on the surface of Sacher-Masoch’s text. More intriguing in Freud’s presentation is the theorization of fetishistic logic. Freud’s fetish is the site of both knowledge and non-knowledge: the fetishist knows that the mother is castrated, but the fetish allows him to maintain the belief that she is not. The second element of Freud’s essay that resonates with Sacher-Masoch is the linguistic joke embedded in the story of the fetish. As is not uncommon in Freud’s work, the essay opens with a moment of multilingual punning: Am merkwürdigsten erschien ein Fall, in dem ein junger Mann einen gewissen “Glanz auf der Nase” zur fetischistischen Bedingung erhoben hatte. Das fand seine überraschende Aufklärung durch die Tatsache, daß der Patient eine englische Kinderstube gehabt hatte, dann aber nach Deutschland gekommen war, wo er seine Muttersprache fast vollkommen vergaß. Der aus den ersten Kinderzeiten stammende Fetisch war nicht deutsch, sondern englisch zu lesen, der “Glanz auf der Nase” war eigentlich ein “Blick auf die Nase” (glance=Blick).22

Freud concludes that the “nose was the fetish,” but others have argued since that this particular fetish is constituted in and by the movement between languages, in the oscillation between the English glance, the German Glanz, and the unarticulated presence of the Latin homonym glans, which has been visible to a number of good Freudian readers.23 More recently, this passage has also proved fertile ground for scholars searching for ways that Freud inscribed Jewish difference into the theories of psychoanalysis. 24 Following Freud’s lead and Venus’s hint, let me now speculate on the origins of Sacher-Masoch’s invented word. As I turn to dictionaries of the languages invoked in the novel, I find that The Concise Oxford Turkish Dictionary lists the primary meaning of kaza as accident; mischance; casualty; chance, which carries a certain resonance with the Freudian threat of castration. Kaz is also the root of the Ukrainian verb kazati, the Polish kazaü, and the Russian kazat’. The various overlapping meanings of these 22

Freud, “Fetischismus,” 311. Jacques Lacan and Wladimir Granoff read the fetish as constituted by the oscillation between languages in “Fetishism: The Symbolic, the Imaginary, and the Real,” in Perversions: Psychodynamics and Therapy, ed. Sandor Lorand and Michel Balint (New York: Random House, 1956), 265-76. Freud’s “exemplary denial” of the Latin glans is discussed by Charles Bernheimer in “Fetishism and Allegory in Bouvard et Pécuchet,” in Flaubert and Postmodernism, ed. Naomi Schor and Henry F. Majewski (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), 165-66; see also Guy Rosolato, “Le Fétichisme dont se dérobe l’objet,” Nouvelle Revue de psychoanalyse, no. 2 (Fall 1970): 31-39. 24 Jay Geller, “‘A glance at the nose’: Freud’s Inscription of Jewish Difference,” American Imago 49, no.4 (1992): 427-44. 23

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words include to say, to order, to command, to preach, to show, to punish, and to chastise. Additionally, in most Slavic languages koza (pronunced kaza in Russian) is a female goat, and a Polish koĪuch is a kind of sheepskin coat. The word baika also exists in these three Slavic languages. One meaning of the word is story, tale, or invented thing. Another refers to baize, a kind of cloth. Kazabaika also rhymes nicely with nagaika, the Russian word for whip.25 While the connections between these elements may still seem vague, the Kazabaika clearly continues the text’s practice of overdetermination. Like its author, this fetish is multinational, combining diverse languages and cultures. As both a fetish object and a verbal fetish, the Kazabaika unites at least two stories of origin. One is psychosexual, the other seems in some way to address the question of ethnic and geopolitical origins. While at this point it may sound doubtful that Turkish and Slavic punishment and Slavic goats and fairytales have anything in common, a look at the protagonist Severin’s “Confessions of a Supersensualist” may illuminate some of the potential connections: [J]a schon in der Wiege, so erzählte mir meine Mutter später, war ich übersinnlich, verschmähte die gesunde Brust der Amme, und man mußte mich mit Ziegenmilch nähren (39).

Here, Severin invents a retrospective fantasy in which the act of nursing appears as a first seduction attempt. The goat’s milk becomes a literal substitution for the milk that emerges from the frightening female form. As Severin continues his story, he links his fear of women and his discovery of the fetish (this time embodied in the statue of Venus) directly to an environment full of contradictory social and cultural messages: Als kleiner Knabe zeigte ich eine rätselhafte Scheu vor Frauen, in welcher sich eigentlich nur ein unheimliches Interesse für dieselben ausdrückte. Das graue Gewölbe, das Halbdunkel einer Kirche beängstigten mich, und vor den glitzernden Altären und Heiligenbildern faßte mich eine förmliche Angst. Dagegen schlich ich heimlich, wie zu einer verbotenen Freude, zu einer Venus aus Gips, welche in dem kleinen Bibliothekszimmer meines Vaters stand, kniete nieder und sprach zu ihr die Gebete, die man mir eingelernt, das Vaterunser, das Gegrüßt seist du Maria und das Credo (39-40).

25

The word nagaika, like bashlyk and kantschuk, speaks of Russian encounters with neighboring peoples, since it developed in Russian from the name of a Turkic tribe (the Nogai) living in the Crimea and the Caucasus. Maks Fasmer, Etimologicheskii slovar’ russkogo iazyka, vol. 3 (Moskva: Progress, 1971), s.v. “nagaika.”

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The focus of the boy’s anxiety is the feminine, dark, uncanny, and apparently Slavic world of home and icon-worshipping Christianity. The enlightened space of the father’s library counters this fear of the maternal. In the statue of Venus the boy creates a bridge between these two worlds—the statue is a safe, enlightened alternative to the uncanny, but fascinating religious forms. He treats the statue as an idol, worshipping it the only way he knows how—with the language of church ritual. By mixing these cultural codes he creates his own kind of pidgin worship, which also includes other rituals the boy has observed among the peasants who work his family’s land. Venus herself ultimately “punishes” the boy for this method of worship when she appears to him in a dream raising her harm in a threatening gesture (40). The clash of cultural codes continues as Severin relates his first conscious experience of seduction: he proudly fends off a young and voluptuous Slavic chambermaid by raising up a copy of Tacitus’s Germania. But it is only after this first, rather comic, scene of seduction that Severin finally discovers both the pleasures of the whip and of the Kazabaika. A distant aunt, “Gräfin Sobol,” 26 comes to visit and decides to “hold court” over the boy: Unerwartet trat sie in ihrer pelzgefütterten Kazabaika herein, gefolgt von der Köchin, Küchenmagd und der kleinen Katze, die ich verschmäht hatte. Ohne viel zu fragen, ergriffen sie mich und banden mich, trotz meiner heftigen Gegenwehr, an Händen und Füßen, dann schürzte meine Tante mit einem bösen Lächeln den Ärmel empor und begann mich mit einer großen Rute zu hauen, und sie hieb so tüchtig, daß Blut floß und ich zuletzt, trotz meinem Heldenmut, schrie und weinte und um Gnade bat (41).

It is at this point—when the masochistic fantasy is finally narrated in alliterative purple prose—that Sacher-Masoch introduces the Kazabaika. And here the etymological games fall into place. Kaza, glossed as goat and accident or mischance, points towards the goat’s milk as an Ersatz for the mother’s breast and towards the threat of punishment. Baika, which can be translated as a cloth, an invented thing, or simply a tall tale, invokes an obsession with fabrics, as well as the pleasure of the often deceptive process of narration itself. The titillation that the narrator experiences in receiving orders, telling his story, and expecting punishment enacts the various meanings of the verbs kazati/kazaü/kazat’. The possible resonance with nagaika (“whip” in Russian), speaks for itself. In short, the constitutive elements of this particular fantasy become embodied in this single word. 26

“Gräfin Sobol” is another, rather transparent, encoding of a story in a name, since sobol’ means sable in Russian. As Etkind points out, even Sacher-Masoch’s choice of fur is culturally marked, this time as distinctly Russian. Sodom i psikheia, 20.

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The Secrets of the Kazabaika

The Kazabaika, disavowal, and Freud’s topography of the psyche If the Kazabaika is a verbal fetish that fits a certain Freudian mold, there are two questions I would like to ask of it. First, if we accept Freud’s presentation of the fetish as a place of both knowledge and non-knowledge, what is it that Severin’s Kazabaika disavows? Second, what can the Kazabaika say about Freud’s own theorization of fetish and fantasy? After all, in contrast to Freud’s ostensibly ahistorical narrative of the fetish emerging from a universal primal scene, the Kazabaika has revealed itself as a linguistic joke that can only have emerged from a very specific historical and cultural context and that draws attention to the historical narratives that are potentially embedded in apparently static signifiers. Venus in Furs presents the reader with a series of dichotomies and ostensibly propagates notions of absolute difference: much narrative energy is devoted to the struggle between North and South, frigidity and sensuality, modernity and antiquity, Germanic and Slavic, man and woman. But the text is equally concerned with pointing out the instability of these oppositions. The journey on which the protagonists embark is announced as a journey from North to South, but the trip in fact takes an East-Southwest trajectory that essentially maps the borders of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.27 Slavic and German are posited as essentially different, yet both characters represent ethnic and cultural hybrids. Moreover, their ethnic identities are revealed as contractual, rather than governed by blood, since the protagonists are able to change their ethnic identities as they progress on their journey. The male-female distinction is also destabilized in the masochistic relationship, nowhere as clearly as in the brief appearance of “the Greek”—a beautiful cross-dressing man who is desired by other men and whose appearance proves powerful enough to end the relationship between Severin and Wanda.28 The disavowal at work in the text seems to be the fundamental disavowal of borders themselves, as expressed in the geopolitical divisions of nineteenth-century Europe, and in terms of ethnic and sexual difference. Venus in Fur’s ethnic and geopolitical fantasy oscillates between a vision of a borderless Europe, where 27

It is significant that while Severin and Wanda contemplate traveling to Constantinople (a choice that nicely conflates the “Turkish/Oriental” and the “Ancient Greek” themes of the novel), the pair ultimately chooses the not-so-distant locale of Florence. In other words, a text that sets out to cross dramatic political borders into a world “wo jeder einen Sklaven hat” (63) instead remains close to home. In fact, one could argue that no established political border has been crossed at all: Florence belonged to the House of Hapsburg-Lothringia until 1859 (a decade before Venus in Furs was penned) and Severin’s first extended “Italian” encounter is with a soldier who had served in the Austrian army and speaks German (77). 28 Once the text iterates this homosexual desire, it stops before it actually consumes it: the Greek announces that he must kill any man who desires him (117).

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ethnic and sexual identity can be donned and doffed as easily as a fur-line coat, and a rigidly defined world, in which the “cured” Severin can expound in the frame narrative (whether seriously or not) that one must choose to be either hammer or anvil (138). At least while staging the masochistic relationship, the Kazabaika fetishist rebels against this rhetoric of absolute ethnic and sexual difference and embodies the potential for a more complex vision of history that would reveal complex stories of cultural encounters. Ultimately, however, this alternate vision of history remains implicit and the Kazabaika hides its messages somewhat too well: after all, fur-clad Wanda also serves to reinforce the stereotypical image of the “cruel Slavic woman,” which remained a popular space for the projection of male fears and desires throughout fin-de-siècle European culture and arguably until today. If within the narrative economy of the novel Venus in Furs, the Kazabaika disavows the borders of absolute sexual and ethnic difference, what could this binding of the sexual and ethnic stories suggest about Freud’s theorization of fetish and fantasy? Let us look briefly at how the “fantastic”29 text of Venus in Furs might shed light on the borders of Freud’s topography of the psyche. Freud divides the psyche topographically into the systems of the Unconscious, Preconscious and Conscious. Within this Freudian topography, “fantasy” is the privileged point where one may catch in the raw the process of transition from one system to another. In other words, fantasy is where we see the workings of repression or of the return of repressed material.30 Within the context of Venus in Furs, it is noteworthy that Freud uses a racial metaphor to illustrate his point: Ihre Herkunft [i.e., of fantasies] bleibt das für ihr Schicksal Entscheidende. Man muß sie mit den Mischlingen menschlicher Rassen vergleichen, die im großen und ganzen bereits den Weißen gleichen, ihre farbige Abkunft aber durch den einen oder anderen auffälligen Zug verraten und darum von der Gesellschaft ausgeschlossen bleiben und keines der Vorrechte der Weißen genießen.31

What about Freud’s observations of fantasy provoke this racial figure of speech? And why do both Freud’s fantasy and Sacher-Masoch’s fetish carry such an aura of racial mixture as well as the sense that they can “pass” for something 29

Venus and Furs not only announces itself and its protagonist as “fantastic” (25), but also takes place at the cusp of waking and dreaming. Borders between conscious and unconscious remain permanently blurred in the text as it utilizes innumerable “ready-made” scenarios from literature, history, and the visual arts. What emerges is the mise-en-abîme structure of fantasy: in the text’s search for origins, all paintings, portraits, always already appear as reproductions, and it is impossible to establish a causal chain of events. 30 Laplanche and Pontalis, 20. 31 Freud, “Das Unbewusste,” in Gesammelte Werke, vol. 10, 289-90.

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other than what they are? (In Freud’s elaboration, the fetish passes in the sense that its sexual import is unrecognizable to the outsider).32 As the multilingual pun of Freud’s “nose-fetishist” shows, Sacher-Masoch and his heroes are not the only fetishists to disguise “symptoms” in exotic words of a foreign language. A similar story is recounted by Freud in the case of the Wolf Man, a Russian patient who shares some of Severin’s proclivities for Slavic words and Slavic women and who collaborates with Freud in elaborate multilingual decodings of his dreams. Without reiterating this famous case study, I will halt briefly at a parenthetical remark Freud makes about his patient: “Er bediente sich wie so viele andere seiner Fremdsprachigkeit zur Deckung von Symptomhandlungen.”33 I do wish Freud had elaborated on that aside, for the nose fetishist, the Wolf Man, Severin von Kusiemski, Sacher-Masoch, not to mention Freud himself, have more in common than a way with foreign words. All offer their readers complex stories involving multicultural and multilingual upbringings in which stories of sexual initiation take place in languages other than German and later become coded not only as encounters between the sexes, but also as multilingual, cross-cultural encounters.34 Freud’s discoveries concerning the psyche derived from a modern preoccupation with delineation, demarcation, and classification—exemplified by the sexological studies of Krafft-Ebing that first categorized Sacher-Masoch’s literary output as symptomatic of a specific psychopathology.35 Medical practices of categorization also coincided (and often overlapped) with the era’s heightened

32

Only recently has the question of psychoanalysis and race begun to receive the attention it deserves. Freud’s racialized figure of fantasy as well as his employment of the enigmatic Glanz-fetishist as inscriptions of his Jewish identity in a predominantly Christian and overtly anti-Semitic society. See Geller; Sander Gilman, Freud, Race, and Gender (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 21; Daniel Boyarin, “What does a Jew Want?” in The Psychoanalysis of Race, ed. Christopher Lane (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998): 211-40. For explorations of “unconscious” deployment of signifiers of race in psychoanalytic articulations of sexual difference, see Jean Walton, Fair Sex, Savage Dreams: Race, Psychoanalysis and Sexual Difference (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001). 33 Sigmund Freud, “Aus der Geschichte einer infantilen Neurose,” in Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12, 128. 34 Freud famously produces autobiographical stories of multilingual and cross-cultural upbringings in texts such as The Interpretation of Dreams (1900). 35 Richard von Krafft-Ebing first introduced the term “masochism” in the 1890 edition of Psychopathia Sexualis.

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preoccupation with ideas of both “nationality” and “race.”36 Sacher-Masoch, the Wolf Man and Freud’s Glanz-fetishist all resist unambiguous sexual and racial demarcation and classification. All these subjects cross or disavow linguistic, ethnic, and sexual borders, often in more ways than one. Perhaps such crosscultural case studies helped provoke Freud into reproducing a narrative of the psyche that draws so heavily on racial and geographic metaphors and that also insists on blurring those same boundaries. It hardly seems accidental that the Kazabaika and psychoanalysis, with their complex explorations of psychosexual and ethnic origins, emerged from the multiethnic and multilingual Hapsburg Empire in an era in which the idea of the “political nation” was coming into increasing conflict with the “nation” defined in ethnic and linguistic terms.37 The question of personal ethnic, cultural, and religious identity was also central to the intellectual and artistic projects of both Sacher-Masoch and Freud, the self-defined “Galician Russian” and the assimilated Viennese Jew (and son of a Galician mother). Since the inception of psychoanalysis—and even before the term “masochism” was ever coined—it has often been suggested that masochism might be a particularly Slavic phenomenon. 38 The following reaction to Venus in Furs suggests that some readers who unambiguously identified as “German” would have found it more comfortable to view the author as distinctly other, rather than as a fellow writer in the German language: Mag sein, daß unter den Russinnen dergleichen Sphinxe vorkommen, die zugleich küssen und zerfleischen; im civilisierten Europa kennt man sie glücklicherweise nicht. . . .

36

See, for example, Sander L. Gilman’s work in this area, including Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race, and Madness (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985). 37 These divergent approaches to “the nation” were addressed by Sacher-Masoch himself when he launched the journal “Die österreichische Gartenlaube”: “Wir werden das Oesterreichertum vertreten als eine politische Nationalität, in der sich die natürlichen Nationalitäten, jede im vollen Genuße ihrer Rechte und Freiheiten, vereinen lassen” (Farin, 337). The notion of a “natural” nationality is, of course, also imaginary, as Venus in Furs so aptly demonstrates. 38 For discussions of this question, see Michael C. Finke, “Sacher-Masoch, Turgenev, and Other Russians,” in One Hundred Years of Masochism: Literary Texts, Social and Cultural Contexts, ed. Michael C. Finke and Carl Niekerk (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000), 119-137. See also James Rice, Freud’s Russia: National Identity in the Evolution of Psychoanalysis (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1993) and Daniel Rancour-Laferrière, The Slave Soul of Russia: Moral Masochism and the Cult of Suffering (New York: New York University Press, 1995).

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The Secrets of the Kazabaika Sollte er [Sacher-Masoch] forfahren den Nihilisten zu spielen, so möchte ich ihm rahten, nicht nur russisch zu denken, sondern auch russisch zu schreiben, denn in Deutschland wäre dann für ihn und seine Bücher so wenig Raum, als für die russische Barbarei, in deren Namen seine Wanda v. Dunajeff ihren Liebhaber prügelt.39

While this response reveals little understanding of the linguistic nuances potentially in play in Sacher-Masoch’s work, it does confirm that the “otherness” of Sacher-Masoch’s characters enhanced the reading pleasure for his Germanlanguage audience. In this respect, it is also relevant to note that Sacher-Masoch’s sexual preoccupations tended to be ignored in contemporary Ukrainian and Russian responses to his work. Among those people who had the linguistic means to understand his play with words, his works were read in terms of their more or less realistic depiction of the Galician or Russian environment, not as an exploration of sexual fantasies.40 This suggests a kind of colonial imbalance: the ethnic mix of Galicia and of the world of Venus in Furs is more potent and symbolic for the “civilized” German-language readers at the center of the Empire than for those living at the margins. “Sacher-Masochism,” as elaborated in Venus in Furs, with its essential elements of fantasy and fetishism, is clearly not only an outpouring of the “Slavic soul,” but rather a product that emerges from a cross-cultural encounter—in particular the ongoing encounter between Western and Eastern European nations, peoples, religions, and languages. I conclude, therefore, by restating that Venus’s Kazabaika is more than just a fur, and that “Sacher-Masochism” is far more than a sexual perversion. Instead, I read Venus and her furs as products of the encounter between discursive and social categories of Slav and German, Oriental and Occidental, primitive and civilized. While Venus in Furs often invokes crude binaries, there are many moments in which more complicated and contradictory stories are hidden in plain view. The Kazabaika is one central repository of these images. Its ethnic and linguistic hybridity also resonate with fundamental metaphors of Freudian psychoanalysis. Since this paper has been so very concerned with narratives of origins, I will end by suggesting that fantasies similar 39

Karl von Thaler, “Nihilismus in Deutschland,” in Farin, 49, 51. Eugen Nachlik, “Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s Rezeption im westukrainischen Literaturprozeß des XIX. Jahrhunderts,” in Von Taras Ševþenko bis Joseph Roth: Ukrainisch-Österreichische Literaturbeziehungen, ed. Wolfgang Kraus and Dmytro Zatons’kyj (Bern: Peter Lang, 1995), 165-71; Etkind, Sodom i Psikheia, esp. pp. 29-30. Etkind makes the point that many Russians claimed Sacher-Masoch as one of their own and ignored the Galician specifities of his texts. Nachlik mentions that Polish responses to Sacher-Masoch were largely limited to disgust over his (usually negative) depictions of Poles. 40

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to Sacher-Masoch’s, which react to and resist very specific constellations of geopolitical and discursive realities of nineteenth-century Europe, lie at the very heart of Freud’s mapping of the psychical apparatus. “Mixed blood” is an essential figure for both Sacher-Masoch’s and Freud’s explorations of fetish and fantasy.

PART II: EASTERN EUROPE

Habermas and his Yugoslavia Tomislav Zelic I. Introduction Jürgen Habermas, celebrated by some as the unofficial state philosopher of the Federal Republic of Germany and definitely one of the leading representatives of the leftist intellectual scene in Western Germany, never tired of voicing his opinions about the developments in the Southeastern region of Europe called “the Balkans.”1 In my reconstruction of his political and intellectual engagement with Yugoslavia and in Yugoslavia from the 1960s to today, I would like to show the interplay between identification and partisanship, defense and rejection, projection and frustration insofar as Habermas’ stance towards Yugoslavia in the second half of the 20th century is exemplary for the Western German leftist intellectual scene as a whole. On the basis of an anti-totalitarian consensus during the Cold War, the conflict between conservatives and liberals in Adenauer’s Federal Republic of Germany ran along the frontlines of anticommunism and antifascism. At the climax of this conflict in 1968, Marxist leftists in the vein of Habermas reinterpreted antitotalitarianism in terms of a principled pacifism and “posthumous anti-fascism” combined with “anti-anti-communism.”2 Habermas himself advanced his version of unorthodox Western Marxism. 3 During what he called the turn of political tendency (Tendenzwende) of the late 1970s and early 80s, Yugoslavia, a Southeastern European region excluded from the Western European world, served him as a screen of projections for a political alternative to Western representative parliamentary democracy and liberal market economy.4 In the face of “the crisis of the social welfare state”, which Habermas diagnosed in 1984, “utopian energies”

1

Focal point for Habermas’ discussion of Yugoslavia is not so much his philosophical work than the German weekly news magazines Die Zeit and Der Spiegel. 2 Ulrike Ackermann, Sündenfall der Intellektuellen. Ein deutsch-französischer Streit von 1945 bis heute (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2000). 3 Jürgen Habermas, Zur Rekonstruktion des Historischen Materialismus (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1976). 4 Jürgen Habermas, Kleine Politische Schriften (I-IV) (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1981), 311.

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began exhausting themselves in the West.5 During the war in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo in the 1990s, German leftist intellectuals protested the allegedly inappropriate or untimely recognition of the newly founded independent Republics of Slovenia and Croatia and diagnosed the failure of Western politics in general, while their own hopes and ideals regarding Yugoslavia and Europe underwent a fundamental intellectual crisis of apparently similar dimension.6 But what was it about Yugoslavia that made it so attractive to leftist intellectuals like Habermas, even after 1989? In the first place, Yugoslavia seemed to be equally antifascist as anti-Stalinist during the 1950s, since it came off and celebrated itself as one of victors over European fascism in World War II. and the Cominform expelled the Yugoslav Communist Party due to Marshal Tito‘s defiance of Soviet supremacy as early as in 1948. Secondly, real existing “democratic socialism” and “worker’s self-administration” allegedly existed in Yugoslavia until Tito’s constitutional amendments of 1971 and his constitutional reforms of 1974. Until then, the nonaligned idyll and dreamland of pre-capitalist inviolacy seemed to have been treading safely on the groundbreaking “third way” between communism and capitalism. Thirdly, a region beyond the borders of Western Central Europe seemed to embody the model of multicultural society for future European integration and unification. Three main religious groups (Roman Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and Muslims) and six nations (Slovenes, Croats, Bosnians, Serbs, Montenegrins, and Macedonians) as well as many minority groups (Albanians, Italians, Germans, Hungarians, Bulgarians, Jews, Romanies and Sinti) seemed to be living peacefully together – under Tito’s authoritarian and repressive regime. This essay is divided into four parts. In the first part, I will deal with Habermas’ engagement in and with the Praxis group during its “heroic” age in Yugoslavia from 1964 to 1974. Secondly, I will describe the rise of Habermas’ Yugoslavism which occurred during the time from the Tendenzwende in Germany until the Historian’s Debate in the eve of German unification 1974-1989. Thirdly, I will focus on Habermas’ nostalgic Yugoslavism from 1989-1995, and last but not least I will comment on the vistas of his German “constitutional patriotism” and so-called “postnational” Europeanism since 1999. 5

Jürgen Habermas, “Die Krise des Wohlfahrtstaates und die Erschöpfung utopischer Energien,” in Die neue Unübersichtlichkeit (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1985), 141-66. English edition: Jürgen Habermas, “The New Obscurity: The Crisis of the Welfare State and the Exhaustion of Utopian Energies” in The New Conservatism. Cultural Criticisim and the Historian’s Debate, trans. and ed. Shierry Weber Nicholsen (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989), 48-71. 6 Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Aussichten auf den Bürgerkrieg (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1993).

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II. The “Heroic” Age of the Praxis Group 1964-75 During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia was in great disarray. After, in 1966, Tito had removed from office Minister of the Interior Aleksander Rankoviü, the authoritarian proponent of Greater Serbia under the guise of antifascist socialist Yugoslavism, independent intellectuals and liberal Communist Party members from Croatia began rallying for national and demanded more civil liberty, multiparty democracy, checks and balances between the Socialist Republics and the Federal government, and even the membership of the Socialist Republic of Croatia in the United Nations. The movement was simply called “Mass Movement” (Maspok) by Croatian party officials amongst whom it found favor and later it became known as the Croatian Spring. The leadership of the Croatian Communist party headed by Savka Dabþeviü-Kuþar and Miko Tripalo articulated their liberal views, and especially their demands of instituting liberal market economy. Those who stepped out in protest of these demands were mainly Serbs in Croatia and orthodox communists, so-called Yugoslavians under Tito’s leadership who destroyed the Croatian Spring brutally in late 1971 and early 1972. At a meeting in Karadjordjevo (Karaÿorÿevo), former seat of King Aleksander Karaÿorÿeviü, where he had proclaimed the First Yugoslavia under the name “Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes” in 1918, Tito and the Central Committee condemned what was called “Croatian nationalism.” The entire leadership of the Croatian Communist Party, amongst others Savka DabþeviüKuþar and Marko Tripalo, were forced to leave offices they held at cultural, scientific, party and governmental institutions. Thousands of Croats were arrested and imprisoned, persecuted and forced into exile in Western Europe, the Americas, and Australia. Matica Hrvatska, the Croatian cultural institute in Zagreb, allegedly a nationalistic if not neo-fascistic organization, was dissolved. Some independent intellectuals like Veselica and Gotovac spent years in prison. Other more radical supporters of an independent Croatian state were sent to Goli Otok, literally Naked Island, a former nudist island close to the Island of Rab in the Northern Adriatic Sea, where Tito established a concentration camp, slave labor camp, and torture chamber in which were interned both radical leftists persecuted as Bolshevists or Stalinists and rightist dissidents persecuted as fascists or nationalists after World War II. At home and abroad, Croats were killed by the Yugoslav secret police UDBA. Tito and the Central Committee of the Communist Party carried out such cleansings in Slovenia and Serbia as well, however, it did not have the drastic character such as in Croatia because of Croatia’s Ustasha (Ustaša) past during 1941-44, when Hitler’s puppet state, the Independent State of Croatia (NDH),

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existed. Under Tito, the Communist repression of Croatian nationalism legitimized itself in terms of socialist anti-fascism, not unlike Habermas’ posthumous antifascism politically directed against “neo-conservatism” in the Federal Republic of Germany. After 1971, the Croatian Silence began while Croats, who were in favor of fairer relationships between the Socialist republics within Yugoslavia, were terrorized as public enemies. The persecution of Croats provoked a wave of Greater Serbian disposition and demonization of everything Croatian. Tito began persecuting Croatian and Albanian separatists who rallied for the independence of the Socialist Republic of Croatia and respectively the Kosovo region in Southern Serbia, while the faction of “Serbian liberals” dominated the Communist Party and demanded further liberalization of socialist market economy. Tito amended the Yugoslavian constitution in 1971 and argued that every republic has to fight its own nationalism believing that authoritarian Yugoslavism under the slogan “brotherhood and unity” (bratstvo i jedinstvo) and pacification through repression would suffice as an integrative mechanism for the six Socialist republics. In 1974, Tito reacted to these domestic tensions with adopting constitutional reforms, into which the constitutional amendments of 1971 were integrated, attempting to contain all national separatist movements, including Serbian nationalism within the Communist Party and Serbian dominance in the Yugoslav Federal Army, diplomacy, and federal political institutions in general. According to the new constitution, the six Socialist Republics were redefined as states and self-governing communities, they were granted more autonomy from the Yugoslav federal government, and even parity was enforced between them. The Kosovo and Vojvodina regions, within the territory of the Socialist Republic of Serbia, were redefined as autonomous provinces and granted equal status as the six Socialist Republics. In sum, all political questions were institutionally nationalized ever since 1974. Already in 1967 Slovenian Praxis group member Veljko Rus had criticized Tito’s constitutional amendments and plans of constitutional reforms for its “bureaucratic idealism,” “bureaucratic activism” and “bureaucratic optimism,” arguing that they were built on the “illusion that through perpetual institutional transformation social inertia can be prevented and social mobility maintained.” He writes: But the institutional changes only activated the institutional machine and not the social infrastructure besides the institutions, too, and what resulted was an optical illusion: […] our leaders frequently spoke of a reality not experienced by the masses; they spoke of an esoteric institutional reality that was being experienced

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Habermas and his Yugoslavia only by them. Through that time the distance between the elite and the masses, 7 between the institution and social life was growing.

From 1964 to 1975, the Praxis group members, as loyal opposition in Yugoslavia, articulated what they themselves understood as leftist Marxist constructive criticism to Tito’s state socialism in their journal. They protested against the encroachment of political and economical state bureaucracy upon socialist society and against the implementation of socialist state administration and socialist market economy. Instead they demanded the realization of radical “democratic socialism” understood as economical, political, and social “worker’s self-administration.” III. Yugoslavism from the Tendenzwende to the Historian’s Debate, 1975-89 Tito and the Central Committee under the influence of the Serbian liberals made the Serbian Praxis group members responsible for the Belgrade student protests in 1968. As a result, the publication of the journal Praxis was abolished and eight Serbian professors, who were Praxis group members, were suspended from the University of Belgrade in 1974. In an immediate response, Habermas joined illustrious intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky and Paul Ricœur amongst others in organizing the so-called “International Committee of Concern for Academic Freedom in Yugoslavia” and writing a public “Letter to Tito” in 1975. In their public letter, they stated that they saw in the University of Belgrade “a model for the world at large” and in the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia “a respected member of the family of progressive and peace-loving nations” in order to take a shoulder-to-shoulder stance towards their academic fellows in Belgrade.8 Their political engagement was implicitly antifascist, since the foundation of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia was interpreted as “the liberation of the Yugoslav people”,9 and more precisely, the liberation of all six “Yugoslav” nations from fascism. Their stance against Tito’s state socialism was nonetheless pro-Yugoslavian, insofar as Yugoslavia embodied their political ideal of “democratic socialism” and Yugoslavia seemed to be anti-nationalistic, 7

Veljko Rus, “Institutionalization of the Revolutionary Movement,” ed. Croatian Philosophical Society, Praxis 3, no. 2 (1967): 206. 8 Alfred J. Ayer, Chaim Perelman, Dagfinn Follesdal, Georg Henrik von Wright, Harald Ofstad, Jaako Hintikka, Jürgen Habermas, Noam Chomsky, Paul Ricœur, Robert S. Cohen, “Letter to Tito,” The New York Review of Books 22, no. 1, (1975). 9 Ibid.

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whereas all national liberation and separatist movements within the Yugoslav Federation, and especially the Croatian Spring, must be understood as nothing else but a regression to nationalism, chauvinism, and eventually fascism. In 1977, Habermas published a partisan article praising the Praxis group for its theoretical creativity and pluralism as well as their philosophical and political engagement in Yugoslavia. Then Habermas continued to indulge himself in memories of the Summer School on the Croatian Island of Korþula up until 1974. The Summer School was bringing together, as Habermas put it, “the ruling communists of the East and the ruling social-democrats of the West.” 10 These personal memories sound as melancholic as nostalgic, while seemingly taking a glimpse at the realized utopia of Habermas’ famous paradoxical ideal of “discourse free from domination” (herrschaftsfreier Diskurs) guided by the “unforced force of the better argument” (zwangloser Zwang des besseren Arguments).11 Under Mediterranean skies things come together more unconstrained (zwangloser) than at other places where they fall apart: theoretical seriousness, radical democratic convictions, urban open-mindedness, Dionysian pleasure (with our Yugoslavian friends, Nietzsche has not lost his innocence up to today).12

But “under Mediterranean skies” Habermas made another very impressive and important personal encounter which referred him to the history of World War II. and German-Yugoslav relationships forcing him to change the tone from reminiscence to anti-fascist devotion to the Yugoslav partisan war heroes whose company and cooperation he enjoys. Finally, the Praxis group owes its success to another inestimable element: all leading members have participated in the partisan war against German troops; they enjoy that silent moral authority, which one attains only through a decnt life story.13

In the end, Habermas wonders whether “the Yugoslavs could help us today”14 in teaching “the intellectual Left in the Federal Republic how to deal with a bureaucracy that administers convictions; they may learn how to resist 10 Jürgen Habermas, “Der Demoralisierung widerstehen. Die jugoslawische Gruppe ‘Praxis’ stand immer zwischen den Feuern,” Die Zeit, no. 50 (9. Dezember 1977): 17. 11 Jürgen Habermas, Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns. 2 vols. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1981). English edition: Jürgen Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984). 12 Jürgen Habermas, “Der Demoralisierung widerstehen. Die jugoslawische Gruppe ‘Praxis’ stand immer zwischen den Feuern,” Die Zeit, no. 50 (9. Dezember 1977): 17. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid.

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bureaucratically intended demoralization. Regrettably enough, the situations here and there are becoming more and more similar.”15 In other words, during the 1970s the political struggle of leftist intellectuals against “neo-conservatism” in Western Germany and the political struggle of the Praxis group against Tito’s state socialist regime in Yugoslavia shared in common the same convictions and were directed against the same enemies, namely, politically against bureaucratization, and economically, against capitalism. After Tito’s death in 1980, the conflict over the relationship between the Socialist Republics and the Yugoslav central government in Belgrade and the exigency of founding a true federation or even a loose confederation gained momentum. Eventually, it was to escalate into the war in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1991 to 1995 and the war in Kosovo in 1999. At this time, Habermas could not have envisioned that some of the Serbian Praxis group members around Mihailo Markoviü would take a nationalistic turn during the 1980s. Also, he could not have envisioned that after Tito’s death in 1980, support for Yugoslav Socialism was actually going to mean support for Serbian supremacy in Yugoslavia and the imperialistic political program of either preserving Serbian national unity under the name “Yugoslavia” or establishing Greater Serbia, if necessary, by force. In 1981, Habermas published an article in defense of philosopher colleague and Praxis group member Mihailo Markoviü, who had been teaching at the University of Belgrade since the 1950s and had come under political attack from the President of the Serbian Republic in the aftermath of the student protests. Habermas believed himself defending the case of the Yugoslavian “Third Way” and not the Greater Serbian movement on the rise since Tito’s death in 1980. Habermas bemoaned that Markoviü and others had been removed from the University of Belgrade in 1975 because “the Party saw in them the inspiration and wirepuller of the student protest.” 16 Since his suspension, Markoviü had been prohibited from teaching and publishing. The Yugoslav authorities had confiscated his passport, while he had been visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. Since 1975, the journal Praxis had been republished under the name Praxis International of which besides Markoviü and Richard Bernstein served as editor in chief. Once again, Habermas indulged himself in personal memories of the “heroic past of the Summer School on Korþula, where unorthodox leftists of all varieties, amongst them Bloch, Fromm, and Marcuse, met every year to discuss with their friends from Zagreb and Belgrade.” 17 He praised Markoviü and his colleagues, 15

Ibid. Jürgen Habermas, “Wo ist die Fünfte Kolonne? Die Intellektuellen der Praxis-Gruppe werden verfolgt,” Die Zeit, (23. Januar 1981): 34. 17 Ibid. 16

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their unceasing “academic productivity” and their “political courage” and spoke out in support of their filing for action with the highest constitutional court after the Serbian parliament had modified the university law in order to suspend the Praxis group members from the University of Belgrade in 1974. What is most important, Habermas referred himself to the antifascist consensus, which served as the ideological legitimatization and political basis for the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia as well as Western Yugoslavism. Habermas quoted from Markoviü’s and his colleagues’ public appeal addressed to the highest constitutional court of Yugoslavia. In the place, where they [the Belgrade Praxis group members] feel hurt the most, the source of their intrepidness appears at the same time: ‘As veterans of the partisan war, we demand that the matter is straightened out: where is the external enemy, whose internal fifth column we are?18

In Serbia, the Kosovo question, which had been an autonomous province since the constitutional reforms of 1974, was raised once again after Tito’s death in 1980. In Kosovo, Albanians made up a great majority of more than 90%. Since the late 1960s, they had been demanding independence of Kosovo from the Socialist Republic of Serbia; more radical factions had even been opting for secession from Yugoslavia altogether. The leadership of the Serbian Communist Party headed at first by Ivan Stamboliü and since 1989 by his protégée Slobodan Miloševiü disapproved of Albanian autonomy. In 1986, the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts published a Memorandum issuing the imperialistic rallying cry “All Serbs in one state.”19 Mihailo Markoviü was, of course, amongst the signatories. Until 1975, the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia had presented the solution to the Serbian national question. Since the end of World War II, all Serbs were, in fact, cohabitating in one state, namely, the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia. In the same vein as Western leftist Marxist intellectuals like Habermas, the Memorandum praised Yugoslavia as “an exemplary model of a multinational federation in which the principle of unity of the state and state policy was successfully joined with the principle of political and cultural autonomy of nationalities and national minorities.”20 In Tito’s attempt to contain the influence of the Serbian liberals within the Communist Party and Serbian nationalism in general through the constitutional reforms of 1974, the signatories of the Memorandum saw an insult to Serbian nationhood. Tripartite Serbia consisting of Serbia proper 18

Ibid. Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU), 1986. Translated and edited by Hrvatski Informativni Centar (Croatian Information Center), 1998. http://zagreb.hic.hr/books/greatserbia/sanu.htm. 20 Ibid. 19

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and two autonomous provinces Kosovo and Vojvodina meant a great loss of territory. In the Memorandum, the Serbian nation is represented as the victim of anti-Yugoslav nationalism in the Socialist Republic of Croatia and the autonomous province of Kosovo. The Socialist Republic of Croatia, according to the Memorandum, had been openly neo-fascist since the publication of the declaration about the Croatian language in 1967.21 The threat of Yugoslavia’s disintegration was reinterpreted as a direct threat to Serbian national unity. Paradoxically, the Memorandum rallied against all nationalism for the sake of preserving Yugoslavia in the name of Serbian national unity, moreover, arguing outright nationalistically that only a strong Serbia could guarantee a strong Yugoslavia, and that whoever intended to keep Yugoslavia strong had to keep Serbia strong, while whoever weakened Yugoslavia actually weakened Serbia. Since 1986, Miloševiü’s Serbian Communist Party, the Serbian Orthodox Church, and the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts came together under the banner of Greater Serbia. At first, the autonomous provinces, Kosovo and Vojvodina were abolished and reintegrated into the Socialist Republic of Serbia. Miloševiü made successful efforts to secure support from the leadership of the Socialist Republic of Montenegro. In 1989, commemorating the 600th anniversary of the Serbian defeat to the Ottoman Empire in Kosovo in 1389, Miloševiü publicly announced the political program of establishing Greater Serbia, which he was going to realize under the ideological guise of Yugoslav socialist anti-fascism and with the military might of the Yugoslav Federal Army. Ever since 1989, the Socialist Republic of Croatia with a Serbian minority of about ten percent and the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina with a Serbian population of about one third as well as the autonomous province of Kosovo with a small Serbian minority had been in danger from Greater Serbian aggression. In 1991, the Yugoslav Federal Army under Serbian dominance waged the war against the Republic of Croatia for Greater Serbia under the guise of anti-fascist socialist Yugoslavism. Markoviü, who served Miloševiü as ideologist in chief, opted for Greater Serbian imperialism by co-signing the Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in 1986. This was confirmed when he held the office of Vice President of the Serbian Socialist Party under Miloševiü during the war in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1991 until 1995. In a public statement on the arrest of Miloševiü, which was distributed by the Socialist Party of Serbia around the world on April 4, 2001, Markoviü, signing as a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts and not as a member of the party, protested against Carla del Ponte, Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former 21 Jelena Hekman, ed., Deklaracija o nazivu i položaju hrvatskog književnog jezika. Graÿa za povijest Deklaracije (Zagreb: Matica Hrvatska, 1997).

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Yugoslavia (ICTY), who was allegedly prejudging Miloševiü. Markoviü denied the legitimacy of the ICTY, demanded the removal of Carla del Ponte from office and the dismissal of the case altogether. Furthermore, in good leftist Marxist antiAmerican fashion, he denounced the ICTY as an institution entirely subordinate to the political interests of the USA, “the only remaining superpower.” 22 He attempted to make the world believe that the ICTY persecuted Miloševiü in connection with the break-up of Yugoslavia and not for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity, based on the evidence that “the four wars in former Yugoslavia were not produced by Miloševiü but by paramilitary forces of secessionists.”23 Markoviü went as far as denying that there was any “systematic Serbian policy deserving to be characterized as genocide or crime against humanity,”24 and if similar genocide did occur, as for instance, the one perpetrated by the USA in Vietnam, the president of that state was not brought to justice but merely those who actually committed crimes against humanity. In the final analysis, Markoviü held responsible the USA for falsely demanding the arrest of Miloševiü “in order to absolve itself from the moral and legal responsibilities for bombardment of Yugoslavia.” 25 In the summer of 2003, Markoviü maintained: “Kosovo is the Jerusalem of the Serbian nation.” 26 Habermas did not distance himself from Serbian “ethnonationalism” before commenting the war in Kosovo in 1999.27 IV. Nostalgic Yugoslavism during the War in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina In the winter of 1991, several members of the editorial board of Praxis International, the successor of Praxis appearing at Blackwell in Oxford, England, since 1981, gathered around Richard Bernstein and Seyla Benhabib and published an “Open Letter to our Yugoslav friends”, dated “Berlin, Frankfurt, Helsinki, Konstanz, Montréal, New York, December 3, 1991” and explicitly addressed to Mihailo Markoviü and other Serbian members of the Praxis group, expressing

22

Mihailo Markoviü, “On the Arrest of Miloševiü,” published by Vladimir Krsljanin., April 5, 2001, http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/2001-April/016345.html. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid. 26 Mihailo Markoviü, “Es wird einen Showdown geben,” Junge Welt (28. Juli 2003). 27 Jürgen Habermas, “Bestiality and Humanity: A War on the Border between Legality and Morality.” Constellations 6, no. 3 (1999): 265.

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“outrage” about “the events in Yugoslavia.”28 What is more important, they also bemoaned that their “old friends” might be tempted to betray or might already have betrayed the group’s “principles of human rights, democracy, and the struggle against all forms of authoritarianism, fascism, and totalitarianism.”29 Despite their problematic reduction of the war in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina to “nationalistic outbreaks” and a “civil war” instead of an anti-totalitarian struggle against the Yugoslav Empire under Serbian hegemony, the signatories expressed solidarity with those who were “opposing nationalism, media terror, and war jingoism in their own republics.” They maintained that “nothing can justify the barbaric and inhuman manner with which the Yugoslav Federal Army has conducted this war in Slovenia and the Adriatic coast, especially, but not exclusively, against the Croatian civilian population.” 30 Condemning Greater Serbian imperialism under the guise of socialist Yugoslavism, they add: […] insofar as the political leadership, whether explicitly or not, acts in agreement with the Yugoslav Federal Army, there is no justification for their present policies […] and barbarian acts of such nationalistic politics. […] we want to make clear what the limits of our political friendship and unity are—and to state that these limits are broached when and if it is the case that some of you do not accord priority to the principles of human rights and democracy over and against nationalistic goals and moods. In the past we have strongly supported political dissidents and opposition members in Serbia; on these grounds we also believe we are justified to stand on the side of the victims of the war and the dissidents of today.31

In a note to the letter, the editorial board informs the reader that the “letter was sent to the Yugoslav colleagues, most of whom are members of the Editorial Board. At the time of the publication of this issue, and the English translation of the letter, we were only able to contact individuals mentioned at the end of the letter. Other signatories of the original German letter included Axel Honneth, Friedrich Kambartel, and Georg Henrik van Wright.”32 This letter, to be sure, was not signed by Professor Jürgen Habermas. Insofar as Habermas’ disciple Honneth and former signatory of the “Letter to Tito” van Wright distanced themselves from the Serbian Praxis group members, the absence of Habermas’ signature might have to be interpreted as a politically well-intended move. 28

Seyla Benhabib, Richard Bernstein, Iring Fetscher, Charles Taylor, Albrecht Wellmer, “Open Letter to Our Yugoslav Friends,” Praxis International 11, no. 4 (1991): 1-2. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid.

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In an “Editorial Statement,” the editorial board of Praxis International notified “their readers that with issue number 4 of volume 13, to be published in January 1994, the journal is ceasing publication.” 33 The editorial board claims that the journal Praxis and its successor Praxis International “played a modest but important role in keeping alive the democratic aspirations of Eastern European intellectuals” – as well as the Yugoslavian chimera of Western intellectuals until 1994. The last issue of Praxis International will be devoted to an examination of the civil war in and disintegration of former Yugoslavia. We will publish articles of intellectuals from the various nationalities involved in the conflict, who analyze in depth the history as well as structural reasons for the current tragedy in the former Yugoslavia. Board members of Praxis International are currently reconstituting a new journal entitled Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory.34

In the eve of German reunification, Habermas had engaged in the Historian’s Debate (Historikerstreit) in which the national self-understanding of the Federal Republic of Germany was on the agenda. Habermas articulated his suspicion against any kind of historical revisionism of “neo-conservatives” who were, according to him, downplaying the crimes committed by the German Army (Wehrmacht) during World War II., implicitly relativizing Auschwitz, attempting to return to national normality in the Federal Republic of Germany, and, in fact, pursuing the re-establishment of German hegemony in Europe.35 Ernst Nolte, one of Habermas’ main opponents in the debate, had called the period from 1917 to

33

“Editorial Statement. Notice to our Readers,” Praxis International 13, no. 3 (1993): 1-2. Ibid. 35 Jürgen Habermas “Entsorgung der Vergangenheit,” Die Zeit (17. Mai 1985). Jürgen Habermas, “1989 im Schatten von 1945. Zur Normalität einer künftigen Berliner Republik. Rede zur Wiederkehr des 8. Mai 1945, gehalten am 7. Mai 1995 in der Frankfurter Paulskirche,” in Die Normalität einer Berliner Republik. Kleine Politische Schriften VIII. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1995), 167-88. Jürgen Habermas, “Eine Art Schadensabwicklung,” Die Zei, (11. Juli 1986). Jürgen Habermas, “Geschichtsbewußtsein und posttraditionelle Identität: Die Westorientierung der Bundesrepublik (1987),” in Die Moderne – ein unvollendetes Projekt. Philosophisch-politische Aufsätze (Leipzig: Reclam 1990), 159-79. English editions: Jürgen Habermas, “A Kind of Settling of Damages” and “Historical Consciousness and Post-Traditional Identity: The Federal Republic’s Orientation to the West,” The New Conservatism. Cultural Criticism and the Historian’s Debate, trans. and ed. Shierry Weber Nicholson. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989), 207-68. 34

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1945 the epoch of the European civil war between fascism and bolshevism, 36 emphasizing the turning point of the year 1989 over and against 1945. From Habermas’ perspective, this meant scandalously reducing the catastrophe of 193345 to a mere episode. Against the “neo-conservative” return to national normality, Habermas prescribed European integration according to the Maastricht agreement.37 Against the backdrop of the Historian’s Debate and the two alternatives of either continuing the success story of the Federal Republic of Germany since 1949 or meeting the new challenges to German foreign policy in the European context, Habermas condemned deployment of German troops in the First Gulf War and in the war in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. His argument, which makes implicit references to Auschwitz, is based on oversaturated historical memories of National Socialist military operations and lebensraum politics in Eastern Europe during World War II. More specifically, Habermas might have had in mind the crimes committed by the Wehrmacht in Serbia, especially the bombardment and siege of Belgrade in April 1941. During the war in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, Habermas witnesses nothing else but “the dynamics of selfdestruction, which reminds us of the almost natural historical drama of our own nationalism, of the European nationalism in the 19th and 20th century.”38 From this perspective, the Southeastern region of Europe called “the Balkans” actually does not belong to Europe. Habermas experiences a Eurocentric and narcissistic historical déjà-vu: for him, the war in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina reflects the prehistory of pacified Europe since 1945, which after German reunification in 1989 ought to be well underway towards European unification instead of, as leftist intellectuals like Habermas would have it, “relapsing into barbarism.” Only in 1993 could Habermas publicly concede that he refused to deal theoretically with Stalinism, when Polish historian Adam Michnik reproached him with failing to assign any systematic significance to the critique of Stalinism in his work. Habermas admits that his fear of being applauded from political adversaries imposed silence on him, Habermas, the great master of public discourse. He probably did not want to get tied up with anticommunism and refused to overcome his anachronistic posthumous antifascism, anti-anti-communism and principled

36

Ernst Nolte, Der europäische Bürgerkrieg 1917-1945: Nationalsozialismus und Bolschewismus (Berlin: Propyläen, 1987). Ernst Nolte, Das Vergehen der Vergangenheit: Antwort an meine Kritiker im sogenannten Historikerstreit (Berlin: Ullstein, 1987). 37 Jürgen Habermas, “Gelähmte Politik,” Der Spiegel 28 (1993): 50-5. 38 Jürgen Habermas, “Ein Abgrund von Trauer. Interview mit dem Philosophen Jürgen Habermas über die Intellektuellen und den Balkan-Krieg,” Der Spiegel 32 (1995): 34-5.

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pacifism. 39 This was, at least until 1999, a new leftist German Sonderweg of downplaying Yugoslav state terrorism and Greater Serbian imperialism. What is worse, Habermas argued his case with an implicit reference to the incomparability of the extermination of European Jews in German history, a legitimatization argument of the Yugoslavian regime exploiting the history of Auschwitz politically at the cost of the victims in the present. It is no wonder that Michnik held against Habermas that he could not share in Habermas’ argument for the historical singularity of National Socialist crimes, in which, despite all respect for the German experience, Michnik saw the “triumphalism of the singularity of guilt.”40 During the war in Croatia, Habermas denied that there existed any “normative argument that could justify the right to national self-determination” 41 and at another occasion recounted the self-congratulatory anecdote about his friends “from all Yugoslavian countries,” 42 to whom he paid a visit in Croatia during the war in 1993. In a private conversation on that occasion, his “Yugoslavian” friends allegedly told him with a “deep sigh”43 that they wished American troops would march in and stay for forty years because that would produce the ideal conditions, in which a democracy as stable as that of the Federal Republic of Germany could emerge. From a Croatian perspective, that view seems like defeatism, since, at that time, Croatia had already been an internationally recognized sovereign nation state for two years and ever since then it had been under the double attack by the Yugoslav Federal Army and terrorist separatist Serbs under the guidance of Miloševiü and his imperialistic politics of establishing Greater Serbia. At least in the case of the Republic of Croatia, the path towards European integration led through national self-determination in the liberation war. Then, at the Kant-conference in Frankfurt in 1995, commemorating the 200th anniversary of Kant’s Perpetual Peace 44 as well as the 50th anniversary of both the end of World War II and the declaration of the United Nations Charta, Habermas’ disciple Axel Honneth criticized the historically, politically, and philosophically false view that the violent break-up of Yugoslavia could be understood as “Hobbesianism of our days.” The criticisms were mainly directed against 39

Jürgen Habermas and Adam Michnik, “Mehr Demut, weniger Illusionen,” Die Zeit, no. 51 (17. Dezember 1993): 11. 40 Ibid., 10. 41 Jürgen Habermas, “Ein Abgrund von Trauer,” Der Spiegel, no. 32 (1995): 35. 42 Jürgen Habermas and Adam Michnik, “Mehr Demut, weniger Illusionen,” Die Zeit, no. 51 (17. Dezember 1993): 10. 43 Ibid. 44 Immanuel Kant, “Zum Ewigen Frieden. Ein philosophischer Entwurf,” in Schriften zur Anthropologie, Geschichtsphilosophie, Politik und Pädagogik 1, Werkausgabe Band XI. Hrsg. von Wilhelm Weischedel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1977), 191-251. English edition: Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace and other essays. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983).

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Enzensberger’s “uninhibited anthropological speculations,” which dimmed out the social, that is, non-natural conditions of the alleged “relapse into the state of nature.” 45 From a Kantian perspective in the historical situation of 1995, Honneth argued that the new conflicts and wars in Europe were a sign of a strengthening tendency towards democratization and human rights politics world-wide. 46 At the same conference, Habermas himself spoke out for a revision of the Kantian principle of nonintervention in the laws of peoples and the United Nations Charta. However, military interventions were to remain the ultima ratio. Habermas and Honneth constructed an early version of the theory of globalization, arguing that the world-wide expansion of economic markets would result in the dissolution of the sovereign nation states. Following Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, Habermas went so far to maintain that the separation of politics into domestic affairs and foreign relations would collapse and politics would be reduced to global domestic politics (Weltinnenpolitik).47 In memory of Auschwitz, Habermas reinterpreted anti-totalitarianism as posthumous antifascism, the ideological foundation on which the Federal Republic of Germany was established and underwent a more or less stable, in any case, exemplary development for some forty years. However, in reference to the war in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, Habermas’ posthumous antifascism implicitly, not unlike the Greater Serbian propaganda explicitly, associated the Republic of Croatia with the Ustasha (Ustaša) regime and the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), Hitler’s puppet state existing from 1941-1944. While, on the other hand, Habermas explicitly associated the Serbs and Yugoslavs with anti-fascist partisans and former victims of fascism, just as the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU) presented the Serbian nation in its Memorandum of 1986 and Miloševiü claimed in 1989, during the commemoration of the 600th anniversary of the Serbian defeat to the Ottoman Empire in Kosovo in 1389. In the final analysis, Habermas posthumous antifascism served as an indirect legitimatization for Miloševiü’s regime and Greater Serbian imperialism implying indifferent toleration if not even complicit acceptance of Serbian crimes, such as the destruction of the Eastern Croatian town of Vukovar by the Yugoslav Federal Army under Serbian leadership in 1991, the establishment of concentration camps in Bosnia in 1993, and the massacre of Srebrenica in 1995. At least until 1995, when the war in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina ended with the Dayton agreement, if not even until 1999, when the war in Kosovo broke out, Habermas’ political stance 45

Axel Honneth, “Is Universalism a Moral Trap? The Presuppositions and Limits of a Politics of Human Rights,” in Perpetual Peace: essays on Kant’s cosmopolitan ideal, ed. James Bohman and Matthias Lutz-Bachmann (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), 155-78. 46 Ibid. 47 Jürgen Habermas, Die Einbeziehung des Anderen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1996).

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remained bound up in nostalgic Yugoslavism, a melancholic longing for the imagined times of the multinational state of “worker’s self-administration” and false reminiscences to the alleged peace, order, and stability in Tito’s Yugoslav Empire.48 The war in Southeastern Europe, Central Europe’s forgotten backyard or Kafkaesque broom chamber, in which the repressed European unconscious made a return, 49 came as a shock for everybody, including Habermas, who did not recognize that Tito’s Empire had already been decaying from within both economically and politically at least since 1971. After Tito’s death in 1980, Greater Serbian imperialism came to the forefront slowly but surely. However, leftist intellectuals like Habermas supported the political ideology of “democratic socialism” and continued cultivating their nostalgic Yugoslavism, which prevented them from recognizing the democratic forces rising to power in Croatian society. The very same forces, which might have pursued the violent break-up of Yugoslavia, have at the same time been gradually implementing liberal market economy as well as establishing democratic political institutions and cultivating civil society since the Dayton agreement of 1995, since the Stabilization and Association Agreement between the European Union and the Republic of Croatia in 2001, and especially since European Union membership candidacy in 2004. The question remains as to whether or not Franco-German Europeanism, based on “postnational identity” and “constitutional patriotism” and manifesting in nostalgic Yugoslavism, is not the origin of a new Western Central European narcissism regarding the expansion of the European Union through the integration of Eastern Europe. With an eye to the complex process of European unification, the collapse of Socialist regimes behind the Iron Curtain marks the end of the European postwar order which guaranteed more or less peace and stability for some forty years. The collapse of multinational Socialist empires in Eastern Europe indicated the limits of multinational statehood and provoked exceptional public 48

Peter Handke, Abschied des Träumers vom neunten Land:Erinnerungen an Slowenien (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1991). Peter Handke, Winterliche Reise zu den Flüssen Donau, Save, Morawa und Drina (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1996). Peter Handke, Sommerlicher Nachtrag zu einer winterlichen Reise (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1996). Peter Hanke, Unter Tränen fragend: Nachträgliche Aufzeichnungen von zwei JugoslawienDurchquerungen im Krieg, März und April 1999 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1999). English edition: Peter Handke, A Journey to the Rivers: Justice for Serbia, trans. Scott Abbott (New York: Viking, 1997). Cf. also Klaus Bittermann, ed., Serbien muss sterbien (Berlin: Tiamat, 2000). And the movies of Goran Markoviü: Tito i ja (1992) and Emir Kosturica: Underground (1996). 49 Slavoj Žižek, “Eastern European Liberalism and its Discontents,” New German Critique 57 (Fall 1992): 51-66. Slavoj Žižek, “Die Obszönität der Globalisierung,” Süddeutsche Zeitung 14 (November 2000): 10.

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support for “les petites nations,” for instance, the Republic of Croatia, even from French intellectuals like Alain Finkielkraut.50 But on the other hand, the collapse must have felt like an insult to Western Central European narcissism, especially, for leftist intellectuals like Habermas who looked toward the East in search for alternatives to the West. V. Vistas of German “Constitutional Patriotism” and “Postnational” Europeanism The more recent paradigm shift towards the new American blend of Realpolitik, moral-political universalism, and military defense of human rights without the mandate of the United Nations, which was performed for the first time in NATO’s bombardment of Belgrade in 1999 and trumped recently by President George W. Bush’s military doctrine and practice of preemptive strikes against Iraq in 2003, has actually been announcing itself ever since 1989. Habermas’ two cents about the Serbian genocide on Albanians in Kosovo and NATO’s war against Miloševiü’s regime simply reinforce the validity of the Kantian cosmopolitan ideal and idealistic hopes for finally realizing the shift from classical power politics to “global civil society.” 51 Habermas supported the Operation Allied Forces politically and at the same time criticized NATO morally for its “paternalism” on the grounds that it “lacks the quality of a compulsory legal action legitimated by a democratic civil society of global citizens.”52 For this reason, he demanded that “NATO’s self-authorization should not be allowed to become the general rule.”53 Instead, Habermas understood the military operation as “armed peace-keeping (even without a United Nations mandate implicitly) authorized by the community of nation-states” in the hope that “the war in Kosovo could signify a leap from the path of classical law of states to the cosmopolitan law of world society of citizens [zum kosmopolitischen Recht einer Weltbürgergesellschaft].”54 Amidst the political crisis, Habermas makes a Kierkegaardian leap of faith, “credo quia absurdum est,” the kind of sacrificum intellectus Nietzsche derided, professing his cosmopolitan belief that the universalistic idea of “postnational identity” based on “constitutional patriotism” goes beyond nationalistic particularism while himself having admitted in the eve of German reunification that only after Auschwitz the Federal Republic 50 Alain Finkielkraut, Dispatches from the Balkan War and Other Writing, trans. Peter S. Rogers and Richard Golson (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999). 51 Jürgen Habermas, “Bestiality and Humanity: A War on the Border between Legality and Morality,” Constellations 6, no. 3 (1999): 264. 52 Ibid. 270. 53 Ibid. 271. 54 Ibid. 264.

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of Germany could have angled off from the German Sonderweg. In other words, the “postnational identity” of German leftist intellectuals could develop under specific psychosocial conditions, namely the embarrassment and feelings of guilt of an entire generation in regards to German fascism and its mass crimes, which in the end, according to Habermas, facilitated the development of democracy in the Federal Republic of Germany and its orientation to the West.55 Unorthodoxly following Benedict Anderson, one could argue that Habermas’ vistas of the world society of citizens, if they are not simply chimerical ideals, actually posit an “imagined community” which is at least as imagined as the nations on which modern democratic states and civil society are based, or, for that matter, political edifices like Yugoslavia, the European Union, or the United Nations. 56 Whereas les petites nations in the region from Northeastern to Southeastern Europe, from the Baltic Sea to “Ex-Yugoslavia,” nowadays called “Western Balkans,” exemplify that national sovereignty and self-determination are the preconditions not only for establishing democratic political institutions, implementing liberal market economy, and cultivating civil society but also for gradual integration into the European Union. Despite all universalistic claims, “cosmopolitanism,” “postnational identity,” and “constitutional patriotism” may nonetheless be particular to the national identity formation of some German and French leftist intellectuals. Habermas’ attempt at erasing national identity or integrating it into a pan-European “constitutional patriotism” á l’allemande is as ever before motivated by anachronistic posthumous anti-fascism and nostalgic Yugoslavism. Before his recent death, Jacques Derrida hastened to join Habermas in establishing a political and intellectual consensus and philosophically dignifying the political discourse of European integration of different paces. In order to grasp the simultaneous internal consolidation and external expansion of the European Union, they set out to define, on the one hand, “the determination of new European political responsibilities beyond any Eurocentrism,”57 but they operate, on the other hand, with the problematic term “the core European nations.”58 Logically speaking, the concept of some kind of “core European nations” must be understood in 55

Jürgen Habermas, “Historical Consciousness and Post-Traditional Identity,” in The New Conservatism: Cultural Criticism and the Historian’s Debate, trans. and ed. Shierry Weber Nicholson (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989), 249-67. 56 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991). 57 Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida, “February 15, or What Binds Europeans Together: A Plea for a Common Foreign Policy, Beginning in the Core of Europe,” Constellations 10, no. 3 (2003): 291. 58 Ibid.

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contradistinction to something like the marginal European nations, which in analogy to the distinction between center and periphery is part and parcel of the social and political semantics used during the transition from pre-modern to modern society in Western Central Europe during the late 18th century. 59 Habermas and Derrida seem to embrace a kind of temporary if not substantial Western Eurocentrism, while the consensus amongst both the leading public intellectuals and their governments of the “core European nations” as well as the people in the streets protesting against President George W. Bush and the Second Gulf War might or might not have created a European public sphere for the first time. In any case, this “manifestation in the public sphere” is still far from realizing the Franco-German philosophical consensus on “postnational Europeanism,” let alone European unification or Kantian cosmopolitan ideals. The future will show whether the consensus will usher in the age in which “the avant-gardist core of Europe” will really be “the locomotive”60 and whether it will thus not only promote European unification but also legitimize its hegemony within the consolidated and expanded European Union or whether it did not just hitch up a Slavic ox to the locomotive, hoping to ride it to the global bull market of the future. In the final analysis, the philosophical consensus on “postnational” Europeanism makes one wonder what the “normative” grounds for the integration of Eastern and South Eastern European countries into the EU are in reality. There seems to be no workable “normative” argument in Habermas’ sense, or, if such an argument existed, it would certainly not be free from force. After all, the expansion of the EU through the integration of Eastern and South Eastern European countries is mostly a matter of instituting, expanding, and consolidating the economic, legal, and political power of the EU in the region. Certainly, for Eastern and South Eastern European countries there was and there will be no better choice than joining the EU; however, only on well-negotiated terms, without haste, and at the right time, provided that the EU does not disintegrate before time.

59

Niklas Luhmann, Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997). 60 Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida, “February 15, or What Binds Europeans Together: A Plea for a Common Foreign Policy, Beginning in the Core of Europe,” Constellations 10, no. 3 (2003): 292.

Imagining the East: Some Thoughts on Contemporary Minority Literature in Germany and Exoticist Discourse in Literary Criticism Maria S. Grewe

When Herta Müller’s novel Reisende auf einem Bein1 appeared in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1989, the Romanian born author2 had already made a successful appearance on the West German literary scene in 1984 with a collection of short prose fiction pieces in Niederungen.3 This collection of stories had been published in Bucharest by Kriterion in 1982, albeit under Romanian communist state censorship. In the FRG, Niederungen attracted the attention of the literati and literary critics.4 With the narrative fiction Der Mensch ist ein großer Fasan auf der Welt,5 published by Rotbuch Berlin in 1986, the German public was presented with Müller’s “autofictions,”6 the author’s term to characterize her fiction. Niederungen and Der Mensch ist ein grosser Fasan auf der Welt are both set in a rural Romanian-German village in the Banat, Romania. Narrated from the first-person perspective of a child, Niederungen depicts in detail so-called ordinary, everyday life in this Romanian village. From a more mediated narrative perspective, Der Mensch ist ein großer Fasan auf der Welt “chronicles the efforts of a RomanianGerman peasant family to get passports to leave the country.”7 In addition to its setting, Der Mensch ist ein großer Fasan auf der Welt and Niederungen share a 1

Herta Müller, Reisende auf einem Bein (Berlin: Rotbuch Verlag, 1989). Herta Müller was born in 1953 in Nitzkydorf, Romania. 3 Herta Müller, Niederungen: Prosa (Berlin: Rotbuch, 1984). 4 Calvin N. Jones, review of Nadirs, by Herta Müller, trans. Sieglinde Lug, South Atlantic Review, South Atlantic Modern Language Association 65, no. 4 (2000), http://www.samla.org/sar/00fJones.html. 5 Herta Müller, Der Mensch ist ein grosser Fasan auf der Welt: eine Erzählung, 1. ed. (Berlin: Rotbuch, 1986). 6 “Autofiction” combines the literary genres autobiography and fiction. 7 Beverley Driver Eddy, “kurzbiographien. ‘herta müller’,” Glossen. Eine internationale Zeitschrift zu Literatur, Film und Kunst nach 1945, no. 1 (1997), http://www.dickinson.edu/ departments/germn/glossen/heft1/hertabio.html. 2

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highly critical narrative standpoint exposing mechanisms of social control and repression, and conformity in the name of cultural and community identity.8 In her later collection of self-reflexive essays, Der Teufel sitzt im Spiegel. Wie Wahrnehmung sich erfindet,9 Müller examines her memories of childhood in the village Nitzkydorf in the Romanian Banat. Placing her experiences in their sociopolitical, cultural and historical framework, the author scathingly critiques the village community’s ethnocentrism and national socialist past, its patriarchal structures and subjugation of personal freedom and expression to rules of social conformity, and links mechanisms of surveillance, control and terror in the Banat village to the urban spaces in Romania. Müller’s early fiction treats, among other things, the Banat Swabian minority’s complicity with totalitarian social structures, as well as everyday life in a socialist dictatorship10 in which consciousness and perception are part of reality’s veil.11 Refusing to cooperate with Nicolae Ceausescu’s12 secret police, the Securitate, and voicing criticism of and opposition to the repressive regime, Müller was denied permission to work and publish in Romania. In 1987 she emigrated to West Germany, and when Reisende auf einem Bein was published, Müller had been in West Berlin for two years. Reisende auf einem Bein, set mainly in West Berlin and referred to as Müller’s “Berlin novel,” explicitly deals with political persecution in communist totalitarian Romania under Ceausescu, as well as the extension of structures of power and control in the capitalist West. Narrated in the third person is protagonist Irene’s resettlement from Romania to West Berlin. The novel received high acclaim in Germany. In an interview conducted in 1998, Herta Müller was asked the following: Die rumänische Diktatur ist jetzt seit langem vorbei, aber die Aufgabe, die Effekte der Diktatur auf die Menschen zu beschreiben, kommt Dir anscheinend als wichtiger denn je vor. Kannst Du eine Zeit voraussehen, wo Du mit diesem Thema fertig werden wirst? Können wir zum Beispiel vielleicht eines Tages

8

Thematic and poetic similarities in Müller’s earlier works of fiction are discussed by various critics and scholars. 9 Herta Müller, Der Teufel sitzt im Spiegel. Wie Wahrnehmung sich erfindet, 1. ed. (Berlin: Rotbuch, 1991). 10 I have demonstrated linkages between excerpts from the critical essays in Der Teufel sitzt im Spiegel. Wie Wahrnehmung sich erfindet and passages in Niederungen by arguing for political and socio-historical contextualization as a means for theorizing some of the poetic techniques in Müller’s fiction writing. 11 Theodor W. Adorno, “Engagement,” in Noten zur Literatur, (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1974), 409-30. 12 Romanian communist dictator from 1965-1989.

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wieder so eine scharfe Analyse der bundesrepublikanischen Gesellschaft erwarten, wie Du sie einst in Reisende auf einem Bein geliefert hast?13

The idea that Reisende auf einem Bein is a novel for Germans and about Germans and Germany not only betrays the expectation that Müller would eventually deliver such a piece, but also unveils the discursive parameters for such a piece’s circulation. Such notions also predetermine the novel’s function: held up as a mirror, reader and critic can see themselves through the eyes of a foreigner. The outsider’s gaze as a means of revelation for the observed assumes that what is naturalized for Germans, such as language, customs and habits, cultural traditions and a rootedness in Western intellectual history, is mediated and reflected in a plethora of nuances and differentiations that challenge limits of understanding. For example, the native German speaker experiences her mother tongue in a denaturalized form, which opens up new and creative uses and possibilities in poetic language.14 Scholar Sabine Gross points out that the critic’s and reader’s attention 13

My translation of the quote: “The Romanian dictatorship is now long over. But the task of showing its effects on the people seems to be more urgent than ever to you. Do you foresee a time when you will come to terms with this subject? Can we perhaps expect one day, for example, another acute analysis of West German society, like the one you presented in Reisende auf einem Bein?” Brigid Haines and Margaret Littler, “Gespräch mit Herta Müller,” in Herta Müller. Contemporary German Writers, ed. Brigid Haines (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1998), 23. Brigid Haines’ and Margaret Littler’s volume in the Contemporary Women Writers series was one of the first collections of critical scholarship I came across that was dedicated entirely to the work of Herta Müller and to which my research is indebted. With this contribution to the scholarly reception of contemporary women writers, the editors further processes of re-examining our assumptions about L/literature and our modes of theorizing the place(s) of contemporary women’s literature within this broad category. My use of the quote above serves merely as an example of paradigms in literary critical scholarship that reappear in different forms over time. 14 Sabine Gross elaborates on this tendency: “Gerade der Versuch, das Eigentliche, Eigene, Besondere im Werk von AutorInnen wie Müller und Monikova zu erfassen, instrumentalisiert sie somit andererseits aus der Perspektive der hypothetischen ‘richtigen’ Deutschen, denen sie durch ihre neue, ungewohnte Sicht- und Ausdrucksweise zu Erkenntnissen verhelfen und Einsichten vermitteln. Diese Funktion wird sowohl bei Müller und Monikova [...] mit schöner Regelmäßgkeit hervorgehoben. Stellvertretend für viele sei Irmgard Ackermann zitiert: ‘Der sprachliche Außenblick sensibilisiert in besonderer Weise für sprachliche Nuancen und Differenzen und öffnet kreative Möglichkeiten.’ Das Betonen des ‘fremden,’ ‘sezierenden,’ ‘verfremdenden’ Blicks ist zum Topos geworden, der sich auch in Texten über die hier behandelten Autorinnen immer wieder [...] findet.” Sabine Gross, “Einleitung: Sprache, Ort, Heimat,” Monatshefte für deutschen Unterricht, deutsche Sprache und Literatur. Special Issue: Libuše Moníková/Herta Müller - Sprache, Ort, Heimat 89, no. 4 (1997): 442.

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is turned to poetic representations of alienation, foreignness, migration and homelessness. 15 Foreignness is thus deduced from the author’s biography. To speak of a poetics whose singularity is evoked by a minority author’s national and cultural roots is well-intended exoticism that re-asserts the imaginary East-West distinction it ostensibly erases. Moreover, readings of fremd remain in a mainly sociological and historical dimension, and often fail to fully theorize the foreign in its aesthetic appearances.16 A naturalizing discourse, the generation of cultural and national otherness remains in its own aesthetic category. Reading poetic aspects of a work solely in terms of cultural and national origin presupposes that an author represents part of an undifferentiated whole in its original state and acts as translator between two worlds. Fluent and writing in German, the author figures as a vessel of cultural, national and ethnic difference originating outside of what is familiar and known. Seen from this perspective, terms such as Ausländerliteratur, Fremdenliteratur, Literatur der Fremde, Migrantenliteratur, and multikulturelle Literatur not only betray their addendum-like character to a national German literature but also place this body of literature in a Fremdendiskurs. Concealed are the mechanisms through which the foreign functions as a constitutive factor in the production and reception of German minority literature.17 Furthermore, highlighting a text’s poetics in terms of a foreign/not foreign opposition can easily de-politicize a text. I would even argue that such a reading re-aestheticizes its object of analysis.18 I am interested in bringing forth implicit assumptions in comments such as the one above regarding the reception of Reisende auf einem Bein, and exploring the ways in which these assumptions relate to the production and reception of contemporary German minority literature. At stake here is the memory and mythology of a collectivity founded in a uniquely German cultural and intellectual heritage (Kulturnation). The idea that a Leitkultur can be successfully institutionalized, a term that hardly succeeds in masking its hegemonic and homogenizing impulses, ignores the continuities and changes in cultural formations and production, as well as the socio-political conditions alongside which such a notion must be historicized. Notwithstanding the controversy surrounding Friedrich Merz’s comment regarding the integration of immigrants into what is 15

Ibid., 441-46. Andrea Ciccarelli, “Frontier, exile, and migration in the contemporary Italian novel,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Italian Novel, ed. Peter Bondanella and Andrea Ciccarelli (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 197-98. 17 Leslie Adelson, quoted in Can Bulut, Stellenwert der türkischen Migrantenliteratur in der deutschen Literaturszene, http://www.geocities.com/almandili1/Migrantenlit.html (December 11, 2003). 18 Ibid. 16

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supposed to be a leading culture of Germany,19 minority literature in Germany is often seen as an exotic cultural artifact and is treated as its own aesthetic category. How the idea of the foreign author/literature functions in the reception of German minority literature is not always immediately apparent.20 In the following I read a section of an essay by Müller and show how it foregrounds an operative principle in some of the reception of the author’s work, and uses the same principle structurally to construct a frame of reference on radically different terms. I choose Müller’s writing as exemplary of the Romanian-German minority authors and dissidents living in Germany today. This group of writers and political activists differs from certain minority authors and shares with others in Germany in that Romanian-Germans are considered, according to the old Blut und Boden laws, ethnic Germans. However, this does not guarantee an easy assimilation or crossing into a German cultural canon and political landscape. In fact, it complicates the relationship to the idea of a homogenous German national identity. In regards to differentiating the reception of literature by Romanian-Germans from a larger framework,21 critic and scholar Sigrid Weigel proposes a useful point of departure. In an entry entitled “Literatur der Fremde–Literatur in der Fremde” in volume 12 of Hansers Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur, Gegenwartsliteratur seit 1968,22 Sigrid Weigel identifies a shift in which German literary reception expands its boundaries to include East Central European authors. Re-drawing the imaginary Orient-Occident divide23 allows East Central European authors to move towards a literary center. At the same time it marks the other side of the divide as its other, or in this case, as the Orient, the Near East or simply the East.24 With the change in the perception of and attitude towards what is considered foreign in the homeland, authors from East Central European countries can be considered by the literary reception as quasi German authors. Though not without 19

Andrea Mrozek, “Heavy on the Leitkultur,” Central Europe Review 2, no. 42 (2000), http://www.ce-review.org/00/42/mrozek42.html (November 2003). 20 Leslie Adelson quoted in Bulut. 21 The framework I refer to is what I call “contemporary German minority literature.” The term “minority” is somewhat contentious and appears to re-inscribe difference. I use the term here, however, to counter frequently used labels such as “Ausländerliteratur.” 22 Sigrid Weigel, “Literatur der Fremde - Literatur in der Fremde,” Gegenwartsliteratur seit 1968. Band 12. Hansers Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur vom 16. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart (Hrsg. Rolf Grimminger), ed. Klaus Briegleb und Sigrid Weigel (München: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1992), 226-29. 23 Zafer Senocak calls literary practices operating with this divide “logozentristische Dialektik.” See Zafer Senocak, “Literarische Übersetzung: Brücke oder Schwert?,” in War Hitler Araber? IrreFührungen an den Rand Europas: Essays (Berlin: Babel Verlag Hund & van Uffelen, 1994), 54. 24 Weigel, “Literatur der Fremde - Literatur in der Fremde,” 226-29.

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their own set of differentiating markers, these authors occupy a separate and more privileged literary status in comparison to the ossified categories of Migranten- and Ausländerliteratur. To mention just a few names: the Czech author Libuše Moníková, 25 and of the Romanian-German authors living in Germany, Herta Müller, Richard Wagner and Rolf Bossert. In the case of the Romanian-German authors, German literature beyond the national borders of German-speaking countries is particularly attractive to the German literary public because of its connection to political opposition and dissidence.26 Language acts as a marker of similarity that, in the end, guarantees certain privileges on the German literary market. Language as a criterion can mediate alliances across cultural, political, historical and economic differences and conditions. German ethnicity and native German language afford the author with a literary status different from that of non-/native German language authors who are not considered to be ethnic Germans. An ethnic German foreign national author, for example, is returning to the political and cultural territory of her own native language, as opposed to authors who have gained entry but not yet a permanent seat there. Historically, the rationale of this line of argument can be read with a view towards a quote by Wilhelm von Humboldt, “die wahre Heimat ist eigentlich die Sprache,” which posits the transnational character of the notion of Heimat based on the mobility and similarity of language.27 What is excluded or overlooked in such inclusionary politics (via a relation of similarity) are the differences, and

25

Libuše Moníková passed away in January 1998. Weigel, “Literatur der Fremde - Literatur in der Fremde,” 226-29. 27 The use of this quote, however, points to the dual and conflicting nature between reception and notions of inclusion and exclusion. On the one hand, this quote has been used by German emigrants in order to reaffirm an essential German literary, and therefore cultural, identity that continues to exist outside of Heimat. On the other hand, it has been used by minority authors to call for a politics of inclusion into German cultural and, more specifically, literary arenas. The failure of the latter is attested to in the categorization and special treatment of authors whose native language is not German yet write and publish in German. The Adelbert von Chamisso Preis, “Beiträge zur deutschen Literatur von Autoren mit nichtdeutscher Muttersprache,” for example, has been criticized in the past. See also Libuše Moníková’s acceptance speech from 1991, “Anerkennung verbunden mit Ausgrenzung,” in which she points to the double function of the Chamisso prize. See also Ulrike Baureithel, “Wo die Seele des Migranten liegt. Zur literarischen Reihe ‘Deutschland neu lesen’ im Haus der Kulturen der Welt,” Die Welt – Kultur online vom 08.06.2000, http://www.welt.de/daten/2000/06/08/0608me172591.htx. These categories are finally beginning to be dismantled, especially in light of increasingly rapid demographic, economic, cultural and political changes in the FRG. 26

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specifically those that are culturally, historically, politically and economically informed.28 The author Herta Müller lays bare the complexities surrounding the relationship between ethnicity and constructions of national and cultural identity in a German historical. As Germans, Banat Swabians (Banater Schwaben) and Transylvania Saxons (Siebenbürger Sachsen) are minorities in Romania (deutschstämmige Minderheiten). This also holds true in the cases of language and culture. Within these communities, Müller’s status is further differentiated. In regards to gender, she is part of a minority within a minority. Müller’s opposition to repressive social conditions in which she grew up, her outspokenness and criticisms of alleged Romanian-German complicity with and even active participation in crimes committed during the fascist National Socialist era, and Müller’s “autofictional” representations of the ethnocentrism which she characterizes as continuations of complicity with the National Socialist ideology of racial superiority, have earned her condemnation and very real threats from several Romanian-German voices in Romania. Moreover, her open criticism of Nicolae Ceausescu and the Romanian terror regime, for which she was persecuted, marked the author as “undesirable” on a statewide political level. When Müller arrived in West Germany from Romania, she insisted on entering as a political refugee (politisch Verfolgte), rather than be granted entry and citizenship as per the FRG’s citizenship laws at the time. Apparently the German government had made it understood that she would receive German citizenship expeditiously if she could provide documentation confirming her father’s past service as an officer of the SS.29 In this case, the idea of returning home to the political and cultural territory of the German language is undone, as is any idealization of Heimat. In a politically significant move, Müller denounced her ties to a national German majority. In her essay Der fremde Blick, oder, Das Leben ist ein Furz in der Laterne30 Herta Müller responds to the critical reception which attempts to describe Müller’s aesthetic representation of perception as an essentially foreign gaze that reveals processes of alienation in the capitalist West. This label, however, relies on simple East-West categories in which the finer political and historical differences and aesthetic contextualization are brushed aside. Her essay works against this normative categorization by re-appropriating the term to describe processes of her own aesthetic production. She also re-inscribes a politically engaged dimension

28

Weigel, “Literatur der Fremde - Literatur in der Fremde,” 226-29. Herta Müller, “Heimat oder der Betrug der Dinge,” in Dichtung und Heimat. Sieben Autoren unterlaufen ein Thema, ed. Wilhelm Solms (Marburg: 1990), 69-83. 30 Herta Müller, Der fremde Blick, oder, Das Leben ist ein Furz in der Laterne (Göttingen: Wallstein, Göttinger Sudelblätter, 1999). 29

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that otherwise is subsumed in readings privileging the “foreign” as a definitive characteristic. The essay argues that der fremde Blick (the foreign gaze) is not that of a foreigner’s in a foreign country. It was not produced in a new environment, but rather in a familiar environment: Ein fremdes Auge kommt in ein fremdes Land – mit dieser Feststellung geben sich viele zufrieden, außer mir. Denn diese Tatsache ist nicht der Grund für den fremden Blick. Ich habe ihn mitgebracht aus dem Land, wo ich herkomme und alles kannte.31 In diesem Alltag ist der fremde Blick enstanden. Allmählich, still, gnadenlos in den vertrauten Straßen, Wänden und Gegenständen. [...] Und dies ist der Grund, weshalb ich es beim FREMDEN BLICK, wie man mir ihn in Deutschland bescheinigt, nicht belassen kann. Der Fremde Blick ist alt, fertig mitgebracht aus dem Bekannten. Er hat mit dem Einwandern nach Deutschland nichts zu tun. Fremd ist für mich nicht das Gegenteil von bekannt, sondern das Gegenteil von vertraut. Unbekanntes muß nicht fremd sein, aber Bekanntes kann fremd werden.32

Müller’s re-formulation of the term focuses on a distinction between the binary oppositions of fremd/bekannt and fremd/vertraut. The first set of terms aligns unknown or foreign with unfamiliar or never encountered. The second set of terms ruptures this alignment by re-locating unknown or foreign beyond the realm of familiarity or acquaintance. This distinction can be re-formulated by way of emphasizing the quote above: that which is unfamiliar or has not been previously encountered need not necessarily be foreign--it can still be understood, assimilated as knowledge about something and as such be trusted; on the other hand, that which is familiar to someone can be made foreign—over a period of time what is familiar or “knowable” is made strange and unfamiliar, and in this case also threatening and destabilizing. By setting up the oppositions in this manner, Müller debunks the commonplace meaning of the term foreign. Experience of and 31

My translation: A foreigner’s gaze enters a foreign country – many people are satisfied with this explanation, except for me. For this fact is not the reason for the foreign gaze. I brought it with me from the country I am from and where I was familiar with everything. Ibid., 5. 32 Emphasis in the original. My translation: The foreign gaze arose in the midst of everyday life. Gradually, quietly, merciless in the familiar streets, walls and objects. [...] And this is why I can not leave it at the FOREIGN GAZE the way it has been attested to in Germany. The foreign gaze is old, it was complete when it came here from what was familiar. It has nothing to do with the emigration to Germany. For me, foreign is not the opposite of familiar, but rather the opposite of familiar trust in what one knows. What is unfamiliar is not necessarily foreign, but what is familiar can become untrustworthy familiarity. Ibid., 11.

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familiarity with the empirical world are placed within the realm of understanding as an epistemological category. Hence cultural differences are not foreign, but rather differences with which one has not yet been acquainted. What is foreign, fremd, is a process and state of alienation in which the experience of empirical reality can no longer be subsumed under rational categories of understanding. Müller goes on to specify this meaning of foreign in terms of der Blick (the gaze). Once again the oppositions fremder Blick/bekannter Blick and fremder Blick/intakter Blick serve to distinguish two types of Blick. The first opposition defines the foreign gaze as that which is unfamiliar in the sense of acquaintance, and the latter differentiates this binary opposition with the binary pair intact/fragmented. The foreign gaze, according to Müller, is a gaze that is no longer intact. It eludes the totality and cohesion of perception and experience. The logic of referentiality underlying the intact gaze is undone, and perceptual coherence reveals itself as a fragile arrangement of disparate elements. The foreign gaze is not only a mode of seeing but also a key part of a poetics particular to Müller’s fiction. As a process of poetic representation, der fremde Blick does not denote an essentially foreign point of view, such as for example the gaze of the permanent outsider. The analysis of der fremde Blick yields the following: it is an autobiographically informed mode of perception, and a poetics of representing perception, consciousness and processes of alienation. These two dimensions are not interchangeable. I have tried to draw out some of the mechanisms at work in the reception of minority literature in Germany by way of reading Müller’s essay as a response to modes of literary reception in which identity politics operate as a constitutive factor in the production and reception of precisely this literature. In this case, “the foreign” as a genre in literature and as an aesthetic category in literary critical studies is not what makes up the “literariness” of a text. Rather it is extra-literary insofar as the “the foreign” functions as an aesthetic category that is autonomous from and not subject to aesthetic laws governing a literary text. Müller’s essay offers a conceptual re-structuring of the not uncommon Orient/Occident paradigm, and herein lies the author’s unique contribution to what I call a poetics of “the foreign gaze.” Rather than read for example Reisende auf einem Bein only as a representation of Irene’s new and alienating experiences in West Germany, and particularly in the urban spaces of West Berlin, the novel can also be read with a view towards the function of its formal elements, such as the poetic strategies Müller employs to represent processes and modes of Irene’s gaze. As a formal element of aesthetic content, “foreign” is an effect of poetic strategies of representation and part of the text’s literariness.33 Rather than set up the “foreign” 33 Perry Anderson et al., eds., Aesthetics and Politics, with an afterword by Fredric Jameson (London: Verso, 1997), 142-95.

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as a universal condition in modernity, Reisende auf einem Bein offers the reader the possibility of historicizing the poetic representation of Irene’s gaze. It is not my interest to inscribe minority literature in Germany into a German cultural canon, nor is it my intention to insist on a minority-versus-majority discourse. Instead, I hope to have demonstrated the need to work out the specific nature of the poetics in individual works and to situate these in their relevant literary critical and political contexts. With contemporary German minority literature, scholarship is dealing with a body of cultural production that is still fairly new to the literary arena. As it continues to be produced and diversify, transformations of aesthetic forms need to be theorized and modes of literary criticism that take such changes into account further developed. Neither scholars in the FRG nor the USA are “outside” observers. As scholars of postcolonial theory and studies point out, academics participate in the production and continuation of exoticist discourse and discursive structures of power. 34 It is the student and scholar’s responsibility to approach the text with an awareness of her own complicity in re-inscribing precisely those power differentials she seeks to overcome. WORKS CITED

Adorno, Theodor W. “Engagement.” In Noten zur Literatur, 409-430. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1974. Anderson, Perry, Rodney Livingstone, Francis Mulhern, and Ronald Taylor, eds. Aesthetics and Politics. London: Verso, 1997. Breckenridge, Carol Appadurai, and Peter van der Veer. Orientalism and The Postcolonial Predicament: Perspectives on South Asia. Edited by Carol Appadurai Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993. Ciccarelli, Andrea. “Frontier, exile, and migration in the contemporary Italian novel.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Italian Novel, edited by Peter Bondanella and Andrea Ciccarelli, 197-98. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Eddy, Beverley Driver. “kurzbiographien. ‘herta müller’.” Glossen. Eine internationale Zeitschrift zu Literatur, Film und Kunst nach 1945, no. 1 (1997).

34

Carol Appadurai Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer, Orientalism and The Postcolonial Predicament: Perspectives on South Asia, ed. Carol Appadurai Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer, South Asia seminar series (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 1-18.

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Gross, Sabine. “Einleitung: Sprache, Ort, Heimat.” Monatshefte für deutschen Unterricht, deutsche Sprache und Literatur. Special Issue: Libuše Moníková/Herta Müller - Sprache, Ort, Heimat 89, no. 4 (1997): 442. Haines, Brigid, and Margaret Littler. “Gespräch mit Herta Müller.” In Herta Müller. Contemporary German Writers, edited by Brigid Haines, 23. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1998. Müller, Herta. Der fremde Blick, oder, Das Leben ist ein Furz in der Laterne. Göttingen: Wallstein, Göttinger Sudelblätter, 1999. ———. Der Mensch ist ein grosser Fasan auf der Welt: eine Erzählung. 1. ed. Berlin: Rotbuch, 1986. ———. Der Teufel sitzt im Spiegel. Wie Wahrnehmung sich erfindet. 1. ed. Berlin: Rotbuch, 1991. ———. “Heimat oder der Betrug der Dinge.” In Dichtung und Heimat. Sieben Autoren unterlaufen ein Thema, edited by Wilhelm Solms, 69-83. Marburg, 1990. ———. Niederungen: Prosa. Berlin: Rotbuch, 1984. ———. Reisende auf einem Bein. Berlin: Rotbuch Verlag, 1989. Senocak, Zafer. “Literarische Übersetzung: Brücke oder Schwert?” In War Hitler Araber? IrreFührungen an den Rand Europas: Essays, 96. Berlin: Babel Verlag Hund & van Uffelen, 1994. Weigel, Sigrid. “Literatur der Fremde - Literatur in der Fremde.” In Gegenwartsliteratur seit 1968. Band 12. Hansers Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur vom 16. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart (Hrsg. Rolf Grimminger), edited by Klaus Briegleb und Sigrid Weigel, 226 - 229. München: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1992.

Inviting Barbarism: Nietzsche’s Will to Russia Nicholas Martin “Evil men have no songs.”—How is it, then, that the Russians have songs?1

Churchill once remarked: “I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” 2 In common with many other modern Western European observers, Nietzsche shares this view to a large extent, although unlike Churchill he regards the mysterious Russian bear with excited fascination rather than bafflement. Nowhere in his writings does Nietzsche discuss Russia or Russians systematically; his remarks on them, as on many other topics, are scattered and diffuse. As both geographical reality and cultural construct, Russia is not as central to Nietzsche’s outlook as ancient Greece, for example, or Rome, or Judaea. Russia nevertheless plays an important ancillary role in his diagnosis of contemporary Europe and its ills. Russia or, rather, what Nietzsche imagines Russia to be, offers important clues, he believes, to overcoming the malaise of nineteenth-century Europe. Nietzsche saw in Russia an antidote or alternative to what he perceived as the febrile decadence [“décadence”] of Western Europe in general and Germany in particular. Throughout his writings, which span a twenty-year period from the late 1860s to the late 1880s, Nietzsche argues that Western culture is disintegrating. Those parts of it which are not already dead, are dying. Western European culture of the late nineteenth century, he maintains, has entered a limbo state of decadence, in which traditional, bedrock values (crucially, those of Christianity) have been 1

“‘Böse Menschen haben keine Lieder.’ – Wie kommt es, dass die Russen Lieder haben?” Friedrich Nietzsche, Götzen-Dämmerung [Twilight of the Idols], i 22, in Sämtliche Werke. Kritische Studienausgabe [KSA], ed. Giorgio Colli, Mazzino Montinari et al. (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1988), 6: 62. Subsequent references to Nietzsche’s works will be to this edition and give the abbreviated name of the work, followed by the section number and the KSA volume and page numbers, e.g. GD ix 11. Abbreviations used: EH – Ecce homo; FW – Die fröhliche Wissenschaft [The Gay Science]; GD – Götzen-Dämmerung [Twilight of the Idols]; GM – Zur Genealogie der Moral [On the Genealogy of Morals]; GT – Die Geburt der Tragödie [The Birth of Tragedy]; JGB – Jenseits von Gut und Böse [Beyond Good and Evil]; MA – Menschliches, Allzumenschliches [Human, All Too Human]; NF – Nachgelassene Fragmente [Notes and Fragments]; UB – Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen [Untimely Meditations]. Translations are my own. 2 In a BBC radio broadcast as First Lord of the Admiralty, October 1, 1939, shortly after Poland had been partitioned by Hitler and Stalin under the terms of a secret protocol to the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of August 23, 1939.

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weakened and undermined but not yet entirely abandoned, while new values to replace them have yet to be conceived. Nietzsche famously posits that “God is dead,” in other words that belief in God is dead.3 Loss of faith has left existence in the post-Christian West without objective foundation, Nietzsche believes. Western culture is caught in a state of nihilism; traditional values and beliefs have lost their divine sanction, and existence has therefore become largely meaningless. Members of this culture scratch around nervously in search of substitutes for the Absolute. These substitutes, Nietzsche maintains, include faith in science, belief in Progress, as well as in reassuring political and moral alternatives to religion, such as socialism, nationalism, and utilitarianism. Nietzsche’s philosophical project consists in large measure of diagnosing the causes and symptoms of Western nihilism and of exploring possible ways of overcoming it. This sense of fundamental crisis is at the core of Nietzsche’s philosophical outlook: the will to power, eternal recurrence, the philosophy of the Dionysian, his vision of “great politics” [“grosse Politik”], and even the figure of Zarathustra, who acts as a mouthpiece for Nietzsche by condemning the nihilistic decadence of his contemporaries and heralding a type of human being who may overcome this decadence: the Super-man [“Übermensch”]. Although not a Russian-speaker, Nietzsche was conversant with the more important developments in Russian culture in the late nineteenth century. He was, after all, a member of the educated and informed German middle classes, despite his contempt for this group. For all his railing against the life of the mind, and his promotion of instinct over reason, Nietzsche remained to the end a thoroughgoing intellectual. 4 His knowledge of Russian culture was mediated through French translations of Russian writers (notably Tolstoy and Dostoevsky) and through his specific acquaintances and friendships with Russians and with German Russophiles, including the Wagner circle, Malwida von Meysenbug, Olga Herzen, Franz Overbeck and, most important of all perhaps, Lou Andreas-Salomé.5 On his wanderings through southern Europe and Switzerland between 1879 and 1889 (the 3

The theme is introduced in FW 108 and expanded upon by the madman [“toller Mensch”] in FW 125. 4 As one critical admirer later observed, “[Nietzsche] spent his whole life cursing the ‘theoretical man’, but he himself is that theoretical man par excellence […].” [“[Nietzsche] hat sein Leben lang den ‘theoretischen Menschen’ vermaledeit, aber er selbst ist dieser theoretische Mensch par excellence […]” Thomas Mann, “Nietzsche’s Philosophie im Lichte unserer Erfahrung [1947],” in Schriften und Reden zur Literatur, Kunst und Philosophie, ed. H. Bürgin (Frankfurt a.M.: S. Fischer, 1968), 3: 21–49 (46)]. 5 Lou Andreas-Salomé, who for a brief period was Nietzsche’s confidante, later wrote one of the first biographies of Nietzsche (Friedrich Nietzsche in seinen Werken (Vienna: Konegen, 1894)). It remains one of the most perceptive accounts of his character and work.

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year of his mental collapse), Nietzsche also encountered and corresponded with Count Urusov and Countess Anna Dimitrievna Tenicheva.6 Nietzsche’s unsystematic notes on Russia and Russians owe much to stereotypical nineteenth-century views of Germany’s vast eastern neighbour. At the risk of over-simplifying a complex body of opinions, it is possible to identify three salient views of “the Russian” among educated Germans in the late nineteenth century. The first was of “the Russian” as a cunning political fox, capable of either plotting or simply of using brute force in order to obtain his ends. The second was of “the Russian” as the holy man of a specifically Russian, non-European variety. The third of these stereotypical views was the closest to Nietzsche’s; this was the view of “the Russian” as a barbarian, who had barely progressed beyond the worldview of Genghis Khan. Typically, this last view tended to be held by Russophobes of a German nationalist persuasion, anxious that the menacing Russian bear be tamed or defeated before it swallowed up Germany and/or Western Europe. Nietzsche’s understanding of Russian “barbarism” is quite different but before examining this understanding in more detail, we should attempt to identify what Nietzsche found attractive in Russia and relate the nature of this attraction to his broader philosophical outlook. The figure of Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881) was an important element in Nietzsche’s qualified Russophilia. He discovered Dostoevsky’s writings relatively late, in a second-hand bookshop in Nice in 1887, in much the same way as he had earlier discovered Schopenhauer and Stendhal: It was the same with Dostoevsky as earlier with Stendhal: the chancest of contacts, a book one opens in a bookshop, ignorance of everything about him except the name – and that sudden, instinctive feeling of having encountered a blood relative.7

Dostoevsky’s psychological insights and (presumed) character become a persistent and important point of reference during the last eighteen months of Nietzsche’s active life. He was fascinated by Dostoevsky’s views on nihilism, 6

See Susan Ray, “Afterword: Nietzsche’s View of Russia and the Russians,” in Nietzsche in Russia, ed. Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 393– 401 (394–95). 7 “Mit Dostoiewsky ist es mir gegangen wie früher mit Stendhal: die zufälligste Berührung, ein Buch, das man in einem Buchladen aufschlägt, Unbekanntschaft bis auf den Namen – und der plötzlich redende Instinkt, hier einem Verwandten begegnet zu sein” (Letter to Heinrich Köselitz (Peter Gast), March 7, 1887). Nietzsche had discovered Schopenhauer’s writings by chance in a second-hand bookshop in Leipzig in 1865, commenting later: “I understood him [Schopenhauer] as if he had written for me.” [“Ich verstand ihn [Schopenhauer] als ob er für mich geschrieben hätte” (UB III 2: 1/346)].

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admired the Russian writer’s diagnosis of the criminal mind, and became convinced that Dostoevsky had arrived independently at Nietzsche’s own notion of “immoralism.” Nietzsche made an abstract of Dostoevsky’s The Possessed, as well as detailed notes on Notes from the House of the Dead and The Insulted and the Injured; he appears also to have read Notes from the Underground and The Idiot.8 In Walter Kaufmann’s view “it is plain that Nietzsche conceived of Jesus in the image of Dostoevsky’s Idiot [Prince Mishkin].”9 Throughout his cultural criticism, Nietzsche does not hesitate to draw grand inferences (positive or negative) from a writer’s outlook to alleged characteristics of the nation to which that writer belongs. In the case of Dostoevsky, the inferences are positive. Perhaps the clearest statement of Nietzsche’s admiration for Dostoevsky occurs during a discussion of criminal psychology in the section of Twilight of the Idols entitled “Skirmishes of an Untimely Man”: The testimony of Dostoevsky is relevant to this problem [of the criminal] – Dostoevsky, the only psychologist, incidentally, from whom I had something to learn; he ranks among the most beautiful strokes of fortune in my life, even more than my discovery of Stendhal. This profound human being, who was ten times right in his low estimation of the superficial Germans, lived for a long time among the convicts in Siberia – hardened criminals for whom there was no way back to society – and found them very different from what he himself had expected: they were carved out of just about the best, hardest, and most valuable wood that grows anywhere on Russian soil.10

In a letter of 1887 Nietzsche confirms that Dostoevsky has given him his most precious psychological material, expresses gratitude for this, and adds that one of the reasons for his gratitude lies in the fact that Dostoevsky constantly offends his most basic instincts. 11 There is an unconscious echo or adumbration of 8

For further discussion of Dostoevsky’s appeal to Nietzsche, see Mihajlo Mihajlov, “The Great Catalyzer: Nietzsche and Russian Neo-Idealism,” in Nietzsche in Russia, ed. Rosenthal, 127–45 (137–41). 9 Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, 4th ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 340–41. 10 “Für das Problem [des Verbrechers], das hier vorliegt, ist das Zeugniss Dostoiewsky’s von Belang – Dostoiewsky’s, des einzigen Psychologen, anbei gesagt, von dem ich Etwas zu lernen hatte: er gehört zu den schönsten Glücksfällen meines Lebens, mehr selbst noch als die Entdeckung Stendhal’s. Dieser tiefe Mensch, der zehn Mal Recht hatte, die oberflächlichen Deutschen gering zu schätzen, hat die sibirischen Zuchthäusler, in deren Mitte er lange lebte, lauter schwere Verbrecher, für die es keinen Rückweg zur Gesellschaft mehr gab, sehr anders empfunden als er selbst erwartete – ungefähr als aus dem besten, härtesten und werthvollsten Holze geschnitzt, das auf russischer Erde überhaupt wächst” (GD ix 45: 6/147). 11 Letter to Franz Overbeck, February 23, 1887.

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Raskolnikov, the anti-hero of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, in the chapter “The Pale Criminal” [“Der bleiche Verbrecher”] in Part One of Thus spake Zarathustra. As Kaufmann points out, this sketch appeared in 1883, some four years before Nietzsche discovered Dostoevsky’s work.12 More speculatively, it has been suggested that there are parallels between Nietzsche’s final collapse in Turin on January 3, 1889 – he fell around the neck of a horse that was being beaten – and Raskolnikov’s dream in Crime and Punishment of similarly protecting a horse.13 However, one does not have to endorse the notion of life as literature to see that Dostoevsky or, rather, Nietzsche’s interpretation of him, made an important contribution in the period 1887–89 to Nietzsche’s increasingly frenzied attempts to answer the questions that still preoccupied him: the questions of moral versus aesthetic values and of what kind of art is needed to rebuild a shattered civilization and culture. Tolstoy, on the other hand, Nietzsche found repellent. In his view a profoundly “decadent” characteristic was all too prominent in Tolstoy’s writings, namely, Christian pity. Nietzsche believed, notoriously, that Christian pity was an invention of the weak, the “have-nots.” The strong have no need of pity, he contends, at least not as a binding injunction. Nietzsche also claims to find certain supposed Russian character traits sympathetic or congenial. In a passage in his intellectual autobiography, Ecce homo, he writes: Against [ressentiment] the invalid has only one great remedy—I call it Russian fatalism, that fatalism without revolt with which the Russian soldier, when a campaign becomes too strenuous, finally lies down in the snow. No longer to accept anything at all, to take anything, to take anything in—to cease reacting altogether…The great intelligence of this fatalism is not always merely the courage to die, since it can preserve life under the most perilous conditions by reducing the metabolism, slowing it down, as a kind of will to hibernate.14

12

Kaufmann, 340 n. See Robert C. Solomon and Kathleen M. Higgins, What Nietzsche “Really” Said (New York: Schocken, 2000), 142. 14 “[Gegen das Ressentiment] hat der Kranke nur Ein grosses Heilmittel – ich nenne es den russischen Fatalismus, jenen Fatalismus ohne Revolte, mit dem sich ein russischer Soldat, dem der Feldzug zu hart wird, zuletzt in den Schnee legt. Nichts überhaupt mehr annehmen, an sich nehmen, in sich hineinnehmen,—überhaupt nicht mehr reagiren... Die grosse Vernunft dieses Fatalismus, der nicht immer nur der Muth zum Tode ist, als lebenerhaltend unter den lebensgefährlichsten Umständen, ist die Herabsetzung des Stoffwechsels, dessen Verlangsamung, eine Art Wille zum Winterschlaf” (EH i 6: 6/280). 13

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Later in this chapter of Ecce homo, entitled “Why I am So Wise,” he writes that he has been forced time and again to rely upon this “Russian fatalism” in order to endure various almost unbearable individuals, situations, and even philosophies. In Nietzsche’s thinking the Slavic world functions as a foil to, and an escape from, the decadence of the West. His desire to distance himself from his own “German-ness” becomes so extreme that on two occasions he fabricates Slavic descent. In a preparatory note to The Gay Science in 1882 and more explicitly in a chapter of Ecce homo in 1888, Nietzsche claims, on the basis of a dubious etymology of his name, that he is descended from a Polish Count Nietzsky: I am a Polish nobleman pur sang, without a drop of bad blood, let alone German blood. […] But even as a Pole I am an immense atavism. One would have to go back centuries to find this noblest of races on earth, pure of instinct, such as it is represented in me.15

He says that he was told of this lineage by his mother and that wherever he goes in Europe he is mistaken for a Pole. In the list of resident aliens in Nice, he says, he is entered as “Polonais.” There is no independent evidence for this, and at no stage does Nietzsche produce a family tree. His strategy is clear, however. His disgust with Germany and Germans is now so deep-seated that he is prepared to exaggerate or even fabricate Slavic descent as a means of distancing himself from them. It is also a means of lending greater credence to his anti-German remarks. In these notes he glorifies Russians and Poles in general at the expense of Germans, particularly those in the artistic field, though Nietzsche’s elevation of Chopin over Beethoven would seem to be more of a rhetorical device than an aesthetic judgment. The characteristic of Russians which most appealed to Nietzsche was their supposed “barbarism.” Unlike the Russophobes mentioned above, Nietzsche does not fear or deplore this barbarism, he positively welcomes it. While Western Europe was, in his view, lifeless, uncreative and lacking in that mysterious quality he calls “will,” the untamed Russian steppes and their supposedly wild inhabitants held out the promise that Europe might be revitalized through an injection from the East of barbarous vitality and raw, creative “will.” In Nietzsche’s opinion, Russia is a great storehouse of energy or “will” which will be unleashed, for better or for worse, upon the moribund culture of Western Europe. His hope is that Russian “barbarism” will revivify and possibly unite 15 “Ich bin ein polnischer Edelmann pur sang, dem auch nicht ein Tropfen schlechtes Blut beigemischt ist, am wenigsten deutsches. […] Aber auch als Pole bin ich ein ungeheurer Atavismus. Man würde Jahrhunderte zurückzugehn haben, um diese vornehmste Rasse, die es auf Erden gab, in dem Masse instinktrein zu finden, wie ich sie darstelle” (EH i 3: 6/269).

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Western Europe, either through direct conquest or by galvanizing Europe into defending itself against this threat from the East. As he observes in a Nachlass note of 1880: The sole conquering power in the grand style is Russia (without this will to conquer states are castrated. To this end overflowing strength is to be directed outward!) As a consequence it will force Europe to unite itself.”16

In his first Untimely Meditation (1873) Nietzsche provides a pithy definition of his understanding of culture. Culture is, above all, unity of style in all the expressions of the life of a people. Accumulated knowledge and learning is neither an essential means to culture nor a sign of it, and if needs be can get along very well with the opposite of culture, barbarism, which is lack of style or a chaotic jumble of all styles.17

Nietzsche goes on to assert that this unity is conspicuously lacking in Germany in the years immediately following her militarily impressive but culturally hollow victory over France in 1870–71. His cultural criticism in this early period tends to invoke his interpretation of the ancient Greek world as both a mirror and corrective to Bismarck’s Germany. While Greece still has an important role to play in Nietzsche’s later reflections on how best to revive Germany’s allegedly fragmented, weary culture, he also turns eastward to contemporary Russia and her supposed reserves of as yet untapped barbaric energy. Possessing barbaric energy is a necessary though not a sufficient condition of culture, in Nietzsche’s view. Specifically, it is a necessary condition of what he terms “nobility of character” [“Vornehmheit”]. He discusses this counter-example to the slave-like characteristics of his age at length in Beyond Good and Evil (1886) and elaborates upon it a year later in On the Genealogy of Morals. A whole chapter of Beyond Good and Evil seeks to answer the question “What is noble?” [“Was ist vornehm?”], and here Nietzsche claims to identify the origins of any great culture:

16

“Die einzige erobernde Macht großen Stils ist Rußland (ohne dies Erobern-wollen sind die Staaten kastrirt! Es gehört dazu, überschüssige Kraft nach außen zu wenden!) Folglich wird es Europa nöthigen sich zu einigen” (NF late 1880: 9/359). 17 “Kultur ist vor allem Einheit des künstlerischen Stiles in allen Lebensäusserungen eines Volkes. Vieles Wissen und Gelernthaben ist aber weder ein nothwendiges Mittel der Kultur, noch ein Zeichen derselben und verträgt sich nöthigenfalls auf das beste mit dem Gegensatze der Kultur, der Barbarei, das heisst: der Stillosigkeit oder dem chaotischen Durcheinander aller Stile” (UB I 1: 1/163).

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[…] barbarians in every terrible sense of the word, men of prey who were still in possession of unbroken strength of will and lust for power, hurled themselves upon weaker, more civilized, more peaceful races, perhaps traders or cattle farmers, or upon mellow old cultures whose last vitality was even then flaring up in splendid fireworks of spirit and corruption. In the beginning, the noble caste was always the barbarian caste: their predominance did not lie mainly in physical strength but in strength of the soul – they were more complete human beings (which also means, at every level, “more complete beasts” – ).18

Nietzsche sees a correspondence between “barbarians” [“Barbaren”] and other key figures on the positive side of his cultural balance sheet, namely, “higher men” [“höhere Menschen”], “free spirits” [“freie Geister”] and the “blond beast” [“blonde Bestie”]. These figures best embody the kind of vital, creative instincts Nietzsche is seeking to promote, which includes the sense of “living dangerously,” in order to overcome nihilism and decadence.19 The attitudes expressed by these figures and, of course, by Nietzsche himself are profoundly at odds with those of the sterile, enfeebled culture he perceives around him. As Nietzsche repeatedly acknowledges, these vital and creative instincts are also the instincts driving war and cruelty. This is an inevitable and, to Nietzsche, not entirely regrettable sideeffect of the plan he envisages for cultural revitalization. Nietzsche associates Russia above all with inexhaustible reserves of “will.” The clearest expression of this belief occurs in a lengthy passage in Beyond Good and Evil: The strength to will, and to will one thing for a long time, is somewhat stronger already in Germany, […] considerably stronger in England, Spain and Corsica, […] but strongest of all and most astonishing in that huge empire-in-between, 18

“[…] Barbaren in jedem furchtbaren Verstande des Wortes, Raubmenschen, noch im Besitz ungebrochner Willenskräfte und Macht-Begierden, warfen sich auf schwächere, gesittetere, friedlichere, vielleicht handeltreibende oder viehzüchtende Rassen, oder auf alte mürbe Culturen, in denen eben die letzte Lebenskraft in glänzenden Feuerwerken von Geist und Verderbniss verflackerte. Die vornehme Kaste war im Anfang immer die BarbarenKaste: ihr Übergewicht lag nicht vorerst in der physischen Kraft, sondern in der seelischen, – es waren die ganzeren Menschen (was auf jeder Stufe auch so viel mit bedeutet als “die ganzeren Bestien” – )” (JGB 257: 5/206). 19 “For believe me! – the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously! […] Live at war with your peers and yourselves! Be robbers and conquerors as long as you cannot be rulers and possessors, you seekers of knowledge!” [“Denn, glaubt es mir! – das Geheimniss, um die grösste Fruchtbarkeit und den grössten Genuss vom Dasein einzuernten, heisst: gefährlich leben! [...] Lebt im Kriege mit Euresgleichen und mit euch selber! Seid Räuber und Eroberer, so lange ihr nicht Herrscher und Besitzer sein könnt, ihr Erkennenden!” (FW 283: 3/526)].

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“The emergence of Russia as a world power is perfectly clear to [Nietzsche],” as Thomas Mann points out in his 1947 essay.21 Nietzsche makes this prediction in his seemingly prescient forecast of the twentieth century in a Nachlass note of 1880, where once again the demand is for an injection of barbaric energy to revive a culturally moribund Europe: Signs of the next century: 1) entry of the Russians into culture. A grandiose goal. Proximity to barbarism, awakening of the arts. Magnanimity of youth and fantastic madness und real strength of will. 2) the socialists. […] 3) religious forces may still be strong enough for an atheistic religion à la Buddha […]. A New Man must show himself. – I myself am far from this and do not desire it at all! it is probable, however.22 20 “Die Kraft zu wollen, und zwar einen Willen lang zu wollen, ist etwas stärker schon in Deutschland, […] erheblich stärker in England, Spanien und Corsika, […] aber am allerstärksten und erstaunlichsten in jenem ungeheuren Zwischenreiche, wo Europa gleichsam nach Asien zurückfliesst, in Russland. Da ist die Kraft zu wollen seit langem zurückgelegt und aufgespeichert, da wartet der Wille – ungewiss, ob als Wille der Verneinung oder der Bejahung – in bedrohlicher Weise darauf, ausgelöst zu werden, um den Physikern von heute ihr Leibwort abzuborgen. Es dürften nicht nur indische Kriege und Verwicklungen in Asien dazu nöthig sein, damit Europa von seiner grössten Gefahr entlastet werde […]. Ich sage dies nicht als Wünschender: mir würde das Entgegengesetzte eher nach dem Herzen sein, – ich meine eine solche Zunahme der Bedrohlichkeit Russlands, dass Europa sich entschliessen müsste, gleichermaassen bedrohlich zu werden, nämlich Einen Willen zu bekommen […]. Die Zeit für kleine Politik ist vorbei: schon das nächste Jahrhundert bringt den Kampf um die Erd-Herrschaft, – den Zwang zur grossen Politik” (JGB 208: 5/140). 21 “Das Heraufkommen Rußlands als Weltmacht ist ihm [Nietzsche] vollkommen klar. ‘Die Gewalt geteilt zwischen Slawen und Angelsachsen und Europa als Griechenland unter der Herrschaft Roms’” (Mann, “Nietzsche’s Philosophie im Lichte unserer Erfahrung,” 43–44). 22 “Zeichen des nächsten Jahrhunderts: 1) das Eintreten der Russen in die Cultur. Ein grandioses Ziel. Nähe der Barbarei, Erwachen der Künste. Großherzigkeit der Jugend und

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Although the barbarism which emerged in the twentieth century was of a different order—it had nothing to do with cultural revitalization as Nietzsche understands it—there are hints in this passage, which in some respects prefigures Expressionist manifestos, that his excited contemplation of the future contains both anticipation and dread; but he seems to want to press on regardless. Nietzsche takes almost no account of the possible practical or political consequences of his ideas. Despite his profound mistrust of theories of historical inevitability, Nietzsche is nevertheless fond of positing grand historical conjunctions.23 In the hoped-for marriage of Russian barbarism and Western European decadence, he sees a conjunction of forces as potentially epoch-making as the moment in the sixth century BC when the ancient Greeks absorbed Oriental barbarism, symbolized by Dionysus, and tamed it with light and reason, symbolized by Apollo. The cultural theory which Nietzsche derives from, or reads into, the Greek experience rests on a speculative account of the Greeks’ psychological development. The original inhabitants of Greece were a gentle, pastoral people who were then invaded by quasi-barbarians from the East. The conquerors of Greece preserved their aggressive energy and mysterious mythology. The conquered were, in turn, able to redirect and channel the dark, aggressive energies of their new masters without stemming them altogether. This, Nietzsche asserts, underlies the creativity and cultural glory of sixth-century, pre-Socratic Greece, rather than the later, so-called “Golden Age,” by which time, in Nietzsche’s view, Greek culture had already begun to decay. The Greeks provide Nietzsche with a model or template for cultural development and, in the context of his concern with European cultural revitalization, it is significant that the model relies on an injection of barbarous energy from the East. According to the speculative analysis Nietzsche presents in The Birth of Tragedy (1872), pre-Socratic Greek culture was the result of a “marriage” between opposing psychological drives symbolized by the gods Apollo and Dionysus. The Greeks’ first achievement had been to confront and overcome the dark wisdom of Silenus. Silenus, Dionysus’s companion, is captured by King Midas who asks him what is the best and most desirable thing for man. Silenus retorts: ‘“The best of all things,” Silenus replies, “is something entirely beyond your grasp: not to be born, phantastischer Wahnsinn und wirkliche Willenskraft. 2) die Socialisten. […] 3) die religiösen Kräfte könnten immer noch stark genug sein zu einer atheistischen Religion à la Buddha […]. Ein neuer Mensch muß sich zeigen. – Ich selber bin ferne davon und wünsche es gar nicht! es ist aber wahrscheinlich” (NF late 1880: 9/341, 7[111]). 23 This mistrust is at its most evident and articulate in sections 8–10 of Nietzsche’s second Untimely Meditation (On the Advantages and Disadvantages of History for Life) of 1874 (KSA 1/302–34).

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not to be, to be nothing. But the second-best thing for you – is to die soon.”‘24 By means of Apollonian art, Nietzsche asserts, the Greeks had been able to stand this desperate wisdom on its feet and say, “‘the worst thing of all would be to die soon, the second-worst to die at all.’”25 Yet for the production and maintenance of great culture, life must retain its barbaric, irrational undercurrent, as Nietzsche writes in section 235 of Human, All Too Human (1878): “Should we not therefore wish that life retain its violent character, and that wild strengths and energies be called forth over and over again?”26 Nietzsche’s theory of culture, which is based on this Greek model, seems more alarming when he turns his attention to the political organization of the Greek state as he perceives it and which is, in turn, relevant to his perception of the “barbaric” forces at work in contemporary Russian culture. This “political analysis” is most clearly articulated in his brief, unpublished essay The Greek State (1872), where Nietzsche (re)constructs a Greek polity, in which that conquering Dionysian energy is allied or married to the form-giving, Apollonian impulse of the conquered.27 The Dionysian energy is fundamentally important, however, not least to keep in check the enormous number of slaves required for the production of great culture. Freed from daily toil, a small number of Greeks (approximately onefifth of the population) was driven by this same energy to rivalry with one another and to the highest cultural achievements. In Nietzsche’s view, slavery is aesthetically justified, because it enables the creative few to labour in their studios and studies.28 The cultural producers had themselves been bred through a process 24

“Es geht die alte Sage, dass König Midas lange Zeit nach dem weisen Silen, dem Begleiter des Dionysus, im Walde gejagt habe, ohne ihn zu fangen. Als er ihm endlich in die Hände gefallen ist, fragt der König, was für den Menschen das Allerbeste und Allervorzüglichste sei. Starr und unbeweglich schweigt der Dämon; bis er, durch den König gezwungen, endlich unter gellem Lachen in diese Worte ausbricht: ‘Elendes Eintagsgeschlecht, des Zufalls Kinder und der Mühsal, was zwingst du mich dir zu sagen, was nicht zu hören für dich das Erspriesslichste ist? Das Allerbeste ist für dich gänzlich unerreichbar: nicht geboren zu sein, nicht zu sein, nichts zu sein. Das Zweitbeste aber ist für dich – bald zu sterben’”(GT 3: 1/35). 25 “‘das Allerschlimmste sei für sie, bald zu sterben, das Zweitschlimmste, überhaupt einmal zu sterben’” (ibid.). 26 “Müsste man somit nicht wünschen, dass das Leben seinen gewaltsamen Charakter behalte und dass immer von Neuem wieder wilde Kräfte und Energien hervorgerufen werden?” (MA 235: 2/196). 27 Der griechische Staat (KSA 1/764–77). 28 “The misery of the toiling people must be increased still further, in order to allow a small number of Olympian individuals to produce the world of art.” [“Das Elend der mühsam lebenden Menschen muß noch gesteigert werden, um einer geringen Anzahl olympischer Menschen die Produktion einer Kunstwelt zu ermöglichen” (KSA 1/767)].

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of cultivation, and at times in his early writings Nietzsche appears to present this as a viable template for Europe’s future development. The production of genius and, by extension, great culture is Nietzsche’s goal. Peace, general prosperity, socialism, the modern state, democracy and short-term educational reform do not satisfy Nietzsche’s criteria for the production of genius. The reverse is true, he argues, because these levelling conditions tend to deaden the instincts of the culturally productive few. Genius can only arise, Nietzsche suggests, on the back of conditions as harsh and ruthless as those obtaining in nature itself. These harsh, culturally productive conditions obtained in modern Russia, Nietzsche believed. In Nietzsche’s reworking of his own earlier mythology, which itself had constituted a revision, Apollo represents Western European “civilization” and Dionysus stands for Russian (or possibly Oriental) “barbarism.” Nietzsche is characteristically reluctant to discuss the practical arrangements for marrying the two, though he appears at times, especially in Ecce homo (1888), to suggest that great wars and convulsions will be necessary to bring it about. As he suggests excitedly in an apocalyptic vision of the twentieth century in the final, selfaggrandizing chapter (“Why I am a Destiny”) of that work: For when truth enters into a fight with the lies of millennia, we shall have upheavals, a convulsion of earthquakes, a moving of mountains and valleys, the like of which has never been dreamed of. The concept of politics will have merged entirely with a war of spirits, all power structures of the old society will have been exploded—all of them are based on lies: there will be wars the like of which have never yet been seen on earth. It is only beginning with me that the earth knows great politics.29

Nietzsche presents a grand aesthetic vision of the future, and violent barbarism is part of that vision. Russians as bearers of revitalizing barbaric energy are 29

“Denn wenn die Wahrheit mit der Lüge von Jahrtausenden in Kampf tritt, werden wir Erschütterungen haben, einen Krampf von Erdbeben, eine Versetzung von Berg und Thal, wie dergleichen nie geträumt worden ist. Der Begriff Politik ist dann gänzlich in einen Geisterkrieg aufgegangen, alle Machtgebilde der alten Gesellschaft sind in die Luft gesprengt – sie ruhen allesamt auf der Lüge: es wird Kriege geben, wie es noch keine auf Erden gegeben hat. Erst von mir an giebt es auf Erden grosse Politik.” (EH xiv 1: 6/366). Cf. also one of Nietzsche’s last notes, entitled Die große Politik: “Ich bringe den Krieg. Nicht zwischen Volk und Volk. Nicht zwischen Ständen [. . .]. Ich bringe den Krieg quer durch alle absurden Zufälle von Volk, Stand, Rasse, Beruf, Erziehung, Bildung: ein Krieg wie zwischen Aufgang und Niedergang, zwischen Willen zum Leben und Rachsucht gegen das Leben, zwischen Rechtschaffenheit und tückischer Verlogenheit…” (NF Dec. 1888 – Jan. 1889: 13/638).

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assigned an important, if ill-defined place in this vision. However, Nietzsche appears to confuse the violence used by a sculptor, say, on his raw material with the violence inflicted upon human “raw material.” Whether or not under Nietzsche’s influence, Lenin, Mussolini and Hitler each liked to imagine himself as a sculptor who worked with human beings rather than marble. 30 Nietzsche also tends to confuse the notions of artistic strength and brute force. He was reluctant to take any lessons from the German Romantics but, at the turn of the nineteenth century, Novalis had already identified the dangers inherent in this confusion: The ethical ideal has no more dangerous rival than the ideal of the highest strength, the powerful life, which one has also dubbed the ideal of aesthetic greatness […] It is the barbarian at his worst and at this time when culture is running wild it has found many adherents among the greatest weaklings. This ideal makes man half-animal, half-intellect—a combination whose brutal wit has a brutal attraction for weaklings.31

Thomas Mann was one of Nietzsche’s more astute readers. By 1947 he had witnessed not only the misuses to which Nietzsche’s thought had been put but had also come to the opinion that Nietzsche had to some extent paved the way for this misuse through his naïve and irresponsible aestheticism. In his 1947 lecture, Nietzsche’s Philosophy in the Light of Contemporary Events, Mann offers a devastating analysis of Nietzsche’s tendency to glorify barbarism, war, pillage and torture: Nietzsche’s glorification of barbarism is nothing more than an excess, born of his aesthetic intoxication, and at any rate it reveals a worrying connection – between aestheticism and barbarism.32 30

See Denis Mack Smith, “The Theory and Practice of Fascism,” in Fascism: An Anthology, ed. Nathanael Greene (New York: Crowell, 1968), 82; Ernst Nolte, Der Faschismus in seiner Epoche: Action française, Italienischer Faschismus, Nationalsozialismus, 2nd ed. (Munich: Piper, 1984), 246. 31 Das Ideal der Sittlichkeit hat keinen gefährlicheren Nebenbuhler als das Ideal der höchsten Stärke, des kräftigsten Lebens, was man auch das Ideal der ästhetischen Größe […] benannt hat. Es ist das Maximum des Barbaren und hat leider in diesen Zeiten der verwildernden Kultur gerade unter den großesten Schwächlingen sehr viele Anhänger erhalten. Der Mensch wird durch dieses Ideal zum Tier-Geiste – eine Vermischung, deren brutaler Witz eben eine brutale Anziehungskraft für Schwächlinge hat.” (Quoted in Mann, “Nietzsche’s Philosophie im Lichte unserer Erfahrung,” 40). 32 “Nietzsche’s Verherrlichung des Barbarischen ist nichts weiter als eine Ausschweifung seiner ästhetischen Trunkenheit, und allerdings verrät sie eine Nachbarschaft, über die wir allen Grund haben nachzudenken: die Nachbarschaft eben von Ästhetizismus und Barbarei.” (Ibid., 45).

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Perhaps Nietzsche was naïve and irresponsible, as Mann suggests. It seems equally likely that he became increasingly bored by an age of peace, prosperity and mediocrity, and that his tone became shriller the less he was taken notice of. In a note that seems breathtakingly naïve after the experiences of the twentieth century, Nietzsche addresses himself “To the Artists” [“An die Künstler”]: .

In the seventeenth century there was nothing uglier than a mountain range; one associated all kinds of misfortune with it. People were tired of barbarism, just as we today are tired of civilization.33

Russia is poised between Europe and Asia; she is “that huge empire-inbetween” [“Zwischenreich”], not only geographically but also culturally and, above all, psychologically. Nietzsche finds the prospect of Russian “barbarism” so enticing that he extends what amounts to an invitation to Russians to provide the primal energy for his project to revitalize Western European culture through barbarism, a project that would be completed by artist-individuals who would turn themselves and the world around them into a vast and ever-changing work of art. The Russian “barbarism” imagined by Nietzsche is part of a remarkable, and fateful, aesthetic vision for mankind.34

33 “Im 17ten Jahrhundert war nichts häßlicher als ein Gebirge; man hatte tausend Gedanken ans Unglück dabei. Man war müde der Barbarei, wie wir heute müde der Civilisation sind” (NF 1886–87: 12/287).

PART III:

THE NEAR EAST AND NEARBY

Orientalism, Expressionism, Imperialism: Bruno Taut’s Competition Design for the “House of Friendship” in Istanbul Didem Ekici In collaboration with the German Werkbund, the German-Turkish Union organized the House of Friendship competition, in the middle of the First World War to promote German culture in Istanbul. The purpose of this first nongovernmental German public endeavor to be realized in Istanbul was to strengthen the alliance between Germany and the Ottoman Empire both culturally and politically. The designs for the competition provide a case study of the discourses contesting the representation of Germany as a nation. Among the entries Bruno Taut’s proposal is particularly interesting, because of its combination of local architectural elements with Taut’s ideas about glass architecture. This paper will analyze the House of Friendship competition in two contexts: the German imperialist project of the period, on the one hand, and the Expressionist and Orientalist underpinnings of Bruno Taut’s competition proposal, on the other. In the late nineteenth century German imperialism emerged as the youngest and the most ambitious imperialist project in Europe, and competed with other imperialist countries, namely Britain and France. German imperialism aimed to make Central Europe, the Balkans and the Ottomans economically dependent on Germany. German-Turkish collaboration that started at the time became the first chain of Germany’s long-term plans to dominate Asia which was largely under French and British economic control. Compared to the British and French, who were constantly taking over Ottoman lands, Germany seemed to have no land demand and claimed to help the economic development of the Ottoman Empire by investing in its land. After long struggles with the British, Russians and French, the German Empire won a series of contracts between 1888 and 1903 to extend the existing railway line from Istanbul all the way to the Persian Gulf. The project, known as the Baghdad railway, was controlled mainly by Deutsche Bank, which played a leading role in imperialist expansion of the German Empire. According to an Italian observer, the Baghdad railway became the biggest victory of German imperialism and one of the main factors that led to WWI. He wrote in 1914: The colonial policy of the present day is a network of railways. Railways are the essential element, the raw material of every greater or lesser imperialistic movement of our time; first arrive the rails, the indispensable vanguards; then

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comes the clash of armies. To conquer the Ottoman Empire, the Great Powers began by disputing with one another its future railways, and the bitter diplomatic and financial struggle which was waged round them for so many years, to the almost invariable advantage of the Germans, was to be no more than an episode of preparation for the much more terrible war now in progress. 1

Besides getting the right to operate the railway for 99 years, Deutsche Bank also obtained the rights to exploit the resources of the 12.5-mile-wide land, including mines, agricultural land, forests, oil reserves and antique ruins, along the railway line between Istanbul and Ankara, in addition to the rights to build ports in Kastapol, in Baghdad and at the end of the railway line in the Persian Gulf. German industrialists exploited Ottomans also through the weapons trade. Starting from the 1880s, the Ottoman Empire paid millions of Marks to German companies in order to buy weapons. Thus the Ottoman Empire, along with China, and Latin America, became a part of the “informal empire” of the Germans based on their economic interests. 2 The war suppressed any attempts at retaining the German empire. Instead, Germany lost its colonies and its economic influence in its “informal empire.” The rising impact of Germany on the Ottoman Empire found its reflection in the German daily press with such titles as “Do not go to the New World, go to Mesopotamia!” 3 In parallel to its rising economic influence, Germany was displaying a growing interest in the “Orient,” a phenomenon that found reflection in architecture, literature, and the arts. The House of Friendship competition that was proposed during WWI reflects this rising interest in the Near East. The House of Friendship Germany’s growing interest in the Near East was also reflected in the policies of the German Werkbund. In 1912, the political journalist Ernst Jäckh was chosen for the Werkbund post.4 In 1916, Jäckh became a member of Arbeitsausschuss für Mitteleuropa and advanced the notion of extending the Central European federation eastward to include the Balkans and Turkey. He proposed building a “House of Friendship” in Istanbul as an expression of a Greater Mitteleuropa. 1

Paolo Giordani, The German Colonial Empire, its beginning and ending, trans. Gustavus W. Hamilton (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1916), 86. 2 Jürgen Osterhammel, Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview, trans. Shelley L. Frisch (Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1997), 19. 3 Quoted by Ragip Zarakolu, “Introduction,” in Lothar Rathmann, Alman Emperyalizminin Turkiye’ye girisi; Berlin-Bagdat, trans. Ragip Zarakolu (Istanbul: Gozlem, 1976), 11. 2 Joan Campbell, The German Werkbund: The Politics of Reform in the Applied Arts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 35.

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Werkbund members who accepted his proposal had hoped to show that the Werkbund was not an apolitical group of artists, but an organization which could play “a constructive role in a world created by the fortunes of war.”5 The name “House of Friendship” was given by Ottoman foreign relations minister Talat Pasha. The proposal also appealed to Kaiser Wilhelm II, who wanted to expand relations between the two countries to encompass the broader public and cultural domains. Funds for the project would come from a private association, the GermanTurkish Union of which Jäckh was the leading spirit. Although privately financed by interested industrialists, the House of Friendship was seen as an instrument of imperial foreign policy. Aimed at signifying the political and cultural alliance between Germany and Turkey, the House of Friendship was to be an imperial showpiece of Germany’s mounting campaign in the Near East to win over Turkey and repel those European countries against whom Germany competed for moral, economic, and political supremacy. Through promoting German culture, the House of Friendship would be a part of the German imperialist project. Culture is a crucial element in the “process of imperialism,” as Edward Said noted, because “the enterprise of empire depends upon the idea of having an empire.”6 The project for a House of Friendship in Istanbul evinced the imperialistic tendencies of Germany, which sought to insinuate itself in the Near East in order to gain access to the resources of the Persian Gulf and India. A comparable facility was also planned for Berlin to facilitate cultural interaction between the two countries. Neither the proposed facility nor the House of Friendship was never realized due to the Germany’s defeat at the end of the war. The House of Friendship was envisioned as a multi-purpose building encompassing various social and cultural activities, such as concerts, meetings, exhibitions, theaters, operas, and festivals, along with a library and a café. The competition for the design of this facility provided an opportunity for leading architects of the era, particularly for the pioneers of the German Expressionist movement, to present themselves. Twelve well-known architects were invited to compete, including Peter Behrens, Walter Gropius, Paul Bonatz, Martin Elsässer, Hans Poelzig and Bruno Taut.7 The last four were invited to work in Turkey after the establishment of the republican regime. It is important to note that no Turkish architects were invited.

3

Ibid., 97. Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Knopf: Random House, 1993), 11-12. 7 Walter Gropius could not participate since he could not obtain leave from the army. 6

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The participants also acted as the selection committee. At the end of two days of discussions Germen Bestelmeyer’s design was chosen. 8 According to Paul Bonatz, each juror had cast the first of his two votes for his own proposal, and the second for the one that seemed to him least competitive rather than best.9 The laying of the cornerstone for the House of Friendship took place on April 27, 1917, in the presence of prominent Turkish and German notables.10 In his trip to Istanbul in October 1917 the Kaiser first visited the project site. The construction began in 1918 only to be interrupted by Germany’s defeat. The site was given by the Turkish government, which was significantly in a Turkish neighborhood of Istanbul, away from the neighborhoods where embassies and foreign companies were densely located. The site faces Divan Street, which had been Istanbul’s main thoroughfare for centuries with its one end at Sultanahmet and Hagia Sophia and the other end at Beyazit Square and Kapalicarsi. The great markets were located between Divan Street and the harbor, making the area the commercial core of the capital.11 Hence, locating a building by a German architect in the Golden Horn substantially enhanced the symbolic meaning of the project. That meaning, in Theodor Heuss’s words, “concerns not self-manifestation or achievement of the state, but rather of the nation.”12 Inserting a building rendered in a German style into a traditionally Turkish fabric of the city would effectively have foregrounded Germanic national attributes. The competition brief addressed the question of style in the following manner: Certain questions and considerations present themselves: do we have an architecture that completely expresses the German essence? No. For twenty years intellectuals have argued about the “German style,” and proposed new artistic ideas, but, in fact, we still see in these diverse efforts, the expression, the prevalence of individual personalities…13

8

According to Heuss, Hans Poelzig’s proposal was the most imaginative submission. See Heuss, Erinneringen, 222. 9 This comment was based on the account of Paul Bonatz, who was one of the participating architects, quoted in Campbell, The German Werkbund: The Politics of Reform in the Applied Arts, 96. 10 Theodor Heuss, “Die Grundsteinlegung,” in Das Haus der Freundschaft in Konstantinopel: ein Wettbewerb deutscher Architekten, ed. Deutscher Werkbund and Deutsch-Türkische Vereinigung (München: F. Bruckmann, 1918), 46-48. 11 Zeynep Celik, The Remaking of Istanbul: Portrait of an Ottoman City in the Nineteenth Century (Seattle and London, U. of Washington Press, 1986), 3. 12 Heuss, in Das Haus der Freundschaft in Konstantinopel, 5. 13 Ibid.

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The competition entries reveal the contesting discourses about German national identity. The architects adapted very different styles, ranging from various elements of Early Christian architecture, the Italian Renaissance and Neoclassical styles to traditional motifs from the German past. The architects were also required to relate their designs to the oriental context. Some designs were adorned with local decorative elements which were a common feature of colonial architecture; the tendency was to employ Western building types and methods and dress them in local motifs in ways that departed significantly from the mode and scale of local traditional forms. The contradictions within the styles of the entries reveal disparities within prevailing notions of German national identity and its imperial policies and practices, which could not be neatly reflected in a single architectural style. Bruno Taut’s Proposal Among the entries, only Taut’s design attempted to establish an explicit stylistic dialogue with the local and cultural setting (Fig. 1). In his proposal, Taut augmented his Expressionist design strategy with a calculated infusion of Ottoman architectural elements. Among them were the buttressed eaves and small towers resembling traditional chimneys. In addition, he also adapted the Byzantine window motifs and opus mixtum wall construction pattern as significant elements. His entry was the only one with a dome used to cover the grand central hall, an octagon set in a massive rectangular prism. (Fig. 2) The dome was supported by the exposed trusses that assumed something of an ornamental character. The dome itself was composed of ferroconcrete ribs with glass panels in between them. The corners of the octagon, supporting the trusses, were anchored by buttressed towers. Taut designed a mural wall without windows, without roof overhang and shade. The building thus acquired a uniformly closed and monumental character, with a contrasting open figuration of the dome, making for a whole that did not seem too massive. Despite its massive construction, the mosque had also seemed rather light to Taut. 14 The Expressionist architects tended to look to the East for a monumentality derived from massiveness. Taut himself had implied as much in praising “Indian” architecture for its “bold, weighty massiveness, steeply piling up to the sky.”15 Although Taut was inspired by Istanbul’s domed cityscape, there is also a discernable connection between the glass concrete dome employed in his competition design and the Glass Pavilion that he designed for the Werkbund 14

Bruno Taut, “Reiseeindrücke aus Konstantinopel,” Das Kunstgewerbeblatt 27 (December 1916): 49. 15 Taut, “Ex Oriente Lux, “ Das Hohe Ufer 1 (January 1919): 17.

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Exhibition in Cologne in 1914. Taut had linked the domed shape of his Glass Pavilion with crystalline forms in his explanatory report.16 Crystal symbolized the spirit of the age. The mystic tradition of crystal was reinforced by Taut’s own fascination with glass as a building material, which had been inspired by the writer Paul Scheerbart. Scheerbart’s legacy was an important factor in Taut’s work, and later it also pervaded the Crystal Chain correspondence that Taut established in 1918 with other eminent Expressionist architects. The Glass Pavilion reflected the Scheerbartian concept of an architecture of glass and concrete. It was inscribed on the drum with Scheerbart’s words: “Light seeks to penetrate the whole cosmos and is alive in crystal.” Scheerbart’s novels, apart from the glass and crystal metaphors, drew the attention of the group to the “Orient” and oriental mysticism. Scheerbart had read the works of Li T’aipo, Abu Nuwas, and Omar Khayyam, which he passed on in his novels as Tarub, Bagdads berühmte Köchin, Ein Arabischer Kulturroman (1897), Der Tod der Barmekiden. Arabischer Haremsroman (1897), and Machtspäss. Arabische Novellen (1904).17 His passion for the “Orient” was related to his interest in theosophy and anthroposophy. Scheerbart himself likened the dome hall of the Glass Pavilion to the rhombohedron form of the Mamelucken graves around Cairo.18 In comparison to the dome of his Glass Pavilion, Taut’s shallow dome in his House of Friendship resembles the domes of Haghia Sophia and the Turkish mosques that had deeply affected him when he visited the city in 1916.19 Indeed, his pierced dome structure bears a striking resemblance to the mosques that accentuate the Istanbul skyline. In Islamic architecture, the dome of a mosque represented the divine element of the building. In general, palaces and public buildings had pitched roofs while the dome was reserved for religious buildings. In the city silhouette the dome was an unmistakable marker of a mosque. 20 By applying a dome to a public building, Taut transgressed against this building tradition. Heuss criticized the ambiguity of his dome:

16 “The large dome,” wrote Taut, “that resembles rhombohedron of crystal in its form, is composed of glass planes between ferro-concrete ribs and rests on iron-reinforced support, which comes out from a concrete socle.” Bruno Taut, Erläuterungsbericht, 24. 17 Iain Boyd Whyte, The Crystal Chain Letters: Architectural fantasies by Bruno Taut and his circle (Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1985), 8. 18 Paul Scheerbart, “Glashäuser,” Technische Monatshefte 4 (1914): 9. 19 Taut, “Reiseeindrücke aus Konstantinopel,” 49-50. 20 Jale Necdet Erzen, Mimar Sinan Estetik bir Analiz (Ankara: Sevki Vanli Mimarlik Vakfi Yayinlari, 1996), 100.

102

Orientalism, Expressionism, Imperialism Taut’s design is the only one that has applied the dome figure. This can lead to a fundamental discussion. Is it possible that a “German” house seem so Turkish to Turks?21

Clearly, Taut’s design could not symbolize “Germanness” in the Turkish context. In this sense, it marked a reversal of the German Werkbund’s aim to construct a national identity in opposition to those of other Europeans and nonEuropean countries. However, by merging mosque architecture with Expressionist features, his project represented a particular construction of the Other informed by the Orientalist and the Expressionist discourse, which regarded Eastern temples as the highest form of architecture. The actual challenge of building in an Oriental setting was a dilemma confronted by all participating architects. Hans Poelzig, another Expressionist architect, responded quite differently to that dilemma. His entry in the House of Friendship competition was likened to the description of Diodor’s Hanging Gardens of Babylon (Fig. 3). His entry was criticized for its overwhelming scale and monumentality at a time “when German friendship asks for hospitality in a foreign country.”22 In his designs Poelzig applied figures from the East, which for him resembled natural formations. For example in his Schauspielhaus built in 1914, in the dome he used Islamic stalactite vaulting, as well as Egyptian palmate capitals as a model for the fanning out of the columns. A comparison of Taut’s and Poelzig’s approaches to the House of Friendship project reveals their different conceptions of the “Orient” within Expressionist practice. Where Taut sought to establish a stylistic link with Istanbul by adapting key Ottoman architectural features, Poelzig referred to a more abstract, homogeneous “Orient”, which, for him, encompassed an array of images to choose from, regardless of their context. According to Poelzig, the hanging gardens of Babylon seemed an appropriate metaphor for Istanbul, inasmuch as the modern metropolis and the ancient city were both located in an abstractly Oriental geographical terrain, one filtered though the mind’s eye of a Western observer. Compared to Poelzig, Taut used local architectural elements, yet his approach was formalistic since he ignored their established meaning and function. Having conceptualized a hybridity between East and West, Taut found the Western buildings in Istanbul disturbing. “Only the foreign elements, although rare, are uniformly disturbing,” Taut wrote. “These include such buildings as the Greek patriarchate and the station in Haydar Pasha, which looks like a fist to the eye, and is, alas, a German work.”23 The Haydar Pasha Train station that Bruno 21

Heuss, in Das Haus der Freundschaft in Konstantinopel, 41. Heuss, in Das Haus der Freundschaft in Konstantinopel, 41. 23 Taut, “Reiseeindrücke aus Konstantinopel,” 49. 22

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Taut mentioned was built on the Asian side in 1909. It was designed by two Germans, Helmuth Cuno and Otto Ritter. The building was in an imposing neoclassical style. In fact, Western elements came much earlier than this building. Beginning from the nineteenth century, due to the powerful cultural and physical impositions from Europe, efforts were made to transform Istanbul into a Westernstyle capital. In the late nineteenth century there was already a European urban image in Pera and its surroundings. Yet the Istanbul peninsula, in which the House of Friendship project would be built, preserved its “Oriental” image. Taut also criticized Pera, the neighborhood where Europeans lived, for its mixture of Western and Turkish elements: Pera is the absolute counter proof of Istanbul. One sees people here and understands the degeneration that a mixture of Europe and the Orient can lead to.24

Taut’s disdain of Pera was an essential paradox common to those travelers to Istanbul who often criticized the westernization of the city, deploring the adverse influence of their own culture in the process. His adapting of the prevalent opinions about the old city and Pera was emblematic of the Orientalist discourse as seen in the British architect William Burges’s definition of Pera in the 1860s: The population of Pera exactly answers to Gibbon’s description of that of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. The state of society is utterly bad, avarice is the ruling passion and everyone cheats everybody else.25

Burges’s reactions were also guided by previous travelogues, which is evident in his referring to Gibbon. As architects, both Taut and Burges criticized not only the architecture but the hybrid society in Pera. Likewise Le Corbusier, who visited the city in 1911, felt “bewildered in the very middle of a street swarming with a crowd of Greeks, Germans, and French, all that suspect blend of the Levantine.”26 All these architects exoticized the East through their desire to keep it untainted by any Western influence. The House of Friendship would be the first of many architectural designs with which Taut sought to crown the cities and mountains. Istanbul constituted an early example of his idea of crowning the cities. It scarcely seems coincidental that 1916, the year of the competition, was also the year when Taut began his book, Die Stadtkrone, which would be published in 1919. In Stadtkrone, he assembled many 24

Ibid. Burgess as quoted in Marc Crinson, Empire Building: Orientalism and Victorian Architecture (London: Routledge, 1996), 155. 26 Le Corbusier, Journey to the East, ed. Ivan Zaknic, trans. Ivan Zaknic and Nicole Pertuiset (Cambridge, Mass.; London: The MIT Press, 1987). 25

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photographs from different cities, including Istanbul and other Eastern cities, which inspired his work at the time.27 In his book, Alpine Architektur, published in 1919, Taut would transform mountain tops into glass-crystal domes through the use of a very similar dome image that he employed in his design for the House of Friendship.28 Years later, in 1936, Taut returned to Istanbul, where he spent the last two years of his life. The city, which influenced his early career would be his last home. Ex Oriente Lux29 The Orient is the real mother of Europe, and our latent aspiration always goes there. Constantinople is, in every sense, the gate of the Orient. There the Europeans can feel familiar ground under their feet and yet they also look into a completely different world.30

Taut produced this telling passage in his travelogue following his trip to Istanbul for the House of Friendship competition. In his groundbreaking study, Orientalism, Edward Said defined Orientalism as a political vision of reality whose structure promoted the difference between the familiar and the strange.31 Likewise Istanbul, for the German architect, was a transition to this mysterious world beyond Europe. When Taut depicted Istanbul as a dream world, and as a colorful carnival, he was influenced by the legacy of Orientalism. In the early twentieth century the impact of Orientalism was felt in every field of art and literature in Germany. The Theosophical Society, a popular esoteric cult in which many artists were involved, the Oriental themes that run through the poetry and paintings of German Expressionism, and architectural journals devoted to the “Orient” reflected Germany’s attraction to the East and its attempts to mystify it. The negative attitude toward European culture in the wake of the war combined with visual exposure to the East through travels, mass media, and exhibitions. As a result, the Expressionists adapted the powerfully expressive forms of Oriental art and architecture. According to Gulsum Baydar, in architectural histories of non-Western cultures, “a monolithic non-West is either de-privileged as irrational and pre27

See Taut, Die Stadtkrone, (Jena: E. Diederichs, 1919). See Taut, Alpine Architektur (Hagen i.W.: Folkwang-Verlag, 1919). 29 From the East (comes) light. 30 Taut, “Reiseeindrücke aus Konstantinopel,” 49. 31 Said, Orientalism, (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 43. 28

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modern, or privileged as the embodiment of values that are lost to the ‘enlightened’ West.”32 Expressionist architects’ way of looking at the “Orient” fit into the latter perspective through which they saw in the “Orient” a possibility of redemption, a spiritual and harmonious totality of the self with his/her environment, which, they thought, was lost in the modern civilization of the ‘West.’ In his book Indische Kunst (1923), Otto Hoever wrote: Passionate nostalgic big city artists and art critics flutter restlessly around the globe, searching for the spirit, from Congo to the Amazons and far to the islands of Pacific.33

For the Expressionists, the “Orient” had the spirituality that the modern civilization of Europe lacked. In order to recover spirituality, one had to distance himself/herself from his/her European identity. Adolf Behne, an architectural critic involved in the Expressionist circle stated: Still we live in the Europe of Europeans. We must look outside from that narrow window as far as possible—to the East. The art of the East, for us, has a value, which the classical never had. Throttle the European! Throttle him! Throttle him! Throttle him dead! (Paul Scheerbart)34

The way to salvation was reflected in Paul Scheerbart’s words “Throttle the European”.35 Taut proclaimed his desire to break free from European identity in a similar vein:

32 Gulsum Baydar and Wong Chong Thai, “Introduction” in Postcolonial Space(s), ed. Gulsum Baydar and Wong Chong Thai (New York: Princeton Architectural Press,1997), 8. 33 “Brennende Sehnsüchte grossstädtischer Künstler und Kunstdeuter flattern ruhelos um den Erdbal vom Kongo zum Amazonas und weiter zu den Inseln des Hochpazifik... Untergangsvisionen Europas treiben beste Geister, Rückhalt an indischer Kunst zu suchen und aus den Missständen abendländischer Wirklichkeit in die tiefen rätselvollen Fluten vedischer Weisheit, buddhistischer Erlösungslehren und symbolhafter Tempelkulte hinduistischer Brahminen unterzutauchen.” Otto Hoever, Indische Kunst, (Breslau: Ferdinant Hirt, 1923), 8. 34 Behne quoted Scheerbart’s poem Indianerlied (originally published in Katerpoesie, 1908). Adolf Behne, “Glasarchitektur” in Die Wiederkehr der Kunst (Leipzig: Verlag Kurt Wolff, 1919; repr., Frühlicht 1920), 13. 35 Taut would also quote the very same lines from Scheerbart: “Murx den Europäer! Murx ihn! Murx ihn. Murx ihn ab! “ Taut, “Ex Oriente Lux,” 17.

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For the Expressionist architects the “Orient” reflected a perfect unity between Geist and Volk, which had vanished in the capitalist society of the “West” since the Gothic age. In Stadtkrone, Taut wrote that the perfect unity between Geist and Volk was reflected in the relationship between the Gothic cathedral and the simple houses surrounding it. Taut saw an analogous harmony between the sacred and the profane in the cultures of the “Orient”. In his Istanbul travelogue he wrote: The grand again arguably holds a distance from everyday life, however does not push it, even attracts it, so that everything, the mosque and the whole colorful life, which is like a quiet carnival, compose a complete unity…The grand mosques throne the hills, amid a mixture of housing tangle, which is so random, but still seems harmonious... 37

In the culture of India Adolf Behne recognized a similar relationship between the sacred and the profane: The Indian temple penetrates deep into the surrounding countryside. The simple huts belong to it, for they derive from the same sensibility. The boats on the rivers, the book illustrations, the carvings on their jewellery, the dances of the girls and the patterns of their materials—all these things exist in a resonant relationship to their temple.38

Walter Gropius in his notes from the early days of the Bauhaus would write: “To build! To give form! Gothic – India.” 39 Likewise in his Istanbul trip Taut found the spirit of the Gothic in the city’s grand mosques. He wrote: “Europe has only the Gothic, which is grown out of the same ground of purifying feelings, but certainly in a completely different direction.”40 For him, these religious buildings represented the highest forms of architecture, and belonged to a time in which art and artist were in service of everyday life. Expressionist architects’ fantasies of the Gothic past and the “Orient” were determined by the needs of their war-torn

36

Taut, “Ex Oriente Lux,” 16. Bruno Taut, “Reiseeindrücke aus Konstantinopel,” Das Kunstgewerbeblatt 27, no. 3, (December 1916): 49. 38 Adolf Behne, Die Wiedergeburt der Kunst (Leipzig, 1919), 13. 39 Walter Gropius quoted in Wolfgang Pehnt, Expressionist Architecture (London: Thames and Hudson, 1973), 53. 40 Taut, “Reiseeindrücke aus Konstantinopel,” 49. 37

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society. Religiosity that had already vanished in modern society, for Taut, would be replaced by a utopian apolitical socialism. Expressionist architects developed a nostalgia for the Gothic past, which was juxtaposed with the Eastern present with an assumption that the “Orient” had not changed since the times these temples that they admired, had been built. It is the denial of history, change and progress to the “Orient,” as if these belong exclusively to the “West,” which was one of Said’s basic objections to Orientalist knowledge. The “Orient” was abstracted and reduced to circulating images of a few sacred buildings. “It is Europe that articulates Orient”, writes Said, “whose power represents, animates, constitutes the otherwise silent and dangerous space beyond familiar.”41 Taut in his article “Ex Oriente Lux”, praised Angkor-Vat in Cambodia, Borobudur in Java and the pagodas from Rangoon, Madura, Udepur, Bangkok, “each, a tiny piece of the rich culture from India, Ceylon, Cambodia, Annam, Siam from the 4th to the 16th centuries.” 42 Likewise, in his essay “For the new Architecture” and in his book Die Stadtkrone Taut employed the images of the same Oriental temples.43 All of his examples were temples located in the European colonies in Southeast Asia—namely, French Indochina, and the British and Dutch colonies. Aside from his visit to Istanbul, Taut did not travel to any of these places at the time. His images of Oriental temples referred to an imaginary East derived from images circulating in print media. In L’Art decorative d’aujourd’hui Le Corbusier explains the impact of print media on architecture: The fabulous development of the book, of print, and the classification of the whole of the most recent archaeological era, has flooded our minds and overwhelmed us. We are in a completely new situation. Everything is known to us.44

Everything was known from second-hand sources provided by western observers, who spoke for a silent “Orient”. There were about sixty thousand books on Asian subjects published in the West between 1800 and 1950. Most of these books have detailed depictions of local architectures with accompanying photographs. Benedict Anderson has used the term “print capitalism” for the power of mass literacy and its attendant large scale production of projects of ethnic

41

Taut, “Reiseeindrücke aus Konstantinopel,” 57. Taut, “Ex Oriente Lux, “ 17. 43 Taut, “Für die neue Baukunst!” Das Kunstblatt 1 (Januar 1919): 16-24. 44 Le Corbusier qtd. in Beatriz Colomina, Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1996), 160. 42

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affinity.45 Besides generating nationalisms, print capitalism also became an agency of Orientalism through the representations of the East in print media. Both Orientalists and Expressionist architects reduced the “Orient” into representations. The Orientalists documented Oriental art and architecture with an encyclopedic mindset; they categorized and represented everything in detail, therefore turning the “Orient” into an object of pragmatic knowledge. On the other hand, the “Orient” of the Expressionists was reduced to religious building images, which, for them, symbolized “a complete communion of man with his fellows, and of society with nature—a communion, moreover explicitly as an anti-European cultural motif.” 46 The sources they relied on were the books of the Orientalists from the 19th century and early 20th century. Pastiche of temple images and nostalgia were the central modes of their reception of the “Orient.” During the war years, when architects had little opportunity to build, the basis of Bruno Taut’s movement, although concerned with architecture, remained literary. The only actual building was the Glashaus at Cologne. The Expressionist architects spread their ideas through letters, articles, manifestos and books. They used print media culture, and everyday images of the press to incorporate them in their art. According to Le Corbusier, “The press and the book operate much more efficiently than art relative to religious, moral, or political aims. What is the destiny of the art today?”47 The artistic production of Expressionist architects was in the form of articles, manifestos, sketches, drawings and letters. In Orientalism, Edward Said defined Orientalism as a political vision of reality whose structure promoted the difference between the familiar and the strange.48 Said explains the Otherness of the “Orient” as follows: “The Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West), as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience.”49 Taut’s drawing of the planet earth in his book Alpine Architektur represents this East-West opposition. Taut depicted the European side of the earth in light, the Asian side in darkness. The title underneath reads, “Europe –the bright one- Asia still brighter in the colored darkness of the night.” 50 The dark-light contrast is juxtaposed with the East-West contrast in Taut’s drawing: the dark Asia is still symbolizing the exotic, playful, irrational ‘other’ of the ‘Western’ rational and progressive self. 45

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983). 46 Manfredo Tafuri, The Sphere and the Labyrinth, trans. Pellegrino d’Acierno and Robert Connoly (1980; Massachusetts, The MIT Press, 1990), 124. 47 Le Corbusier quoted in Colomina, 170. 48 Said, Orientalism, 43. 49 Said, Orientalism, 1-2. 50 Taut, Alpine Architektur, 25.

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In contrast to Said, who has argued that the lack of colonies made German colonialist discourse more abstract and less powerful, Susanne Zantop argues that it was precisely this lack of actual colonialism that created the colonial fantasies, in the “pure” realm of imagination, untainted by praxis, which functioned as a substitute for the real thing.51 The belief in the superiority of the oriental cultures, combined with the belief in the regenerative power of architecture, culminated in the Expressionist utopias. To this day, German Expressionist architecture, which started before the war and lasted until 1923, is generally treated as a collection of utopian fantasies by a select group of architects. However, these architects have scarcely been analyzed in the context of German imperialism, and the impact of the Orientalist discourse on their architecture is often neglected. Likewise, Taut’s House of Friendship proposal is marginalized in the historiography of modern architecture because of its so called “anti-modern”—Expressionist and Orientalist—aspects. This is evident in the prominent critic Manfredo Tafuri’s words, “For Bruno Taut ‘the new world’, ‘the day of peace’ appeared on the horizon of the East; but the new world glimpsed by him was the one dreamed of by utopian Expressionism, the one evidenced by the ambiguous projects presented at the competition for the ‘House of Friendship’ in Istanbul…” 52 The “ambiguity” of Taut’s competition project needs to be reread through the ideology of Orientalism. Thus, the House of Friendship competition offers a compelling point of departure to understand the ways in which difference and identity inhabit architecture.

51

Susanne Zantop, Colonial Fantasies: Conquest, Family and Nation in Precolonial Germany, 1770-1870 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997), 6-7. 52 Manfredo Tafuri, The Sphere and the Labyrinth, 122-123.

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FIG. 3 1. Bruno Taut, House of Friendship proposal (84).

FIG. 3 2. Bruno Taut, sketch of the grand central hall (86).

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FIG. 3-3. Hans Poelzig, House of Friendship proposal (68). WORKS CITED Behne, Adolf. “Glasarchitektur.” See pp. 63-69 in Die Wiederkehr der Kunst. Leipzig: Verlag Kurt Wolff, 1919. Campbell, Joan. The German Werkbund: The Politics of Reform in the Applied Arts. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978. Celik, Zeynep. The Remaking of Istanbul: Portrait of an Ottoman City in the Nineteenth Century. Seattle and London: U. of Washington Press, 1986. Colomina, Beatriz. Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1996. Crinson, Marc. Empire Building: Orientalism and Victorian Architecture. London: Routledge, 1996. Deutscher Werkbund and Deutsch-Türkische Vereinigung, eds. Das Haus der Freundschaft in Konstantinopel: ein Wettbewerb deutscher Architekten mit einer Einführung von Theodor Heuss. München: F. Bruckmann, 1918. Erzen, Jale Necdet. Mimar Sinan Estetik bir Analiz. Ankara: Sevki Vanli Mimarlik Vakfi Yayinlari, 1996. Giordani, Paolo. The German Colonial Empire, its beginning and ending. Translated by Gustavus W. Hamilton. London: G. Bell and Sons, 1916. Heuss, Theodor. Erinnerungen, 1905-1933. Tübingen: R. Wunderlich, 1963.

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Hoever, Otto. Indische Kunst. Breslau: Ferdinant Hirt, 1923. Osterhammel, Jürgen. Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview. Translated by Shelley L. Frisch, Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1997. Pehnt, Wolfgang. Expressionist Architecture. London: Thames and Hudson, 1973. Rathmann, Lothar. Alman Emperyalizminin Turkiye’ye girisi; Berlin-Bagdat. Translated by Ragip Zarakolu. Istanbul: Gozlem, 1976. Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979. ———. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Knopf: Random House, 1993. Scheerbart, Paul. “Glashäuser.” Technische Monatshefte 4 (1914): 8-10. Taut, Bruno. Die Stadtkrone. Jena : E. Diederichs, 1919. ———. Alpine Architektur. Hagen i.W. : Folkwang-Verlag, 1919. ———. “Reiseeindrücke aus Konstantinopel.” Das Kunstgewerbeblatt 27:3 (December 1916): 49-50. ———. “Ex Oriente Lux.” Das Hohe Ufer 1 (January 1919): 15-18. ———. Glashaus: Werkbund-Ausstellung Cöln 1914. Exhibition catalogue, Archiv der Akademie der Künste, Berlin. ———. Erläuterungsbericht zur Errichtung eines Glashauses auf dem Ausstellungsgelände in Cöln am Rhein, 1914. Reprinted in Bruno Taut Retrospective: Nature and Fantasy. Tokyo: Ausstellungskatalog Sezon Museum, 994. ———. “Für die neue Baukunst!” Das Kunstblatt 1 (January 1919): 16-24. Tafuri, Manfredo. The Sphere and the Labyrinth. Translated by Pellegrino d’Acierno and Robert Connoly. 1980. Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1990. Zantop, Susanne. Colonial Fantasies: Conquest, Family and Nation in Precolonial Germany, 1770-1870. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997. ILLUSTRATION CREDITS Deutscher Werkbund and Deutsch-Türkische Vereinigung, eds. Das Haus der Freundschaft in Konstantinopel: ein Wettbewerb deutscher Architekten mit einer Einführung von Theodor Heuss. München: F. Bruckmann, 1918.

Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Between Persia and Greece Azadeh Yamini-Hamedani Zarathustra vs. Zoroaster: Nietzsche’s Historical Reformation This article focuses on the figure of Zarathustra in Nietzsche’s experimental reinterpretation of history. In this reinterpretation he attempts to decipher the historical beginnings of morality, which he traces back to the ancient Iranian Zoroaster. In what follows I will refer to the Iranian figure as Zoroaster and to the character in Nietzsche’s corpus as Zarathustra. By questioning history and refuting the fabricated division between good and evil, Nietzsche says in Ecce Homo that Zarathustra overthrows Zoroaster “in mich.”1 Disrupting the historical inheritance of good and evil involves overthrowing Zoroaster, the creator of morality, and uncovering the historical roots of modern decadence. According to statements from Nietzsche’s Nachlass, however, Greek engagement in the Persian wars corresponds with the decline of Greek philosophy. In this respect, Nietzsche considers the potential for a different history, namely a Persian victory and hence a Zoroastrian reign over the Hellenic world. The period of the Persian wars becomes for Nietzsche a shore upon which present Germany arrives, with the future course of history yet to be determined. This, I argue, is the complex, multi-dimensional historical dynamic that Nietzsche evokes with the name Zarathustra. Friedrich Creuzer’s Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker 2 was a significant source for Nietzsche’s understanding of Zoroastrianism. He borrowed this four-volume work in 1871 from the university library in Basel and subsequently returned to it during his work on Also Sprach Zarathustra.3 Creuzer, a professor of philology at Heidelberg and a pivotal classical scholar, introduces the significance of Iran in Graeco-Roman history. He declares Zoroastrianism “eine Hauptquelle”4 of early Greek philosophy, thus placing Greek thought within a larger framework of Oriental influence and interrelation. 5 He argues, for 1

Friedrich Nietzsche, “Ecce Homo,” in Der Antichrist, Ecce Homo, Dionysos-Dithyramben, ed. Peter Pütz (Munich: Goldmann, 1999), 187. 2 Curt Paul, Janz, Friedrich Nietzsche: Biographie (Munich: Hanser, 1993), 1: 230. 3 Ibid. 4 Georg Friedrich Creuzer, Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker (Leipzig: Leske, 1812), 3: 774. 5 “Seit den ältesten Zeiten war sie [die Stadt Ephesus] so ein Hauptpunkt jenes merkwürdigen Ideenverkehrs zwischen den Orient und der Welt der Griechen…dort hatten

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example, that the teachings of Heraclitus6 and Pythagoras7 originated from earlier Zoroastrian ideals. In statements from the Nachlass Nietzsche also acknowledges the Oriental influence on Greek culture: die Einsichten des Orients mit der Philosophie und Mythologie der Griechen sich vielseitig vermischt.” Ibid., 2: 516, 597. “Wenn Erdfeuer und auf den Seen schwimmendes brennendes Erdpech, wenn Feuerheerde auf den Höhen, wie wir wissen, äussere Anlaesse des Persischen Cultus sind, wer will dann zweifeln, dass wir in jenen Mythen alt-Persische Anschauungen haben?” Ibid., 1: 272. “Wenn aber der alte Königshaus von Argos ganz eigenthümlich eine siegbringende Venus verehrte, so haben wir in der Dreizahl der Kreise und in der Vierzahl der Kugeln auf der Mycenischen Säule die Erinnerung an jene Conjungtion des zeugenden Mithras mit der Gebärerin und Siegerin Venus; also Mithra-Mitra in einem verbindenden Symbol…Das Mycensiche Thor ward also vermuthlich dem Mithras, in der Eigenschaft des feurigen Löwen gewidmet…Vom Mycenischen Bildwerke brauche ich, nach dem was oben erörtet worden, weiter nicht zu sagen, als dass die von Löwen gehaltene Säule, mit den solarischen Kugeln und Reifen in ihrer Spitze, ein Mithrisches Bild aus der Lehre der Leontica vor Augen stellt, nämlich die von der Sonne im Löwenzeichen erfasste und bewältigte feurige Erdfeste.” Ibid., 1: 277-89. “Wenn aber in den Griechischen Lichtreligionen Mithra nachher ganz verschwindet, so darf uns dies nicht befremden, indem Sabazius und Bacchus dort als Mittler in den Mysterien an seine Stelle traten.” Ibid., 1: 236. “Als solche werden folgende sechs genannt, die augenscheinlich mit der Asiatischen Grundideen des Apollo- und Artemisdienstes zusammenhängen: Finsterniss, Licht, Erde, Jahr, Sonne, Die Wahre. Es wäre überflüssig, ausdrücklich zeigen zu wollen, dass in diesen Formeln derselbe Gegensatz hervortritt, den die Persische und heraklitische Lehre als den Grund aller endlichen Dinge aufgefasst hatte, und dass er zugleich mit dem Asiatischen Sonnendiest in Zusammenhang gebracht ist.” Ibid., 2: 597-98. 6 “Er [Heraklit] nennt den Streit den Vater aller Dinge, und legt ihm nach andere Prädicate bei, als Herrscher, König und dergleichen. Auch weiter fasst er die Gegensätze gerade so, wie z.B. Aufgang, Niedergang, Tag, Nacht…das nun in allen diesen und anderen Gegensätzen, oft bis zu wörtlicher Übereinstimmung, Persische Lehre liege, davon kann sich Jeder überzeugen, der nur den Einen Plutarchus oder Starbo zu vergleichen sich die Mühe nehmen will. Dass diese Sätze in die Ephesische Priesterdogmatik aufgenommen worden waren, wäre schon aus dem nachgewiesenen Zusammenhange der Artemischen Religion mit dem Feuerdienste Oberasiens wahrscheinlich. Es kommt hinzu, dass die Priester der Göttin zur Ephesus Persische Ursprungs waren.” Ibid., 2: 595. 7 “Auch Pythagoras soll seine Lehre von der volkommenen Monas, als Mutter aller Dinge, und der von jener erzeugten Dyas, aus jener Zoroastrischen Idee hergenommen haben, und die Neuplatoniker bekannten sich gleichfalls zu dieser Lehre, welche sie vom Zoroaster herleiteten; vergl. Foucher im Anhang zum Zenavessta Bd. I Th. 2 p. 289 (vergl. p.132) Was den Magismus, oder Zoroaster, wie Viele ihn erklähren- s. Fabricii Bibl. Graes I. p.305 Harles.)- den Pythagoras gelehrt, das Zwei der Zahlen der Zahlen Mutter, das Eine aber deren Vater sei und dass sie besseren Zahlen der Monas gleichen. S. Plutarch. de anim. generat. in Tim p.1012 Fr. Vol. IX p.124 ed. Wyttenb.).” Ibid.

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Zwar hat man mit Eifer darauf hingezeigt, wie viel die Griechen im orientalischen Auslande finden und lernen konnten und wie mancherlei sie wohl von dort geholt haben. Freilich gab es ein wunderliches Schauspiel, wenn man die angeblichen Lehrer aus dem Orient und die möglichen Schüler aus Griechenland zusammenbrachte und jetzt Zoroaster neben Heraklit...stellte.8

Nietzsche refers to the Orient as a source of Greek learning and borrowing and ponders the possibility of a play that would bring together the teachers of the Orient and the students from Greece, here placing Zoroaster next to Heraclitus, the influential figure at the dawn of Greek civilization. 9 Furthermore, in “Die dionysische Weltanschauung” Nietzsche describes Dionysus10 as “den aus Asien heranstuermenden,” 11 the one who storms into Greek culture from the east. Looking at Nietzsche’s literary remains and Creuzer’s Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker, it becomes apparent that Zoroastrianism, as it was known to Nietzsche, stands at the crossroads of various philosophical and religious formations.12 8 Friedrich Nietzsche, “Sokrates und Die Griechische Tragödie,” in Die Geburt der Tragödie, Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, Kritische Studienausgabe (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1999), 806. 9 However, by comparing the myth of Oedipus’s transgression to the birth of magic in Zoroastrianism, Nietzsche draws a clear distinction between Greek and Persian culture: “Es gibt einen uralten, besonders persischen Volksglauben, dass ein weiser Magier nur aus Incest geboren werden könne...dort wodurch weissagende und magische Kräfte der Bann, von Gegenwart und Zukunft, das starre Gesetz der Individuation, und überhaupt der eigentliche Zauber der Natur gebrochen ist, eine ungeheure Naturwidrigkeit- wie dort der Incest- als Ursache vorausgegangen sein muss.” Maternal incest as a symbol of the anatural, stands for the disintegration of time and identity: the son, as father, son, and lover, returns into his mother, and plants a seed. He invades the entity from which he descends, while enacting the potential for new life. Here Nietzsche differentiates between two types of magic: nature’s magic that controls man, and the magic of the a-natural that frees man. The magic of the a-natural represents an Ungeheuer that ties incest to a rupture within the historical continuum. I would argue that Nietzsche’s stance towards the a-natural as a valuable rupture within history has a closer affiliation to the Zoroastrian birth of magic than to Oedipus, where incest leads to tragedy and social banishment. Ibid., 614. 10 Creuzer argues that Persephone, the mother of Dionysus, and Artemis, twin sister of Apollo, originated in Persia. Creuzer, Symbolik, 4: 616, 661. 11 Ibid., 1: 556. 12 “Dieser Feuer und Lichtdienst [der Perser] hatte sich hier mit der Jüdischen und Christlichen Lehren und Cultus vermengt…So wirkten diese Mithriaca im Occident selbst auf die hohen Feste der ganzen Christenheit… Ein neurer Schriftsteller (Dupius in seiner Origine de tous les Cultes IV. p.269) erklährt hingegen das Christenthum selbst für einen Zweig der Mithrasreligion. Neuerdings hat F. Nork einen ähnlichen Weg eingeschlagen (s.

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Keeping Nietzsche’s knowledge of Zoroastrianism in mind, we can now address the relationship between Nietzsche’s Zarathustra and its historical antecedent. In Ecce Homo Nietzsche speaks of the distinction between Zoroaster and Zarathustra, even though he uses the same spelling for both the historical and the fictional character: Man hat mich nicht gefragt, man hätte mich fragen sollen, was gerade in meinem Munde, im Munde des ersten Immoralisten der Name Zarathustra bedeutet: denn was die ungeheure Einzigkeit jenes Persers in der Geschichte ausmacht, ist gerade dazu das Gegenteil. Zarathustra hat zuerst im Kampf des Guten und des Bösen das eigentliche Rad im Getriebe der Dinge gesehen—die Übersetzung der Moral ins Metaphysische, als Kraft, Ursache, Zweck an sich, ist sein Werk. Aber diese Frage wäre im Grunde bereits die Antwort. Zarathustra schuf diesen verhängnisvollsten Irrtum die Moral: folglich muss er auch der erste sein, der ihn erkennt. Nicht nur, dass er hier länger und mehr Erfahrung hat als sonst ein Denker—die ganze Geschichte ist ja die Experimental-Wiederlegung vom Satz der sogennanten “sittlichen Weltordnung”—: das Wichtigere ist, Zarathustra ist wahrhaftiger als sonst ein Denker. Seine Lehre, und sie allein, hat die Wahrhaftigkeit als oberste Tugend—das heisst den Gegensatz zur Feigheit des “Idealisten”, der vor der Realität die Flucht ergreift; Zarathustra hat mehr Tapferkeit im Leibe als alle Denker zusammengenommen. Wahrheit reden und gut mit Pfeilen schiessen, das ist die persische Tugend.—Versteht man mich?....Die Selbstüberwindung der Moral aus Wahrhaftigkeit, die Selbstüberwindung des Moralisten in seinen Gegensatz—in mich— das bedeutet in meinem Munde der Name Zarathustra.13

dessen Schrift: Mythen der alten Perser als Quellen christlicher Glaubenslehren und Ritualen; Leibzig 1835).- Schon durch meine obige Hinweisung auf Jesaias 45.7, wo Jehova als Schöpfer von Licht und Finsterniss vorgestellt wird, habe ich den im Princip vom Persischen Dualismus abweichenden Monotheismus des Juden- und auch des Christenthums andeuten wollen.” Ibid., 1: 340, 238. “Was die schriftlichen Quellen betrifft, so müssen hier vorerst die biblischen Urkunden in Anschlag gebracht werden, namentlich die Bücher, deren Verfasser in irgend einer näheren Beziehung und Berührung mit Persien standen....Dies sind besonders die Schriften der Propheten, eines Daniel, der, wie es scheint mit dem Persischen Lichtdienste nicht unbekannt war, eines Ezechiel, dessen Visionen äussern viel Persisches aus der Lehre der Magier enthalten; ferner die Bücher Esra, Nehemia und andere...” Ibid., 1: 181. “Ferner spricht dafür der Umstand, dass die vom Parsism sichtbar abgeleiteten (Gnostischen) Systeme durchaus die Scala der Wesen von einem Aeon Teleios, Agnostos etc. anfangen.” Ibid., 1: 313. “Auch in das diesseitige Deutschland kamen die Mithriaca mit den Römischen Legionen. Mehrere Monumente in den südlichen Provinzen geben noch jetzt anschauliche Überzeugung.” Ibid., 1: 263. 13 Nietzsche, “Ecce Homo,” 187.

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The beginning of the quote sets clear boundaries between Zoroaster the historical figure and Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. What history makes of Zoroaster stands in opposition to what the name comes to mean on Nietzsche’s tongue. Zoroaster, as the creator of morality, stands for the division and conflict between good and evil, and Nietzsche as an Immoralist stands within this history as a counterforce. Establishing Zoroaster as the creator of morality, Nietzsche concludes that Zoroaster must surely be the first to recognize its createdness. Through this recognition, morality loses its natural status and becomes rather a product of invention and history. This realization not only changes Nietzsche’s interpretation of history to the time of his writing but also its future course. However, an intrinsic ambiguity underlies this realization, namely its subject. Who recognizes the constructedness of good and evil? Zoroaster, Zarathustra, or both? Recognizing the inventedness of morality not only creates an ambiguity surrounding its subject, it also transforms the grammatical tense of the text from the past to the present tense. What has been becomes what is, and Zoroaster as a historical figure from the past becomes a historical reality in the present. The tenseshift in turn functions to increase the ambiguity between Zoroaster and Zarathustra and, since Nietzsche uses the same spelling—”Zarathustra”—for both, there is no way to determine which one he means. The ambiguity of the subject, which prevails, may be intentional, for although Nietzsche sets definite boundaries between Zarathustra and Zoroaster, these boundaries collapse as both figures recognize morality’s inventedness. Through this knowledge Zarathustra and Zoroaster come to resemble each other, and as thinkers they both play a significant role in man’s history and fate. However, the resemblance between the two figures ceases and the boundaries of difference reemerge. This time, Zarathustra overthrows Zoroaster within Nietzsche himself. Paradox, the coexistence of sameness and difference, informs Nietzsche’s relationship to Zoroaster. Nietzsche takes the name Zarathustra with all its historical implications, analyzes, transforms, and delivers it back to society with new meaning. By using the same name with a new meaning he renders Zarathustra’s history as a moralist, giving him a new historical function as an immoralist. This new historical function will determine the course of the future. As Nietzsche writes in Ecce Homo: “Die Frage nach der Herkunft der moralischen Werte ist deshalb eine Frage ersten Ranges, weil sie die Zukunft der Menschen bedingt.”14 By deciphering the history of morality, man becomes an active participant in his future. Zoroaster as the ancient father of morality has determined the fate of men, and Nietzsche by appropriating this name and attaching to it his own voice, his immorality, attempts to influence the future. In this respect, Nietzsche becomes historical dynamite: “Ich 14

Ibid.

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bin kein Mensch. Ich bin Dynamit.” 15 By attempting to discontinue historical influences Nietzsche ceases to be history’s subject; he acts as dynamite that explodes history into elements from which he can create a new future. Redeeming history involves its reformation: “Vergangenen zu erlösen und alles ‘Es war’ umzuschaffen in ein ‘So wollte ich es!’ das hiesse mir erst Erlösung.” 16 As an active participant in history, Nietzsche takes the past and recreates it. The present, not being divorced from the past, changes when a look into history finds in it the roots of modern decadence. The project of historical Umschaffung from an “es war” into a “so wollte ich es” occurs within a creative textual space. In other words, creative writing becomes the basis of historical change, the possibility of taking an “es war” and transforming it into a “so wollte ich es.” Zoroaster and the Greeks’ relation to Persia play a significant role in Nietzsche’s historical Umschaffung. In 549 BCE the defeat and annexation of Media by Cyrus drove a number of magi, Zoroastrian priests, to emigrate to Greek cities.17 Furthermore between 547 BCE and 490 BCE Greeks living in Western Asia Minor fell under Persian rule and as a result had increased contact with Iranians. During this period many early Greek philosophers were in Asia Minor.

15

Ibid. Ibid. 17 “To put a different question: what sort of people would we expect, in Iranian lands, to possess the knowledge in which we are interested? The answer that immediately proposes itself is ‘the Magi,’ that formidable caste which held a controlling influence in all matters of religion. The Iranian cosmological doctrines recorded by Aristotle, Eudemus, and Theopompus, are attributed by those authors specifically to the magi. They were the people one talked to about such things….But what invaded Greek speculation in the mid-sixth century was no mere convolvulus that withered away when its season was past, leaving the sturdy stems of Hellenic rationalism to grow unimpeded as they had always meant to. It was an ambrosia plant that produced a permanent enlargement where it touched. In some ways one might say that it was the very extravagance of oriental fancy that freed the Greeks from the limitations of what they could see with their own eyes: led them to think of tenthousand-year cycles instead of human generations, of an infinity beyond the visible sky and below the foundations of the earth, of a life not bounded by womb and tomb but renewed in different bodies aeon after aeon. It was now that they learned to think that good men and bad have different destinations after death; that the fortunate soul ascends to the luminaries of heaven; that God is intelligence; that the cosmos is one living creature; that the material world can be analysed in terms of a few basic constituents such as fire, water, earth, metal; that there is a world of Being beyond perception, beyond time. These were conceptions of enduring importance for ancient philosophy. This was the gift of the Magi.” M.L.West, Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient (Oxford: Oxford University Press: 2001), 240-41. 16

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Current as well as earlier scholarship 18 characterizes this period as one of significant Iranian influence on the development of pre-Socratic Greek philosophy19, specifically evident in Pherecydes, Anaximander20, Anaximenes21, 18 See M.L. West, Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient (Oxford: Oxford University Press: 2001); M.L. West, The East face of Helicon: West Asiatic elements in Greek poetry and myth (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); Walter Burkert, Die Griechen und der Orient: von Homer bis zu den Magiern (München: Beck, 2003); Walter Burkert, Die orientalisierende Epoche in der griechischen Religion und Literatur (Heidelberg: Winter, 1984); J. Duchesne-Guillemin, The Western response to Zoroaster (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1958); Ruhi Muhsen Afnan, Zoroaster’s influence on Greek thought (New York: Philosophical Library, 1965); Ruhi Muhsen Afnan, Zoroaster’s influence on Anaxagoras, the Greek tragedians, and Socrates ((New York: Philosophical Library, 1969); Arnaldo Momigliano, Alien wisdom: the limits of Hellinization (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1975); Cumont, Franz V.M., The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism (New York: Dover Publications, 1956); Friedrich Creuzer, Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker, besonders der Griechen: In Vorträgen und Entwürfen, vol. 4 (Leipzig: Leske, 1812). For a complete history of Zoroastrian reception please turn to Michael Stausberg, Faszination Zarathustra: Zoroaster und die Europäische Religionsgeschichte der Frühen Neuzeit (Berlin: Wakter de Gruyter, 1998); August Gladisch, Zoroaster und Heraklitos (Leipzig, 1859). 19 “I find most objectionable in the conventional approach to the study of the Presocratics: the exaggeration of the achievement and influence of individuals, the failure to see beyond surface differences to underlying relationships, and the implicit assumption that nobody contributed to the development of thought except the few whose writings survived them.” West, Early Greek Philosophy, 218-19. 20 “If it is true that Anaximander described the earth’s surface as concave, he would seem to be modernizing a mythical scheme of geography according to which the earth was surrounded by a ring of mountains. This is not a Greek scheme: it is oriental…In Iranian cosmology, besides the idea of a polar mountain, we find the idea that the earth is surrounded. Mt. Elburs, the Caucasian mountain is extended sideways into a complete ring, and upwards to connect with the sky.…From another point of view Anaximander’s astronomy presents a distinctly Iranian appearance. He placed the stars nearest to the earth, then the moon, then the sun. He is almost the only Greek known to us who arranged the heavenly bodies in that order; but it is the standard Persian connection. In the Avesta, stars, moon, sun, and the Beginningless Lights are regularly named as a series.” Ibid., 87-89. “In Chapter 2 it was shown that the Iranian cosmogony, although mainly known from the late sources, is of early origin; that it has significant affinities with the cosmogonies of other peoples of the ancient east; and that it and other Iranian traditions have to be adduced in order to explain much of Pherecydes. Now we find that it is no less relevant to Anaximander. And whereas before, although it was the Iranian version that seemed closest to the Greek, we could not be sure that the things involved were purely Iranian, here we seem to be on firmer ground. The wheels and their measurements may perhaps show Babylonian inspiration. But the order of the heavenly bodies is peculiar to the Persians among the peoples who come into question. They cannot have got it from the Greeks, since

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and Heraclitus22. This period of Iranian influence ranged from c.550 to 480 BC, its end coinciding with the Persian wars23 (490 BCE and 480/79 BCE) and Persia’s defeat and withdrawal from Greece. Anaximander is almost the only Greek who believed in it, and it is against all reason that a philosopher who was hardly read by his own people should have supplied the standard world-picture to the Persians.” Ibid., 96. 21 “This contrast between two contributory traditions, Greek rationalism and barbarian theology, is at most open and unresolved in Anaximander’s system. In the cosmology of his younger fellow citizen Anaximenes it has already become blurred; the inevitable process of assimilation and integration are at work. The materialistic principle has been extended beyond the confines of the visible world, so that instead of a mysterious Boundless we have boundless Aer…Anaximenes is following a tradition with a long history. He modifies it by taking aer for his basic substance, and by giving it the qualities of Anaximander’s Boundless. He makes it unbounded in extent all around the world, eternal, perpetually in motion, and divine, or at least the father of the gods….There are certain things that link [Anaximenes] too with eastern and specifically with Iranian speculation…It can hardly be a coincidence, however, that [Anaximenes’] explanation of eclipses as being caused by dark bodies circulating below the sun and moon is identical with the belief of the Persians….There is no question of its having been taken from the Greeks, for the Greeks discovered the true causes both of solar and lunar eclipses in the fifth century, and soon forgot about the dark bodies. Nor is it likely that Anaximenes thought of the explanation himself. Given his view of the sun and moon being like leaves, and Anaximander’s theory that eclipses were caused by the twisting-over of the outer tubes of their wheels, it would have been natural for Anaximenes to say that eclipses turned over when the leaves turned over….Anaximenes, much more than Anaximander, follows in the footsteps of Thales. But he too betrays the influence of eastern and specifically Iranian cosmology, in things that he could not have taken from Thales or from Anaximander.” Ibid., 99-214. 22 “The question was already raised at the beginning of the last century by the pioneer of Heraclitean studies, Friedrich Schleiermacher, and I should not be surprised to learn that it had been raised earlier. At the end of his collection and discussion of the fragments of Heraclitus, Schleiermacher writes that important investigations remain to be made, and one of those that he mentions is whether ‘persische Weisheit’ exercised any formative influence on the Ephesian’s teaching. The idea is cautiously formulated; more so than in the next work in which it appears, Friedrich Creuzer’s Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Voelker. In this imposing and once influential book, Creuzer attempted to show that Greek religion was based on the profound wisdom of the east, which recognized light in all its forms as the true object of worship. Any physical creature or object that appeared in myth or ritual was symbolic of some elemental essence. In Heraclitus, ‘a servant of pure fire,’ Creuzer found an important link between eastern elementalism and Greek rationalism. He declared that Heraclitus thought and taught in the spirit of Zoroaster, only penetrating what he had taken from the east with the shafts of clear Hellenic logic, and reducing it to a coherent system so as to make it acceptable to his people.” Ibid., 166. “I believe that Heraclitus would not have naturally turned to fire without some particular stimulus. Such a stimulus could have been given by observation of the extraordinary status

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In his literary remains Nietzsche refers to the Persian wars as the cause of Greek decline: “die Perserkriege sind das nationale Unglück: der Erfolg war zu gross....[M]an denke nur, wie unproductiv Athen für Philosophie lange Zeit accorded by the Persians to fire…Heraclitus ridicules men who pray to statues as foolish and ignorant. He is not alone among the Greeks of his time in his rejection of anthropomorphism; Xenophanes makes fun of it at any rate. But this is just another of the ideas current in Ionia at that period which magically agrees with those of the Persians…This was a feature of the Persian religion that the Greeks and Romans found most noteworthy; it is mentioned again by Strabo and Cicero…With his intolerant attacks on established religious usages, his threats of future punishment for all contrivers of falsehood, his warnings against drunkenness, Heraclitus strikes a prophetic note that has reminded more than one reader of Zoroaster…Without the extensive parallels of doctrine this would remain a generality. With them it becomes a significant point.” Ibid., 173-93. 23 “From the time of Anaximander and Pherecydes perhaps half a century had elapsed. The potency which oriental influences maintained at the end of this period may be gauged from Heraclitus. They do not continue through the fifth century. Greek thought turns in on itself and digests what it has taken in. One obvious cause is the Persian War and its aftermath. The expulsion of pro-Persian rulers from the Ionian towns would not in itself make much difference. But orientals, of all stations, may have suddenly found themselves personae non gratae; Xerxes’ discomfiture certainly produced a new national awareness and pride; and it may have become difficult or impossible for Greeks to travel into the Asiatic interior. At the same time the growth of the Athenian empire facilitated communication between different parts of Greece. There was another factor, however, which may have been the most important of all: the growing self-sufficiency of Greek rationalism…a period of active Iranian influence stands out sharply in the development of Greek thought, from c. 550 to 480 B.C. For a century or so beforehand, milder oriental influences can be seen; afterward, it is as though they had been shut off with a tap. How did it happen? What set in motion this wave that washed into Miletus between Thales and Anaximander, and into other Ionian towns at a similar period? I have noted that this is close to the time when Persians reached the Aegean. But it was not just a matter of conquest, for Miletus retained its independence from Cyrus as from Croesus, and a garrison is in any case not a likely source of enlightenment to an Anaximander. The occupation of neighboring towns after 547 may have brought a variety of civilian metics in its wake, priests, tradespeople, and so on; but any influence upon Miletus from this source would come too late to explain the facts…If the diaspora was a direct result of the campaigns of Cyrus, and was not reinforced by emigrations on the same scale in subsequent decades, it is natural that its impact on the Greeks should have lost its power after a time. And there are other reasons, as I have said, why its influence should dwindle and disappear in the early fifth century. In general, foreign contributions were no longer wanted; not because they were foreign to Greece, but because they were foreign to inquiry based on empirical data. The maturing of the scientific approach coincided with a change in international relations which made Greece perforce more introspective. It was not until Eudoxus, after the political situation had changed again, and scientific speculation about cosmology had played itself out, that barbarian seed once more fell upon hospitable soil.” Ibid., 226-41.

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war24....[D]er Intellekt wird extravagant und übermühtig.”25 Nietzsche ties Greek triumph in the Persian Wars to Greek philosophical and ethical decline. Military triumph turns into great danger as victorious Athens with its desire to dominate the Hellenic world, becomes tyrannical suppressing the individual strength of smaller states. Its intellectual arrogance, which stifles the likes of Pindar, Empedocles, and Heraclitus, eventually leads to the philosophical decline of Greece. Nietzsche creates an interesting causal relationship between the realms of the military and political (i.e. the Persian wars) and the creative and philosophical. The political prevents the creative from reaching its heights, as the Greek revolt against Persian rule leads to the Greeks’ downfall. The Greeks’ engagement in the Persian war constitutes a great historical loss by undermining the possibility for genius. In his literary remains Nietzsche contemplates recreating and reforming the times before the Persian wars: Diese Reformation der Hellen, wie ich sie träume, wäre ein wunderbarer Boden für die Erzeugung von Genien geworden: wie es noch nie einen gab....Ich suche nicht nach glücklichen Zeiten in der Geschichte, aber nach solchen, welche einen günstigen Boden für die Erzeugung des Genius bieten. Da finde ich die Zeiten vor den Perserkriegen. Man kann sie nicht genau genug kennen lernen.26

Nietzsche studies the decline of Greek culture as a historical reformer. For him, the time before the Persian wars does not represent a historical ideal but rather an auspicious ground from which genius may spring. According to Nietzsche, Zoroastrianism would have reigned over the Greeks had Darius not been defeated in the Persian Wars: “Die Religion des Zoroaster hätte, wenn Darius nicht überwunden wäre, Griechenland beherrscht.”27 Darius’ victory in 490 BCE at the battle of Marathon and Zoroastrian reign over the Hellenic world represents an alternate turn in a decisive moment in history. Nietzsche ponders this alternative in his Nachgelassene Fragmente: “Es wäre viel glücklicher noch gewesen, dass die Perser als dass gerade die Römer über die Griechen Herr wurden.”28 What if the Persians had been victorious and reigned over Greece? How would history have unfolded differently? Would the emergence of a genius have been more pos`sible? And where does the German nation come into this picture? 24

Friedrich Nietzsche, “Sommer 1875,” in Nachlass, 1875-1879, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, Kritische Studienausgabe (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1999), 8: 108. 25 Nietzsche, “Winter 1869-70-Frühjahr 1870,” in Nachlass, 1869-1874, 7: 46. 26 Nietzsche, “Sommer 1875,” 8: 112,114. 27 Nietzsche, “September 1870-Januar 1871,” in Nachlass, 1869-1874, 7: 106. 28 Nietzsche, “Frühling-Sommer 1875,” in Nachlass, 1875-1879, 8: 65.

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Nietzsche presents Germany in an interesting relationship to Greece and Persia. He writes in September 1870: “Deutschland als das rückwärtsschreitende Griechenland: Wir sind an der Periode der Perserkriege angelangt.”29 The notion of a backward-striding Germany is ambiguous: Is Germany fighting the Greek ambition for sovereignty and power? Does it stand on the side of the Persians? Is it reversing history’s decadence? Germany as the backward-striding Greece enters the period of the Persian wars. The past becomes a shore upon which present Germany arrives. This arrival coincides with an undoing, a historical battle reversed, an attempt to analyze the past in the present and for the future. It signifies the exploration of an alternative, the reversal of Hellenic downfall, and the potential for Genius. Having arrived at this historical turning point, Germany has the potential to determine where to go from there. Nietzsche concerns himself with this potential and possibility. In this respect, Nietzsche writes: “Die griechische Geschichte hat durch die Perserkriege einen daemon ex machina.” 30 This phrase stands against the background of the Latin “Deus ex machina.” According to the Latin formulation, God interferes in man’s history when there is no human resolution. In Greek and Roman plays this divine force, portrayed with the help of stage machinery, acts as an unexpected savior. Nietzsche takes this notion and transforms it by replacing the word God with “daemon.” In this context, the two meanings of the word, as demon and genius, are not mutually exclusive; a genius by standing against the historical continuum represents an Ungeheuer reserved for demons. Nietzsche’s Zarathustra poses the possibility of a “daemon ex machina.” WORKS CITED Afnan, Ruhi Muhsen. Zoroaster’s Influence on Anaxagoras, the Greek tragedians, and Socrates. New York: Philosophical Library, 1969. ———. Zoroaster’s Influence on Greek thought. New York: Philosophical Library, 1965. Burkert, Walter. Die Griechen und der Orient: von Homer bis zu den Magiern. Munchen: Beck, 2003. ———. Die orientalisierende Epoche in der griechischen Religion und Literatur. Heidelberg: Winter, 1984. Creuzer, Georg Friedrich. Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker, besonders der Griechen: In Vorträgen und Entwürfen. 4 vols. Leipzig: Leske, 1812. Cumont, Franz V.M. The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism. New York: Dover Publications, 1956. 29 30

Friedrich Nietzsche, “September 1870-Januar 1871,” in Nachlass, 1869-1874, 7: 97. Friedrich Nietzsche, “Sommer 1875,” 8: 114.

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Duchesne-Guillemin, J. The Western response to Zoroaster. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958. Gladisch, August. Zoroaster und Heraklitos. Leipzig: 1859. Janz, Curt Paul. Friedrich Nietzsche: Biographie. 1978. Vol. 1. Munich: Hanser, 1993. Momigliano, Arnaldo. Alien wisdom: the limits of Hellinization. New York: Camridge University Press, 1975. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Ecce Homo. Der Antichrist, Ecce Homo, DionysosDithyramben. 1888. Edited by Peter Pütz. Munich: Goldmann, 1999. ———. “Die Philosophie im tragischen Zeitalter der Griechen.” In Die Geburt der Tragödie, Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen, edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, 804-72. Vol. 1. Kritische Studienausgabe. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1999. ———. “Sokrates und die griechische Tragödie.” In Die Geburt der Tragödie, Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen, edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, 601-40. Vol. 1. Kritische Studienausgabe. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1999. ———. “Winter 1869-70-Frühjahr 1870.” In Nachlass, 1869-1874, edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, 43-86. Vol. 7. Kritische Studienausgabe. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1999. ———. “September 1870-Januar 1871.” In Nachlass, 1869-1874, edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, 93-128. Vol. 7. Kritische Studienausgabe. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1999. ———. “Sommer 1875.” In Nachlass, 1875-1879, edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, 97-185. Vol. 8. Kritische Studienausgabe. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1999. ———. “Frühling-Sommer 1875.” In Nachlass, 1875-1879, edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, 39-96. Vol. 8. Kritische Studienausgabe. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1999. Stausberg, Michael. Faszination Zarathustra: Zoroaster und die Europäische Religionsgeschichte der Frühen Neuzeit. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1998. West, M.L. Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 2001. West, M.L. The East face of Helicon: West Asiatic elements in Greek poetry and myth. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

“Crouching Tiger” and Hidden Desires: Exotic Danger in Waldemar Bonsels’ Indienfahrt and Thomas Mann’s Tod in Venedig Sukanya Kulkarni Even though the E.W. Bonsels Verlag, founded in 1904 by Waldemar Bonsels with Bernd Isemann and his brother-in-law Hans Brandenburg, published several of Thomas Mann’s works, the literary connection between Bonsels and Thomas Mann has been completely neglected by literary scholars. Waldemar Bonsels, who rose to instant fame after his children’s book Die Biene Maja was published in 1912, was widely admired and respected by contemporary critics and authors such as Liliencron, Schlaf, Dehmel and the Mann brothers. The first two decades of the twentieth century saw a close friendship develop between Bonsels and Heinrich Mann: both traveled to Italy together and spent time critiquing each other’s literary projects. On the other hand, Bonsels did not share a similar friendship with Heinrich Mann’s younger brother, Thomas Mann. Although Bonsels published Thomas Mann’s works, their relationship remained strictly professional.1 One can assume that Bonsels followed Thomas Mann’s literary career closely, not only as a contemporary author, but also because his publishing company was interested in Thomas Mann’s oeuvre. It was Bonsels who in 1906 urged Mann in 1906 to submit to the Bonsels Verlag the second edition of Bilse und ich, which was Mann’s defense against the allegation that he had portrayed his hometown in Buddenbrooks.2 In 1912, soon after Mann published Tod in Venedig, the Bonsels Verlag published a critical 30-page book review entitled Thomas Mann und der Tod in Venedig. Eine kritische Abwehr by Bernd Isemann. Isemann, also one of the Verlag’s co-founders, concluded that Mann’s novella was immoral as the 1

After reading Bonsels’ poetry collection “Feuer” Thomas Mann compliments him: “Es ist nichts in dem Buch, was ich bewundere; aber etwas, dem ich mit so persönlicher Liebe zugetan bin, wie ganz wenigem in neurer Dichtung.” Waldemar Bonsels im Spiegel der Kritik, ed. Rose-Marie Bonsels, Ambacher Schriften (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 1986), 1: 13. 2 In the foreword of Bilse und ich Thomas Mann recognizes Bonsels’ efforts to get the book published: “Die folgende Erörterung wurde, wie aus dem Texte ersichtlich, zunächst für das Feuilleton der ‘Münchener Neuesten Nachrichten’ geschrieben, und der Gedanke, sie als selbständiges Schriftchen herauszugeben, ist nicht der meine. Herr Bonsels, der diese Publikation als Verleger zeichnet, brachte ihn mir entgegen, und daß ich ihn bereitwillig aufnahm, geschach aus einem zweifachen Grunde. […]” Bilse und ich (Munich: E.W.Bonsels Verlag, 1906), 5.

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protagonist of the novella, Gustav von Aschenbach, did not embody contemporary political traits of the Prussian state, even though Thomas Mann had portrayed him as a model citizen of the Empire. Heinrich Mann also took issue with Aschenbach’s idealistic characterization. In a review dated 1913, he compared the protagonist’s fated demise and the inevitable downfall of Kaiser Wilhelm’s Empire with Emile Zola’s novels of the 1860s that heralded the end of the French Empire. He thus underscored the story’s implicit foreshadowing of the European political crisis: “Die Stadt Venedig, von der unheimlichen Krankheit befallen, und ein seltener Mensch an der letzten, gefährlichen Wendung seines Lebens, sie rufen einander.”3 That same year, Bonsels started writing a novel loosely based on his Indian journey between October 1903 and April 1904. Bonsels, who had traveled to India on behalf of the Basel Mission, returned disappointed after having experienced firsthand the economic exploitation of the natives by Christian missionaries. Indienfahrt, published in 1916, once again established Bonsels’ reputation as a best-selling author. Translations in English, Dutch, Finnish, French, Hungarian, Russian and Swedish followed in quick succession, and in the first five years of publication alone, 230,000 copies of the novel were sold. At first glance, Tod in Venedig and Indienfahrt seem unrelated to one another, but both literary works have close, though not immediately apparent, thematic similarities: an exotic environment comparable to the trend of Victorian travel literature; an expression of fin de siècle decadence; rejection of rational thinking leading to a confusion of moral values; and an emphasis on physical degeneration—all of which also characterize Modernist literature. However, Bonsels’ conclusion of Indienfahrt departs radically from the ending in Mann’s novella. I argue that this conclusion represents Bonsels’ response to Mann’s treatment of the exotic in the context of the political atmosphere of 1916 when Indienfahrt was published. During his world travels, Bonsels always positioned himself as an enlightened traveler, a German who respected non-Europeans and did not consider the Other to be inferior. While his journeys took him around the world and he found pleasure in being a “vagabond,” Bonsels, a self-proclaimed Fahrtenromantiker, always insisted on maintaining a sense of one’s self: Auf der Reise sind die meisten Menschen besser als in den kleinen Bedrückungen ihrer engen Häuslichkeit; mit meiner Erinnerung an meine Reisejahre, die fast meine ganze Jugend ausfüllten, verbindet sich für mich die Vorstellung, daß ich damals ein bei weitem besserer Mensch war, als heute. Das Reisen läutert das Gemüt, denn die Fremde macht bescheiden, und durchaus nicht auf die Art, wie es 3

Heinrich Mann, “Der Tod in Venedig. Novelle von Thomas Mann,” März, eine Wochenschrift 7, no. 1 (1913): 478-79.

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nur die Lumpen sein sollen. Die Achtung vor fremden Wesen, die gerade uns Deutschen so gern als Tadel nachgesagt wird, ist nur dann eine Untugend, wenn 4 sie sich mit einer Preisgabe des eigenen Wesens verbindet. (My emphasis)

Bonsels considered himself a better European on his travels not only by trying to understand and appreciate the diverse cultures, but also by preserving his own German identity. This trait is imperative when one compares Tod in Venedig and Indienfahrt and examines the following questions: How do Thomas Mann and Bonsels portray the concept of Heimat in their works and what role does travel to an exotic locale play in their perception of Heimat? How intertwined are exotic desire and disease/death in both narratives, since the fascination with the exotic implies and anticipates one’s demise? To what extent is Indienfahrt representative of the Zeitgeist during the First World War? In other words, does the protagonist’s diseased state foreshadow the decline of the Wilhelmine Empire? Even though Bonsels never directly criticizes Mann’s Tod in Venedig, nor addresses the criticism posed by Isemann, I propose that Bonsels responds to important political events in Germany around 1916 by foregrounding the protagonist’s responsibility towards his country. Mann’s novella, on the other hand, veils the pessimistic demise of the bourgeois Prussian ideologies with Aschenbach’s moral collapse. Indeed, it would be wrong to assume that Mann was not affected by political upheavals in Germany when Tod in Venedig was published in 1912. In fact, Mann was intensely sensitive to German nationalism which had reached its zenith in the 1910s. As I demonstrate, Mann’s concept of Heimat manifests itself not only as a counter idea against decadent exoticism, but is also informed and influenced by European colonialist and imperialist ideologies. Furthermore, the feeling towards one’s Heimat is complicated by travel in both the works and plays a life-altering role in the life of the protagonists following the traveler’s attraction for the exotic Other that hinders his return home. The central character in Mann’s novella is the respected and aging author Gustav von Aschenbach, who leaves his home in Munich to travel to an Adriatic island, from where he takes a motorboat to Pola, a port near Triest, to finally reach Venice. Bonsels’ semi-autobiographical novel depicts a narrator, whose leisurely ramble through the jungles of Southwest India brings to the foreground the struggle of a Western traveler “trapped” in the exotic surroundings of the East. Thus, both Tod in Venedig and Indienfahrt depend on an exotic location as a fateful locus, Venice and India. The decadent Venetian culture and the overripe tropical nature of the Indian jungle have an imperious effect on Aschenbach and Bonsels’ narrator, respectively. The exotic character of these two non-German locales exerts 4

Waldemar Bonsels, Menschenwege. Aus den Notizen eines Vagabunden (Frankfurt/M: Rütten & Loening, 1917), 72.

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such an attraction over the older Aschenbach and the Indian traveler that in both the narratives there is a dangerous possibility of no return. Precisely this danger is portrayed by Mann and Bonsels as life threatening. Tod in Venedig has as its center the moral and psychological collapse of Aschenbach, eventually resulting in his death in Venice after his failure to return to Germany. Hence, in Mann’s novella, the North-South dichotomy emerges to the forefront when the German Aschenbach succumbs to the Venetian lure. In the beginning of Indienfahrt, the narrator surrenders to the exotic and erotic attractions of India that stand in contrast to European rationalism. In this respect he is similar to Aschenbach’s character. But Bonsels’ narrator, in jeopardy of violating patriotic fervor, eventually refuses to yield to the exotic temptations India offers him. By envisioning his return from India to Germany, he narrowly escapes his death in a distant place. To understand how Bonsels’ narrator reaches this “homecoming” that Aschenbach is not capable of, it is necessary to examine the nature of exotic desire that is omnipresent in the two narratives. This desire is twofold—not only for the exotic landscape but also for the exotic Other, and in both instances is associated with danger. Exotic Nature and Danger At the beginning of his novella, Mann leaves the exact date of the story vague: “[…] an einem Frühlingsnachmittag des Jahres 19--.” 5 Hinting that Europe is threatened by (impending) war, Mann consciously sets the story within the political environment of the summer of 1911, when the German navy threatened the French territorial claim to Morocco. As early as 1913, Thomas Mann honestly confessed to the novella’s unique “seismographic sensitivity” for the political context of its period, stating that Tod in Venedig stood in 1913 “an seinem rechten, fatalen Platz.” 6 In this work Mann portrays the protagonist as a representative of the Prussian Geist, as a cultural figure for the puritanical traditions of Wilhelmine Germany. Aschenbach counts among his most influential works a copious volume 5

My post-colonialist interpretation of Thomas Mann’s novella is influenced and informed by several historical or New Historicist interpretations by Mann scholars (See, for example, Edward Timms’ geographical and political analysis in Jeffrey Berlin’s edited volume.) My aim here is to highlight some of the exoticized aspects of the novella and connect them to desire and danger associated with an exoticized destination, and compare and contrast the characteristic aspects in Mann’s and Bonsels’ works, which demonstrate a mutual influence between the two contemporary authors. Thomas Mann, Gesammelte Werke in Dreizehn Bänden (Frankfurt/M: S. Fischer Verlag, 1960), 8: 444. References to this work cited hereafter in text by page number. 6 Hans Wysling and Marianne Fischer, eds., Thomas Mann. Teil I: 1889-1917 (Munich and Frankfurt: S Fischer Verlag, 1975), 445.

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on Fredrick the Great, the 18th century Prussian king who propelled the nation on the way toward political expansion in Central and Eastern Europe. Modeled on Prussian principles, Aschenbach’s character is a slave to discipline and convention. It is the decline of these principles that simultaneously signals the demise of the old bourgeois ideologies.7 Aschenbach’s disciplined and dignified composure is disrupted shortly after the novella begins, when he is confronted with an exotic milieu in a Munich city park. During one of his routine walks, a longing for a distant, exotic place grips the author as he is confronted with an unexpected vision of a mysterious foreigner in front of a cemetery: Es war Reiselust, nichts weiter; aber wahrhaft als Anfall auftretend und ins Leidenschaftliche, ja bis zur Sinnestäuschung gesteigert. Seine Begierde ward sehnend, seine Einbildungskraft, noch nicht zur Ruhe gekommen seit den Stunden der Arbeit; schuf sich ein Beispiel für alle Wunder und Schrecken der mannigfaltigen Erde, die sie auf einmal sich vorzustellen bestrebt war: er sah, sah eine Landschaft, ein tropisches Sumpfgebiet unter dickdunstigem Himmel, feucht, üppig und ungeheuer, eine Art Urweltwildnis aus Inseln, Morästen und Schlamm führenden Wasserarmen,—sah aus geilem Farrengewucher, aus Gründen von fettem, gequollenem und abenteuerlich blühendem Pflanzenwerk haarige Palmenschäfte nah und ferne emporstreben, sah wunderlich ungestalte Bäume ihre Wurzeln durch die Luft in den Boden, in stockende, grünschattig spiegelnde Fluten versenken, wo zwischen schwimmenden Blumen, die milchweiß und groß wie Schüsseln waren, Vögel von fremder Art, hochschultrig, mit unförmigen Schnäbeln, im Seichten standen und unbeweglich zur Seiten blickten, sah zwischen den knotigen Rohrstämmen des Bambusdickichts die Lichter eines kauernden Tigers funkeln—und fühlte sein Herz pochen vor Entsetzen und rätselhaftem Verlangen (446-47).

Aschenbach’s hallucination of this tropical jungle divides his world into two zones: a safe zone in Europe and a dangerous zone that he identifies with the distant jungle. The jungle symbolizes a threat, a place where Aschenbach is confronted by death. The danger is symbolized in the vision of a “crouching tiger” at the end of his hallucination.8 On the other hand, the exotic nature of the jungle 7

In a lecture to Princeton students in 1940 Mann acknowledges that Aschenbach’s demise was an expression of its time that “nicht mehr zur alten bürgerlichen Welt gehört, sondern schon mit einer nachbürgerlichen Lebenshaltung zu tun hat, obgleich er ironischpessimistisch ad absurdum geführt wurde.” Thomas Mann, Gesammelte Werke in Dreizehn Bänden (Frankfurt a.M.: S. Fischer Verlag, 1960), 13: 151-52. 8 Connecting Aschenbach to Prussian and European imperialism, Russell Berman argues that Aschenbach’s “vision of a tropical jungle” and of a “crouching tiger” give “significant evidence of a fascination with the non-European world during the age of colonialism.”

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(palm trees, lotus flowers, and cranes) intensifies the desire for travel in the aging author, while simultaneously concealing the impending danger of disease and death. This attraction for the exotic Other can be traced back to the author’s mother who was from Bohemia. One of the reasons why Aschenbach tries so hard to conform to his Prussian identity is because he does not have roots in Germany and is open to foreign influences. This racial “impurity,” as some reviews imply, could also be one of the reasons for his eventual demise: “Gesunde Kraft, Gefühl, Lebensblut, das einem Dichter nur aus stammhafter Zugehörigkeit und aus natürlicher Liebe zu seinem Volke zuteil wird, fließt in ihm [Aschenbach] nicht.”9 The vision of the “crouching tiger” foreshadows the threatening nature of the exotic East even before Aschenbach sets foot in Venice. Instead of dealing with this vision rationally, Aschenbach is gripped by travel fever and decides to travel to Italy. This propels his journey from a protected artistic existence towards the dangers of censored love. Repressing the rational, intellectual world he is accustomed to, the author seeks refuge in exotic Venice, a place that has a strong cultural resonance as an erotic melting pot of Eastern and Western civilizations, symbolizes the magnificent yet decaying European culture, and is the locus of a decadent tradition coexisting with beauty, mystery, and illusion. The image of the tiger from Aschenbach’s vision has been interpreted by scholars in various ways. Ford Parkes brings this image in connection with the protagonist himself by observing how the tiger in Aschenbach’s hallucination remains crouching and makes no move until the end of the novella. 10 Parkes compares the tiger to Aschenbach, who stalks the young Polish boy Tadzio in Venice, similar to the manner in which a tiger stalks its prey. He also demonstrates how Aschenbach, who can be envisioned as a hunter in Venice, ultimately becomes the hunted. He is hunted down by a fatal disease, the Asiatic cholera, about which he first learns from an English clerk at a travel bureau: Seit mehreren Jahren schon hatte die indische Cholera eine verstärkte Neigung zur Ausbreitung und Wanderung an den Tag gelegt. Erzeugt aus den warmen Morästen des Ganges-Deltas, aufgestiegen mit den mephistischen Odem jener üppig-untauglichen, von Menschen gemiedenen Urwelt- und Inselwildnis, in deren Bambusdickichten der Tiger kauert, hatte die Seuche in ganz Hindustan ungewöhnlich heftig gewütet, hatte westlich nach Afghanistan und Persien “History and Community in Death in Venice,” in Thomas Mann. Death in Venice. Complete, Authoritative Text with Biographical and Historical Contexts, ed. Naomi Ritter (Boston: Bedford Books, 1998), 269-70. 9 Richard Zimmermann, “Der Tod in Venedig. Novelle,” Preußische Jahrbücher 146 (1914): 356-57. 10 Ford Parkes, “The Image of the Tiger in Thomas Mann’s Tod in Venedig,” Studies in Twentieth Century Literature 3, no.1 (1978): 73-83.

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übergegriffen und…war…fast gleichzeitig in mehreren Mittelmeerhäfen aufgetaucht, hatte in Toulon…sein Haupt erhoben, in Palermo und Neapel mehrfach seine Maske gezeigt und schien aus ganz Kalabrien und Apulien nicht mehr weichen zu wollen. Der Norden der Halbinsel war verschont geblieben. Jedoch Mitte Mai dieses Jahres fand man zu Venedig an ein und demselben Tage die furchtbaren Vibrionen in den ausgemergelten, schwärzlichen Leichnamen eines Schifferknechtes und einer Grünwarenhändlerin (512).

This passage informing Aschenbach about the origins of the Asiatic cholera is almost identical to the vision of the tropical jungle that Aschenbach has in Munich. The quintessential exotic symbols of India, the tiger and the Ganges river, are now connected with the Asiatic cholera. The diseased landscape portrayed here is suggestive of the Ganges delta, from where the cholera moves to Europe. It penetrates Europe from the East, and consequently attacks Aschenbach’s body. A racist-imperialist attitude that sees danger in the exotic East is evident from the Englishman’s information. The vision of the exotic landscape at the beginning of time reflects a danger that is unharmonious: adjectives such as “üppig-untauglich, mephistisch” that describe the tropical jungle signal the danger associated with the disease. The German traveler is sucked into a dangerous place; Venice, a place that Aschenbach first identifies as a refuge from his mundane German life is transformed into his nemesis, as the exotic landscape becomes a breeding ground of deadly diseases originating in and spreading from the East. Bonsels’ Indienfahrt begins with the narrator’s arrival on the coast of Malabar in South-West India. While Aschenbach’s initial arrival on the tropical landscape is fantasmatic, the narrator’s advent in India is actual. But just as Venice is a choleraridden, disease-stricken city, so too is India a site of overwhelming nature with its dense jungles and pest-infested swamps. Like Mann, Bonsels displaces the exotic threat onto the natural landscape. By offering the reader ornamentalized and exaggerated descriptions of the Indian jungle, Bonsels characterizes the overabundant nature as diseased. The narrator confesses to a fear of plague right from the beginning of his India travels, as he tries to get rid of the rats in his house. Instead, as he witnesses the killing of the cats by the rats, he has to come to terms with the presence of death as an integral part of the exotic locale. Even the water in a house pond is stagnant and green, reminiscent of the Venetian canals. “Überall hockt der Tod im halben Licht,”11 the servant Pascha warns the narrator. Starting from the jungles of Cannanore, the narrator slips into the role of a morally better traveler by sacrificing the comforts other European travelers usually indulge in India. Instead of keeping company with Europeans, he hopes to develop 11 Waldemar Bonsels, Indienfahrt (Frankfurt/M: Rütten & Loening, 1918), 30. References to this work hereafter cited in text as I.

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contact with natives. He has neither detailed maps nor a definite itinerary, but plans to penetrate uncharted territory with the help of his native servants: Mein Entschluß zu reisen, stand fest, ich studierte die recht unvollständigen Karten, war aber schon entschlossen, den Weg nach Norden durch die Flußniederungen der Küste zu machen, obgleich die Ströme noch reich an Wasser waren und das Land teilweise überschwemmt hatten. Die Offiziere der englischen Garnison, deren einige ich kennen gelernt hatte, rieten mir ab, aber sie verstanden meine Absichten nicht, und wenn sie des Glaubens waren, daß mir daran gelegen sei, rasch und bequem voranzukommen, so hatten sie recht (I, 65).

The narrator’s Indienfahrt soon becomes a journey of danger and escape, which corresponds to the rhythm of the jungle and is reflected by its chaos. Similar to the double-edged sword of Mann’s Venice, the Indian jungle demonstrates the narrator’s desire for exotic locales, and simultaneously transforms it into a vicious landscape teeming with deadly diseases. Travel fever, symbolic of the danger that befalls Aschenbach, is concretized in Bonsels’ novel in the form of Tropenkoller, which can be translated as “tropical moral insanity.”12 This tropical sickness surrounds the narrator wherever he travels, impairing his vigor and vitality. Surprisingly, the narrator does not flee from this hazardous environment even when the superiority and vitality of his white race is threatened. On the contrary, he continues to hike deeper into the jungle, which in turn adds to his exhaustion and sickness. Here physical illness is symbolic of the danger of assimilation, of losing one’s identity in a foreign land: Ich hatte meine Heimat vergessen. Europa versank in meiner Erinnerung wie ein lauter, häßlicher Traum voll unnützer Erregtheit, und ich lächelte mitleidig über die Schande, die mir in den kleinen Beteiligtheiten meiner hastigen Vergangenheit widerfahren zu sein schien (I, 99).

The attraction and fascination for the exotic Other becomes almost paradisiacal for the German traveler. As he attempts to “go native,” he feels ashamed to have forgotten his homeland. His eventual physical deterioration is an expression of this repressed shame and guilt, which causes him to suffer from 12

Tropenkoller is a term taken from medical discourse. Sexologist Iwan Bloch defines it as: “[…] a disease of impulsiveness [that occurs in the tropics], usually in regions where all barriers of conventional morality and common social relationships are removed, where the civilized person can follow his inner instincts, and where he finds himself opposite an ‘inferior’ race which he regards and treats as half or wholly bestial.” John Noyes, The Mastery of Submission: Inventions of Masochism (New York: Cornell UP, 1997), 127.

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psychosomatic disorders like insomnia and hallucinations. The jungle metamorphosizes from a tropical haven into a dangerous labyrinth, in which the narrator is in danger of losing his orientation, figuratively and literally. It becomes the narrator’s personal battlefield, as he has to depend on his native servants for survival. They save the European traveler by carrying him from the hot swampy region up to the cool mountains, where he becomes healthy again. Thus, while Mann juxtaposes the diseased East with the West, Bonsels juxtaposes the tropical heat with the coolness of the mountains. Lawrence Phillips has demonstrated in an interesting article on autobiography, illness and imperialism, how representations of illness can reflect an individual’s conscience, experience and memory in connection with experiential reality.13 By connecting the diseased tropical nature (external atmosphere) to the cause of the traveler’s sickness (internal response), Bonsels, writing at the beginning of the First World War, shows the negative relationship of the white traveler to a distant colony. Just as Venice exerts a soporiphic influence on Aschenbach, so too does the jungle rob Bonsels’ narrator of all energy and vitality. Paradoxically, the tropical jungle poses for the white traveler not a place from which he must escape, but an attractive alternative to European civilized order, as the traveler believes to have found a second Heimat abroad. However, there is a linear progression in Bonsels’ novel, from contentment in staying in the Indian jungle despite the illness, to a decision to return to Germany. It is in this choice that Bonsels contradicts Mann’s conclusion of Tod in Venedig. Towards the end of his journey, the narrator in Indienfahrt is confronted with the fatal danger that will arise if he allows pleasure and gratification to remain the criteria for his stay in India. The interaction with and the desire for the exotic Other helps the German traveler in India reach this decision; in Aschenbach’s case it is a similar attraction for the Other that results in his demise. Desire, Disease and Death Having seen how tropical nature has a detrimental effect on the physical health of the two protagonists, I now examine the erotic desire for the Other omnipresent in both texts and its influence on the protagonists. Aschenbach’s encounter with Tadzio has a devastating consequence for the old author, who becomes infatuated with the young Polish boy. Aschenbach’s rigid and repressed personality, characteristic of Prussian principles based upon self-discipline and self-sacrifice, is 13

Lawrence Phillips, “The Canker of Empire: Colonialism, Autobiography and the Representation of Illness: Jack London and Robert Louis Stevenson in the Marquesas,” in Postcolonial Theory and Criticism, ed. Laura Chrisman and Benita Parry (Cambridge, England: Brewer, 1999), 115-32.

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fatally attracted to Tadzio, who is representative of the southern exotic Other. By confessing his attraction to Tadzio, Aschenbach, already in conflict with the external Venetian atmosphere, now revolts against human nature. The obsession for the Polish boy reveals how Aschenbach’s raison d’être is threatened by Slavic sensuality. In Tod in Venedig, Mann dichotomizes the Slavs (and other Eastern Europeans in the hotel) in an East-West binary opposition, which is not surprising, since at the turn of the twentieth century the Slavic East was characterized by negative qualities in popular European imagination. Thus, exotic danger is not only represented by the exotic Venetian landscape, but also by Aschenbach’s repressed sexual desire for Tadzio. The erotic desire for the Other results in a radical imbalance of opposing drives in Aschenbach—a conflict between Apollonian and Dionysian impulses, which inevitably leads to his fall from a public figure to a degenerate recluse.14 The Dionysian iconology is skillfully brought by Mann once again in association with the image of the tiger. In Greek mythology, a tiger-drawn chariot was sent by Dionysus’ father, Zeus, to help the former cross the Tigris river on his expedition from Greece to India. Furthermore, just as the Dionysian cult invaded the West, so does the Asiatic cholera attack Venice in Mann’s novella. The (Dionysian) tiger, as Mann visibly portrays, becomes a symbol of the Asiatic cholera that spreads surreptitiously from the East to the West. In this way, both the tiger and Dionysian impulses characterize the threatening and the exotic nature of the Other. Throughout Aschenbach’s Venetian travels, the Other impinges upon and takes possession of his life and “undermin[es] and fragment[s]” his rationality.15 The author’s tightly grasped fist (“geballte Faust”) in the beginning of the narrative is a sign of his repressed self, resisting every influence that is foreign to him. Eventually, this suppression gives way to incorporating traces of the unfamiliar— the journey to the Southeastern Italian border “undermines” the strict masculinity of the protagonist as the Western body absorbs homosexual, effeminate and foreign influences. Aschenbach’s encounter with the Polish Tadzio and with the “other” characters—the stranger near the cemetery in the Munich park, the primped hag, the Venetian gondolier—represents not only grotesque characters who create a 14

For more on Nietzsche’s influence on Mann, see Susan von Rohr Scaff’s article, “Plato and Nietzsche in ‘Death in Venice,’” in Approaches to Teaching Mann’s Death in Venice, ed. Jeffrey B. Berlin (New York: Modern Language Association, 1992), 140-45. 15 Rodney Symington’s article examines Mann’s use of psychology and Other in Tod in Venedig. Symington argues that Mann’s psychology uses conflicting emotions symbolized by Apollonian and Dionysian impulses. “The Eruption of the Other. Psychoanalytic Approaches to Death in Venice,” in Thomas Mann. Death in Venice. Complete, Authoritative Text with Biographical and Historical Contexts, ed. Naomi Ritter (Boston: Bedford Books, 1998), 137.

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temporary interruption in the protagonist’s routine, or characters who awaken in Aschenbach the desire for travel, but also symbolize the threat by the distant and exotic Other. Indeed, the morbid character in the novella is underscored by figures who keep reiterating the omnipresence of death in Aschenbach’s reclusive world. Whereas all of the characters in Tod in Venedig pull Aschenbach deeper into the Venetian maze and at the same time foreshadow his approaching death, the “other” characters in Indienfahrt do not result in any harmful consequences for the German narrator. Instead, they lead to a revelation about his insignificant role as a German in British-India and to a decision to return to his Heimat. In Mann’s novella, the (homo)erotic desire which has devastating effects on Aschenbach is entirely introspective, whereas sexual or interracial desire is openly acted upon in Bonsels’ novel .16 The silent encounter between Aschenbach and Tadzio can be contrasted with the meeting between Bonsels’ narrator and Goy, the personification of an exotic Indian dancer. In the chapter entitled “Im Fieber,” the narrator has a near death experience as an effect of the tropical fever. He succeeds in creating a mythic, mental fantasy about the object of his attraction in a hallucinatory state, by envisioning himself lying in a coffin and observing the adolescent half-naked Goy bathing in an adjoining stream. This scene is reminiscent of Aschenbach watching Tadzio on the beach. The coffin is suggestive of the gondola, which turns Aschenbach’s glance towards a fantasized Venice and suggests to him the erotic potential of the city. The gondola, which creates an intimate space, interweaves fantasies of Eros and death, as does the narrator’s ambiguous encounter with Goy. The shift from an unhealthy male body to a healthy female native body underscores the shift from the sick West to the fertile East, waiting to be explored. Bonsels describes this visionary encounter of the German traveler with the Indian Bajadere in intimate tones; even the red-lit harem, which the narrator later visits, reflects the German traveler’s desires at that moment. Unlike the silent encounters of Aschenbach with Tadzio, the temple-dancer has no qualms becoming the sexual aggressor of the two, and even questions him about love, life and death, whereas the narrator passively succumbs to the erotic pleasures.17 The German traveler in Indienfahrt is 16

On the beach, Aschenbach’s “stumme Begegnung” with Tadzio takes place with the “Blick.” The passage is full of erotic undertones: “Zuweilen aber auch blickte er [Tadzio] auf, und ihre Blicke trafen sich. Sie waren beide tiefernst, wenn das geschach. In der gebildeten und würdevollen Miene des Älteren verriet nichts eine innere Bewegung; aber in Tadzio’s Augen war ein Forschen, ein nachdenkliches Fragen, in seinen Gang kam ein Zögern, er blickte zu Boden, er blickte lieblich wieder auf, und wenn er vorüber war, so schien ein Etwas in seiner Haltung auszudrücken, daß nur Erziehung ihn hinderte, sich umzuwenden” ( Mann 497). 17 Paul Tholey believes that “in lucid dreams, dream characters sometimes give the impression of having consciousness of their own. They speak and behave logically, perform

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portrayed as being doubly passive: not only is he physically tired, but he is also complacent in a sexual encounter that underscores his personal disempowerment as a European traveler. After recovering from his feverish state, the narrator decides to leave the jungle and travel westwards to Mangalore. While Aschenbach surrenders to pleasurable feelings in his dreams to escape the harsh realities of bourgeois European society, Bonsels’ narrator enters a dreamlike state only to escape from it and get a grip back on reality. Although the hallucinations help both protagonists release their repressed desires, in Bonsels’ novel, they also aid the narrator in making a life-altering decision. If Aschenbach enjoys watching Tadzio from a distance, Bonsels’ narrator develops important relationships with the natives. The narrator encounters many natives during his India travel, all of whom underscore his passive and insignificant position in colonized India. The native servants Panja and Pascha, the dancer Goy, a Hindu king and a Brahmin political activist form important life experiences for the narrator. The last two chapters of the novel act as a political addendum, bringing to light the historical-political reality of India at the beginning of the twentieth century. This historicity of the novel is observed as early as 1918, when Bonsels’ novel was reviewed to be a “fine seismograph” of its time.18 The friendship with the political activist Mangesche Rao has a profound effect on the narrator. Rao, a well-educated Hindu Brahmin who teaches English at a university in Mangalore, is disliked by the natives. As a passionate freedom fighter, he is a threat for the British. In Rao the narrator finds not only an intellectual partner, but also a friend who needs his help in hiding propagandist literature from the British. In the last chapter of Indienfahrt, the narrator visits the morgue to see his friend Mangesche Rao, who is assassinated by the British due to his involvement in the national freedom struggle. The narrator, who becomes Rao’s accomplice and tries to save Rao from being arrested by the British on more than one occasion, realizes in the end the futility of his efforts. Seeing his dead friend, the narrator is forced to come to terms with his inferior position in British India. As a white European, the narrator yields some power, but realizes how amazing cognitive feats and express in their behavior distinct purpose and feelings.” The narrator in Indienfahrt succeeds in creating a mental fantasy about Goy, who is sexually and verbally aggressive, expressing the narrator’s own desires. “Consciousness and Ability of Dream Characters,” Perceptual and Motor Skills 68 (April 1990): 567. 18 Harry Kahn reviewed Bonsels’ novel and observed the political undertones of BritishIndia colonial relations: “Indien, das Wahrzeichen der Macht und Kraft unsres gewaltigsten Feindes, das Rückgrat britischer und somit einstweilen jeder Weltpolitik, beginnt allmählich in den Sichtkreis des mitteleuropäischen Interesses zu rücken. Das Schrifttum ist ein feiner Seismograph.” “Indienfahrt,” Die Weltbühne der Schaubühne. Wochenschrift für Politik, Kunst, Wirtschaft 14 (1918): 564.

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powerless he is in a British colony. No more does he see in exotic India a sheltered realm, but instead envisions with eyes shut his true Heimat, while leaning against a palm tree: Da sah ich im Abendfrieden ein Dorf meiner deutschen Heimat. Der Holunder blühte am Zaun, es hatte geregnet, und die Luft war kühl und feucht. Hoch auf dem Giebel eines Bauernhauses sang eine Amsel in der letzten Sonne, und die klare Süßigkeit ihrer Stimme erfüllte das Land mit Glück (I, 259).

In contrast to the Goy episode, where the narrator wakes up from a hallucinatory stage to return to reality, the narrator at the end of the novel closes his eyes to perceive the truth, as “Entzauberung, Entzweiung und Entfremdung stehen an der Schwelle zu Zauber, Heilung und Heimatgründung auf der Junglereise.” 19 In one of the last scenes from Tod in Venedig, the diseased Aschenbach surrenders to the sole pleasure of seeing Tadzio in the distance on the beach and decides to die with the object of his desire in sight. On the other hand, his insignificant position in India and the patriotism of Mangesche Rao help the narrator in Indienfahrt decide to fight the lure of India. The last paragraph of the novel offers a clichéd, stereotypical description of a romanticized German landscape that stands in total juxtaposition to the tropical Indian nature. Indienfahrt and Tod in Venedig coincide thematically in the representation of diseased foreign landscapes and the (near) collapse of self-control of the two protagonists. For Aschenbach, Venice becomes an imaginary jungle; Bonsels’ narrator finds himself similarly trapped in the Indian jungle. But whereas Aschenbach does not escape the cholera-plagued Venice and makes the ultimate sacrifice by choosing death in the vicinity of Tadzio, the narrator is inspired by Rao’s patriotic love for his country. He has an Aristotelian anagnoresis moment, as Fernweh transforms to Heimweh, and he realizes that India cannot replace Germany to become his Heimat. Conclusion: Bonsels’ Response as Return to Heimat Throughout the journey, the narrator in Indienfahrt is projected as an egoistic traveler, whose primary concern is the attainment of his “Dionysian desires.” In the end, he realizes his responsibility towards his country, albeit ironically through the friendship with a Hindu native, and rejects the illusion of living happily ever after in India. When Indienfahrt was published in 1916, the return of the traveler to Germany reflected Bonsels’ response to the political situation in Europe. During 19 Caroline Fetscher, Tropen als Text: Albert Schweitzers’ “Zwischen Wasser und Urwald” (Hamburg: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1993), 78.

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the War, Bonsels did not believe that the solution to the complications of Western life lay in flight or escape to a distant land. On the contrary, the return to his homeland is the German traveler’s call to face the harrowing catastrophes in Germany. The narrator expresses Bonsels’ sentiments in the novel: Aber mein Verlangen erschien mir bald darauf wie ein Hang zur Flucht, als warteten Pflichten und Aufgaben meiner in einem anderen Land, in einem Bereich, dessen Kräften und Zielen ich durch Abstammung und Ueberlieferung verbunden war, und zum ersten Mal seit Jahren wandten sich meine inneren Augen über das Meer hin der Heimat zu (I, 254).

Examining Indienfahrt as a response to Mann’s novella, one can conclude that in 1916 there were intellectuals like Bonsels in Germany, who protested the resistance against German imperialism. Bonsels’ own life reflects this attitude, as he served as a soldier, was a war reporter for the Prussian army in Galicia, and experienced the war firsthand. Hence, the return of the German traveler home reflects Bonsels’ response to the political situation in Europe—not to flee from the harsh reality of the war and face one’s responsibility towards the Heimatland. The narrator in Indienfahrt finally overcomes the attraction India has on him and escapes the exotic desire that he had succumbed to many times during his stay, a decision that Aschenbach cannot make. Aschenbach personifies the Prussian traditions of an artist and an aristocrat; his stolidity and discipline echo the static structure of Wilhelmine society and bourgeoisie ideals. His inevitable death foreshadows the impending fall of Bismarck’s Germany, suggestive of the subtle warning at the beginning of the narrative: “[…] unserem Kontinent monatelang eine so gefahrdrohende Miene zeigte.” (444). Although Mann’s novella does not explicitly address German political ambitions on the eve of World War I that were overshadowed by the fear of Slavs, Aschenbach’s “longing for death implies the imminent death of his culture, for he represents just that society [monarchic and imperialist].”20 During the years 1914-1918 Mann interrupted his work on Der Zauberberg to embark upon “war service with the weapon of thought.” In a series of introspective essays, Mann presented a vigorous defense of the German Reich in “Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man,” where he acknowledged that Tod in Venedig was “located in a specific period, located in its tension of the will and its morbidity of the war.”21 20

Naomi Ritter, ed., Thomas Mann. Death in Venice. Complete, Authoritative Text with Biographical and Historical Contexts (Boston: Bedford Books, 1998), 17. 21 Thomas Mann, Reflections of a Non-Political Man, trans. Walter D. Morris (New York: F Ungar, 1983), 152-53. Quoted from Edward Timms, “Death in Venice as Psychohistory,” in Approaches to Teaching Mann’s Death in Venice, ed. Jeffrey B. Berlin (New York: Modern Language Association, 1992), 134-39. Timms’ excellent “psychohistorical” study examines

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In his “Reflections” published towards the end of the First World War in 1918, Mann concluded that an artist must participate in politics in order to preserve a creative society.22 However, in Mann’s pre-war fiction, such as Tod in Venedig, the critique of Wilhelmine principles is closely connected with the threat to Prussian ideology and authority and is reflected in Aschenbach’s weakness. With this pessimistic conclusion, Mann gives his own verdict to the political situation in Germany, making the novella his most developed ideological position as he departs from the familiar association of an artist with the king.23 Bonsels’ achievement, on the other hand, lies in establishing an awareness of an individual’s responsibility against the backdrop of 1916 European politics, even if that individual has temporarily forgotten his responsibility towards his fatherland. India ceases to be a moral or philosophical surrogate for the narrator as he becomes more aware of his German self by the end of his travels. The narrator’s encounter with illness and death in India forms an uneasy passage between internalized anxiety and externalized recognition of his role as a German citizen. The return of the traveler to Germany in Indienfahrt is symptomatic of the patriotic enthusiasm and optimism where one’s Heimat, and not the exotic Other, becomes the chosen paradise. The narrator has a vision of his Heimat at the end of his Indian travels—cool breeze, the elder blossoms at the fence, the sweet sound of a blackbird filling the landscape “mit Glück”—holds a promise of renewed hope to the German traveler, who has lost his self abroad.

Mann’s novella in the context of the political and historical atmosphere surrounding Aschenbach. 22 At the end of Thomas Mann’s novel Der Zauberberg (1924), the young Hans Castrop accepts life and, when the war breaks out, returns to his homeland, leaving the sheltered atmosphere of the magic mountain for military service. This ending, I believe, shows that Mann was influenced by patriotic endings of novels such as Indienfahrt. 23 Mann celebrated the alliance of the artist with the king in the Königliche Hoheit (1909).

PART IV:

THE FAR EAST

“So that Asia can become great”: The Representation of Eastern Cultures in Fritz Lang’s Die Spinnen (1919) Richard John Ascárate Since 1919, Fritz Lang’s third film, Die Spinnen, has offered viewers a lavish if convoluted adventure that may well have served as conceptual precursor to modern films such as Romancing the Stone (1984) and those in the Indian Jones series,1 among others. Originally intended as a four-part serial, Lang completed only the first two episodes, but these enjoyed popular acclaim. As Lotte Eisner notes in her eponymous memoir of the director, Die Spinnen was to serve notice to foreign markets, particularly to that of the United States, that the German film industry was still capable of great things, despite the nation’s ignominious defeat in the First World War.2 In the opening installment, Der goldene See, protagonist Kay Hoog, wealthy scholar-sportsman, one day while yachting retrieves a mysterious message in a bottle. The tattered note, purportedly from a Harvard professor who had disappeared several months before while conducting research in South America, speaks of a fabulous treasure lost beneath the sea and of remnants of the ancient Incas who, lost beneath the sands of time, still practice human sacrifice. Intrigued, Hoog sets out to find the treasure. (He makes no mention of trying to find the professor, claiming that “the golden treasures of the ancient Incas are far more inviting” than even the Golden Trophy of the regatta in which he had planned to race the next day). Variously trailing and anticipating his every step is the enigmatically-named, seemingly Caucasian, Lio Sha, agent of the “Spinnen,” a secret, international network of spies notorious for their practice of leaving behind large, petrified spiders at the scenes of their crimes. Hoog pursues the treasure trail across Central and South America to the Incan empire, saves the native sunpriestess Naela from death by serpentine constriction and his adversary Lio Sha from human sacrifice, but loses the treasure. Still, not to return empty-handed, Hoog, in a romantic gesture that suggests on a personal, individual scale earlier national projects of colonial conquest and civilization, brings Naela back to San Francisco to be his wife. (Lang elides questions of linguistic and cultural difference between the two characters. Indeed, they are able to communicate with one another 1

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). 2 Eisner, Fritz Lang, 32.

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from their first meeting.) Naela, however, is killed by Lio Sha after Hoog rejects the latter’s love and proposition to join forces, a tell-tale spider left upon the priestess’s lifeless body. Hoog vows revenge. Thus ends the first part. The second installment, Das Brillantenschiff, exhibits Lang’s continued concern with obtaining ethnographic authenticity in the various scenes. As in the first episode, the director employs the expertise of Heinrich Umlauff, curator of the Ethnological Museum in Hamburg. Costumes and props are used to simulate exotic people and locales, among the latter an underground Chinese quarter and opium den, as well as an Indian yoghi’s meditation chamber. The plot of Das Brillantenschiff, while without the romantic tension that added charm to the first part, becomes complicated rather quickly. Intertitles, however, reveal the main concerns of the key players. Kay Hoog and Lio Sha race against one another throughout the film again, this time to find the so-called “Buddha-head diamond,” possession of which will in some unspecified way rid Asia of foreign (presumably Western) imperialist colonizers. So important is this theme that Lang repeats it no fewer than three times: 1) “This stone was stolen and, so the story goes, Asia will free itself from foreign tyranny when a Princess brings this stone back to Asia”; 2) “I will force Ellen Terry [a minor character in the film] under my will and make her the Princess who will free Asia from all foreign tyranny”; and, 3) “Find the Buddha stone, so that Asia can become great and free itself from foreign rule.” Each of these utterances also echoes the justification offered by the Incas for their bloody, retrogressive practice in Der goldene See. That is, they continue to sacrifice humans to their gods so that, in the words of the high priest, the “[Incan] race […] will again become great and renew its ancient splendor.” Marketed as a vehicle for mass entertainment, Die Spinnen nevertheless also expresses concerns and harbors assumptions stemming from wider discourses and representational practices that had begun during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, among them that: 1) The ethnographic Other could be observed, catalogued, and classified like any other cultural artifact; 2) Non-European cultures stood lower on an evolutionary scale than that of Germany, indeed, had become lodged in time; and 3) Though far removed geographically and often cryptic, foreign cultures could be deciphered, usually by looking far enough back in German cultural history. Arising at different historical times and not without detractors even within Germany, these assumptions occasionally converged to form a discursive network that allowed for such cultural phenomena as ethnographic museums, films, photos, and Völkerschauen. This paper will examine Die Spinnen for traces of these modes of exhibition and suggest a reading of the film that places it within the context of wider discursive practices.

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1. The ethnographic Other could be observed, catalogued, and classified like any other cultural artifact a. Museums Fueled by methods of mass production during the nineteenth century, a commercial culture arose in Europe “based on industrial goods marketed to a broad range of urban consumers.” 3 Concomitant with the wider socio-economic trend toward commodity fetishism, anthropologists also attributed truth value to objects in their museum collections, truth independent of the cultural contexts from which such objects were removed.4 According to one historian, German ethnologists and their supporters expected their museums to become the new libraries of “mankind,” the central resources for the study and analysis of human history, and a primary means for understanding the European “self.”5

By the end of the nineteenth century, too, Germany had amassed a collection of colonies in Togo, East Africa, Southwest Africa, Cameroon, Samoa, Kiautschou (modern-day Tsingtao), the north-eastern part of New Guinea, and the islands of Opolu and Sawaii in Samoa, having purchased outright from Spain the Caroline, Pelew, Marianne, and Marshall Islands in the Pacific. 6 Such colonies, though almost always administered at a financial loss, served nevertheless as a source of pride for Germans, allowing them to take their “place in the sun” beside longtime colonial rivals France, Britain, Spain, and the Netherlands. The colonies also supplied in abundance the exotic artifacts and specimens of flora and fauna to meet the demands of burgeoning German ethnological museums. In accordance with their self-image as the repositories of anthropological truth, German museums in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century exercised an aesthetics of display that emphasized universality and completeness. Curators lined walls and loaded glass cabinets (which themselves had undergone technological innovation, equipped with metal frames instead of wooden ones to sustain larger panes of glass, thus accommodating the ever-growing consumer culture) to maximum capacity. This crowding of the visual field served as part of a wider pedagogical function of museums to train the spectator’s vision. Even the museum visitor’s movements were prescribed so as to replicate those of the “anthropologistexplorer who traverses the physical and cultural landscape, encountering assorted 3

Zimmermann, Anthropology, 149. Ibid. 5 Penny, “Bastian’s Museum,” 101. 6 Henderson, German Colonial Empire, 66. 4

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scenes of indigenous life.”7 But if movement through museum halls replicated the travels of the anthropologist-explorer, films such as Die Spinnen, one could argue, replicated the movements of the museum “traveler” and even augmented the ease and convenience of modern transport by allowing the spectator to see many lands and peoples without leaving his or her seat. In Der goldene See alone, Kay Hoog travels virtually from San Francisco across the flatlands of Mexico and the mountains of Peru to a subterranean Incan city and then back to San Francisco; in Das Brillantenschiff, from (perhaps) San Francisco to Chinatown to a subterranean Chinese quarter, while the spectator makes an additional excursion with agents of the Spiders organization to India. Lang’s film thus follows the practice of German ethnological museums by offering the spectator a wide variety of exotic settings replete with scientifically validated (via screen credits to Heinrich Umlauff and the Ethnological Museum in Hamburg) details. b. Ethnographic films and photos From its inception, film simultaneously recorded subjects and themes of both ethnography and popular culture. A year before the Paris screening of the Lumiére Brothers’ La Sortie des ouvriers de l’usine Lumière (1895), Thomas Edison had captured on the kinetoscope Native Americans performing traditional dances in his Black Maria studio (Fig. 4-1):

FIG. 4-1 – Stills from Edison’s kinetoscopic recording of Native American dance, 1824. Source: History of Edison Motion Pictures: Early Edison Motion Picture Production (18921895): http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/edhtml/edmvhist1.html

Turn-of-the-century documentary films by the Viennese physician and anthropologist Rudolph Pöch, as well as by German ethnographers Karl Weule, Hans Schomburgk, and Count von Mecklenburg also served multiple functions. First, they brought home to German audiences in a way both inexpensive and accessible, representations of colonial possessions, thus helping to secure a unified national identity amidst European powers that had already divided much of the 7

Griffiths, Wondrous Difference, 41.

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non-Western world amongst themselves. 8 Second, the still and filmic images retrieved by Pöch and others provided raw material for developing or continuing discourses on evolution, mono- and polygenesis, and racial hygiene. Furthermore, after the psychological trauma and colonial losses incurred by the First World War, such representations of the native body figured further as images of “a lost unity and provided a vanishing point for a fantasy of coherence and wholeness.” 9 Though constrained from further incursions into faraway lands, “[a]s Germans imagined their others both outside and inside Germany, they created themselves.”10 But if German “[i]maginary colonialism anticipated actual imperialism, words, [and] actions,”11 one might also argue that imaginary colonialism followed actual imperialism in the form of cultural constructions such as ethnographic films and photos. Actual German imperialism, out of political necessity dictated by the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, reverted again to the realm of the imagination, to cinema, enabling Germans to continue the fantasy of colonial and evolutionary mastery by sustaining a visual code that construed the colonized “as a population of degenerate types on the basis of racial origin, in order to justify conquest and to establish systems of administration and construction.”.12 Ethnographic photographs and films in themselves presupposed an unequal relationship between the privileged spectator who could capture an image and the voiceless, presumably illiterate subject whose life and ways were captured by the camera. One of the more famous early ethnographic film fragments, Rudolf Pöch’s Bushman Speaking into the Phonograph (1908), features a Kalahari Bushman relating a story into the cone of a phonograph. Assenka Oksiloff argues that the fragment depicts a “coupling of the first and last links of the evolutionary chain.”13 That is, the Bushman, wearing only a loincloth, possessed of perhaps a grass hut, a few domesticated animals, and a handful of primitive tools, sits opposite to one of the most advanced products of modern technology, an electro-mechanical

8

Oksiloff, Picturing the Primitive, 5. Ibid., 6. 10 Zantop, Colonial Fantasies, 7. 11 Ibid., 9. 12 This is not to suggest a monolithic German stance toward exotic Others, particularly those from the East. The German culture from which emerged ethnographic displays for traveling shows and circuses, for example, also produced Richard Wilhelm’s translations of the classics of Chinese literature. Indeed, this translation of the I Ching is still available and has itself been translated into English. Having returned to Germany from China in 1924, Wilhelm also used his newly-appointed chair of Sinology at the University of Frankfurt am Main to broaden interest in China studies and three years later founded the first private SinoGerman Institute. Bhaba, Location, 70. 13 Oksiloff, Picturing the Primitive, 57. 9

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recording device. The image presumably legitimated ideas of Western superiority and justified the continued colonial presence in Third World countries.14 Images from Die Spinnen also seem to stage Westerners as victors in the “ascent to civilization, depicted as the inevitable triumph of higher races over lower ones and as progress through science and imperial conquest.”15 In the first episode, for example, Kay Hoog proceeds from the comfort and sophistication of modern San Francisco, to the badlands of Cuicatlan, reminiscent of the American Wild West, finally descending upon the “ruined city of the old Incas,” a metropolis whose name has been forgotten even if its Western-standard geographical coordinates have been retained, “75 degrees west longitude.” This filmic movement across vast territories, this colonial journey into the virgin interior reveals a contradiction, for the journey is figured as proceeding forward in geographical space but backward in historical time, to what is figured as a prehistoric zone of racial and gender difference.16

Hoog surveys the ancient Incan city from above in a hot-air balloon used for meteorological measurements, itself a symbol of technological advancement beyond the ken of the primitive Other below (Fig. 4-2). Tellingly, the Europeans in both episodes of Lang’s film enjoy modern modes of transportation such as hot air balloons, trains, and steamships, whereas the inhabitants of the various exotic locales go afoot or, as in the case of an Indian yogi, remain stationary, much like the wax figures of ethnographic

14

Cinematic recurrences of the Victrola-brand of horn phonographs (advertising slogan: “His master’s voice”) as emblems of technological mastery of the West over its Others are legion and deserve a study of their own. In Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo (1982), for example, Klaus Kinski as the eponymous protagonist stands astern of a steamship as it penetrates the uncharted depths of the Brazilian jungle, Enrico Caruso sounding from a Victrola at his side. The recorded tenor competes against the live drumbeats and shouts emanating from an invisible native village. Eventually, Caruso wins the cultural confrontation by intimidating, fascinating, or civilizing the natives into silence. In Out of Africa (1985), Robert Redford as maverick English adventurer Denys George Finch Hatton tests the sensitivity of African wildlife to high Western civilization by playing Mozart records on a horn-phonograph left in a clearing. Finally, in a most violent depiction of the encounter between modern technology and primitivism, between culture and barbarity, Robert Duval as the aptly named Colonel Kilgore and his Air Cavalry in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) destroy a Vietnamese village with guns, bombs, and napalm while Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” blares from loudspeakers attached to army helicopters. 15 Corbey, “Ethnographic Showcases,” 341. 16 McClintock, Imperial Leather, 30.

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FIG. 4-2 – Incan city framed and surveyed. The image stages the binary of modernity/antiquity through technology and motion.

tableaux in German museums. Indeed, as seen below (Fig. 4-3 and 4-4), the ethnographic Other in Die Spinnen often assumes an air of operatic stasis, the living characters at times even overwhelmed by the inanimate background, emerging only with difficulty:

Fig. 4-3 – Naela and the High Priest

Fig. 4-4 – Naela prepares to sacrifice Lio Sha

c. Völkerschauen The staging of ethnographic showcases, or Völkerschauen, began in 1874 when Hamburg resident Carl Hagenbeck, dealer to circuses and zoos of wild animals,17 exhibited Lapplanders and their reindeer in Berlin. So successful was this show that Hagenbeck soon imported natives of German colonies, along with their traditional clothing, implements, weapons, and other paraphernalia. One of Hagenbeck’s earliest Berlin exhibits, that of Eskimos, attracted over forty-four

17

Hagenbeck also happened to be Heinrich Umlauff’s uncle.

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thousand visitors during the Easter holidays alone.18 In general, his shows tracked German conquests in Africa, and included Zulus, Inuit, Dinka, Maasai, Ashanti, though eventually also Indians and Native Americans. Just as ethnographic museums did, Völkerschauen encouraged a way of seeing, of spectating, the compartmentalized Other. In all such shows, for example, distance between spectator and ethnographic subject was strictly enforced. Thus, the living native exhibits had to remain within their prescribed framework, both physically and behaviorally, observing the boundary between wildness and civility, nature and culture.19 Natives of different nations were also segregated from each other, placed in villages specially constructed to resemble those of their homelands. The very language of the catalogue to the first German colonial exhibit, Deutschland und seine Kolonien im Jahre 1896, underscores the dialectic of spectator/subject, of civilization/wildness. While strolling the grounds of the exhibit, the visitor to Berlin could see how [i]n dieses Bild der tropischen Kolonien, wie es Kunst und Wissenschaften auf märkischem Sande geschaffen hatten, brachten die Eingeborenen ein buntbewegtes Leben. Sie verpflanzten mitten hinein in die Weltstadt mit ihren verfeinerten Sitten, ihren Modemenschen, ihre stolzen Pracht, ein Stück natürlicher Wildheit, rohester Kultur. Gerade diese Gegensätze, zum erstenmal in engem Rahmen nebeneinander mit greifbarer Deutlich-keit vorgeführt, machten die Ausstellung so fesselnd und reizvoll für jedermann. (emphasis Ascárate).20

The natives in their “natural wildness” were displayed opposite the metropolitan Berliners, “closely framed beside one another” so as to provide utmost convenience for inspection, just as were the artifacts in ethnological museum display cases. Although the German Colonial Exhibition of 1896 was a speciallystaged event, the tendency to catalogue and categorize the exotic Other also manifested itself on a more mundane level, as in a so-called Koloniales Lesebuch für Schule und Haus published in 1913. In this reference book meant for household use, one reads under the heading of Protectorate of Kiautschou in East Asia: “Lage und Erwerbungsgeschichte, Bodengestaltung, Bewässerung, Klima- [und]

18

Hagenbeck, Von Tieren und Menschen, 89. Corbey, “Ethnographic Showcases,” 344. 20 Schweinitz, Beck and Imberg, eds., Deutschland und seine Kolonien, 25. Just as the physical layout of the ethnographic museum prescribed the visitor’s movements and gaze, so, too, did the catalogs accompanying the exhibits. That is, readers “progress[ed] by traversing the space described, mimicking the experience of the narrator or reporter.” Smith, Discourse Modes, 25. 19

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Gesundheitsverhältnisse, Pflanzen und Tierwelt, Bevölkerung, Produktion des Landes, Handel und Verkehr.”21 The 1896 exhibit also featured various halls modeled after those found in ethnological museums. Figures 4-5 and 4-6 are of the so-called Kolonial-halle. The description of one of the rooms in the hall may just as well be applied to scenes of Kay Hoog’s study (Figs. 4-7 and 4-8) or to the Asian sets (Figs. 4-9 and 4-10) in Die Spinnen: “Die Wand war mit ethnologischen Gegenständen aus Ostafrika bedeckt.”22 That is, Fritz Lang seems to borrow for

Fig. 4-5

Fig. 4-7

21 22

Fig. 4-6

Fig. 4-8

Seidel, Deutschlands Kolonien, 169-75. Schweinitz, Beck and Imberg, eds., Deutschland und seine Kolonien, 25.

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Fig. 4-10

Figs. 4-5 and 4-6 Glimpses into the Kolonialhalle at the German Colonial Exhibition (1896). Observe the abundance of artifacts lining walls and standing upon tables; 4-7 – Kay Hoog’s study with detail (4-8), showing African weapons and shield, a golden Buddha, and what may be a statue of an Egyptian winged god; 4-9 – Waiting room of the Spiders’ headquarters; 4-10 – Kay Hoog in a pawn shop of the underground Chinese quarter.

his own filmic tableaux representational practices then prevalent in ethnological museums, exhibits, and Völkerschauen. One observes both in photographs from the exhibition and stills from the film an semi-orderly crowding of detail, with artifacts from various nations adorning the walls and lining the floors. In Figure 4-7, Kay Hoog speaks to his Indian servant, who wears a turban and bows to his master upon entering the room. In his stylized subservience, the Indian may be read as yet another exotic trophy decorating a Westerner’s mansion, much like the antlers above Hoog’s head. Furthermore, because Hoog stands slightly taller than the Indian and the Chinese (Fig. 4-10), even without the bowing of the latter, the shots stress his dominance over the exotic Other. 2. Non-European cultures stood lower on an evolutionary scale than that of Germany, indeed, had become lodged in time. Besides images from the exhibition halls, the catalogue to the German Colonial Exhibit of 1896 also featured photographs of many of the natives inhabiting the various mock-villages. Three such may be seen in Figures 4-11, 413, and 4-15, as well as in stills of several exotic Others depicted in Die Spinnen. All forty-eight native subjects in the show who agreed to have their portraits taken for the catalogue appear in profile and frontal shots as shown here. Bereft of distracting props and details, the blank backgrounds of such portraits perform a dual purpose: 1) They compel the spectator to focus attention on the ethnographic subject, and 2) They unmoor the subject from any contemporaneous references, allowing him or her to float in a timeless zone somewhere in an allochronic past. Thus framed, the exotic Other, like the “primitives” in turn-of-the-century photographs from anthropologists such as Rudolf Pöch, Karl Weule, Hans

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Schomburgk, and Count von Mecklenburg, is “not simply at the end of the evolutionary time line; he is figured as ‘outside’ of Time and as an ahistorical Other in relation to naturalized Time.”23 Yet, one immediately notices a similar representational strategy used by Lang in depicting the various natives in Die Spinnen. The director never accords the Europeans in the film such stylistic framing, which in turn merely reinforces intertitular intimations of the natives being moored in an allochronic past.

Fig. 4-11

Fig. 4-13

Fig. 4-15

23

Oksiloff, Picturing the Primitive, 60.

Fig. 4-12

Fig. 4-14

Fig. 4-16

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3. Though far removed geographically and often cryptic, foreign cultures could be deciphered, usually by looking far enough back in German cultural history. Foreign climes imply foreign languages, and there is no end of written ones in Die Spinnen. In the first episode, for example, Kay Hoog retrieves an encoded message (Fig. 4-17) from a band of Spiders in a South American bar. Later, he obtains an ivory sliver (Fig. 4-18) with a mysterious symbol that appears to be Chinese. In both cases, he enlists the assistance of an “old bookworm” to help him decipher the codes. Lang does not specify the location of the antiquated gentleman’s shop. Thus, given Hoog’s propensity for travel and his international connections, the scenes in Figs. 4-19 and 4-20 may be anywhere.

Fig. 4-17

Fig. 4-19

Fig. 4-18

Fig. 4-20

Yet, one cannot help but notice the similarity between a detail (Fig. 4-21) from the scene in the bookshop and Carl Spitzweg’s 1850 painting, Der Bücherwurm (Fig. 4-22).24 The still perhaps betrays a tension between competing German selfimages:

24 Carl Spitzweg (German, 1808-1885) Der Bücherwurm (The Bookworm), ca. 1853. Oil in canvas from the collection of the Milwaukee Public Library.

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Fig. 4-21

Fig. 4-22

1) On the one hand, Lang’s seeming quotation of Spitzweg’s Biedermeier depiction suggests a certain inwardness, a lack of self-confidence toward the real, political world following the First World War; 2) On the other hand, that the bookseller is able simply by referring to old volumes in his collection to decipher both the Spiders’ code and the archaic Chinese symbol suggests that the Other has always already been observed, researched, and finally catalogued long before by European, if not by German, scholars. Thus, the amusing image of the bookworm’s eye when magnified through his glass (Fig. 4-20) reinforces the European paradigm of scopic mastery portrayed earlier in the film on a larger scale (Fig. 4-2) Conclusion This paper has indicated merely some of the diachronic and synchronic discourses circulating through and around scenes and images in Fritz Lang’s Die Spinnen. Unraveling various discursive strands embedded in the film reveals a broader, more time-specific picture of postwar German colonial concerns than one might expect upon first view. Germany in 1919, of course, was no longer seen as a great European power, bereft as it was of many of the accoutrements of national respectability, among them, the aforementioned colonies, the navy so painstakingly built by Admiral Tirpitz, and Kaiser Wilhelm II himself, who had resigned. Loss of colonies struck a severe blow to German national pride, one that may have been assuaged by certain hybrid artifacts of ethnography and entertainment, such as Die Spinnen. It was in no way certain after the war that Germany would permanently lose its colonies. The status of lands previously administered by Germany was the subject of heated debate among the other European powers, in a manner,

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continuing through bloodless rhetoric the war that had just been fought with bullets and poison gas. Thus, while the British in 1918 may have entertained the notion that the populations inhabiting one-time German colonies were “inarticulate and [had] no powerful neighbours with direct interests in the matter to come forward as the champions of their cause,”25 the German Colonial Office felt compelled a year later to produce the report, How natives are treated in German and in French colonies, to expose France’s “wholly and solely [..] hate-engendered desire to exclude Germany forever from the possession of colonies and to increase France’s own already excessive empire.”26 The colonial feud between France and Germany was longstanding, of course, arising as early as the sixteenth century. Occasionally, too, the vocabulary of colonialist discourse could even be turned by one of its progenitors against another: The plain fact is as follows: the French left no stone unturned in their efforts to make the natives follow them. An extensive propaganda was carried on amongst the guileless savages—a propaganda in which the Germans were depicted as devils, assassins and cannibals in order that the future fate of the natives under German rule might be presented in the darkest and most terrifying colours.27

May not then the images of Lang’s carefully constructed Incans and Asians, calling as they do for autonomy, freedom from foreign oppression, and restoration of grandeur—as in “time past” and, when necessary, through human sacrifice—be reread as a German response to the oppressive conditions brought about by defeat and the Treaty of Versailles? The director certainly had rhetorical examples from German history from which to draw inspiration. As Friedrich Fabri, Director of the Barmen Rhine Missionary Society, intones in his 1879 pamphlet, Bedarf Deutschland der Colonien?: When, centuries ago, the German Reich stood at the head of the States of Europe, it was the foremost trading and seagoing Power. If the new German Reich wishes to entrench and preserve its regained power for long years to come, then it must regard that power as a cultural mission and must no longer hesitate to resume its colonizing vocation also.28

25

Clifford, German Colonies, 5. “How natives are treated,” 38. 27 Ibid., 29. 28 “Als das Deutsche Reich vor Jahrhunderten an der Spitze der Staaten Europas stand, war es die erste Handels- und See-Macht. Will das neue Deutsche Reich seine wiedergewonnene Machstellung auf längere Zeiten begründen und bewahren, so wird es dieselbe al seine Cultur-Mission zu erfassen and dann nicht länger zu zögern haben, auch seinen colonisatorischen Beruf aufs Neue zu bethätigen” Fabri, Bedarf Deutschland, 181. 26

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Only six years after the first screening of Die Spinnen, Hitler published Mein Kampf, in which he also portrayed the Aryan as the only founder of culture (distinct from those who simply bore culture or destroyed it), as one whose instinct of self preservation had reached “the noblest form, since he willingly subordinates his own ego to the life of the community and, if the hour demands, even sacrifices it.”29 Thus, through the modern medium of film Fritz Lang participated in a dialog that was both anterior and posterior to his own historical moment. But perhaps he understood this himself. In a scene depicting Kay Hoog riding in an open train car through the Mexican jungle (Fig. 4-23), the landscape recedes both from the protagonist and from the film spectator, suggesting Walter Benjamin’s reference to Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus: “His face is turned to the past. […] [A] storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.”30

FIG. 4-23 Kay Hoog staring into the receding landscape from the salon car of the South Mexican Railroad.

29 30

Hitler, Mein Kampf, 297. Benjamin, Illuminations, 258.

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WORKS CITED Benjamin, Walter. “Theses on the Philosophy of History.” See pages 253-64 in Illuminations. Translated by Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken, 1968. Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. Clifford, Hugh. German Colonies: A Pleas for the Native Races. London: John Murray, 1918. Corbey, Raymond. “Ethnographic Showcases, 1870-1930.” Cultural Anthropology 8 no. 3 (1993): 338-69. Edison, Thomas. Buffalo Dance, 1894. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ edhtml/edmvhist1.html. Eisner, Lotte. Fritz Lang. New York: Da Capo Press, 1986. Fabri, Friedrich. Bedarf Deutschland der Colonien?/Does Germany Need Colonies?: Eine politisch-ökonomische Betrachtung von D[r. Theol.] Friedrich Fabri. Translated by E.C.M. Breuning and M.E. Chamberlain. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1998. German Colonial Office. “How Natives are Treated in German – and in French Colonies”: A Reply to the Statements Published in the “Journal de la Republique Française” of November 8, 1918 and January 5, 1919. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer (Ernst Bohsen), 1919. Griffiths, Alison. Wondrous Difference: Cinema, Anthropology, and Turn-of-theCentury Visual Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. Hagenbeck, Carl. Von Tieren und Menschen. Erlebnisse und Erfahrungen. Berlin: Vita Deutsches Verlagshaus, 1909. Henderson, W. O. The German Colonial Empire 1884-1919. London: Frank Cass, 1993. Hitler, Adolph. Mein Kampf. Translated by Ralph Manheim. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971. Lang, Fritz, dir. Die Spinnen, DVD. Chatsworth, CA: Image Entertainment, 1999. First published in Berlin: Decla-Bioscop, 1919. McClintock, Anne. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. New York; London: Routledge, 1995. Oksiloff, Assenka. Picturing the Primitive: Visual Culture, Ethnography,and Early German Cinema. New York: Palgrave, 2001. Penny, H. Glenn. “Bastian’s Museum: On the Limits of Empiricism and the Transformation of German Ethnology.” In Worldly Provincialism:German Anthropology in the Age of Empire, edited by H. Glenn Penny and Matti Bunzl, 86-126. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003. Schweinitz, Graf v., C. v. Beck, and F. Imberg, eds. Deutschland und seine Kolonien im Jahre 1896. Amtlicher Bericht über die erste deutsche KolonialAusstellung. Berlin: Verlag von Dietrich Reimer (Ernst Vohsen), 1897.

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Seidel, A. Deutschlands Kolonien. Koloniales Lesebuch für Schule und Haus. Reprintauflage der Originalausgabe von 1913 nach dem Exemplar des Verlagsarchives. Leipzig: Reprint-Verlag, 2000. Smith, Carlota S. Discourse Modes: The Local Structure of Texts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Zantop, Susanne. Colonial Fantasies: Conquest, Family, and Nation in Precolonial Germany. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997. Zimmerman, Andrew. Anthropology and Antihumanism in Imperial Germany Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.

The Orientalist Reflection: Temporality, Reality, and Illusion in Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde Francesca Draughon In 1907, when Mahler chose to set to music a selection of translated Chinese poems from a collection entitled Die chinesische Flöte, 1 Western Europe had already been for some time involved in the orientalist project of constructing a distant “Other.” The German orientalist movement originally took as its main focus the exoticism of the Middle East—exemplified by the works of two figures who spearheaded the movement, Goethe’s Persian-inspired West-Östlicher Diwan and Rückert’s poems collected under the title Östliche Rosen, in which the narrator assumes the identity of a fourteenth-century Persian poet, HƗfiz.2 Concurrent with this interest in the Middle East, the Far East also became a compelling topic in the Western European imagination, thus expanding the reaches of the orientalist project.3 Western Europe’s contact with Asia began as early as the sixteenth century, when Chinese and Japanese objects were exported to the West, but it was not until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that Western artists began to create their own fanciful visions of the East, as manifested in examples such as Goethe’s Chinese-inspired Chinesisch-deutschen Jahres- und Tageszeiten and Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado.4 1 Die chinesische Flöte: Nachdichtungen chinesische Lyrik, trans. Hans Bethge (Leipzig: Inselverlag, 1907). 2 See Arthur Remy, The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany (New York: Columbia University Press, 1901). Although Rückert’s Östliche Rosen (1819-20) is perhaps the best-known of his orientalist poems, there is also an orientalist tone of Buddhist mystical contemplation in his poem “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen,” which Mahler would set to music in 1901. For a discussion of Rückert’s poem and Mahler’s setting of it, see Stephen Hefling, “The Composition of ‘Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen,’” in Gustav Mahler, ed. Hermann Danuser (Darmstadt: Wiss. Buchgesellschaft, 1992), 96-158. 3 See Ingrid Schuster, Vorbilder und Zerrbilder: China und Japan im Spiegel der deutschen Literatur 1773-1890 (Bern, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Paris: Peter Lang, 1988). See also Anna Jackson, “Orient and Occident,” in Art Nouveau 1890-1914, ed. Paul Greenhalgh (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2000), 100-113. 4 Similarly, once Siam opened up to the West in the second half of the nineteenth century, it too became a popular topic (witness the success of Anna Leonowens’s published accounts of Siam, The English Governess at the Court of Siam (1870) and The Romance of the Harem (1872), which would become the basis for The King and I).

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The continued fascination with and revisionist attitude toward Asia were holding strong at the turn of the century in Vienna. Secessionist artist Gustav Klimt installed in the foyer of his Hietzing studio a collection of Japanese color woodcuts and Chinese scrolls, many of which were borrowed as background patterning for a series of portraits (Adele Bloch-Bauer II (1912), Mäda Primavesi (c.1912), Elisabeth Bachofen-Echt (c.1914), and Friedericke Maria Beer (1916)).5 Similarly, Emil Orlik, a member of the Klimtgruppe who lived for many years in Japan and who created a well-known engraving of Mahler, exhibited an Asian-inspired woodcut entitled Two Figures Under a Tree (1902) at the seventeenth exhibition of Secessionist work in the spring of 1903. Viennese writers such as Rilke and Hofmannsthal continued the Persian-, Indian-, and Chinese-inspired literary tradition embraced earlier by Goethe and Rückert.6 Asian trinkets, prints, silks, and porcelains decorated the homes of the fashionable Viennese, and Mahler’s neighbor Hugo Henneberg—Haus Henneberg sat directly next door to the Villa Mahler-Werfel on Hohe Warte—worked as one of the many Japanese print collectors in the city.7 As Jonathan Carr states, “wholly distinctive though it is, Das Lied was part of a trend.”8 This trend offered a consistent picture of the Orient, but this picture was, nonetheless, an illusion. This is not surprising, for as Edward Said and others have taught us, the constructed image of a distant culture tends to be several times removed from the original and almost entirely dictated by the concerns of those doing the constructing.9 The European orientalist movement constructed an Orient 5

With regard to “orientalist” (in this case, specifically Middle Eastern) influences in Klimt’s work, Austrian painter Anton Faistauer, who knew Klimt, stated in 1923 that: “[Klimt] is conceivable only in Vienna, better still in Budapest or Constantinople … His entire spirituality is Oriental. Eros plays a dominant role, his taste for women is almost Turkish … Persian vase decorations and Oriental rugs inspired him greatly … Gold and silver on his canvases attracted him especially....For the Western European Klimt is … inaccessible and he is relegated to the category of arts and crafts by those who do not wish to deal with his uniqueness. With the exception of a few early influences at the time of the Secession’s foundation—Khnopff, Toorop—Klimt never looked westwards and with the exception of a journey to Spain via Paris was never interested in Western culture. Klimt’s personality was the same as his work … He loved the good life and peace and quiet like a true Oriental and looked like one too.” Cited in Catherine Dean, Klimt (New York: Phaidon Press, 1996), 24. 6 See Lisa Gates, “Rilke and Orientalism: Another Kind of Zoo Story,” New German Critique 68 (1996): 61-77. 7 Both villas were designed by Josef Hoffmann, himself also influenced by Asian prints (Jackson, 109). On the other side of the Haus Henneberg stood a third villa also designed by Hoffmann, the Villa Moll, built for Carl Moll. 8 Jonathan Carr, Mahler: A Biography (Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press, 1998), 190. 9 See Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979).

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that revealed “more than anything the hidden longings and proclivities of those who literally re-presented this unfamiliar world, shrouded in their own dreams and desires.”10 Thus, although orientalism seems to embody what Alfred Doppler has termed a dynamic of “historical evasion”—creating a distant fantasy world as a means of avoiding the more pressing social and political issues of turn-of-thecentury Europe—it does so superficially, in truth engaging quite intimately with those very concerns it seems to be evading.11 One such example is Die chinesische Flöte, which did not contain literal translations of eighth-century Chinese poems, but rather Nachdichtungen—”paraphrase poems”—three times removed from the original source.12 In translating the poems into German, Hans Bethge worked not from the original Chinese manuscripts, but rather from a German anthology of the poems by Hans Heilmann, which itself was based on two French translations, by Le Marquis d’Hervey de Saint-Denys and Judith Gautier. Die chinesische Flöte, as Bethge’s editing rendered it, is ultimately closer to German Romantic poetry than the original eighth-century Chinese text.13 Artistic and literary orientalist constructions typically emphasized qualities of otherness, clearly demarcating the European “self” from the foreign “other.” In this bifurcation, the East was often projected as the desirable opposite of modern, corrupt Europe: it was primitive, uncorrupted, spiritual, the “schönen Fremde.”14 Further, the East was imagined “tout court as feminine…play[ing] the feminine 10

Linda Phyllis Austern, “‘Forreine Conceites and Wandring Devises’: The Exotic, the Erotic, and the Feminine,” in The Exotic in Western Music, ed. Jonathan Bellman (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998), 28. 11 Alfred Doppler, “Die Poetische Verfahrensweise in Rilkes Neuen Gedichten,” Studi Germanici XIV (1976). 12 Stephen Hefling, Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 36-37. In the foreword to another of his translated anthologies Bethge expresses his intent to create a “paraphrase” rather than a literal translation, stating: “The point is not to translate a poem literally, but rather to reconstitute to a certain extent the spirit, the style, the melody of a poem in a foreign language.” Eberhard Bethge, “Hans Bethge and Das Lied von der Erde,” trans. Morten Solvik, News about Mahler Research 35 (April 1996): 18. 13 With regard to the poems being rendered in the German Romantic style, Hefling argues that “Bethge’s versification expands and vitalizes the delicately disjunct and seemingly timeless imagery of the ancient Chinese poets, and it accentuates the personal responses of the (usually nameless) protagonists.” The poems, according to Hefling, “came to resemble German Romantic poetry with oriental overtones.” Hefling, Das Lied, 37. 14 See Christiane C. Günther, Aufbruch nach Asien: kulturelle Fremde in der deutschen Literatur um 1900 (München: Iudicium-Verlag, 1988), 162: “Allgemein ließen sich die Gegensatzpole zusammenfassen zu westlichem Materialismus versus östlicher Geistigkeit, zu profan vs. heilig, zu individualistisch vs. kollektiv, aktiv vs. passiv, intellektuell vs. intuitiv, bewußt vs. unbewußt.”

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role of the to-be-penetrated object to the Occident’s masculine role of the exploring and subduing subject.”15 The language of a feuilleton about Das Lied von der Erde, published in Neue freie Presse two weeks after the work’s Vienna premiere, draws on several of the above-mentioned tropes: the appeal of the oriental poetry on Mahler—called by journalist Richard Specht “the sublimated sediment of a very ancient and illustrious culture”—lay in “the foreign world of these Chinese songs, iridescent with all sorts of primitive jewels.”16 Mahler’s job, it seems, was simply to polish the uncut jewels, so as to reveal the underlying treasure.17 Within the orientalist construction, Japan was continually regarded as exotically naïve and possessing an especially emphatic relationship with nature, believed to be so because they were “still in that childish state of development before self-consciousness has spoiled the sweet simplicity of nature.” 18 In contradistinction, China’s position in the European imagination became complicated by imperialist attitudes: although idealized for aspects such as a supposedly more “natural” religion and a “natural spirit” of the people, her political maneuverings (specifically the Opium Wars, the Boxer Rebellion, and the Chinese-Japanese War) and a continued resistance to trade with the West rendered China a site of terror as well, ultimately both “exotik und gefahr.”19 With Kaiser Wilhelm II’s coining of the propagandistic phrase “die gelbe Gefahr”—the yellow peril—idealization and fear became mixed into one, and China was regarded as simultaneously moral and immoral, wise and cowardly, naïve and crafty, forbidden and desirable, an emblem of “the paradox of the colonial age.”20

15

Mary Hunter, “The Alla Turca Style in the Late Eighteenth Century: Race and Gender in the Symphony and the Seraglio,” in The Exotic in Western Music, 55. See also Nasser AlTaee, “The Sultan’s Seraglio: Fact, Fiction, and Fantasy in 18th-Century Viennese ‘Turkish’ Music” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1999). 16 Richard Specht, Neue freie Presse (December 4, 1912). Quoted in Hefling, Das Lied, 7374. 17 Indeed, the projected vision of conquest is clearly gendered. As Susan McClary has pointed out in her discussion of another orientalist work, Bizet’s Carmen, “the East as a whole became ‘feminized,’ understood as sensual, static, irrational and nonproductive, though fertile with resources and ripe for plunder.” See Susan McClary, Georges Bizet, Carmen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 31. 18 Percival Lowell, The Soul of the Far East (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, 1893), 25 and 110. Quoted in Anna Jackson, “Orient and Occident,” in Art Nouveau, 1890-1914, ed. Paul Greenhalgh (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2000), 100-113. Siam, too, was regarded this way, and for similar reasons: they had kept Europe out, for the most part. 19 “Exotic and dangerous.” See Günther, 52-56. 20 Ibid., 55.

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While propaganda pitted East against West and China against Europe, religion ultimately became entangled in the battle as well, as Buddhism became the projected negative counterpart to Christianity. An engraving by Hermann Knackfuss illustrates the central role religion acquired in propaganda of the yellow peril, exhorting: “Nations of Europe! Join in the defense of your faith and your homes!” 21 Indeed, this negatively constructed image of Buddhism would have proven particularly complicated, as the religion was already implicated in Western Christianity’s domestic concerns and tensions: as Richard King has shown, in the mid- and late-nineteenth century, the Buddha was portrayed primarily as an Indian version of Martin Luther and “many Western scholars tended to represent Buddhism as a form of Hindu Protestantism.”22 It would be surprising if Mahler’s setting of paraphrased Chinese poems, composed in the midst of the European orientalist movement, was not engaged with such a broad and complicated cultural situation. And, in fact, Das Lied von der Erde does take part in the most basic of orientalist traditions, presenting clichéd musical codes of the Orient within a recognizable Western-Art musical structure. The work creates a fantasized version of the East through easily identifiable and easily digestible musical markers of “difference”—high-voiced woodwinds, pentatonic and whole-tone motives, an “unnatural” (within European standards) high-registered tenor voice, and chit-chatty rococo decorativeness, to name but a few—just as Eastern bric-a-brac (including Mahler’s oft-spoken-of cylinders of Chinese music) package Asia in easily consumable form.23 Indeed, Mahler may have selected these particular seven verses from among the eightythree paraphrases of the collection because the texts highlight favorite tropes of the imagined Orient, such as stylized nature and fantastically constructed landscapes.

21

See Robert Druce, “The ‘heathen Chinee’ and the ‘yellow peril’: Pseudo-chinoiserie in Popular Fiction,” in Oriental Prospects: Western Literature and the Lure of the East, ed. C. C. Barfoot and Theo D’haen (Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1998): 131-59. 22 King argues that an early example of Western Christianity’s projection of domestic concerns can be found in Charles F. Neumann’s Catechism of the Shamans (1831): “In this translation of a Chinese Buddhist text on the ethical precepts, Neumann demonstrates the tendency to project Christian sectarian conflicts onto the Asian religious map. Buddhism is described as the Lutheranism of ‘the Hindoo Church,’ while Jinism (Jainism) is said to represent Hindu Calvinism with the Sikh tradition of Guru Nanak being classifiable as a Hindu form of Socinianism.” See Richard King, Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India and “the Mystic East” (London and New York: Routledge Press, 1999), 14445. 23 See Lawrence Kramer, “Consuming the Exotic: Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe,” in Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge (Los Angeles and Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 201-26.

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But Das Lied von der Erde’s resonance with orientalism extends beyond this simple chinoiserie. Mahler’s lengthy textual revisions, which, as others previously have noted, draw out an otherwise veiled eroticism,24 more specifically foreground the Orient as the site of erotic enticement. This is especially noticeable in the fourth song, “Von der Schönheit,” which Mahler revised more extensively than the other poems set in the cycle, adding text that equals almost half the length of the original. The original poem (or, more precisely, Bethge’s version as it was presented to Mahler) narrates a playful exchange between a group of “young maidens picking lotus blossoms on the shore’s edge” and young boys who ride in on horseback in a thrilling show of power. Mahler’s textual revision, however, adds a layer of titillation, transforming the playfulness into a more erotically charged situation. An otherwise absent physicality is introduced with the added phrase “Sunlight mirrors their [the maidens’] slender limbs” (Sonne spiegelt ihre schlanken Glieder), an addition which also objectifies the girls as figures to be gazed upon. An impersonal der Wind is replaced by der Zephir, a masculine personification of the West Wind, who “lifts up the fabric of their [the girls’] sleeves with coaxing caresses” (hebt mit Schmeichelkosen das Gewebe Ihrer Ärmel auf), further heightening the text’s eroticism by foreshadowing the poem’s male/female tension. 25 Finally, the textual revision complicates matters by introducing the girls, not simply the boys on horseback, as seducers. They are given a character well in line with fin-de-siècle notions of the femme fatale, as their innocent glances of “care” (Sorge) are replaced with glances of desirous “longing” (Sehnsucht), later turning into an even more dangerous and sexually charged “dark … hot glance” (in dem Dunkel ihres heißen Blicks). Just as the poem embodies a tension between the maidens and the young lads, so too does the music of “Von der Schönheit” embody feminine and masculine polarities, between a dance-like ‘A’ section and a march-like ‘B’ middle section. After the work’s premiere, Richard Specht called the dance section “a most gracious, sweetly erotic minuet”; a short time later, however, the language was toned down, changed to read “exotisches Menuett” rather than “erotisches Menuett.”26 Indeed, Specht’s adjectival ambivalence hit the nail on the head, as the dance section is both exotic and erotic, in essence conflating the exotic Other and the erotic feminine into one orientalist fantasy, constructed by lilting, pulsating, syncopated dance rhythms, high winds, irregular metrical accents (in the 24

See Hefling, Das Lied; see also Arthur Wenk, “The Composer as Poet in Das Lied von der Erde,” 19th-Century Music 1 (1977): 33-47. 25 The use of the word “coaxing” is also an addition made by Mahler (Der Wind hebt kosend das Gewebe ihrer Ärmel auf becomes the more charged Der Zephir hebt mit Schmeichelkosen das Gewebe ihrer Ärmel auf). 26 Richard Specht, Gustav Mahler (Berlin and Leipzig: Schuster and Loeffler, 1913), 346.

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vacillating meter and unpredictable phrase lengths), and pentatonicism. In contrast, the “handsome lads” who romp about “on spirited horses” carry with them hypermasculine, brass-heavy, military music, and a specifically Western trope of masculine power, alluding, at one point, to Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture (measures 50-52; Fig. 4-24). The extraordinary violence of the men’s entrance— penetrating the relaxed dance of the previous section—and their “conquest” of the girls’ theme—transforming it into a march-like phrase amidst the 1812 Overture allusion (Fig. 4-25) and, at the climax of the movement, combining it with the march theme in a virtually bi-tonal, wildly violent section beginning at measure 75—points exactly to the trope of conquest that Susan McClary speaks of when arguing that the East was imagined as “fertile with resources and ripe for plunder.”27

27

McClary, 31.

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FIG. 4-24: Allusion to Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture (mm. 50-52)28

28

All musical examples are from Gustav Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde, in Full Score (New York: Dover Publications, 1988).

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FIG. 4-25: Transformation of dance-like theme (mm. 52-56)

* * * * * Most critical readings of Das Lied von der Erde agree that the third song, “Von der Jugend,” presents the most transparent expression of chinoiserie in the cycle. 29 The text itself, which envisions a fantastically constructed porcelain pavilion, much like a piece of Asian bric-a-brac, alludes to easily identifiable and heavily consumed markers of the Orient, each contrasting with one another in the details of their textures: the smooth, delicate surface of the fragile porcelain contrasts with the slipperiness of silken sleeves and the hard, opaque jade of a footbridge.30 Mitten in dem kleinen Teiche Steht ein Pavillon aus grünem Und aus weißem Porzellan.

In the middle of the little pool Stands a pavilion of green And of white porcelain.

Wie der Rücken eines Tigers Wölbt die Brücke sich aus Jade Zu dem Pavillon hinüber.

Like the back of a tiger The bridge of jade arches Over to the pavilion.

In dem Haüschen sitzen Freunde

In the little house sit friends,

29 Stephen Hefling argues that “‘Von der Jugend’ is the lightest and shortest of all the symphony’s movements, and the most transparent in its chinoiserie” (Hefling, Das Lied, 95). Jonathan Carr describes the movement as “…a charming scene; elegant friends drinking and chatting in a porcelain pavilion, a little arched bridge of jade, the whole reflected in a peaceful pool. Mahler gives it some of his daintiest music with tinkling triangle and swishing cymbals. Weighty issues do not belong here” (Carr, 192). Constantin Floros says “‘The Porcelain Pavilion’ is undoubtedly the daintiest and most elegant…This graceful poem inspired Mahler to compose a picturesque genre painting that has primarily a scherzando character.” See Constantin Floros, Gustav Mahler: The Symphonies (Portland: Amadeus Press, 1985), 254. Aside from labeling the movement simply as “chinoiserie,” very little attention is given to it (following, of course, the trend of slighting lesscomplicated inner movements). 30 Chinese jade carvings—admired for their “dynamic lines and stylized natural forms”— were collected in Europe as heavily as Asian silks and porcelains. See Jackson, 110.

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The Orientalist Reflection Schön gekleidet Trinken, plaudern Manche schreiben Verse nieder. Ihre seidnen Ärmel gleiten Rückwärts, ihre seidnen Mützen Hocken lustig tief Im Nacken …

Beautifully dressed Drinking, chatting. Some write down verses. Their silken sleeves slide Backwards, their silken caps Perch comically deep on the nape of the neck …

Mahler expresses the quietly imagined scene of the text with similarly relaxed music, which—as is perhaps expected—is coded entirely as “Oriental”: set within an uncomplicated ABA structure, pentatonic and whole-tone lines constantly circle back onto themselves, preferring to wander casually to-and-fro rather than push forward, while fleeting ornaments and chatty voices of high winds and various other “exotic” timbres (triangle, high-registered tenor doubled by piccolo, etc.) decorate the lines, projecting a tone of lightness and comparable carefree impulse. Indeed, the movement bears resemblance to a miniature piece of art in the Rococo style, foregrounding decorative Oriental motifs so heavily that decoration turns into content. It is no surprise that the movement is habitually referred to with femininecoded terms, such as “dainty,” “charming,” “graceful,” and unintellectual (or, more precisely, corporeal rather than cerebral, as Carr pronounces that “weighty issues do not belong here” 31 ), for indeed the music is simultaneously coded “Other,” “Oriental,” and “feminine.” Thus, the text’s fantastical vision of the Orient becomes conflated with an expression of the feminine, and although Bethge’s text describes the friends in the pavilion—the embodiment of Asia?—with the genderneutral “Freunde,” they are musically marked in specifically feminine terms (or, alternately, in feminized masculine terms). To be sure, the actions expressed— drinking and chatting while dressed beautifully—as well as their identification with the wet imagery of the still pond sits more easily within a feminine construct. The gendering of the friends brings to the surface a previously veiled eroticism: the text develops an additional layer of titillation as the friends’ “silken sleeves slide backwards/their silken caps perch comically deep on the nape of the neck” (Ihre seidnen Ärmel gleiten rückwärts/ihre seidnen Mützen hocken lustig tief im Nacken).32 ...Auf des kleinen Teiches Stiller Wasserfläche zeigt sich alles 31

...On the little pool’s still surface Still surface everything appears

Carr, 192. A similar strategy of “feminizing” the Asian Other occurs in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado, in which the men are dressed in kimonos and wear pigtails.

32

Germany and the Imagined East Wunderlich im Spiegelbild …

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Wondrously in reflection …

The middle ‘B’ section of the movement (measures 70-96) presents the crux of the poem—it is here that we catch a glimpse of the pavilion’s mirror image, reflected upside-down on the pond’s still surface. Anton Webern was especially struck by this moment: in a letter to Alban Berg, in which he detailed each movement of Das Lied von der Erde, Webern could here only exclaim “And yet, the ‘reflection’??!”33 While this new perspective of the pavilion clearly points to a spatial reorientation—in that we shift our orientation from the standing pavilion to the pond’s surface, which holds the reflection—we might wonder if the poem’s central idea of spatial reflection could be taken to mean the temporally grounded act of reflect-ing (as “nachdenken”), as well. Mahler’s alteration of the movement’s title—replacing the spatially oriented “Der Pavillon aus Porzellan” (“The Pavilion Made of Porcelain”) with the temporally oriented “Von der Jugend” (“Of Youth”)—invites such an engagement with modes of temporality.34 Indeed, the contrasting “temporalities” of the A and B sections are what, in part, make the disconnect between the two sections so palpable. Elicited by the static pond and the restrained actions of the friends, the text of the A section narrates a scene in which non-movement or quiet energy dominates—a scene, one might argue, of temporal stasis. Similarly, beneath the chatty decorativeness of the music’s surface, the goalless pentatonic lines float in an ungrounded, bassless atmosphere, while the disembodied voices of the high winds hover within a flat, somewhat one-dimensional space. If we were to consider the pavilion not spatially, but rather temporally, one might argue that it is figured as somewhat removed from time, that it is ahistorical; above the hustle and bustle of decoration, the underlying inactivity of the music creates a sense of what Adorno terms “leaving time” (Zeit lassen)—it neither stops time nor capitulates to it.35 Perhaps what makes the B section so extraordinary is that it suddenly knocks us back into “real time.” This is the first instance in the movement in which there is a sense of grounding and of multi-dimensionality, as bass-supported melodic lines and thicker harmonies replace the hovering pentatonic lines and flat harmonies of before (the only pedal point of the movement, a low, tonic ‘g,’ is held by double 33

The original text of Webern’s letter to Berg is printed in Hermann Danuser, Gustav Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde, Meisterwerke der Musik, vol. XXV (Munich: W. Fink, 1986), 114-15. 34 Eveline Nikkels proposes that the “Von der…” formula is a gesture toward Nietzsche’s Also sprach Zarathustra, which similarly titles a series of short chapters. See Eveline Nikkels, ‘O Mensch! Gib Acht!’: Friedrich Nietzsches Bedeutung für Gustav Mahler (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1989), 151. 35 Theodor W. Adorno, Mahler: A Musical Physiognomy, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), 68.

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bassoons for twelve beats in measures 70-77; Fig. 4-26). Similarly, replacing the stark, disembodied voices of high winds, a solo violin speaks in a recitative-like phrase with a voice that carries the markers of an “embodied” subjectivity (transition into the B section, measures 63-69; Fig. 4-27). Because of this embodied subjectivity, the movement engages with the central idea of the original text—a dichotomy between reality and illusion—but subverts the framework as it was previously presented, flipping everything on its head. What in the original poem is understood to be “real”—the pavilion scene as expressed in the A section—is here presented as an illusion, temporally unstable and ambiguous, while the poem’s expression of illusion—the pavilion’s reflection in the B section—is here constructed as reality. FIG. 4-26: Pedal point in double bassoons (mm. 70-77)

FIG. 4-27: Recitative-like phrase in solo violin (mm. 63-69)

…Alles auf dem Kopfe stehend In dem Pavillon aus grünem Und aus weißem Porzellan;

...Everything standing on its head in the pavilion of green and of white porcelain;

Wie ein Halbmond steht die Brücke, Umgekehrt der Bogen. Freunde, Schön gekleidet, trinken, plaudern.

Like a half-moon stands the bridge, The arch inverted. Friends, beautifully dressed, drink, chat.

With the start of the sixth stanza, the music launches directly into the reprise. One could certainly argue that this return to the opening material of the A section is out of place, for the situation is no longer the same—the pavilion has been entirely transformed, presented now merely as an illusory reflection on the pond’s surface, showing “everything to be standing on its head” (Alles auf dem Kopfe stehend). Why, then, does the music itself—presented as simply a repetition of the

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first section—not transform as well? While Stephen Hefling argues that the return of these “gaily chattering lines” make light of whatever seriousness lies in the reflective moment of the B section, “mak[ing] the distorted images seem no more serious than those of a funhouse,”36 we should also note that with such a move Mahler is blatantly violating his principle that “each repetition is already a lie. A work of art, like life, must always develop itself further.”37 Thus, we might argue that the very repetition of the A section constructs the pavilion scene as just such a “lie,” as an illusion. Although we could certainly argue that the non-Western text of Das Lied von der Erde invites Mahler to probe new dimensions of temporality, reality, and illusion, we should also note that here, as with all orientalist constructions, a heavy dose of tension between the “Other” and the Western self lies within what seems like a disinterested expression of Orientalist ideology. After all, what points most clearly toward “reality” in the B section are those very gestures that make the music begin to sound, quite simply, more familiar, the gestures that tell us who we are, after having told us, throughout the first section, who we are not: pedal points, thicker, romantic harmonies, string voices—all in all, tokens and gestures of Western Art music. Implicitly, we are the embodied subjects, holding the feminized, exotic “Other” hostage in a frame of non-existence. We are playing the part of the (masculine) narrator, watching the suspended, ahistorical (feminized) Other from a distance, as if through an orientalist gaze.38 Gustav Klimt, in his Portrait of Baroness Elisabeth Bachofen-Echt (c.1914; Fig. 4-28)39, similarly constructs a dichotomy between the self and Other, between the larger-than-life figure of Elisabeth and the Asian figures who float in space, 36

Hefling, Das Lied, 96. Natalie Bauer-Lechner, Recollections of Gustav Mahler, trans. Dika Newlin, ed. Peter Franklin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 147. [13 July 1900]. Although the ideology implicit in this quotation works well with the trajectory of the song at hand, we should keep in mind that Mahler was referring, in the original instance, specifically to the repetitions in Schubert’s music. 38 In explaining the Western construction of the Orient as timeless, Peter Bishop argues, in the specific case of Tibet, that “within such a space, time and history are suspended. Again and again we read of Westerners commenting that Tibet was a society in deep freeze, left on the shelf, a museum….Such a static, fixed and isolated view of Tibet is a gross exaggeration….It was the Western imagination which needed an unchanging Tibet outside time and history. How nicely this mystical fantasy dovetailed with imperial demands.” See Peter Bishop, Dreams of Power: Tibetan Buddhism and the Western Imagination (London: The Athlone Press, 1993), and Peter Bishop, The Myth of Shangri-La: Tibet, Travel Writing, and the Western Creation of Sacred Landscape (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989). 39 Alessandra Comini, Gustav Klimt (New York: George Braziller, 1975). 37

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locked in the canvas’s background, unable to break free from their imposed static world. The heavily ornamented texture of the canvas—an easily recognizable style of Klimt’s—calls attention to the way the painting freezes its subject into an image, the way it “imprisons” the subject, as if objectifying through ornament. As our eyes scan the canvas, we are continually forced to look back at Elisabeth, not only because almost every Asian face points us in that direction, but also because we cannot deny our awareness that she is staring directly back at us. She pulls us into the image, asks us to stand in her place and, as if inevitably, the dichotomy between Elisabeth and the Asian figures becomes a dichotomy between us and them. Her gaze is forcing us, in effect, to question our own. When we place Das Lied von der Erde within the turn-of-the-century discourse of orientalism, we might realize that the Spiegelbild in “Von der Jugend” is not simply a reflection of the pavilion on the pond’s surface. As the movement’s dialogue is constructed by music marked as gendered and as self/Other, the “reflection” becomes one of our Western priorities and preconceptions. And much like Elisabeth Bachofen-Echt, which forces us to question our orientalist gaze, “Von der Jugend” seems also to ask us to question our construction of the Other, to be concerned, not so much with the reflection, but rather with the need to do some self-reflecting. In the end, then, Webern’s astonishment at the middle section of the movement is well-founded, as everything does indeed revolve around this one enigmatic image.

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FIG. 4-28: Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Baroness Elisabeth Bachofen-Echt

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Brecht and the Chinese Experiment in Theater Imogen von Tannenberg In his 1936 essay “Verfremdungseffekte in der chinesischen Schauspielkunst” [“Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting”], Bertolt Brecht specifically addressed his formal interest in Chinese art. The essay was written shortly after Brecht’s visit to Moscow in 1935, where he attended several performances by the famous Peking Opera actor Mei Lanfang. But what aspects of China interested Brecht, and how do they find expression in his theater? How “Chinese,” for instance, is Brecht’s seemingly most Chinese of plays, Der Gute Mensch von Sezuan?1 Finally, how relevant is the concept of the “Alienation Effect” in this context? In the following, I will examine a set of questions related to Bertolt Brecht’s representation of China, with special emphasis on his play The Good Person of Szechwan. In discussing Brecht’s China, is it key to consider the concept of “strangeness” [i.e. China as “strange”], complemented by Brecht’s hallmark technique, “estrangement” [“A-effect” or “Verfremdungseffekt”] and its repercussions on the stage. Brecht aimed to create not only a new theater but also a new audience, and he developed not only a clear critique of the bourgeoisie, but also a theory of Chinese audiences. We assume that this fresh technique produces both a different kind of actor as well as a new kind of public. To illustrate this point, I will highlight significant productions by Brecht himself as well as modern interpretations of this play, which reveal the concept of authenticity as an ideological category with major implications for moral, political, aesthetic and literary thought. What did “China” in Brecht’s day represents to the Western mind? It is interesting to note that, wherever he went, Brecht himself put up pictures of two Chinese thinkers on his wall: the portrait of the sage Confucius and the scroll of a man he called “The Doubter.” Both gestures were, to a certain extent, subtle acts of self-reference on Brecht’s part. They also symbolized his fascination with China, which would last for decades. We might contextualize Brecht’s manner of responding to Chinese thought within the larger Western reaction to China. One must distinguish between 1 Brecht started to write this play as early as 1930, calling it Die Ware Liebe (The Commodity of Love). He resumed work on the play in Denmark, during March 1939 and, after war broke out and he moved to Finland, finally completed Der Gute Mensch von Sezuan in 1940.

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classical and contemporary China, for Western adaptors have had a tendency to turn to classical China as the mark of Chinese “Chinese-ness.” It seems, however, that the idea of such a “China” is constructed and stems from a Western desire and the demands of Western aesthetics, rather than from anything truly Chinese. What was the source of the Western fascination with China? What does it say for the representation of Otherness? Does China exist as an object of curiosity or as an object of experience? How stable is “China” as an object for thought, how transportable to new contexts, and what does it mean for the culture of reception? To a large extent, the Western reception of China is a history of misinterpretation and simplification. Throughout the 18th century, for instance, philosophers displayed a highly pragmatic interest in China, concentrating on Confucian ideals of virtuous government, where administrators were chosen on the basis of their intelligence and education. The motivation here was an attempt to shame European society into more enlightened policies, and to force political change in Europe through comparison with the higher principles and standards of the Chinese model. During the 19th century, China became an object of exploitation rather than a source of admiration. Europe discovered that the Confucian ideal was masking a very different kind of reality. As traders, explorers and merchants penetrated Chinese markets and imperialist powers scrambled to gain as many possessions as the crumbling Manchu Empire had to concede, China became a synonym for weakness and corruption. In Brecht’s 20th century, however, the intellectual climate had changed radically. Champions of Confucianism in China invariably were seen as political conservatives anxious to restore the order of the past and to inhibit social change. Considering Brecht’s attitude toward intellectual endeavors, specifically philosophy, it is interesting to speculate how and why Chinese philosophy may be relevant to his view of the world. As an academic discipline, philosophy held little fascination for Brecht. The only philosopher to whom he paid more than cursory attention was Hegel. Brecht’s view of Hegel was, however, unconventional. He considered him a humorist. Conversely, Chinese thought appealed to Brecht because he discovered in it a certain familiar dialectical unrest. However, he undertook no systematic study of any particular system of abstract thought. For Brecht, an intellectual discipline needed to concern itself with the question of human behavior, or else it was more or less an unacceptable distraction. Philosophy, for Brecht, had to have a precise purpose. What is the quality, then, that made Chinese philosophy attractive to Brecht? The aspect of Chinese thought that is relevant in this context is the fact that the early Chinese philosophers were in essence practical humanists. They concerned themselves most centrally with social order. Morality was socially important and beneficial, immorality on the other hand, socially disrupting. The appellation

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“Tzu” in Mo-Tzu, Lao-Tzu, Kung Fu Tzu, means “teacher,” and where Europe knew a Divine Right of Kings, in China there existed the Mandate of Heaven, or one could say, a Divine Right of Rebellion. When the Emperor’s conduct was no longer governed by propriety he had in fact forfeited the Mandate of Heaven. Consequently, a revolt against his authority could claim to be motivated by the desire to restore the natural and harmonious order. If this was perhaps the motivating factor behind Brecht’s interest in China, did it influence his creative endeavors? Turning our attention to Brecht’s fiction, we find that his Sezuan is a parable. The setting is no more Chinese than that of the Chalk Circle is Caucasian. On another level of discourse, however, Sezuan has a great deal to do with China. As is evident from notes in his Arbeitsjournal, we learn that the play caused Brecht more trouble than any other. The two main reasons for the difficulty of this material were: 1. the relationship between plot and structure, and, more importantly for this discussion, 2. the Chinese milieu. Most of all, Brecht aimed to avoid chinoiserie and sentimental folklore. His frustration in creating a Chinese milieu becomes evident, for instance in his notes: Das London der Dreigroschenoper und das Kilkoa von Mann ist Mann … scheinen geglückt. Zur Diskussion steht: soll man nur die sozialen Anachronismen beibehalten? Die ... Industrie, die Invasion europäischer Gebräuche, damit bewegte man sich noch auf realem Boden. Aber weder Industrie noch Europäertum wird den Reis mit dem Brot ersetzen. Hier hat man das Chinesische als reine Verkleidung, und als löchrige Verkleidung!2 [The London of the Threepenny Opera and the Kilkoa of Man is Man … seem to be successful creations. The question remains: should the social anachronisms be retained? … Industrialization, the invasion of European customs, all that is still part of reality. But neither industrialization nor the mark of European-ness will ever be able to replace rice with bread. Here, the Chinese-ness is pure disguise, and a disguise full of holes, at that!]

This passage led literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki to claim that Brecht was very aware of the fact that his Sezuan was no more Chinese than Mahagonny was American, and that both were simply poetic conceptions. 3 Brecht’s comments, however, make it clear that he conceived of his Sezuan very differently from his London or his India. First of all, the Chinese milieu caused him such trouble precisely because he aimed to create an acceptably realistic parable. And even if it was not his explicit aim to construct a faithfully “authentic” Chinese milieu, he 2

Bertolt Brecht, Arbeitsjournal (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1973), 233. Antony Tatlow, The Mask of Evil: Brecht’s Response to the Poetry, Theatre, and Thought of China and Japan (Bern: Peter Lang, 1977), 3.

3

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certainly wanted to avoid any kind of grotesque imitation. Secondly, Brecht was interested in Chinese plot as a model. Finally, he responded strongly to the example of Chinese acting. While we might imagine that Brecht could have borrowed aspects of Japanese theater for his stage, it is not as easy to realize his integration of Chinese theater into an otherwise European drama like Sezuan. Much like the Japanese theater, the Chinese stage features certain basic types. It developed its own presentational style, its own language of externalizing convention. Chinese theater differed from Japanese drama types, such as noh and kabuki, in several respects that may have been important for Brecht: Chinese theater became a truly popular theater that functioned in precisely that way that the Japanese Shogunate, for instance, most feared, because it cut across social boundaries, which were less absolute in China. And while kabuki depends entirely on visual representation, Chinese theater, or “opera,” includes a variety of instruments. It also features songs, and it developed into an aesthetically pleasing art form with huge popular appeal. Moreover, Chinese plots are episodic, and an evening’s performance usually consists of a number of episodes from different plays. In terms of its acting technique, this kind of play makes the utmost demands of its practitioners and an “amateur” performance in the Western sense is virtually impossible. Unlike the restricted noh and kabuki, the plots of the Chinese theater cover a wide range of subjects, from domestic squabbles to political intrigue. It reflected the society which produced it, a society, which was markedly different from the Japanese model. For one thing, there was greater mobility in China. The administrative class demanded respect by virtue of its moral authority, rather than its birth. China was ruled by foreign dynasties for long periods of time; their authority rested upon respect for moral principles, at least in theory if not always in fact. During such periods of foreign domination the theater gained a specifically political significance as an instrument of criticism, something that would have been quite unimaginable in Japan. This aspect of Chinese drama, perhaps, was what spoke to Brecht. Although Peking Opera reflected and seemed to perpetuate stabilizing Confucian values, drama itself actually began as a “progressive” form which criticized social abuses and corrupt ruling classes4, and as open criticism was quite impossible, the dramatists transported their plots into the historical past of previous dynasties. Chinese drama as a political instrument is of particular relevance to Brecht, for Brecht’s theory of the epic theater was not just part of a European renewal of the stage as theater but rather as reality. Brecht’s purpose was political, and he himself pointed to the Chinese forms as a forerunner. A study of his plots reveals that he initially did not question the usefulness of the Chinese model, at 4

Ibid., 266.

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least not until the year 1928. Soon after, however, he became fascinated with the themes of Chinese plays, and more particularly, with the manner in which they were acted:5 In stilistischer Hinsicht ist das epische Theater nichts besonders Neues. Mit seinem Ausstellungscharacter und seiner Betonung des Artistischen ist es dem uralten asiatischen Theater verwandt.6 [In terms of style, the epic theater is nothing particularly new. In its performance aspect and focus on the artistic it is related to ancient Asian theater.]

The Chinese plots, which interested him, test the quality of justice in a specific social context. Martin Esslin, one of the leading Brecht scholars, succinctly characterized the close affinity between Chinese drama and the structure of Brecht’s plays. He writes: The construction of the plays of the “epic” theatre, which rejects the logically built, well-made play, is free of the need of creating suspense; it is loosely knit and episodic; instead of mounting to a dynamic climax, the story unfolds in a number of separate situations, each rounded and complete in itself. The total effect of the play will be built up through the juxtaposition and “montage” of contrasting episodes. While the Aristotelian theater can only be understood as a whole, the “epic” drama can be cut into slices which will continue to make sense and give pleasure, like the favorite chapters of a novel which can be read by themselves, or the extracts from plays of great length that are performed as self-contained units in the Chinese classical theatre. 7

An essential document to illustrate this argument is Brecht’s groundbreaking 1936 essay, “Verfremdungseffekte in der chinesischen Schauspielkunst.” The essay, translated by John Willett as “Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting,” has given its name to Brecht’s hallmark concept: the alienation effect. “Alienation Effects” was written some time after Brecht’s visit to Moscow in 1935, where he attended several performances by the charismatic Peking Opera actor Mei Lanfang in the company of Russian friends, including the young director Sergei Tetyakov (author of the 1926 anti-imperialist play Roar China) and the film director Sergei Eisenstein. The Chinese manner of acting raised Brecht’s interest in technique to a new level. Particularly the artistry of Mei Lanfang created an impression of aesthetic quality and a sense of style which made a powerful impression on Brecht. Chinese theater drew his attention to certain possibilities which he had not seen 5

Ibid., 287 ff. Bertolt Brecht, Gesammelte Werke in 20 Bänden, Werkausgabe (Frankfurt, 1967), 15: 272. 7 Ibid. 6

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quite as clearly and which his preoccupation with pedagogics may have obscured. Brecht writes: The following is intended to refer briefly to the use of the alienation effect in Chinese acting. This method was most recently used in Germany for plays of a non-Aristotelian (i.e. not dependent on empathy) type as part of the attempts being made to evolve an epic theater. The efforts in question were directed to working in such a way that the audience was prevented from simply identifying with the characters in the play. 8

The “attempts” to which Brecht refers in the second sentence, are, of course, his own, particularly as he employed them in his “learning plays” or “Lehrstücke”. He goes on to give specific examples: The Chinese do not only show the behavior of a person, but also the behavior of the actor portraying that person. They show how the actors perform the gestures of these persons in their own fashion. […] In other words, when you are watching a Chinese actor, you are in fact watching no less than three people: one person who is performing and two people who are being portrayed.9

Throughout the essay Brecht explains how the A-effect works by describing the actor’s relation to the audience. In his interpretation, the Chinese actor produces the A-effect by “expressing his awareness of being watched. The audience can no longer have the illusion of being the unseen spectator at an event which has not really taken place.”10 The watching goes in two directions. That is, the gazes of the audience and the actor meet. Moreover, the actor sees himself as an actor acting out a part in order to “appear strange, even surprising to the audience. He achieves this by looking strangely at himself and at his work.”11 For Brecht, who aimed to produce not only a new theater but, more importantly, a new audience, the Chinese actor’s apparent relationship to his audience constituted both parties in a fully socio-historical mode. Brecht writes: “[The] Chinese artist’s performance often strikes the Western audience as cold.” 12 The actor seems cold, because he presents emotional and psychological states as signs rather than as states. The Chinese actor externalizes this emotion by making 8 As quoted in Martin Esslin, Brecht: A Choice of Evils: A Critical Study of the Man, His Work and His Opinions (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1959), 113. 9 Bertolt Brecht, Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic, trans. John Willet (New York: 1966), 91. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid., 96. 12 Ibid., 93.

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it into a discrete sign, and by making visible not only that sign (through his action) but also his deliberation of which sign to use. In this way he alienates himself from the presentation that he gives to his audience to read via his body. What is achieved is a kind of super-realism, in which, as Brecht puts it, “there is a creative process at work; but it is a higher one because it is raised to the conscious level.”13 For Brecht, a major problem with Western acting lies in its attempts to present the “unconscious truth” of the characters it portrays. He criticizes methods like Stanislawsky’s, which are designed to help an actor overcome the barriers to merging with his character. Brecht’s A-effect cannot be produced by acting alone. Instead, the very act of acting must occur as an artificial gesture on the part of the audience, and there must be a kind of mutual agreement between actor and audience—a pact of sorts, that remains quite impossible for the bourgeois spectator in the traditional theater. Of course, it is possible to argue, that part of what produced the Chinese theater’s strange effect may to a certain extent be attributed to its being Chinese. Western spectators witnessing their first Peking Opera performance (as was Brecht) could be expected to find the production “strange,” if not downright bizarre. We should interpret “strange,” here, as “Befremdung” rather than the Aeffect’s term “Verfremdung.” The term befremdlich now takes on the sense of “odd.” When Brecht explains his concept of alienation, as he does for the majority of the essay, he refers to both the process of Chinese acting (die chinesische Schauspielkunst), in general, as well as the Chinese actor, in particular (der chinesische Artist). He then shifts the discussion to “the Chinese” (die Chinesen) and reveals for the first time his own awareness of Chinese Otherness. He says: “When one sees the Chinese acting it is at first very hard to discount the feeling of estrangement which they produce in us as Europeans.”14 Consequently, this experience of odd strangeness [Befremdung] continues with an examination of the A-effect and its relevance in Chinese theater. Brecht goes on to say that one has to be able to imagine the Chinese actors as achieving an A-effect among their Chinese audience, as well. This theory seems to indicate that one must not confuse the experience produced by seeing Chinese people acting with the effects intended by their theater. In order to understand the A-effect in Chinese acting, Brecht insists that the feeling of strangeness he experiences does not stem simply from racial or cultural difference, but rather that the A-effect also affects audiences who do not experience Chinese people as strange, i.e. other Chinese people. Of course, one can question whether these concepts are so clearly distinguishable, but in theory, Brecht does address this rather subtle dilemma.

13 14

Ibid., 95. Ibid., 96.

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In an essay entitled “Brecht and the Chinese Other,” the critic Shu-hsi Kao argues that China in many ways impersonates, or rather is the symbolic equivalent of the A-effect, and is in fact its presumed site of origin, even though the essay itself attempts to ignore that fact. She insists that “the Chinese reference gives Brecht a dual benefit: on one hand, the opportunity to draw from the communal well of the European imaginary to find the already “familiar” figure of the Chinese Other, and on the other hand, the possibility of exploiting that figure’s infinite difference, in order to make it the keystone of the Verfremdungseffekt’s conceptual structure”.15 Kao’s reading depends precisely on what Brecht wants to ignore: namely that China, for a German writing in 1935, really is strange and worth remarking on. This is particularly true for Brecht’s most “Chinese” play Der Gute Mensch von Sezuan. 16 In the play, Shen Teh, a Chinese prostitute, finds herself being rewarded for being a “good person” by a trio of visiting Gods. Eventually, though, Shen Teh finds herself besieged by those who have decided to take advantage of her new-found fortune. At her wit’s end, Shen Teh transforms herself into the figure of Shui Ta, a ruthless male cousin from out of town, who is able to successfully run her new tobacco shop. At one point, Brecht even wrote an alternate script, where Shui Ta operates an opium den. By moving back and forth between these diametrically opposed characters, Shen Teh discovers that only by being ruthless can she protect herself, and her good intentions. As Shui Ta inflicts insufferable working conditions on his employees and the play finds a kind of resolution when those who suffer at Shui Ta’s hands report Shen Te’s “disappearance” to the divine ones, in a satirical twist on the ancient Greek convention of deus ex machina, and Shui Ta reveals herself, telling the gods: Your order, long ago to be good and yet to live tore me like lightning into two halves.17

The gods, happily unaware of the difficulties produced by their demand to be good, sail back to the heavens with an unburdened conscience, back to an ideal existence, from whence they came. Before they take off, however, they leave Shen 15

Shu-hsi Kao, “Brecht et L’Autre Chinois: Questions preliminaries,” Brecht Yearbook 15 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990): 85-97; see also Eric Hayot, Chinese Dreams: Pound, Brecht, Tel quel (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004). 16 Translations, specifically “The Good Soul of Sezuan,” Performance at the Electric Lounge Theater, in Venice, CA, 2004. 17 Bertolt Brecht, Collected Plays, trans. and ed. John Willet and Ralph Manheim (London, 1979), 6: 100.

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Teh with a well-intended warning, to only become Shui Ta once a month. What a compromise! In 1989, the British National Theater produced The Good Person of Szechwan in circumstances that present a striking example, where the odd couple “Brecht and China” opens to a London audience, of how Brecht’s China has become the product of popular notions of China. In her highly critical review of the production, Margaret Eddershaw describes the set as an “open, bleak wasteland of grey concrete.”18 As for a specifically Chinese ambiance, it “was created by the random placing of a few black-painted bicycles around the set, while the audience was treated to fleeting glimpses of figures in coolie-hats and pajama-like trousers” cycling across the stage. In keeping with director Deborah Warner’s interest in making “The Good Person” relevant to contemporary audiences, the play’s program also included pictures of dead bodies lying in Beijing’s Tian-An-Men Square, following the crushing of the student rebellion in 1989. Once again, the reference seemed to have little connection with the production – with the exception that one picture contained a heap of bicycles. Eddershaw was quite irritated because, she claims, Warner does not really understand Brecht. In particular, Warner misses the point that “The Good Person” has almost nothing to do, both culturally and politically, with China. For Eddershaw, the play is not about exotic Chinese ambiance, but rather addresses the difficulty of being “good” in a world where ideological and economic structures force a person to be “bad” to survive. Instead, Warner uses various “Chinese” elements to render the play exotic in a familiar way. Rather than learning anything new, the production seems to reiterate what is already a well-known impression of China: that China is a place, where people ride on bicycles, dress in silk pajama pants, smoke opium, and get murdered by their Communist government. For Eddershaw, the production’s little hints of China are, in fact, not much more than simple chinoiserie. They distract from the important political message conveyed by the play. It is implicit that the “Chineseness” of the play is not intended as a reflection of a historical China, but rather, as a representation of a particular version of a “European China”. Returning to the “Alienation Effects,” now unburdened by the question of Brecht’s intention, it is possible to more freely recognize the text’s struggle against confusing Chinese “strangeness,” including the pivotal question of how to transport a technique without also importing the markers of its own “strange” origin.

18 Margaret Eddershaw, Performing Brecht. Forty Years of British Performances (London, 1996), 125.

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As both the “Alienation Effects” essay and Brecht’s own personal history—in which the author is not actually and “authentically” himself—suggest, the idea of authenticity may very well be a dead end, not only for Brecht, but rather by definition, and counter to its claim. I would like to suggest that the very concept of “authenticity” is itself an ideology. It is a concept that by definition preserves a certain privilege, a certain quality of being non-negotiable. It also is contextually fused with moral, political, literary and aesthetic fields. In light of this argument, it seems that China, in many ways, is realized on the basis, even perhaps the very need of a Western desire, rather than being rooted in anything originally Chinese. I propose that an alternative relationship is most explicitly visible within the framework of two main themes: 1) The vortex of “Verfremdung/Befremdung” as seen in the “Alienation Effects” essay 2) The emphasis on “reception” rather than “production” worked out more explicitly in the discussion of Brecht in performance. Both themes point to the ideological, yet varied venues in which China can be—and very much is—a figure through which the relation between aesthetics and modernity expresses itself. The production and performance history of Der Gute Mensch von Sezuan continues to pose the relevant question of how China looks on Western stages of all types, now and in the future.

Imaginary Terrain of German Orientalism: The Image of Japan in Die Gartenlaube, 1854-1902 Hoi-eun Kim “Today, there is no other nation which shows so many similarities with Japan than Germany.”1 By referring to the political and cultural necessities and functions of the two peoples, Dr. Hans Eckardt, a German scholar, delivered his presentation in the spacious special room of the Fukuoka Kyoiku-Kwaikan (educational association) on 20th April 1935. “In both countries a break with the usual forms of liberal democracy is carried out; both countries are surrounded by the distrust of political rivals and economic competitors; both countries are to be isolated by the encroachment of the other states; and both people recognize their historical mission in the surrounding Lebensraum.” 2 Considering the subsequent alliance between Germany and Japan during the Second World War, this remark by the German scholar certainly does not sound peculiar or strange. Apparently, by the beginning of the twentieth century, the emergence of an industrialized and powerful Japan offered a clear proof to the world that modernization did not have to be the exclusive domain of Western powers. Looking back merely a half century earlier, however, we encounter a strikingly different attitude toward Japan. Introducing the everyday lives of the Japanese students in the newly unified German Empire, Die Gartenlaube describes how “the sons of another sun, lured by the gloss of the German name, came here to learn German essence in custom, work and education and then to use the learning in their homeland.” 3 Although the author pays attention to the highly admirable characters of Japanese students such as politeness, dutifulness and friendliness throughout the article, the somewhat condescending overall image of Japan is a country under a different sun requiring a massive effort to achieve modernization.

1

Dr. Hans Eckardt, “Japanisch-Deutsche Kulturbeziehungen: Gekürztes Selbstreferat eines Vortrages, gehalten am 20. April 1935 im Kyoiku-Kwaikan zu Fukuoka auf Einladung von Exzellenz Matsumoto,” Cultural Nippon 3, no. 2 (1935): 370-71. 2 Ibid. 3 “Japan in Berlin,” Die Gartenlaube (1872): 568. For the sake of historical clarity, all references to Die Gartenlaube will be cited according to the year of publication and page number.

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This essay is primarily concerned with this latter image of Japan held by the German people in the second half of the 19th century. This period saw the climax of the European world. Its empires and colonies spanned the globe, China was on the verge of collapse, and even Japan was forced to open the country and to adopt the role of an eager disciple of Western civilization. This forceful initial encounter produced trans-cultural voyages and mutual images.4 Examining what was written about Japan at the time and noting the continuities and subtle changes in the views and images conveyed, this paper shows “how the act of viewing the other always reveals much about oneself, how the act of perceiving can illuminate the perceiver as much as the thing perceived.”5 More specifically, this essay tries to deal with the “perceived” or “imagined” reality of Japan in the German mind and what this reveals about Germany at the time. Certainly, this theme is by no means new.6 It would be sufficient to mention the works of John Ashmead Jr., Jean-Pierre Lehmann, Toshio Yokoyama, and Gérard Siary.7 However, many English-speaking authors have not considered or even attempted to deal with the German case. Compared to its British and American counterparts, German contact with Japan in the second half of the 19th century was always a marginal phenomenon. Yet, the ongoing historical trajectory after the turn of the century, which eventually led to the alliance of Germany and Japan makes the way German people perceived Japan in the period of their initial contact a stimulating topic. To tackle this problem, this paper pays special attention 4 For Japanese image of Western societies, refer to W. G. Beasley, Japan Encounters the Barbarian: Japanese Travellers in America and Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995); Bert Edström, ed., The Japanese and Europe: Images and Perceptions (Japan Library, 2000); Richard T. Chang, From Prejudice to Tolerance: A Study of the Japanese Image of the West, 1826-1864 (Tokyo: Sophia University Press, 1970). 5 Jeffrey Alan Melton, “Touring decay: Nineteenth-century American travel writers in Europe,” Papers on Language and Literature 35, no. 2 (1999): 207. 6 Refer to the bibliography complied in Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit, Kulturbeziehungen zwischen Japan und dem Westen seit 1853, Eine annotierte Bibliographie (Bibliographische Arbeiten aus dem Deutschen Institut für Japanstudien der Philipp Franz von Siebold Stiftung, Band 6) (München: Iudicium Verlag, 1999). 7 John Ashmead Jr., “The Idea of Japan, 1853-1895: Japan as described by American and other Travellers from the West” (PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 1951); Jean-Pierre Lehmann, The Image of Japan: From Feudal Isolation to World Power, 1850-1905 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1979); Toshio Yokoyama, Japan in the Victorian Mind: A Study of Stereotyped Images of a Nation, 1850-80 (London: Macmillan, 1987); Gérard Siary, “The Image of Japan in European Travelogues from 1853 to 1905,” Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan 2, 4th ser. (1987): 155-70; idem, “De l’utopie à l’aporie: la représentation du Japon chez les voyageurs anglais et français de 1853 à 1912,” Corps écrit (Représentations du Japon) 17 (1986): 41-48. Also, Akira Iriye, Mutual Images: Essays in American-Japanese Relations (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975).

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the German middle-class, illustrated family weekly magazine, Die Gartenlaube. Launched in 1853, Die Gartenlaube was the most popular of the new illustrated weeklies that appeared in the mid-19th century such as Omnibus, Bazar, Über Land und Meer, and Dahaim.8 What distinguished the family weeklies from the remainder of an emerging mass press was not only their appeal to both genders, but also the fact that they addressed an audience whose members were assumed to share a national German identity even in the absence of a German nation-state as political entity, as the recent monograph by Kirsten Belgum 9 clearly attests. Therefore, to analyze the image of Japan represented in Die Gartenlaube would be valuable as a means of discovering how the changing political configurations of Germany and the evolving issues of late 19th-century modernization were projected into the image of Japan and how they reflect important aspects of Kaiserreich. As a preliminary setting, this paper first deals with the broad historical background of contact between Germany and Japan during the late 19th century and the prevalent image of Japan among European intellectuals. This will lay a foundation for the argument that the German attitude toward changing Japan reflected a sense of Germany’s cultural superiority, a common view of other European countries. The paper then addresses the initial stages of contact between Germany and Japan. Primarily concerned with the 1870s, this part will attest to the fact that the feeling of achievement and cultural superiority of unified Germany was projected onto the image of Japanese students in Germany and that German Catholics were equated with the “superstitious” Japanese. Next, I will show the continuation of the century-long image of Japan as a lost paradise in Die Gartenlaube and the complex and ambiguous attitudes of the authors towards changing Japan. Of the many topics dealt with in Die Gartenlaube, detailed articles about women in Japan will be analyzed especially. In general terms, western attitudes towards Japanese women were one of the more striking aspects of changing Japan and, whether based on reality or simple fantasy, deeply influenced Western attitudes toward Japan. Interestingly, the promotion of family values with a domestication of the female social role was one of the most distinguishing features of Die Gartenlaube. Finally, I will show how Die Gartenlaube viewed the

8

Refer to Magdalene Zimmermann, Die Gartenlaube als Dokument ihrer Zeit (München: Heimeran Verlag, 1963). 9 Kirsten Belgum, Popularizing the nation, Audience, Representation, & the Production of Identity in “Die Gartenlaube,” 1853-1900 (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1998). Also refer to the article by the same author, “A Nation for the Masses: Production of German Identity in the Late-Nineteenth-Century Popular Press,” in A User’s Guide to German Cultural Studies, ed. Scott Denham, Irene Kacandes & Jonathan Petropoulos (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997), 163-80.

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impacts of modernization in Japan and what kind of role Japanese commercial photography had in this process of image making. * As a special envoy of Prussia, Friedrich Albrecht of Eulenburg departed on the Ostasien Expedition in 1859 under the pressure from the Hamburg-based merchants and requests from the Germans residing in Japan.10 Cruising through the various East Asian countries, he finally arrived Japan in 1860 and signed the commercial treaty, Freundschafts-, Handels- und Schiffahartsvertrag für Preußen, die Länder des Deutschen Zollvereiens und Mecklenburg, six years after the initial opening of Japan by Commodore Matthew Perry.11 However, this treaty does not have any immediate historical importance in the ordinary Germans’ perception of Japan other than the official launch of a relationship between the two countries. What is more crucial in the initial dissemination of the image of Japan in Germany and perhaps in the mid-19th-century European world was renewed attention to the travelogues by Engelbert Kaempfer (1651-1716) and Philipp Franz von Siebold (1790-1866). A fair description of these works is quite important especially because the first travelers to Japan after the opening of the country could only rely on secondary sources and therefore largely confirmed the image already known from the previous compilations. In the period when only the Dutch could trade with the Japanese government on the artificial island of Deshima off the coast of Nagasaki, the German physician Engelbert Kaempfer served the Dutch settlement between 1690 and 1692 and recorded details about Japan during this period. His extensive notes and observations on Japan were consolidated in his History of Japan (1727)12 which was published after his death and helped to redirect the flow of knowledge from Japan to Europe. 13 With the new interest in Japan aroused by the Perry expedition,

10

Josef Kreiner, ed., Deutschland-Japan Historische Kontakte (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1984): 41-2. 11 Die Preußische Expedition nach Ostasien (Berlin, 1864-1873), 2:164-65, quoted from Harald Kleinschmidt, Württemberg und Japan (Stuttgart: Barbar Fay Verlag, 1991), 13. 12 Engelbert Kaempfer, The History of Japan, Giving an Account of the Ancient and Present State and Government of that Empire (London, 1727). 13 Hans Hüls, “Zur Geschichte des Drucks von Kaempfers Geschichte und Beschreibung von Japan und zur sozialökonomischen Struktur von Kaempfers Lesepublikum im 18. Jahrhundert,” Engelbert Kaempfers Geschichte und Beschreibung von Japan, Beiträge und Kommentar (Berlin, Heidelberg, New York, 1980): 65-94.

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his book was reprinted in Britain in 1852 and 1853 became especially popular.14 An abridged and edited edition was published in Blackwood’s Library of Standard Authors and Popular Voyages and Travels, an anthology published by R. Griffin.15 Kaempfer’s most important contribution to the image of Japan in 18th- and th 19 -century Europe is the confirmation of the positive side of Japan through his own experience. According to Kaempfer, the sakoku policy (a policy of seclusion) of Japan led to the observation that “their country was never in a happier condition than it is now,” and “in short, to make the whole Empire, as it were, a school of civility and good manners.” 16 In comparison with this positive side, negative elements such as superstitions were largely disregarded. In a similar vein, Philipp Franz von Siebold, another German physician who served the medical needs of the Dutch at Deshima between 1823 and 1830 and pursued his research and promoted Dutch-Japanese relations between 1859 and 1862, published the results of his early studies of Japan and the Japanese in a major work, Nippon. Archiv zur Beschreibung von Japan (1832-1854).17 Without doubt, his extensive collection of ethnological and scientific materials concerning Japan formed the core of the Museum of Ethnology in Leiden,18 yet the images of Japan conveyed in his work only proves that the European image of Japan has a particularly long tradition going back for centuries reflecting the same en vogue conceptions of the second half of the 19th century. According to Gérard Siary, these works provided readers with an ideal if not utopian image of feudal Japan. The country was described as the Far Eastern Eldorado, a Promised Land for Christian missionaries, and a model of an intelligent, fair, and enlightened nation. Apparently, however, they also did not fail to criticize the Japanese authorities for their despotism and repression and to express their personal humiliation in dealing with the Japanese authorities. For instance, Kaempfer describes the indignities which he was forced to endure for the sake of trade:

14

Josef Kreiner, “Das Bild Japans in der europäischen Geistesgeschichte,”Japanstudien: Jahrbuch des Deutschen Instituts für Japanstudien der Philipp-Franz-von-Siebold Stiftung 1 (München: Iudicium, 1990): 21. 15 Toshio Yokoyama, Japan in the Victorian Mind, 3. 16 Kaempfer, 1727: II, Appendix 74, 75. Quoted from Josef Kreiner, “Changing Images: Japan and the Ainu as Perceived by Europe,” in Rethinking Japan: Social Sciences, Ideology & Thought, ed. Adriana Boscaro, Franco Gatti and Massimo Raveri (Sandgate, Folkenstone, Kent: Japan Library, 1990), 138. 17 Philipp Franz von Siebold, Nippon. Archiv zur Beschreibung von Japan (WürzburgLeipzig, 1897). 18 Marie Conte-Helm, The Japanese and Europe (London: Athlone Press, 1996), 6-9.

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He (Shogun) ordered us to take off our Capper, or Cloak, being our Garment of Ceremony, then to stand upright, that he might have a full view of us; again to walk, to stand still, to compliment each other, to jump, to play the drunkard, to speak broken Japanese, to read Dutch, to paint, to sing, to put our Cloaks on and off...In this manner, and with innumerable such other apish tricks, we must suffer ourselves to contribute to the Emperor’s and the Court’s diversion.19

Overall, however, this humiliating personal experience and the negative aspects did not detract from the favorable image of Japan and this stereotyped image was so strong that the later generation of travelers who became disillusioned by the actual conditions of Japan could do nothing to counteract “the deep-rooted image of Japan as a paradise.”20 For disseminating the knowledge of Japanese material culture and its “assumed” beauty to the ordinary European people, various exhibitions throughout Europe served as a platform in the second half of the 19th century. At the International Exhibition of 1862, the British public had a chance to enjoy fully the first organized display of Japanese art. In Paris, the Expositions Universelles of 1867, 1878, and 1889 featured more extensive Japanese displays and at the Vienna International Exhibition of 1873, enthusiasm for the arts and crafts of Japan was further fuelled.21 Especially in France, this fascination with the Japanese arts and crafts was named as Japonisme, and it quickly became the main component of Japan’s image in Europe.22 And predictably, the emphasis was on traditional Japan, the idyllic land of Mt. Fuji, serene lakes dotted with sails, proud two-sworded samurai, and almond-eyed “geisha” in semi-nude poses. For the average German citizen, however, Japan was only a far exotic country with puzzling humans and a far away unknown or misunderstood culture. The geographical distance, which left the country in a lengthy self-chosen state of isolation, made it virtually impossible to get vivid descriptions of Japan. Starting from middle of the 19th century with the rise of new information possibilities23 and reading habits, the Germans, especially the educated middle class, for the first time had a chance to grasp cultures and customs beyond the close boundaries of Central Europe. At the heart of this explosion of the reading public lies Die Gartenlaube. 19

Kaempfer, 1727. Quoted from Ibid., 7. Gérard Siary, “The Image of Japan in European Travelogues from 1853 to 1905,” 157-58. 21 For the role of exhibition in the international relations between England and Japan at the turn of the century, refer to Ayako Hotta-Lister, The Japan-British Exhibition of 1910: Gateway to the Island Empire of the East (Richmond, Surrey: Japan Library, 1999). 22 Klaus Berger, Japonisme in Western Paintings from Whistler to Matisse, trans. David Britt (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 66. 23 Relatively smaller scale, but similar exhibitions such as Ausstellung von japanischen Gegenständen (Berlin, 1877), were organized in Germany as well. 20

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Between 1854 and 1902, a total of thirty-five travel reports, short notices and compilations of illustrations appeared in Die Gartenlaube. The first five out of six appearances of Japan in Die Gartenlaube between 1854 and 1871 are, however, only illustrative sketches without text24 and used only as a pictorial insertion to other articles. For instance, while illustrating the marriage customs of Middle Eastern countries, a picture of a Japanese marriage ceremony is used for the purpose of pure amusement. In this sense, it would be fair to assume that they were copied from the other European secondary sources without any deep appreciation of Japan. What is interesting in this period between 1854 and 1871 and deserving of mention is the article by Franz Wallner on the Japanese group of “imperial entertainers of Taikun, Japan” in the Paris World Exhibition in 1867.25 This article clearly illustrates the amazement of a German who personally witnessed the Japanese people for the first time. Among the numerous exhibitions and performances, with which Paris is flooded, there are Chinese (genuine and fake), Tyrolean, German singers, English dancers, American riders, Tunisian musicians and a group of “imperial entertainers of Taikun, Japan.” This last group performs each evening with an enormous and stormy applause in the Napoleon Square and is the most original and most unbelievable of all the performances carried out by entertainers of all nations in Europe…It was so wonderful that it is almost impossible to describe the performance without any picture.26

Describing in detail the magical performance and novel acrobatic skills of Japanese artists on the stage with equipment made out of bamboo trees, Franz Wallner, however, does not make any value judgment on the Japanese or Japan. He was simply and deeply fascinated by the Japanese performance and finished his travel report on Paris World Exhibition by noting: “I think it would take some time for us to attend this exotic and original performance of Japanese people in Germany. In the meantime, we have to amuse ourselves by attending European performances.”27 Five years later, however, the audience of Die Gartenlaube had a good chance to satisfy their curiosity with the first Japanese students in Berlin, “the emerging

24

“Heirathsgebräuche in Japan” (1854): 24; “Japanesische Spiegelbilder” (1854): 460; “Die ersten Schritte auf Japanesischem Boden” (1856): 290; “Japanesisches Inselreich” (1856): 345; “Das Japanesische Papier” (1871): 807. 25 Franz Wallner, “Bei den ‘Kindern der Sonne’: Ein Bild aus der Weltausstellung,” Die Gartenlaube (1867): 599-601. 26 Ibid., 600 (translation is mine). 27 Ibid., 601.

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world city” 28 and this article reveals the triumphant atmosphere of the newly unified German Empire and an assumption of German superiority over the Japanese. “Compared to other cultural centers such as New York, London, and Paris where hundreds of Japanese students are staying,” the article says, “only two Japanese came to Germany to study in the previous decade.” However, with the “immense German victory over France,” this trend changed and “from the far eastern country, seventy students came to Frankfurt, Bremen, but mostly to Berlin out of deep admiration” to learn from Germany. Strikingly juxtaposed with this high cultural and political eminence of Germany is the physical appearance of the Japanese. “Between 18 and 24 years old,” according to Die Gartenlaube, “these Japanese gentlemen are extremely small and in very frail shapes.” “From their almond-shaped slant Mongolian eyes and from their yellow complexion,” the Japanese are “immediately distinguishable.” More than that, “their stepped-out lower jaws, wide mouths and the inch-long teeth” were sufficient to become “the target of the joke among the Berliner.”29 To draw the conclusion from this description that Germany looked down on Japan and Japanese is, however, too hasty. Even though the Japanese students are described in a comic style, Die Gartenlaube does not fail to point out that Japan is still the “marvelous island state, whose legends and poems the adventure-loving German mind loved for almost one millennium.” 30 At the same time, Die Gartenlaube does not forget to mention that the source of newly aroused German interest in Japan lies in the modernization of Japan: “[W]e hear with a great deal of interest that an enlightened government there initiated the cause of progress: building railways, laying telegraphs and, above all, improving the schoolsystem.”31 Yet, it is not fair to maintain from this passage that the image of Japan in Die Gartenlaube is overall positive, and in this sense it achieves its purported aim as an impartial and progressive magazine for the educated world with reports from other countries and continents. 32 As will be explained in the following paragraphs of this essay, the image of Japan in Die Gartenlaube is quite complex and ambiguous, and it would be fairer to say, “the image is a mosaic.”33 Therefore, it is important to notice in what historical and textual contexts this mosaic reflects the complex and ambivalent dialogue between Japan and Germany in the second half of the nineteenth century. 28

“Japan in Berlin,” Die Gartenlaube (1872): 568-70. Ibid., 568. 30 Ibid., 568. 31 Ibid., 568. 32 Ulrich Lins, “Japan in der Gartenlaube,” Oriens Extremus 32 (1989): 71. 33 Jean-Pierre Lehmann, The Image of Japan, 18. 29

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Only in 1873 did Die Gartenlaube publish an article on Japan and Japanese people with attention paid to Japan proper, not merely focusing on Japanese cultural phenomena in Europe or quoting examples from other European secondary sources. In that year, two articles appeared in Die Gartenlaube: “The Japanese National Festival with Theater Lions”34 and “The Linen of Atonement in Japan.”35 Despite apparent attempts to characterize the native people and their environment objectively, an assumption of German superiority pervades the description of the Japanese and Japan is still regarded as an exotic oriental country strictly confined in a realm of religiosity. This is especially true in the first article. By noting that this article is an excerpt from the travelogues of Herr Heine from Dresden, the editor confirms “it is truly amazing to have a chance to appreciate the peculiarities of the people and land in Japan after the opening of the country.” At least to the eyes of the author and editor, Japan “has a tremendous durability” in the sense that “wonderful customs, ceremonies, and festivals are well preserved.” In the age of rapid industrialization and urbanization, the Japanese are still practicing the festivals which began millions years ago according to their estimation.36 The second article is more peculiar in the sense that Japanese “superstition” (Aberglaube) is exotic and unprecedented to the eyes of the Europeans. According to this article, a foreigner walking through the streets of Yeddo (Tokyo) might be particularly curious about the functions of the linen canvas, spoon, and basket full of water. Unrecognizable Chinese and Japanese characters are written on a canvas and many people wait in line for their turn to drop a spoonful of water into the middle of the canvas and to wait until it seeps through. Certainly, any foreigner would ask what all of this “ritual” or ceremony was about. The whole process, according to Die Gartenlaube, is a ritual of atonement. If somebody is dead, he or she is supposed to spend a certain amount of time in a middle place somewhere between heaven and hell to wash away various sins. This time of atonement is decided by how fast or slow a spoonful of water moves through the linen. The article would seem to simply narrate an exotic custom from the far eastern country, but the corruption related to this atonement ritual makes it more stimulating. The rich people who offer a lot of cash to the priests receive a canvas already thinly scraped in the center so that the water goes through very quickly thus releasing the soul from sin almost instantly. On the contrary, the poor people must wait patiently, until the water finally seeps through the rough canvas, which tends to be extremely water-resistant. The editor of Die Gartenlaube does not forget to mention quite explicitly the implication of the parallel to the situation in 15th-century Europe and this is used as 34

“Japanesisches Nationalfest mit Theaterlöwen, “ Die Gartenlaube (1873): 222-24. “Das Sühnungslinnen in Japan, “ Die Gartenlaube (1873): 722. 36 “Japanisches Nationalfest mit Theaterlöwen,” 224. 35

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a double-edged knife pointed at the Catholics in Germany as well as the Japanese people. To the eyes of the editor, this ceremony of atonement and the place between heaven and hell is virtually the same as the purgatory in European world of imagination during the Middle Ages. He explicitly points out that this Japanese theory on purgatory is almost same as the teaching of the Roman-Catholic Church. 37 To this absurdity and corruption, the editor proposes that the most important gospel is “to love each other,” not a purgatory or “superstitious” Catholic rituals. Apparently, the German Catholics as a whole are equated with “primitive” and “irrational” Japanese people and have no place in the new German order largely based on Protestant Prussia. Japan is simultaneously harshly rebuked and the general impression from this article is that only through “genuine” Christianization and modernization could Japan become one of the leading countries in a highly modernized world order. * If we define the 1870s as the first period of German-Japanese cultural interaction when cursory perceptions of Japan resulted from sources of primarily European origin,38 the last two decades of the 19th century mark the launch of a different stage in the propagation of Japan’s image in Die Gartenlaube. This results from historical changes in this period in both Germany and Japan. First of all, the 1880s and 1890s in modern German history were the period of Weltpolitik. Industrial growth and military power led to the expansion of German influence outside Europe and the German Empire became an active and aggressive participant in the European rush for colonial territories throughout the world. In 1884, for instance, Bismarck gave his approval for the colonial protectorates in Africa and the Pacific where German merchants had been trading for years and requesting imperial support against the interests of other European competitors.39 In response to this trend, Die Gartenlaube like many other family illustrated weeklies, included ever more descriptions of wild and exotic places in both Asia and Africa as a result of a growing national interest in the outside world.40 Likewise, this same period is for Japanese history the period when the unparalleled changes throughout society after the Meiji Restoration (1868) were fully implemented. A series of structural reforms of the previous decade transformed the largely feudal state into a modern monarchy. Feudal classes were 37

“Das Sühnungslinnen in Japan, “ Die Gartenlaube (1873): 722. Kleinschmidt,Württemberg und Japan, 18. 39 Michael Fröhlich, Imperialismus: Deutsche Kolonial- und Weltpolitik, 1880 bis 1914 (Berlin: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1994). 40 Kirsten Belgum, Popularizing the Nation, 148. 38

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effectively abolished and feudal domains replaced by prefectures. A campaign was launched against feudal customs and manners. A decree issued in 1871 endorsed the removal of topknots and the cessation of sword-bearing. In 1872, the first railroad that would cover the country by the end of the century connected Tokyo and Yokohama. Telephones, telegraphs, gaslights, a postal service and other modern conveniences changed the lives of the people. In this period, over half of the boys were in school, youths marched in the new conscript army, and young women had begun to work at steam-powered textile mills. In sum, the modernization of Japan became an undeniable fact. This closer parallel between Japan and Germany41and the growing interest in overseas affairs in the German reading public resulted in a change of perspective that led to a broader and more detailed picture of Japan in Die Gartenlaube. A simple enumeration of the titles of important articles is sufficient to show this change: “The everyday lives of women by C. W. E. Brauns,”42 “The function of the fan in Japan,” 43 “The life of children by E. v. Hesse-Wartegg,”44 and “The 41

Classic historical studies of German-Japanese parallels have had modernization theory as their primary focus and seen both Japan and Germany as experiencing “revolution from above.” As latecomers to industrialization, both countries had to sacrifice the “proper” development of a liberal democracy. Due to this lack of a “normal” progression towards modernity both trod the same path toward fascist regimes and barbaric war. Yet the crumbling of the Sonderweg thesis, which is succinctly represented by the argument of David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley that “German experience constituted a heightened version of what occurred elsewhere,” and the repercussions in Japanese historiography invite the overall reevaluation of these historical parallels. David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley, The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 292. Italics are mine. In his insightful article on modernization and modernity in Japanese history, Sheldon Garon also rightly points out the potential applicability of Detlev Peukert’s interpretation of German modernity in the Japanese case by shedding light on the “pathology of modernity” itself. Sheldon Garon, “Rethinking Modernization and Modernity in Japanese History: A Focus on StateSociety Relations,” Journal of Asian Studies 53, no. 2 (May,1994): 346-7. In a similar vein, Harry Harootunian is also interested in showing that “Japan’s modernity, far from moving toward the achievement of true time, as if there were a developmental Archimedean point, was rather an inflection of a larger global process that constituted what might be called coexisting or co-eval modernity, inasmuch as it shared the same historical temporality of modernity found elsewhere in Europe and the United States.” Harry Harootunian, Overcome by Modernity: History, Culture, and Community in Interwar Japan, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), xvi. 42 “Japanisches Frauenleben von C. W. E. Brauns,” Die Gartenlaube (1886): 232-35. 43 “Der Fächer in Japan,” Die Gartenlaube (1887): 579. 44 “Kinderleben bei den Japanern von E.V. Hesse-Wartegg,” Die Gartenlaube (1896): 23539.

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Blossom Tree Festival in Japan by K. Boeck.”45 Unlike the previous decade when articles were largely based on secondary sources or indirect information from British or French reports, these articles were composed by authors who actually visited Japan and met Japanese people. The first impression when people actually visited the “lost paradise” was pure disappointment. For the people “who believed, in Tokyo, they would see the palace of an Eastern Empire,” an “immense number of gray and tiny huts used as dwelling places for the bulk of the inhabitants” was enough to immediately disillusion them. 46 This disenchantment compounded with the changing sources of information does not, however, necessarily mean that the previous positive stereotyped image was completely altered. On the contrary, the very fact that they actually witnessed the reality of Japan and Japanese people with their own eyes made the authors more confident in their depiction of Japan. To many people, Japan was still depicted as a happy, pristine place where simple and toy-like life flourished. To the European visitors of Japan, the whole beautiful island state just looked like one large kindergarten filled with small, lovely creatures. The houses were so small, nice and delicate, and kitchen appliances reminiscent of toys…Small bridges, temples, and water fountains looked as if they had been created for dolls rather than humans. In Japan, in many respects, even the grown-ups can be said to look like children.47

In this idealized state of living in the eyes of European, Japanese boys and girls enjoyed their childhood longer than European children because “unlike [German] children, they were unaware of injustice and could fully enjoy their lives with dolls, fairy tales and festivals”48 Yet, emphasizing the simple beauty of Japan and the childlike character of the Japanese is not the only intention of the author, Hesse-Wartegg, when he compares Japan to a kindergarten. The most significant feature of this simile is the inference that Japan did not or would not grow into adulthood and remains permanently at a low level of education, intelligence and morality. The author goes on to say that the main reason of this “moratorium syndrome” is a lack of Christian religious education: “Immediately one would notice that Japanese children receive no religious education and Christianity makes only unusually slow progress. Therefore, morality in our sense is in a relatively very low level.” Therefore, “our 45

“Kirschblütenfeste in Japan von Dr. Kurt Boeck,” Die Gartenlaube (1901): 422-25. Ibid., 423. 47 “Kinderleben bei den Japanern von E. V. Hesse-Wartegg,” Die Gartenlaube (1896): 23539. 48 Ibid., 238. 46

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conceptions about virtue, chastity, love, and demureness (Sittsamkeit) are absolutely incomprehensible to the large majority of the people.” 49 Naturally enough, “our definition of shame is similarly incomprehensible to Japanese”50 and that explains why “Japanese people…bring their children into the public baths, where they bathe with other parents and children without any shyness in the same basin.”51 In place of the proper development towards Christianization, according to the author, superstition still plays an extensive role in Japanese society. The custom of packing gifts only with red papers wishing good luck appears to the author only one of many examples of absurd superstition.52 He judges that it is irrational and superstitious that “the father writes the names of children over the main door of the house so that evil spirits do not endeavor to cross the threshold, when epidemics rage.”53 Partly praising their pristine beauty and partly denouncing their lack of progress, this ambiguous and complex view toward Japan can also be applied to the image of Japanese women. As C. W. E. Brauns rightly observes in Die Gartenlaube, “perhaps no other area in the lives of different peoples would be more striking than that of women.”54 This image of women in turn influenced the authors of Die Gartenlaube to gauge the level of civilization—or barbarity—of Japanese society as a whole. In dealing with Japanese women’s lives, the most common narrative strategy of Die Gartenlaube is to compare them with the lives of women in Germany. “Unlike ours,” the article says, “the status of Japanese women is very low and because of this, they are supposed to learn polite manners as early as childhood (to be selected as a spouse).”55 In addition, since “a position other than housewife and mother is not available for women,” 56 women have to remain faithful to their husbands. Largely deprived of adequate social position, appropriate education, and legal protection compared with their counterparts in Germany, Japanese women are portrayed by German observers, merely as “pretty toys for men.”57 Again, the solution for this wretched status of women is to wait until the waves of fundamental changes from Europe finally reach Japan: “[W]e hope that the transformations…which happen inexorably across the globe and have already 49

Ibid., 238. Ibid., 237. 51 Ibid., 237. 52 Ibid., 235. 53 Ibid., 237. 54 “Japanisches Frauenleben von C. W. E. Brauns, ” Die Gartenlaube (1886): 232. 55 “Kinderleben bei den Japanern von E. V. Hesse-Wartegg,” Die Gartenlaube (1896): 237. 56 Ibid., 237. 57 “Aufklärung der Japanerinnen,” Die Gartenlaube (1902): 175. 50

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found their way into Japan would bring changes in everything pertaining to women’s lives in this country.”58 However, in the same sentence, the author makes explicit that he hopes wholeheartedly “their numerous female virtues—their willingness to sacrifice, their love of order (Ordnungsliebe), their unfailing attention for the details of domestic lives, and finally their quiet, undemanding tolerance—would be preserved.” 59 Furthermore, the author clearly contrasts the wretched circumstances of the Japanese living conditions with what Japanese female virtues achieve: “[N]o one would believe that how harmoniously households are maintained even in the most primitive dwellings of the Japanese people. Without doubt, Japanese women’s love for cleanliness and order plays no small role.”60 In addition, a familiar family saga is reproduced and projected into the Japanese family: “[E]ven in the most derelict situation, one of the most beautiful aspects of the Japanese life glitters. The love of parents, especially the mother’s love to her children and in turn the children’s love to their parents (primarily to their mother) makes a beautiful scene here.”61 The implication of this juxtaposition of the low social status and the domestic virtue of Japanese women for the German bourgeois female readers is clear enough: the social role of women can be most effectively achieved within the boundary of domesticity. And in view of the miserable social status of Japanese women, the standards expected from the German women are much higher because of their enjoyment of legal privileges in liberal society. By using Japanese women as exemplars to their German counterparts, Die Gartenlaube makes it clear that the tradition, “the innermost essence of the German home, the German wife, marriage and family” should be effectively preserved notwithstanding various modern changes and challenges.62 Manifesting European superiority, Die Gartenlaube pays much attention to producing and propagating the serene and idyllic image of Japan. However, it would be wrong to argue that Japan’s modernization went unnoticed in Die Gartenlaube. On the contrary, we can fully grasp the first stage of Japan’s adaptation to modernization. Even though it was still at a primitive stage compared to the German equivalent, Die Gartenlaube reports that the Japanese nation-wide postal system was fully installed with the benefit of “railroads and steamships.”63 The authors of Die Gartenlaube are also fully aware that the adoption of European clothing changed the lifestyle of Japanese people. Unlike the previous period, 58

“Japanisches Frauenleben von C. W. E. Brauns,” Die Gartenlaube (1886): 235. Ibid., 235. 60 Ibid., 234. 61 “Japanisches Frauenleben von C. W. E. Brauns,” Die Gartenlaube (1886): 232. 62 Kirsten Belgum, Popularizing the Nation, 127. 63 “Das Billigste Briefporto in der Welt,” Die Gartenlaube, (1885): 71. 59

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when “people wear only straw and wooden sandals,” for instance, “the European boots make gradual conquests in the domain of the Japanese life style.” Especially, “the Japanese soldiers modeled after the Western style must wear boots” and “among the higher classes of the society, European shoes became an essential item.”64 The adaptation of Japan towards western standards and lifestyle, however, arouses a feeling of concern among the writers of Die Gartenlaube. On the one hand, this concern is from puzzlement and their anxiety about the final disappearance of paradise on the Earth, but more importantly, it was from whether in fact European institutions could be transplanted into Japanese soil. Thus, one author in Die Gartenlaube remarks that: In Tokyo, Yokohama and other cities, where European culture made progress to some extent, it was very strange to me to observe that another world of people in European clothing with school books under their arms coexists with the small Japanese with colorful clothes and decorations. This Europeanization of education and clothing of the children enacted by the government caused heavy psychological and pecuniary concerns to parents. For the boys the advantages of the new education are still easier to detect, but to the girls the new education means a complete reversal of their whole lives and following it, a total change of the culture and the way of life of the whole Japanese people. However, is the moral basis for this change really available?65

To the eyes of the German traveler armed with European cultural and intellectual superiority, European customs and costumes must have been strange and disconcerting and seemed to try the Japanese capacity. Therefore, even though some authors in Die Gartenlaube depict an emerging cultural and technological transformation, on the whole they did not accurately represent the rapid modernization that was taking place in Japan. From their point of view, the Japanese attempts to imitate and adopt European modernization were certainly a necessary step toward a modern state, but at the same time they were harshly rebuked as a futile attempt. What was more interesting and stimulating for the contemporary Europeans was to capture disappearing traditions in the face of internal and external changes. In this respect, they reinforced the oriental imagination in Europe, where stories and pictures of foreign lands and peoples had gradually become a popular commodity and in the process, clearly representative of their cultural superiority.

64 65

“Japanischer Schuhmacher,” Die Gartenlaube (1901): 868. “Kinderleben bei den Japanern von E. V. Hesse-Wartegg,” Die Gartenlaube (1896): 238.

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Yet, attributing the “false” depiction of Japan as a pastoral, pre-modern paradise, or as what Kirsten Belgum calls a “refuge from modernization,”66 or an “antidote to industrialization and modernization in Germany”67 for the European Orientalist imagination is not without its problems. As much as European claims of superiority, Japanese efforts to cater to the tastes of European travelers for exotic places and things contributed to a distorted image of Japan. This is especially important in relation to the increasing usage of photos or illustrations based on genuine pictures in Die Gartenlaube in the last two decades of the 19th century.68 Unlike the previous decades, the usage of genuine pictures from Japan gave the readers the impression that the texts and stories were based on true observations. For that reason, many authors begin their reports by pointing out “illustrations after the author’s original photograph collections of Japan.”69 What is interesting in this close relation between the reports and the illustrations is that most of the pictures the authors brought from Japan were not taken by the authors themselves. Rather, they were bought from the commercial Japanese photographers in Yokohama. When the first treaties with the Western countries were signed in 1858 (they remained operative until 1899) in theory foreigners could only reside within certain stipulated treaty ports and the most populous one was Yokohama. Foreigners were not permitted to travel in the interior without a special pass issued by the Japanese authorities. As years passed it became easier for foreigners to obtain these passes, but it was still virtually impossible to travel beyond large cities such as Yokohama and Tokyo. Not only was transportation inaccessible, but it was also very dangerous to travel into the countryside.70 The authors in Die Gartenlaube also make it clear that their journeys began and ended in Yokohama. 71 For Western travelers to Japan, therefore, photographic prints were the only available medium to appreciate indirectly the Japanese life which remained inaccessible and private. Largely relying on these visual souvenirs of their journeys, authors used this valuable medium to convey a

66

Kirsten Belgum, Popularizing the Nation, 165. Ibid., 167. 68 According to Kirsten Belgum, there were a total of 14 illustrations in Die Gartenlaube in 1855. This number increased to 67 in 1875 and finally reached 133 in 1895. Kirsten Belgum, Ibid., 170. 69 For example, “Japanisches Frauenleben von C. W. Brauns mit Illustrationen nach Originalphotographien aus der japanischen Sammlung des Verfassers,” Die Gartenlaube (1886): 232; “Kirschblütenfeste in Japan von Dr. Kurt Boeck mit Illustrationen nach japanischen Photographien,” Die Gartenlaube (1901): 422. 70 Jean-Pierre Lehmann, The Image of Japan, 42. 71 “Kirschblütenfeste in Japan von Dr. Kurt Boeck mit Illustrationen nach japanischen Photographien,” 423. 67

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first glimpse of unfamiliar cultures, igniting the imagination and curiosity of their readers. Yet, as the recent studies on Yokohama photography show, 72 these photographs were the creation of the Japanese response to market demands. Naturally enough, they tried to record the exotic and pre-modern aspects of Japan rather than the fast evolving modernization processes. With an idyllic background, Japanese women with Kimono or Japanese Samurai with two swords and top-knots were continuously reproduced even after the government’s official prohibition of top-knot hair after the Meiji Restoration. In sum, European writers, including writers for Die Gartenlaube were not academically trained ethnographers or anthropologists. Rather, they were travelers who not only actively participated in the image-making process, but also eagerly consumed those images. * In 1904, Basil Hall Chamberlain, undoubtedly the most knowledgeable scholar concerning Japanese civilization notices the fundamental change between the Western countries and Japan: Old Japan is dead and gone, and Young Japan reigns in its stead…The steamwhistle, the newspaper, the voting paper, the pillar post at every streetcorner and even in remote villages, the clerk in shop or bank or public office hastily summoned from out side to answer the ring of the telephone bell, the railway replacing the palanquin, the iron-clad replacing the war-junk,—these and a thousand other startling changes testify that Japan is transported ten thousand miles away from her former moorings.73

In the period when Chamberlain wrote this piece, the topography of international relations had been radically changed. Japan had successfully 72 Melissa Banta, “Life of a Photograph: Nineteenth-Century Photographs of Japan from the Peabody Museum and Wellesley College Museum,” in A Timely Encounter: NineteenthCentury Photographs of Japan, ed. Melissa Banta & Susan Taylor (Cambridge: Peabody Museum Press, 1988), 11-22; Haruko Iwasaki, “Western Images, Japanese Identities: Cultural Dialogue between East and West in Yokohama Photography,” in A Timely Encounter: Nineteenth-Century Photographs of Japan, ed. Melissa Banta & Susan Taylor (Cambridge: Peabody Museum Press, 1988), 23-38; Albert and Burglind Jungmann, “Frühe japanische Photographie,” in Japan und Europa: 1543-1929 Essays. Zur Ausstellungen der “43. Berliner Festwochen” im Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin, ed. Berliner Festspiele (Berlin: Argon, 1993), 74-80. 73 Basil Hall Chamberlain, Things Japanese, reprinted by Charles E. Tuttle (1971): 7. Quoted from Marie Conte-Helm, The Japanese and Europe, 23.

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negotiated the revision of unequal treaties with Western powers, emerged victorious from the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-5, and become allied to Britain by the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902. In addition, most importantly, Japan had a surprising victory in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5. These events required a change of view about Japan and the Japanese people. By this period, Japan had successfully made the transition “from feudal isolation to World Power.” We do not know exactly how the German reading public perceived this change and in turn how this changing image of Japan reflects reality or the minds of German people. In addition, we do not know how the intellectuals, ethnographers and anthropologists viewed Japan or how these intellectuals influenced ordinary German citizens’ conception of Japan. Still much remains to be done and discovered. Before 1905, however, it would be fair to say that the image of Japan in Die Gartenlaube was determined through complex interactions among the century-long European tradition of Japan as a lost paradise, the European assumption of superiority over non-Western people, Germany’s fascination with modernization and progress, and Japan’s own initiative. At some point, the image of Japan was used to show the greatness of the German unification and, on the other occasions, it was utilized as an “antidote to modernization and industrialization of Germany.” Also, it was used to reinforce bourgeois family values. On the whole, it clearly proves the complex and ambiguous process of adaptation of modern Germany to its own modernization, nation-building process, and outward expansion. WORKS CITED Primary Sources Die Gartenlaube, 1853-1902. Leipzig: Ernst Keil. Eckardt, Hans. “Japanisch-Deutsche Kulturbeziehungen: Gekürztes Selbstreferat eines Vortrages, gehalten am 20. April 1935 im Kyoiku-Kwaikan zu Fukuoka auf Einladung von Exzellenz Matsumoto.” Cultural Nippon 3, no. 2 (1935): 367-74. Secondary Sources Ashmead, John, Jr. “The Idea of Japan, 1853-1895: Japan as described by American and other Travellers from the West.” PhD diss., Harvard University, 1951. Banta, Melissa and Susan Taylor, eds. A Timely Encounter: Nineteenth-Century Photographs of Japan. Cambridge: Peabody Museum Press, 1988. Beasley, W. G. Japan Encounters the Barbarian: Japanese Travellers in America and Europe. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.

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Belgum, Kirsten. Popularizing the Nation, Audience, Representation, & the Production of Identity in “Die Gartenlaube,” 1853-1900. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1998. ———. “A Nation for the Masses: Production of German Identity in the LateNineteenth-Century Popular Press.” In A User’s Guide to German Cultural Studies, edited by Scott Denham, Irene Kacandes & Jonathan Petropoulos, 163-80. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997. Berger, Klaus, Japonisme in Western Paintings from Whistler to Matisse, translated by David Britt. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Chang, Richard T. From Prejudice to Tolerance: A Study of the Japanese Image of the West, 1826-1864. Tokyo: Sophia University Press, 1970. Conte-Helm, Marie. The Japanese and Europe. London: Athlone Press, 1996. Edström, Bert, ed. The Japanese and Europe: Images and Perceptions. Richmond, Surrey: Japan Library, 2000. Fröhlich, Michael. Imperialismus: Deutsche Kolonial- und Weltpolitik, 1880 bis 1914. Berlin: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1994. Hijiya-Kirschnereit, Irmela. Kulturbeziehungen zwischen Japan und dem Westen seit 1853, Eine annotierte Bibliographie (Bibliographische Arbeiten aus dem Deutschen Institut für Japanstudien der Philipp Franz von Siebold Stiftung, Band 6). München: Iudicium Verlag, 1999. Hotta-Lister, Ayako. The Japan-British Exhibition of 1910: Gateway to the Island Empire of the East. Richmond, Surrey: Japan Library, 1999. Hüls, Hans. “Zur Geschichte des Drucks von Kaempfers Geschichte und Beschreibung von Japan und zur sozialökonomischen Struktur von Kaempfers Lesepublikum im 18. Jahrhundert.” In Engelbert Kaempfers Geschichte und Beschreibung von Japan, Beiträge und Kommentar, edited by Heinz Götze, et al., 65-94. Berlin; New York: Springer Verlag, 1980. Iriye, Akira. Mutual Images: Essays in American-Japanese Relations. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975. Jungmann, Albert and Burglind. “Frühe japanische Photographie.” In Japan und Europa: 1543-1929 Essays. Zur Ausstellungen der “43. Berliner Festwochen” im Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin, edited by Berliner Festspiele, 74-80. Berlin: Argon, 1993. Kleinschmidt, Harald. Württemberg und Japan. Stuttgart: Barbar Fay Verlag, 1991. Kreiner, Josef, ed. Deutschland-Japan. Historische Kontakte. Bonn: Bouvier, 1984. Kreiner, Josef. “Das Bild Japans in der europäischen Geistesgeschichte.” In Japanstudien: Jahrbuch des Deutschen Instituts für Japanstudien der PhilippFranz-von-Siebold Stiftung, Bd. 1, 13-42. München: Iudicium, 1990.

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———. “Changing Images: Japan and the Ainu as Perceived by Europe.” In Rethinking Japan: Social Sciences, Ideology & Thought, edited by Adriana Boscaro, Franco Gatti & Massimo Raveri, 134-45. Sandgate, Folkenstone, Kent: Japan Library, 1990. Lehmann, Jean-Pierre. The Image of Japan: From Feudal Isolation to World Power, 1850-1905. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1979. Lins, Ulrich. “Japan in der Gartenlaube.” Oriens Extremus 32 (1989): 65-71. Melton, Jeffrey Alan. “Touring decay: Nineteenth-century American travel writers in Europe.” Papers on Language and Literature 35, no. 2 (1999): 206-22. Siary, Gérard. “The Image of Japan in European Travelogues from 1853 to 1905.” Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan 2, 4th ser. (1987): 155-70. ———. “De l’utopie à l’aporie: la représentation du Japon chez les voyageurs anglais et français de 1853 à 1912.” Corps écrit (Représentations du Japon) 17 (1986) : 41-48. Yokoyama, Toshio. Japan in the Victorian Mind: A Study of Stereotyped Images of a Nation, 1850-80. London: Macmillan, 1987. Zimmermann, Magdalene. Die Gartenlaube als Dokument ihrer Zeit. München: Heimeran Verlag, 1963.