Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
IN GERMANY AND
CENTRAL EUROPE
Steve Giles
Maike Oergel
Editors
PETER LANG
COUNTER-CULTURES IN GERMANY
AND CENTRAL EUROPE
COUNTER-CULTURES IN GERMANY
AND CENTRAL EUROPE
FROM STURM UND DRANG
TO BAADER-MEINHOF
PETER LANG
Oxford Bern Berlin Bruxelles Frankfurt am Main New York Wien
ISBN 3-03910-007-6
US-ISBN 0-8204-6276-4
Contents
Acknowledgements
STEVE GILES
11
GUSTAV FRANK
25
43
MAIKE OERGEL
Revolutionaries, Traditionalists, Terrorists? The Burschenschaften and the German Counter-Cultural Tradition
61
CARL WEBER
87
MALCOLM HUMBLE
105
DAVID MIDGLEY
121
MARGARETE KOHLENBACH
137
Contents
COLIN RIORDAN
155
SABINE EGGER
171
STEFAN BUSCH
193
STEVE GILES
213
JEROME CARROLL
241
CARMEL FINNAN
259
MATTHIAS UECKER
273
INGO CORNILS
295
JAMIE TRNKA
315
GERRIT-JAN BERENDSE
333
Contents
UWE SCHTTE
353
MORAY MCGOWAN
373
Notes on Contributors
395
Acknowledgements
STEVE GILES
The key texts in the Kunstlump debate are those by Heartfield/Grosz and
Alexander; their theoretical and historical contexts are admirably documented
in Fhnders/Rector, 43103.
12
Steve Giles
13
For further discussion, see the essays compiled in Giles, Theorizing Modernism.
14
Steve Giles
15
16
Steve Giles
17
insist that the category of cultural revolution does not only apply to
transitional epochs. This is because any society is characterised by a
permanent process of conflict and struggle between antagonistic
modes of production. Jameson therefore concludes that the individual
cultural text whether it be a play, a painting or a poem must now
be reconfigured as a field of force in which the dynamics of sign
systems of several distinct modes of production can be registered and
apprehended (Jameson, The Political Unconscious, 98). Moreover,
these sign systems operate both in society in general and within
particular artistic processes, so that, he continues, formal features of
texts themselves transmit ideological messages which may be at odds
with a texts ostensible content.
Although Jamesons argument appears at various points to be
indebted to Adornos account of artistic mediation, it also bears a
striking resemblance to the early work of the Russian Formalist Jurij
Tynjanov; indeed, it might almost be seen as providing a materialist
foundation for Tynjanovs otherwise overly abstract conception of
dialectic.7 In his brilliant but neglected essay Das literarische Faktum
of 1924, Tynjanov rejects the view that literary evolution is a
straightforwardly linear process. He concentrates instead on categories
such as interruption and disjunction, and argues that innovations in the
literary sphere involve a fundamental shift in the terms of reference of
the literary system: Das ist nicht planmige Evolution, sondern
Sprung, nicht Entwicklung, sondern Verschiebung (Tynjanov, Das
literarische Faktum, 395). In other words, literary evolution does
not move in a straight line, but is broken and disrupted. Similarly, new
artistic developments do not modify or amplify a tradition, but
supplant existing forms. In fact, at one point in this essay, Tynjanovs
terminology seems to be implicitly Marxist, when he suggests that the
underlying principles of literary development are struggle and
supersession (401). Elsewhere, however, the implication seems to be
that the dynamics of literary change are rather more abstract, and
18
Steve Giles
For a more detailed analysis of Mukarovskys work in this area see Giles,
Sociological Aesthetics. My discussion here is based on Mukarovsky, 3366.
19
20
Steve Giles
21
9
10
22
Steve Giles
23
Works Cited
Adorno, T.W. Thesen zur Kunstsoziologie, in Brger, P. (Hg) Seminar: Literaturund Kunstsoziologie (Frankfurt aM, Suhrkamp, 1978), 20411.
Vermittlung, in Adorno, T.W. Einleitung in die Musiksoziologie (Reinbek,
Rowohlt, 1968), 20833.
Alexander, G.G.L. Herrn John Heartfield und George Grosz, Die Rote Fahne, 9
June 1920. Reprinted in Fhnders/Rector, 5053.
Kunst, Vandalismus und Proletariat. Erwiderung, Die Rote Fahne, 23/24 June
1920. Reprinted in Fhnders/Rector, 5660.
Bell, D. The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (London, Heinemann, 1976).
Bhaskar, R. The Possibility of Naturalism. A Philosophical Critique of the
Contemporary Human Sciences (Brighton, Harvester, 1979).
Caute, D. Sixty-Eight. The Year of the Barricades (London, Paladin, 1988).
24
Steve Giles
Dirke, S. von. All Power to the Imagination! The West German Counterculture from
the Student Movement to the Greens (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1997).
Fhnders, W./Rector, M. (Hg) Literatur im Klassenkampf. Zur proletarischenrevolutionren Literaturtheorie 19191923 (Mnchen, Hanser, 1971).
Giles, S. Against Interpretation? Recent Trends in Marxist Criticism, British Journal
of Aesthetics, 28, 1 (Winter, 1988), 6877.
Sociological Aesthetics as a Challenge to Literary Theory: Reappraising
Mukarovsky, New Comparison, 19 (Spring 1995), 89106.
(ed) Theorizing Modernism. Essays in Critical Theory (London, Routledge,
1993).
Gorsen, P./Kndler-Bunte, E. (Hg) Proletkult. 1. System einer proletarischen Kultur.
2. Zur Praxis und Theorie einer proletarischen Kulturrevolution in
Sowjetruland 19171925 (Stuttgart, Frommann-Holzboog, 1974).
Heartfield, J./Grosz, G. Der Kunstlump, Der Gegner, 1, 1012 (1920), 4856.
Reprinted in Fhnders/Rector, 4350.
Jameson, F. The Political Unconscious. Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act
(London, Methuen, 1981).
The Prison-House of Language. A Critical Account of Structuralism and
Russian Formalism (Princeton University Press, 1972).
Jau, H. R. Literaturgeschichte als Provokation der Literaturwissenschaft, in Jau,
H. R. Literaturgeschichte als Provokation (Frankfurt aM, Suhrkamp, 1970),
144207.
Mukarovsky, J. Aesthetic Function, Norm and Value as Social Facts (Ann Arbor,
University of Michigan, 1970), first published in Czech in 1936.
Mller, H. Verabschiedung des Lehrstcks, in Hrnigk, F. (Hg) Heiner Mller
Material. Texte und Kommentare (Leipzig, Reclam, 1989), 40.
Striedter, J. (Hg) Russischer Formalismus. Texte zur allgemeinen Literaturtheorie und
zur Theorie der Prosa (Mnchen, Fink, 1971).
Tynjanov, J. Das literarische Faktum, in Striedter (Hg), 393431.
ber die literarische Evolution, in Striedter (Hg), 43461.
GUSTAV FRANK
die idealistische Periode fing damals an, Kaufmann war ein Anhnger davon,
Lenz widersprach heftig. (Bchner, Lenz)
Georg Bchners all too unhappy practical experience of countercultural activity when writing and distributing Der Hessische
Landbote made him take a step back and have a look at his
predecessors. As a member of at least one counter-culture of the
1830s, Bchner can therefore also be seen as the first historian of the
counter-cultures of the Goethe-Zeit (see Frank). It is this historical
interest in the potential of counter-culture that drives his investigations
in Dantons Tod into the competing factions of the French Revolution
with their different rhetorical strategies and contrasting prescriptions
for social renewal. And it is this same historical interest that
distinguishes his critique of the Romantic movement through his
literary exploitation of the subversive potential of its comedies,
making Bchners approach utterly different from, for example,
Heines Romantische Schule. In his novella Lenz, Bchner
investigates the prior counter-culture of the Sturm und Drang, perhaps
the origin of all German counter-cultures of young intellectuals, for
the sake of a later movement.
This essay will follow in the footsteps of Bchners historical
interest and depict the close relationship between the Enlightenment
and the Sturm und Drang, showing how the dynamic inherent in the
process of Enlightenment itself was bound to produce the Sturm und
Drang. It will then focus on some characteristics of the Sturm und
Drang as a counter-culture and consider the dialectical relationship
1
My thanks go to Elizabeth Boa for her invaluable help with the English version
of this paper. I remain, of course, responsible for the finished product.
26
Gustav Frank
27
28
Gustav Frank
Dynamics of Enlightenment
To pursue the argument, let me now suggest a different view of the
Enlightenment. I shall treat this complex period by isolating three
phases, following the usual terminology of the early, middle, and late
periods of Enlightenment: Frhe Aufklrung with, for example,
Gottsched and his circle, Mittlere Aufklrung characterised by
Empfindsamkeit, and Spte Aufklrung. I shall argue that the literature
of Early Enlightenment and of Empfindsamkeit serves to illustrate
contemporary philosophical propositions, whereas from the Sturm und
Drang onwards an autonomous literature takes on a complementary
rather than merely illustrative function: literature separates from
philosophy to become more autonomous.
I take the Enlightenment to be a system of thought and of
thinking, of producing allowed or permissable thoughts, in the sense
that Foucault establishes in The Archaeology of Knowledge. There are,
accordingly, basic assumptions that allow us to speak generally of
Aufklrung and there are more specific elements that allow us to
differentiate between the sub-periods. In this view, the Enlightenment
has as a basis a common programme. As the programme is gradually
realised more and more fully and is expanded to embrace more and
more regions of thought, this process creates feedback effects,
producing the changes and developments necessary to adapt theory
and its perceived application. The phases or stages of Enlightenment
that I distinguish are produced by those who were no longer willing to
follow the intrinsic development of the programme. For them, the
advantages they gained by their participation in the preceding stage of
29
the process were in danger of being lost by the next step. By going
forwards they felt they would have to risk something that they could
not afford to lose or even to jeopardize. Crucially, their opposition to
further progress was no longer in line with that universal reason which
they claimed to be the measure of all things. It is this which lays them
open to criticism in the name of the very standards they themselves
upheld, and which invites investigation of their group or class values
and norms in the light of reason (see Pikulik; Titzmann, Klinger).
Due to the dynamics inherent in the process of Enlightenment,
controversy between struggling factions does not only emerge at the
moment when the guiding principles of Enlightenment were first
articulated with massive polemical impact on the ancien rgime and
on Christian orthodox theology. Rather, the battles continue throughout, so that controversy also breaks out when, around 1750 and again
around 1770, the programme of Enlightenment was expanded. Such
continuing expansion and struggle is a true sign of Enlightenments
success.
To abbreviate English and French developments of the second half of the 18th
century.
In accordance with recent research (see Benthien, Fleig and Kasten; Hansen Die
Geschichte Emotionalitt; Schlaeger and Stedman; Schlaeger; Wegmann),
emotion is taken to be a historical practice of speaking and behaviour with
significant spatio-temporal differences.
30
Gustav Frank
31
32
Gustav Frank
That this is really a deliberate selection is mirrored by the book market which
was selling under the counter the Marquis dArgens Thrse Philosophe and
other well-known works of philosophical pornography. The fundamental role of
this underground and its repercussions in pre-revolutionary France are well
known (see Darnton; Mason). This under-the-counter reverse of the literature of
sentiment is the basis of a socio-political counter-culture in France but not in
Germany, where the reception of Western European thought almost ends with
Humes scepticism, which Kant refers to in the introduction of his Prolegomena
zu einer jeden knftigen Metaphysik die als Wissenschaft wird auftreten knnen
as the central stimulus that had awakened him from his dogmatische[r]
Schlummer (Werkausgabe V, 118). In the introduction to the second edition of
his Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Kant lists all the enemies of his project in a
veritable whos who of obscure orthodox and radical thought: Materialism,
Fatalism, Atheism, dem freigeisterischen Unglauben, der Schwrmerei und
Aberglauben, [] Idealism und Sceptizism (Werkausgabe III, 35).
33
the moment when the seducer is pursued within the midst of the
family itself, destroying this family as a model of theodicy, as in
Schillers Die Ruber.
In Empfindsamkeit we can reconstruct the first roots of counterculture, the first basic elements. It develops the code of emotion that
creates the progressive and younger elite of the Enlightenment from
Klopstocks first works around 1750 to his heirs around 1770 in the
Gttinger Hain. But there was as yet not really an overtly oppositional
counter-culture, for the culture of Empfindsamkeit sought ways to
harmonise differences between theory and practice and to overcome
the concrete deficiencies of social life. Therefore it created
compensatory models both in theory above all in the philosophy of
history, which was to have such long-term influence and in literary
and social practice above all in terms of the family and the
sentimental code and rites of an elite. The status of the sentimental
elite depended on their moral superiority over the ancien rgime. But
because they needed this contrast, needed to be victims and celebrated
tears, they were in fact a constitutive element of the old society which
they served to consolidate.
34
Gustav Frank
through genius and through the originality of their works. The basis of
a Strmer und Drnger was no longer a group but a single identity,
the criterion of membership no longer a common feeling but a
unique passion as the immediate expression of nature. Thus the
sentimental code and rites, with their rhetorical and formal similarity,
were negated.
For the first time, authors of the younger generation, following
the example of Goethe, constituted an opposition. And the fact that it
was and could be Goethe, an individual without the protection of a
coherent group, is significant for this change. Goethe reacted against
the failings of Empfindsamkeit but based this reaction in the cult of
sentiment by unfolding what had been implicit but suppressed. The
lyrical subject in his poems (see Wnsch, Lyrik; Wnsch, frhe
Lyrik), and the protagonists of his novel Werther and his early
dramas, not only prove their readiness to break the social rules but
dare to claim their rights and to live an intense life of passion.
Moreover, Sturm-und-Drang drama transmuted Empfindsamkeit also
through radicalising the negative impact of the brgerliches
Trauerspiel. The Sturm und Drang intensified the suffering of the
victim, not to show his or her guilt, but to criticise the social and
political state. Wagners Kindermrderin, Klingers Leidendes Weib,
Lenzs Hofmeister and Soldaten, and Schillers Kabale und Liebe
justify the demand for change and the act of revolt by the exceptional
individual.
The characteristics of the individual who transcends the group,
characteristics which had till then been delegated to negative
characters, are partly incorporated into the protagonists. The subject
now wants to realise all his potential in a passionate life and therefore
lives in explicit contradiction to the given world order. Resistance to
the social rules and transgression of the conventional boundaries
become the touchstone of the passionate individual. It is the necessity
to prove oneself, in accord with such an understanding of what it is to
be an autonomous individual, that makes of this figure the agent of a
counter-culture. Thus this new subject seeks to throw off the
emotional bonds that held back the sentimental subject from antisocial action.
35
Prerequisites in Theory
At this point, however, it is is necessary to look back for a moment to
the emergence of the aesthetic theory of Empfindsamkeit. Gottscheds
appropriation of the Aristotelian concept of art as mimesis of nature
would seem to qualify literature to be an ideal ally in the rehabilitation
of sensuality. But it was not until Baumgarten invented the term
sthetik for proper philosophical use that this alliance was established.
He argues for an emancipation of the sensually beautiful and vital
from mere service in applying the laws of reason, and requires an
independent logic for the realm of the sensually beautiful.6 Yet the
beautiful still remains subordinate to reason and so does not generate
any contradiction with it. The literary revolt of Sturm und Drang,
however, based on the new values of the individual, of genius, of
originality, and of transgressive passion rooted in divine nature, aims
to overthrow this last constraint: the beautiful not only obeys its own
laws and logic, but is also autonomous with respect to intervention or
domination by other discursive formations such as philosophy.
Studium and ingenium have not yet changed places, but if passion
proves maturity in the individual life, literature could become the
proof for progress of society as a whole. The master in the process of
coming of age should be nicht ein wissenschaftlicher Grtner,
sondern ein fhlendes Herz (Goethe, Werther, 8). Breaking the rules
of conventional poetry, especially the bonds of an obviously rhetorical
language, individualises the unique work and constitutes an act of
revolt. Here is another prerequisite of the counter-culture of Sturm
und Drang.
Gustav Frank
36
37
38
Gustav Frank
39
the remedy lie close together in their works: the danger lies in what
they say, and the remedy in the fact that they say it. The elitist
individual of Sturm und Drang was not to become the source of a
conspiracy against existing society. On the contrary, the simultaneous
literary production of the passionately transgressive individual
together with the remedy of allowing this subjectivity to speak and
write, guarantees the authors a place in society. On the 11 June 1776,
Goethe became Geheimer Legationsrat at Weimar. Polemically, one
could say that as a result the literature of the German Klassik would
realise the programme of the self-restraint of freedom (see Titzmann,
Sturm und Drang). The Strmer und Drnger enter the avant-garde
of modernising society by establishing literature as a semiotic
playground for innovation but with a limited binding force. As the
cultural influence of German Classicism proves, parts of the
conception autonomy of the individual/literature but self-restraint of
passion/topics were in the long run accepted and adopted by society.
Returning to Bchners Lenz where this essay started, the fate
which befell Lenz, and which is mirrored in some of his narratives,
illustrates what could happen to those Sturm und Drang authors who
were psychologically unable to operate with strategic threats or
treason. With the failure of Lenzs attempt to get rid of the
internalized father figure and the order this figure represents, Lenz
shows the real psychic bonds which construct the problem underlying
the claim of radical individuality. Most of the other Sturm und Drang
authors managed to hide this problem of an internal emotional link to
traditional norms and values through their theatralisation of the
Kraftgenie. Lenz never solved, either in literature or in practice, the
tension between the figure of the Sturm und Drang intellectual who
ends in despair and suicide, as depicted in Zerbin oder Die neuere
Philosophie (1776), and the utopian harmonising of autonomy and
social integration in the Oberlin-like figure of the country parson only
one year later in Der Landprediger. Thus the opposition between an
internalized culture and as only theoretically and rationally deduced
counter-movement, cuts through the individual psyche. Victims like
Lenz clearly demonstrate the price of counter-cultural activity under
the (post-)sentimental condition.
Some of those who drew a moral, social or political conclusion
from the logic of passion and voted for real social change represent
40
Gustav Frank
Works Cited
Aris, P. Centuries of Childhood: a Social History of Family Life (London, Pimlico,
1996).
Badinter, E. The Myth of Motherhood: an Historical View of the Maternal Instinct
(London, Souvenir Press, 1981).
Begemann, C. Furcht und Angst im Proze der Aufklrung. Zu Literatur und
Bewutseinsgeschichte des 18. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt aM, Athenum, 1987).
Benthien, C. / A. Fleig / I. Kasten (Hg) Emotionalitt. Zur Geschichte der Gefhle
(Kln, Bhlau, 2000).
Bobsin, J. Von der Werther-Krise zur Lucinde-Liebe. Studien zur Liebessemantik in
der deutschen Erzhlliteratur 17701800 (Tbingen, Niemeyer, 1994).
41
42
Gustav Frank
Sara Sampson und Emilia Galotti. Mit einer Einleitung: Gemischte Gefhle.
Zur Problematik eines explikativen Verstehens der Empfindung (Stuttgart,
Steiner, 1986).
Studien zu einer Geschichte der literarischen Empfindung, Hg. H. Arntzen,
Vol. 2: Die Objektivitt der Empfindung. Hlderlin. Mit einer Einleitung zu
Kant und Hegel (Stuttgart, Steiner, 1989).
Pikulik, L. Leistungsethik contra Gefhlskult. ber das Verhltnis von Brgerlichkeit
und Empfindsamkeit in Deutschland (Gttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1984).
Riedel, W. Erkennen und Empfinden. Anthropologische Achsendrehung und Wende
zur sthetik bei Johann Georg Sulzer, in Schings, H. J. (Hg) Der ganze
Mensch. Anthropologie und Literatur im 18. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, Metzler,
1994), 41039.
Sae, G. Liebe und Ehe. Oder: Wie sich die Spontaneitt des Herzens zu den Normen
der Gesellschaft verhlt: Lessings Minna von Barnhelm (Tbingen,
Niemeyer, 1993).
Schiller, F. Gedichte/Erzhlungen/bersetzungen. Nach den Ausgaben letzter Hand
unter Hinzuziehung der Erstdrucke und Handschriften, Hg. H Koopmann
(Mnchen, Winkler, 1993).
Schlaeger, J. / G. Stedman (eds.) Representations of Emotions (Tbingen, Narr,
1999).
Schlaeger, J. (ed.) Representations of Emotional Excess (Tbingen, Narr, 2000).
Titzmann, M. Empfindung und Leidenschaft: Strukturen, Kontexte, Transformationen der Affektivitt / Emotionalitt in der deutschen Literatur in der 2.
Hlfte des 18. Jahrhunderts, in Hansen (Hg) Empfindsamkeiten (Passau, Rothe,
1990), 137165.
F.M. Klingers Romane und die Philosophie der Sptaufklrung, in
Zimmermann, H. (Hg) Der deutsche Roman der Sptaufklrung: Fiktion und
Wirklichkeit (Heidelberg, Winter, 1990), 24284.
Vom Sturm und Drang zur Klassik. Grenzen der Menschheit und Das
Gttliche Lyrik als Schnittpunkt der Diskurse, Jahrbuch der deutschen
Schillergesellschaft, 42 (1998), 4263.
Wegmann, N. Diskurse der Empfindsamkeit. Zur Geschichte eines Gefhls in der
Literatur des 18. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart, Metzler, 1988).
Wnsch, M. Der Strukturwandel in der Lyrik Goethes: die systemimmanente Relation
der Kategorien Literatur und Realitt: Probleme und Lsungen (Stuttgart,
Kohlhammer, 1975).
Die frhe Lyrik Goethes in ihrem literatur- und denkgeschichtlichen Kontext,
Christiana Albertina, 32 (April 1991), 514.
44
45
See Mhl, and Mannheim, Ideologie und Utopie (178). Mannheim argues that
only an historically realised utopia qualifies as authentic, the rest qualifying
merely as ideologies. Compare Gtz Mllers Gegenwelten.
Pikulik, 1334. Norm, says Pikulik (1314), means two negative things for the
Romantics: the everyday and that which is determined by convention; each
examplifies a kind of compulsion.
46
47
48
It should be evident even from this hasty summary with just how
much overweening significance this short work and especially the two
slight figures, Michaly and Mitidika, are invested. The tale of course
suggests that Romantic poesy is the ultimate mediator across all
conceivable borders and conflicts, and the medium for realising the
Romantic utopia, descendant of Schillers aesthetic state. With
forensic acuity Mitidika and Michaly discover hidden truth the
authentic identity of the Doppelgnger undiscernable to normal
intellects. They create intercultural harmony between the bewildering
mix of nations and cultures that is the Habsburg state (and there is
plenty of evidence that Brentano seriously intended this as a political
utopia).5 They make peace between various conflicting parties. They
rescue love from oblivion and re-unite divided partners. Mitidikas
Mignon-like androgynity even suggestively fulfils the ancient myth of
reunion of the divided sexes familiar from the Symposium and
Genesis. In short, Michaly and Mitidika transcend any kind of
boundary political, cultural, aesthetic, sexual in order wherever
they act to restore wholeness and harmony, and Brentano does not
shrink from promoting messianic associations around their person.
Die mehreren Wehmller, then, contain nothing less than a selflegitimation of authentic Romantic poesy in a philistine age, and
represent just as much of an apotheosis of poetry as the opulent early
Romantic Heinrich von Ofterdingen. And, to focus more narrowly, the
two Gypsies, representatives of Oriental otherness in war-torn and
philistine Europe, are the ultimate symbol of late Romantic selfunderstanding, vehicles of one of the last versions of the Romantic
poetic utopia, symbol of healing for all the ills of Biedermeier
Germany (or Austria).
But it is precisely the Romantic selection of the Gypsy among
all possible Oriental ethnic groups which is most remarkable about
this tale. For of course the Romantic Gypsy utopia entirely fails to
correspond to the reality of Gypsy life around 1800. If we look at
Brentanos main source, Grellmanns study in Enlightenment cultural
anthropology Die Zigeuner. Ein historischer Versuch (1783), then we
rapidly discover that Gypsies in Brentanos age were to a far greater
5
See Brentanos letter to Achim von Arnim, Vienna, early December 1813.
49
degree than even the Jewish nation (Jews were at least tolerated)
absolutely the most despised ethnic group. Naturally this had to do
with their vagrant status and irredeemably low public esteem. In every
German state save Austria they were obliged by law on pain of death
(as vogelfrei) to cross the border of wherever they happened to be.
With no national territory, they were therefore obliged to make their
home everywhere and nowhere, de facto outside of society, in fields
and forests in nature, and to make their scarce living by disreputable
trades or theft. Grellmanns unsympathetic account of Gypsy life
finally interprets the Gypsies under the Enlightenment category of
Naturvolk, as living in ultimate primitivity and wretchedness, lacking
in any but the most basic skills and techniques of civilisation, almost
entirely lacking in civilised thought and morality, whose only saving
grace is a certain affinity towards the arts (evident in their dancing and
musicianship and practice of chiromancy); his account culminates in a
pseudo-philanthropic Josephinist plan for their forced cultural
assimilation into the Austrian state, so as to maximise their economic
usefulness. Of course Brentano, although he excerpts many details
from Grellmanns book (including Mitidikas and Michalys names
and their songs), will already have known from his own socialisation
and personal experience of Gypsies in Bohemia (where he had lived
for years) just how far his poetic Gypsies were wildly idealised
versions of the unfortunate originals, as he himself commented.6
But at one level the stark contrast between this absolute
glorification of the Gypsies in Romantic art and their real-life
abjectness is not a contradiction. The negativity and marginalisation of
the Gypsies (rather like that of woman in patriarchal discourse)
paradoxically only increased their suitability as a poetic symbol of
sheer Otherness, and precisely this is what Brentano exploits. At home
everywhere and nowhere, recognising no borders, living close to
nature rather than culture, his Gypsies offer the ideal basis for
symbolising cosmopolitan humanity and are in fact the means
whereby early Romantic cosmopolitanism survives into the darker
days of late Romanticism regardless of Brentanos more sinister
patriotic and nationalistic fervour elsewhere. The same applies to their
6
50
51
Brentano himself, for a time, wholly identified with (his fantasy of)
them, and the autobiographical motif of the Gypsy as poetic sexual,
cultural and political messiah is omnipresent in his work of this period
from Gustav Wasa (1798) to the Romanzen vom Rosenkranz (1810)
and the Wehmller. Elsewhere, Romanticised Gypsies feature large in
the work of Brentanos sympoetic collaborator Arnim (Isabella von
gypten of course), in Hoffmann (Kater Murr), Kleist (Michael
Kohlhaas) and Eichendorff (Die Entfhrung). They also feature, often
at crucial junctures, in the non-Romantic texts of Goethe (Gtz and the
Lehrjahre), Schiller (Die Jungfrau von Orleans) and Wolzogen (Die
Zigeuner), as well as in the popular literature of the Enlightenment
(Vulpiuss Rinaldo Rinaldini and Kotzebues Die kleine Zigeunerin).
This is also the case for much of the nineteenth century in Germany,
through texts which cannot be explored here,8 at least up to Thomas
Mann, whose Gypsies symbolise everything Gustav Aschenbach is
not. The Romantic paradigm of the Gypsy, then, which effectively
silences the Gypsy voice even as it preaches emancipation and
transcendence, exerts a dominating influence over the literary representation of the Gypsy in the nineteenth century. It thus
inaugurated and controlled the discourse on the Gypsy for this period.
We shall now consider to what extent this received discourse of the
Gypsy retained its power in the twentieth.
For example: Storms Immensee or Raabes Die Kinder von Finkenrode; not to
mention other literatures, from Bronts Heathcliffe, to Scotts Meg Merrilies,
Hugos Esmeralda, Mrimes Carmen and Collinss Ezra Jennings.
52
53
body appears more important than the Gypsy origins of the artists
models.
Otto Pankok (18931966) also found in the long years of inner
emigration a cultural space for images of the Gypsies and other
marginal groups in the squalor of the shanty dwellings of the
sprawling Heinefeld estate in Dsseldorf, where he himself lived for
many years. In an exhibition in Bonn in 19909 some 400 images of
Gypsies bore witness to the ethnicity and individuality of the
Romanies, rather than showing them as outsiders.
Yet this artistic utopian landscape peopled by bronzed bodies, by
angular and often distorted facial features, and scruffy clothing,
defiantly staring out at the viewer, this glorification of what appeared
more like a primitive tribe, was pronounced unacceptable, likely to
inspire only disgust. Although these works portrayed the reconciliation of man and nature, and opposed urbanised civilisation, they
were considered decadent, not in line with Nazi classicist ideals of
beauty. The images of Gypsies flowing from the brushes and charcoal
of Mueller and Pankok were thus among the many banned by Hitler as
degenerate in the infamous Exhibition of Entartete Kunst in Munich in
1937.10 They were part of a counter-cultural initiative which was
deemed threatening, unhealthy, uncultured, to be abominated, out of
tune with the visions of organic wholeness to be strived for. Their
works were proscribed, removed from public view, consigned to the
storerooms of the galleries.
After this cultural cleansing, Pankok comments in 1945 on how
only one of the many Gypsies he had painted had actually survived the
Holocaust. (The others fell, victims of ethnic cleansing.) It was only
once the Aryan aesthetic ideals of the Hitler regime were unmasked
after 1945 in all their insipid shallowness and fatuousness that
Pankoks works of resistance, defiant in their eschewing of the Nazi
norms of beauty and form, were again on public display. Today they
9
10
54
See Tebbutt Travel and The Trojan Horse, for an account of Hackls
cosmopolitan concerns.
55
issue of the play, but the bomb explodes before the play begins. For
Jelinek it is the cultural representation of the deaths, and the media
indifference and insensitivity, the oscillation between images of
misery and banality, the failure to see beyond the surface, which
intrigues. The play is not only about the deaths but their
memorialisation, the place which they take in history. In the
archaeological investigation of counter-cultures within Hackls and
Jelineks works it is possible to find traces of different civilisations,
or better, non-civilisations in which the Romanies were regarded as
personae non gratae. Yet in both works they emerge as an important
part of the literary counter-culture, and illustrate the cultural diversity
of the contemporary German-speaking world.12
Up to this point the focus has been on ways in which nonRomanies in the twentieth century have created utopian, and later
dystopian images of the Romanies. How do the minority group
themselves react, respond, generate a new genuine counter-culture?
Cultural history does not only relate to works of literature. Cultural memorials
to the past can also be seen as an attempt to acknowledge dystopia. Since the
1980s a substantial number of monuments and plaques have been erected in
cities, towns and other sites which mark the events of the Nazi regime in which
Gypsies were deprived of their liberty, tortured and murdered. In the debate
over the memorial to the Sinti and Roma in Berlin the old concerns about
whether the dystopian images should be brought into the foreground are raised
again.
56
alongside that of the Jewish people. Driven by the wish to record the
traumas which they had experienced, and perhaps themselves exorcise
some of the pain, the Romanies use writing as a form of therapy.
Collectively, these survivors testimonies contribute both to the
cultural heritage of their own people and to the cultural heritage of the
country in which they live. Whilst recording the depths of depravation
and inhumanity of the Nazi period, they attempt with remarkable lack
of bitterness to create a culture of tolerance and understanding, to
recapture those idyllic days in which they led a life free of threats of
violence and abuse.
The heterogeneity of the autobiographies is striking. Each writer
is searching for a personal utopia, whether it is from a womens
perspective that of Philomena Franz, Ceija Stojka or Anna Mettbach
or the strongly regional perspective of Lolo Reinhardt (1999) who
describes in broad Swabian the dangers of overwintering in hiding
under the constant fear of being caught by the Nazis. Here the
Romany counter-culture forms part of a further subculture a regional
counter-culture.13 A similar phenomenon is to be found in the lyrical
work of poet and song-writer Jos F. Oliver, born in Swabia to
Spanish parents, who mixes the Alemannic with the Andalusian.14
Counter-cultures within counter-cultures are also to be seen in the
writing about the alternative Romany tradition in music which
pervades the work of many of the autobiographies. When Alfred
Lessing writes of having to play in front of Nazi officials in
Buchenwald he is describing the paradoxical attitude to countercultures the Nazi at once proscribed Romanies and yet were
perfectly willing to enjoy their musical talents (be it wittingly, or as in
the case of Alfred Lessing who played for the SS in Buchenwald
concentration camp, unwittingly, since they did not know that he was
in fact a Romany).
13
14
Bei einer bertragung ins Hochdeutsche wre zu viel von der Ausdruckskraft
des Textes verlorengegangen. Zudem drckt diese Sprache die eigentmliche
Mischung von Fremdsein und Dazugehren aus, die das Leben dieser
schwbischen Sinti bestimmt hat (Reinhardt, 155).
Oliver also interweaves writing and singing and has made a number of CDs in
which he reads or sings his work.
57
In the writing of all these Romanies and in the art of Karl and
Ceija Stojka, both now internationally acclaimed as artists who depict
the horrors of the Holocaust, the dystopian world of the concentration
camp is described in all its inhumanity and excesses of barbarism.
Although relatively few of their works relate unambiguously to the
experience of Romanies some refer to those of Jews and other
persecuted groups the aim is to create an aesthetic space in which
the relatively utopian contours of a nomadic lifestyle prior to the
introduction of strict laws preventing movement from one town to
another are juxtaposed with the horrors which succeeded it.
Conclusion
In the cultural history of the German-speaking world the art and
writing about and by the Romanies illustrate the weakness of talking
of a major and a minor culture. Although the works of both Mueller
and Pankok were condemned as degenerate, they diverge from the
officially accepted art culture in different ways. The Romany may
appear as a form of noble savage, a primitive in an utopian landscape,
as in the works of Mueller, but for Pankok social inequality is
signalled in his inner emigration to a cultural space beyond the Nazi
propaganda machinery.
After 1945 it is impossible to represent the Romanies without the
Holocaust casting its shadow. The idea of utopian images of Gypsies
seems a contradiction in terms. Dystopian images of their treatment at
the hands of the dominant powers are to be found in the socially and
politically critical work of Hackl, and in Jelineks play Stecken, Stab
und Stangl. The continuity of anti-Gypsyism is perpetuated by the
journalists, but Jelinek interrogates the melodramatically dystopian
media images of the Oberwart bombing and sets against them her own
counter-interpretation. Rather than being seen as forming a minority
alternative group within society, the work of the Romanies is no
longer to be comprehended exclusively in terms of a counter-culture,
in opposition to something which is not, but as a valid culture in its
58
Works Cited
Agnew, V. Ethnographic transgressions and confessions in Georg Forsters Voyage
Round the World, in N. Saul, D. Steuer, F. Mbus (Hg) Schwellen.
Germanistische Erkundungen einer Metapher (Wrzburg, Knigshausen &
Neumann, 1999), 304315.
Baumhauer, Ursula. (Hg), Abschied von Sidonie von Erich Hackl: Materialien zu
einem Buch und seiner Geschichte (Zurich, Diogenes, 2000).
Bhabha, Homi K. (ed) Nation and Narration (London, Routledge, 1990).
The Location of Culture (London, Routledge, 1994).
Breger, C. Ortlosigkeit des Fremden. Zigeunerinnen und Zigeuner in der
deutschsprachigen Literatur um 1800 (Cologne, Bhlau, 1998).
Brentano, C. Die mehreren Wehmller und ungarischen Nationalgesichter, in G.
Schaub (Hg), Clemens Brentano. Smtliche Erzhlungen (Munich, Goldmann
1991) 142188.
Briefe Bd. 2, Hg F. Seeba (Nuremberg, Hans Carl, 1951).
Franz, P. Zwischen Liebe und Ha: Ein Zigeunerleben (Freiburg, Basle, Herder,
1992).
Man hat mir die Flgel gestutzt, in H. Roth (Hg), Verachtet, verstoen,
vernichtet: Kinder- und Jugendjahre unterm Hakenkreuz (Wrzburg, Arena,
1995), 7075.
Geertz, C. Thick Description. Toward an Interpretative Theory of Culture, in The
Interpetation of Cultures. Selected Essays (London, Fontana 1993) 330.
Gesellschaft fr bedrohte Vlker, (Hg), Sinti und Roma im ehemaligen KZ BergenBelsen am 27. Oktober 1979 (Gttingen, Gesellschaft fr bedrohte Vlker,
1980).
Grellmann, H. M. G. Historischer Versuch ber die Zigeuner betreffend die Lebensart
und Verfassung Sitten und Schicksale dieses Volks seit seiner Erscheinung in
Europa, und dessen Ursprung. (Gttingen, Diederich, 21787) (Leipzig 11783).
Hackl, E. Abschied von Sidonie (Zurich, Diogenes, 1989).
59
60
MAIKE OERGEL
62
Maike Oergel
Due to the particular political and social circumstances in the German territories
nationalism was an unusually new, politically effective and destabilising force:
this new post-French Revolution nationalism did not need to compete with
older traditions of institutionalised nationalism of national greatness that had
supported the Ancien Rgime. The grandeur of France, for example, had
already sparkled in the fountains at Versailles, before it was claimed by the
revolutionary Republic.
The recent study of the Burschenschaften by Dietrich Heither et al. is based on
such a definition of an anti-democratic and anti-Western identity (see Heither,
12). A similar view of the political tendencies of the Burschenschaften was put
forward by Walter Grab (see Grab, Ein Volk, 498501). Researching German
Jacobinism, Grab of course is keen to point out democratic tendencies in other
German contexts.
63
political and social views. It is evident that such violent opposition has
proved counter-productive. Militant and radical fringes, committing
acts of illegal violence to destabilise a system they find oppressive and
exploitative, have repeatedly brought entire opposition movements
into disrepute, thus paralysing all progressive powers. The question
arises to what extent there may be a direct line from Carl Ludwig
Sand, whose actions precipitated the persecution not only of the
Burschenschaften, but also of the entire liberal opposition, to the
activities of the RAF and its descendant groups, who caused
considerable problems to the self-understanding and efficacy of the
Neue Linke. A close analysis of the political and national ideas that
informed the early Burschenschaft movement will shed light on the
nature of any German peculiarity regarding political tradition and
especially political radicalism, and also suggest a number of parallels
to radical opposition movements in West Germany in the late 1960s
and early 1970s.
Let me begin with a brief look at the political and intellectual
background to the nationalism of the Befreiungskriege. Between 1770
and 1813 the basis for the modern German identity was laid. Political
and cultural (self-)definitions of a modern German nation were in
competition, until they eventually combined around the crisis-point of
1806, when after the Prussian military collapse Napoleon controlled
much of central Europe. The Sturm und Drang-movement demanded
reform in both the cultural and social fields, but had a mainly cultural
impact. The events of 1789 gave fresh impetus to political ideas of
representative and constitutional government the enthusiasm of the
German intelligensia for the early phases of the French Revolution is
quite legendary but the German situation laid the double obstacle of
feudal absolutism combined with territorial division in the path of
such ideas. These circumstances necessarily reinforced a link between
political reform or revolution and national unity. But political
enthusiasm declined in the wake of the Jacobin Terror and the unprogressive handling of the occupation of conquered German
territories by the French. It was replaced with the notion of the
Kulturnation, which claimed that culture needed to precede politics
and suggested that German culture, unsullied by political involvement
and unfettered by an ossified classicism, could prepare the
culmination of human culture for the benefit of humanity. This meta-
64
Maike Oergel
Fichtes Reden an die deutsche Nation (1807/08) are a typical example in this
context. The previously defined cultural superiority is now harnessed to invest
the need to fight French occupation with a world-historical dimension. Again,
culture, in the shape of education, must precede political action, but political
action is now paramount.
65
66
Maike Oergel
67
68
Maike Oergel
69
had not been finished yet. The liberation of the individual consciousness was merely the moral basis for the political and national
liberation to come, a notion that fits in well with the German idea
that culture needs to precede politics. So the politically responsible
and active Burschenschaftler felt called upon to complete the
Reformation.
This search for a tradition led to an (over-)emphasis on what was
considered original Germanness, which included Francophobia and
anti-semitism. It also led to more harmless activities such as wearing
altdeutsche Tracht, a black frock-coat, a white shirt with a long
collar and wearing your hair long. This outfit was worn and perceived
as a provocative political act, sending conservatives into fits of
disgust, as the comment by the Austrian Hofrat Friedrich von Gentz, a
close associate of Metternichs, makes clear: Der einzige Flecken im
Gemhlde [der Stadt Heidelberg] sind die grotesken und widerlichen
Figuren, die in schmutzigen altdeutschen Trachten [] mit Bchern
unter dem Arme, die falsche Weisheit ihrer ruchlosen Professoren
einholen gehen.8 These were clearly the jeans and parka of the time.
Revolutionary ideas were so closely linked with this Teutomania, that
the one indicated the other.9 In conservative circles Jena, the centre of
8
9
1770s onwards (in Protestant and Catholic variants), had become very
pronounced since the later 1790s, for example in Friedrich and August Wilhelm
Schlegels influential lecture cycles on literary and cultural history. It forms the
basis of Hegels definition of the modern Germanic world in his lectures on the
philosophy of history in the 1820s.
Letter from Gentz to Pilat, 9 Dec 1818, quoted by Bssem, 539, note 10.
Steiger observes that conservative authorities viewed these clothes as a German
variant of the French Sansculottes (Steiger, 55).
The link between Jacobinism, nationalism and Teutomania, and their shared
revolutionary nature, was taken to be an established fact for several decades, as
the assessment of the conservative historian K. A. Menzel of 1844 shows. He
too establishes parallels between Jacobinism and revolutionary nationalism:
Aber wie schwer auch der Gewaltige [Napoleon] und seine Helfer durch ihre
Blutthaten am Rechte gefrevelt, doch haben sie kaum so groe Schuld auf sich
geladen, als diejenigen ihrer Gegner, welche [] aus dem verwesenden
Leichnam der Revolution den Peststoff verbrecherischer, das sittliche Leben
vergiftender Grundstze zogen, und ihn einimpften den Seelen der Jugend. Zu
der Gedankenverwirrung, in welche der verunglckte Ausgang des
Franzsischen Freithums selbst Mnner und Greise versetzt hatte, waren die
Bemhungen der Cabinette getreten, Frankreichs politisch-militrischen
Despotismus, nach dem Beispiel, welches Spanien gegeben hatte, durch
70
Maike Oergel
10
Erweckung des Selbstgefhls der Vlker, durch die Zauberkraft der Worte
Unabhngigkeit und Freiheit zu strzen. [] Die groe Masse der unreifen
Geister in Deutschland fand sich zeitig genug in denselben Hirngespinsten ber
allgemeine Freiheit und Glckseligkeit, Verdienstlichkeit und Volksgerechtsame verstrickt, mit welchem des unselige Spiel zwei Jahrzehnte frher
in Frankreich begonnen hatte (quoted by Prignitz, 139).
It has been pointed out that attendance by universities from the south of
Germany was sparse, because of their more predominantly Catholic student
intake and the abiding suspicion of southern students that the German unity
advocated in Burschenschaft circles was really a unity under Prussian
hegemony. But religious denomination alone was no bar to being an active
Burschenschaftler, as the example of the Catholic Friedrich Wilhelm Carov
makes clear, who was the last of the speakers on the Wartburg. He was a
moderate, who despite his commitment to German national unity, held the
ideals of the French Revolution and of French legalism in high regard. (See
Steiger, 11821.) The Catholic Josef Grres also sympathised with the aims of
the students, which necessitated his flight into exile once the persecutions set in
after 1819.
71
Among them were Christoph Karl Heinrich von Kamptzs Kodex der
Gendarmerie, a compilation of police laws in force throughout the
Confederation, Karl Ludwig von Hallers conservative-reactionary Restauation
der Staatswissenschaft, Saul Aschers Teutomania, August von Kotzebues
conservative Geschichte des deutschen Reiches, and the Code Napolon. (See
Steiger, 11115.)
72
Maike Oergel
12
Karl Follen moved to a post as Privatdozent (in law) in Jena in October 1818.
(See Bssem, 63.)
73
74
Maike Oergel
75
76
Maike Oergel
the political space that will in the next generation be taken over
theoretically by the revolutionary proletariat: both are invested with
the hope of revolution and emancipation.
The Follens constitution to some extent foreshadows what could
be considered the best and worst in German political traditions. Their
democratic principles and structures were realised reasonably
successfully compared to early twentieth-century attempts on
German soil in the later twentieth century, while their exclusion of
foreigners and Jews, common in Burschenschaft thinking, foreshadows German fascism. Their theory of resistance also foreshadows
arguments put forward by late twentieth-century German terrorists.
Particularly interesting in this context is their view of the morally
legitimate armed struggle, Duldets nicht mehr! [] Volk! Ins
Gewehr! are lines from what is known as the Odenwlder Bauernlied, one of the publicised excerpts of the Groes Lied.16 Pointing out
to the disenfranchised the inhuman conditions in which they exist
became a time-honoured practise among revolutionaries, from Bchner to Meinhof. One of the first publications of the RAF in 1970 runs:
Denen habt ihrs klar zu machen, die von der Ausbeutung der Dritten
Welt [] nichts abkriegen, die keinen Grund haben sich mit den
Ausbeutern zu identifizieren. Current social and economic practices
mach[en] das Volk nur kaputt. It was the RAFs aim to destroy was
das Volk kaputt macht (quoted by Backes, 634). Apart from leading
the masses into revolt, Karl Follen considered the single violent
act against an unrepresentative and repressive system not only a
legitimate, but also a successful weapon. He argued that a state
(Staatszustand)
welcher vielmehr, indem er von Einzelnen autokratisch gehandhabt wird, auch
nur diese Einzelnen als seine alleinige Sttze darstellt, da ein solcher
Staatszustand, auch wenn er die Volksmasse im Zaume hlt, leicht durch den
Vernichtungskampf Einzelner gegen Einzelne gestrzt werden kann. (quoted by
Wikirchen 567)
16
See Grab/Friesel, 734, and Steiger, 162. Nieder mit Thronen, Fronen,
Drohnen und Baronen! Sturm! is one of the closing lines of the Groes Lied
(quoted by Steiger, 160).
77
The RAF was inspired by Mao Tse Tung and Latin American
guerillas, yet they could have found these ideas closer to home.18
Carl Ludwig Sand, the Kotzebue assassin, belonged to the hard core
of the Follen circle.19 With his appearance we have reached the final stage
of the radicalisation of the Burschenschaft: Burschenschaftler Sand, a
theology student, dressed in altdeutsche Tracht, stabbed the writer
17
18
19
Bssem suggests that Karl Follen only became interested in terrorism after
attempts at inciting popular insurrections failed (see 623).
After 1819, Follen could not stay in Germany. To escape arrest, he first fled to
Switzerland (1820), but in 1824 made for the greater safety of the United
States. He planned to found a democratic German state as part of the American
federation. Once there, he returned to an academic career, introducing the
teaching of German language and literature at Harvard. However, he was
removed from his Harvard post after he became active in the cause of liberating
another group of oppressed people, the black slaves. He became an American
citizen in 1830. (See Steiger, 1956.)
Sand was involved in distributing the excerpt Dreiig oder dreiundreiig
gleichviel! of Follens Lied in the autumn of 1818 in Berlin (Steiger,
illustration 46).
78
Maike Oergel
Follen had given Sand money to finance his trip to Mannheim (see Heydemann,
95). Sartorius assisted Sand in preparations for this trip to Mannheim (see
Bssem, 143).
He was not believed, but no directly incriminating evidence could be unearthed
to connect Follen to the attack (probably because Follen had had the foresight
79
22
23
and the opportunity to destroy any evidence before it could be found). (See
Steiger, 195.)
His Bekennerbrief is entirely in keeping with the spiritual-political approach
outlined above: Die Reformation [] ist noch nicht vollbracht! Denn noch
lastet Gewissenszwang, Knechtschaft, Zerrissenheit der Brder auf unserm
Lande []. Brder, lset die alten Ketten des Papsttums, die Ketten der
Herrscherwillkr! Glaube, Lehre und That sollen sich in Eines zusammenthun,
und in der christlichen Begeisterung des freien deutschen Brgers neu
aufleben! (reprinted in Heydemann, 11922, here 1212).
After the execution there was a rush onto the scaffold to grab souvenirs and
dunk handkerchiefs, scarves, shirt sleeves in Sands blood (Heydemann, 102).
80
Maike Oergel
25
See Brmmer, 3842. This was noticed as early as 1844. Johann Ludwig
Klber and Carl Welcker pointed out the Rechtswidrigkeit ihres
Zustandekommens in Wichtige Urkunden fr den Rechtszustand der deutschen
Nation, Mannheim, 1844 (see Brmmer, 38).
To even prepare the preparations, Metternich had held a secret summit with
Prussia a few days before Karlsbad, meeting with Friedrich Wilhelm and
Hardenberg at Teplitz. Metternich secured from the Prussian king a
commitment not to allow the introduction of Volksvertretungen in Prussia.
They also agreed co-ordinated action at the forthcoming conference. (See
Bssem, 363.)
81
82
Maike Oergel
they wish to see cannot be brought about by peaceful means. They are
convinced they are in the right because their consciences are clear,
applying the dogmatic method of self-analysis and self-justification
that originates in the Protestant and Pietistic background, which many
of the radical activists share; Sand for example shares such a
background with Meinhof and Ensslin. Neither movement manages to
get mainstream opinion, bourgeois or proletarian, on whose behalf
they thought they were fighting, actively on their side. In both cases
the activists question, and threaten, the basic self-understanding of the
state, which reacts with relatively severe measures. 28
What produces this similar counter-cultural, extra-systematic
kind of opposition? Leonard Krieger argued in his study The German
Idea of Freedom, with specific reference to the political aims of the
radical elements of the Burschenschaften, that social rootlessness and
critical dissatisfaction produced a critical negativity regarding political
systems:
The critical motif remained dominant even in the constructive process of
working out a positive democratic system. The persistence of a strongly
negative approach denoted the exclusive sponsorship of political radicalism by
socially uprooted intellectuals, whose characteristic political expression
consisted precisely in universal criticism rather than concrete engagement. The
general criticism of society involved [] the specific revulsion against the state
as such. [] This categorical rejection of the whole political system, which
found expression in essentially negative programmes like tyrannicide and mass
emigration, was evidence of the tendency to identify the state with the existing
form of the state and consequently find no rest short of the revolutionary
extreme. (Krieger, 268)
83
Maike Oergel
84
Works Cited
Backes, U. Bleierne Jahre. Baader-Meinhof und danach (Erlangen, Staube, 1991).
Brmmer, M. Staat contra Universitt. Die Universitt Halle-Wittenberg und die
Karlsbader Beschlsse 18191848 (Weimar, Hermann Bhlaus Nachfolge,
1991).
Bssem, E. Die Karlsbader Beschlsse von 1819. Die endgltige Stabilisierung der
restaurativen Politik im Deutschen Bund nach dem Wiener Kongress von
1814/15 (Hildesheim, Gerstenberg, 1974).
29
For example, in France Louis Pierre Louvel stabbed the French Kings nephew
to death in 1820. This assassination occurred against the background of the
conspiratorial activities of the Charbonnerie, a secret society of ex-army
personnel, students and republicans that aimed at overthrowing the Bourbon
dynasty. In Britain the severity of the Karlsbad Decrees is mirrored in the
fearful and hardline decision of the authorities in Manchester to violently
disperse a large crowd of demonstrators by sending in mounted troops, a
decision which resulted in killing or injuring scores of people, and which
became known as the Peterloo Massacre. These drastic measures were followed
by strict censorship of publications and a prohibition of public gatherings. In
response the radical wing of an extra-institutional opposition, led by Arthur
Thistlewood, planned a republican coup for the spring of 1820, which was
betrayed. (See Grab, Burschenschaften, 248.)
85
Elm, L. Von der Urburschenschaft bis zur brgerlichen Revolution, in Elm, L.,
Heither, D., Schfer, G. (Hg) Fxe, Burschen, Alte Herren. Studentische
Korporationen vom Wartburgfest bis heute (Kln, Papyrossa Verlag, 1992/93),
1645.
Grab, W. Ein Volk mu seine Freiheit selbst erobern. Zur Geschichte der deutschen
Jakobiner (Bchergilde Gutenberg, 1984).
Die Burschenschaften im Kontext nationalrevolutionrer Emanzipationsbewegungen anderer Lnder 1815 bis 1825, in Dedner, B. (Hg) Das
Wartburgfest und die oppositionelle Bewegung in Hessen (Marburg, Hitzeroth,
1994), 1129.
Grab, W./Friesel, U. Noch ist Deutschland nicht verloren. Eine historisch-politische
Analyse unterdrckter Lyrik von der Franzsischen Revolution bis zur
Reichsgrndung (Munich, Hanser, 1970).
Haaser, R. der Herd des studentischen Fanatismus und Radikalismus. Die
Universitt Gieen und das Wartburgfest, in Dedner, B. (Hg) Das
Wartburgfest und die oppositionelle Bewegung in Hessen (Marburg, Hitzeroth,
1994), 3177.
Haupt, H. Die Jenaische Burschenschaft von der Zeit ihrer Grndung bis zum
Wartburgfeste. Ihre Verfassungsentwicklung und ihre inneren Kmpfe, in
Haupt, (Hg) Quellen und Darstellungen zur Geschichte der Burschenschaften
und der deutschen Einheitsbewegung, Band 1, 2nd edition (Heidelberg, Winter,
1966), 18113.
Heither, D., Gehler, M., Kurth, A., Schfer, G. Blut und Paukboden. Eine Geschichte
der Burschenschaften (Frankfurt a M, Fischer, 1997).
Heydemann, G. Carl Ludwig Sand. Die Tat als Attentat (Hof, Oberfrnkische
Verlagsanstalt, 1985).
Kranepuhl, P. Die rechtsphilosophischen Auffassungen von Jakob Friedrich Fries
und ihr Einflu auf die Burschenschaftsbewegung, in Asmus, H. (Hg)
Studentische Burschenschaften und brgerliche Umwlzung: Zum 175.
Jahrestages des Wartburgfestes (Berlin, Akademie Verlag, 1992), 8092.
Krieger, L. The German Idea of Freedom. History of a Political Tradition (Chicago
and London, Chicago University Press, 1957).
Lange, A. Reformation und Revolution. Eine theologisch-politische Diskussion im
Umkreis des Wartburgfestes und des Reformationsjubilums von 1817, in
Dedner, B. (Hg) Das Wartburgfest und die oppositionelle Bewegung in Hessen
(Marburg, Hitzeroth, 1994), 21530.
Prignitz, C. Vaterlandsliebe und Freiheit: Deutscher Patriotismus 17501850
(Wiesbaden, Steiner, 1981).
Schrder, W. Die Grndung der Jenaer Burschenschaft, das Wartburgfest und die
Turnerbewegung, in Asmus, H. (Hg) Studentische Burschenschaften und
brgerliche Umwlzung: Zum 175. Jahrestages des Wartburgfestes (Berlin,
Akademie Verlag, 1992), 7079.
Politische Ansichten und Aktionen der Unbedingten in der Burschenschaft,
Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Friedrich-Schiller-Universitt Jena, Gesellschafts- und Sprachwissenschaftliche Reihe, 15, Hft 2 (1966), 22350.
86
Maike Oergel
CARL WEBER
88
Carl Weber
89
90
Carl Weber
91
92
Carl Weber
93
94
Carl Weber
castigated their cowardice and ridiculed the way in which they were
acting at a revolution rather than actually accomplishing it. He also
offered his biting comments on Viennas political scene which
promptly earned him reproach for maligning the ideals of the citys
liberals. The highlight of his own performance as the liberal journalist
Ultra was no doubt Ultras appearance in several disguises, among
them a slimy Jesuit priest, a Russian Grand Duke, and emissary of the
Czar who promises the embattled rulers of Krhwinkel military
support while actually thwarting their efforts to subdue the rebellious
citizens, and his impersonation of Metternich who, having abdicated
in March, passes through town on his way to London and invites the
local rulers to follow his example. Ultra then reappears dressed as a
working man, pickaxe in hand on his way to the barricades, and
proclaims: Ah, mir gschieht ordentlich, seit ich wieder einem
rechtschaffenen Menschen gleichseh (Nestroy, Stcke, 26/I, 19).
Discovering on a good burghers door the inscription Heilig sey das
Eigentum he comments: Wenn diese Worte dem Arbeiter nicht ins
Herz geschrieben wren, was nutzet denn auf allen Tren das
Geschmier? (Nestroy, 19). Most surprising, and surely exhilarating the
audience, must have been the plays finale, when young women in the
disguise of revolutionary students mount the barricades and achieve
what their male fellow burghers were not capable to do, namely bring
liberty to the small German town of Krhwinkel, synonym for bigotry
and self-indulgence, as it was created by August von Kotzebues
popular comedy of 1802, Die deutschen Kleinstdter.
After the revolutions defeat and the renewal of censorship,
Nestroy wrote three plays that to varying degrees reflected on the
revolutions failure. The first one, Lady und Schneider, opened in early
February 1849. It appeared to many of his liberal critics as a loathsome
about-face, while conservative minds applauded lines such as:
Das Volk ist ein Ries in der Wiegen, der erwacht, aufsteht, herumtargelt, Alles
zusammtritt, und am End wo hineinfallt wo er noch viel schlechter liegt als in
der Wiegen. (Nestroy, Stcke, 26/II, 8)
Yet, this and similar statements come from the mouth of Nestroys
role, the tailor Heugeign (literally Hay-fiddle), an ambitious but
95
An early working title for the script was Der Mann an der Spitze.
One scene is concluded by Heugeign with a song that ends:
So weit iss jetzt kommen, fr Wien iss a Schand, Wir sind noch fadr als
Berlin mit sein Sand und Verstand Fallt dUmstaltung so aus, sag I, nein, Da
hrt es auf ein Vergngen zu seyn. (Nestroy, Stcke, 26/II, 17)
96
Carl Weber
97
98
Carl Weber
Nestroys last play of 1849, Der alte Mann mit der jungen Frau,
presented a fugitive who had been sentenced to ten years imprisonment
after the 1848 Revolution. Having escaped, he hides in a cabin in the Alps
that is owned by the plays protagonist. Another one of Nestroys
preposterously absurd Happy Ends, a general amnesty, sets him free.
Banned from Austria, he emigrates with his young wife to Australia
and is joined by their friend and benefactor ostensibly for a better
life than Austria offers. Already in rehearsal, the play was cancelled
by the theatres director, Carl, apparently due to its controversial
content, and never performed in Nestroys lifetime.
But let us go back to the Vormrz, a time when no text that
implied the slightest criticism of the dominant culture could be
performed on an Austrian stage. Looking at the plays Nestroy
submitted to the censor, we find that comments on the Empire, the
Catholic Church, the corruption of the judiciary, and so forth, as they
appear in plays performed after 1848, could not be voiced during the
Vormrz. Even though, as Gutzkow wrote in 1845:
Metternich und Sedlnitzky lassen zwar kein einziges Shakespearesches Stck
auffhren, in welchem ein zweideutiger Knig oder schlechter Minister
vorkommt, aber was man so gewhnlich in Oesterreich Komdien nennt [...]
und viel Nestroy, das lsst man zu. (Gutzkow, 229)
99
character, but in Nestroys play he is the only person who is not more
or less corrupted, aside of the girl from the outer borough, the
needleworker Thekla. She defeats the advances of several horny rich
swains and, in another one of Nestroys deliberately hackneyed Happy
Endings, finally gets the young man she loves, a certain Herr von
Gigl, who seems to be nice enough but has repeatedly shown himself
as a pretty daft fellow. A central character is the Spekulant Kauz, a
player of the stock market who persuaded Schnoferl to invest money
with him, which Schnoferl promptly lost. It turns out that Kauz not
only sexually harassed and nearly tried to rape Thekla in the dark of
night in Viennas unlit back alleys, an assault Schnoferl prevented by
his intervention, but that he is a veritable white collar criminal.
Schnoferl eventually manages to blackmail him into handing back the
money he had stolen from his victims. The action is supposed to
happen in A big city and the country house of Kauz. But this is
clearly Vienna, and no one would have had any doubt about it. In
Vormrz Habsburg Austria, attacks on the new breed of capitalist
business men were obviously admissible, and jokes about a useless
and idle aristocracy seemed also not to bother the censor they might
have been opportune since they provided popular scapegoats for the
widespread disaffection with economic and political stagnation. Yet,
any reference to democratic values, the slightest hint smacking of
criticism of the ruling system was not permitted.
As for the unscrupulous Kauz, Schnoferl keeps greeting him with
the exclamation: Schauts, der Herr von Kauz! ridiculing the newly
established habit of elevating commoners, who were successful in
business and loyal to the Empire, to the state of nobility of lower
rank, of course. (Macartney, 2656) The farce clearly reflects the
economic plights which haunted Austria during the Vormrz. In one
of his songs, Schnoferl/Nestroy ridicules the many ways people fool
themselves about their prospects in life. The last verse comments on
the conditions the class structure of Vienna imposed on those with
little or no means:
s wart Einer in ein Vorzimmer bei ein nobeln Herrn
Auf die Gnad, dass er einmal wird vorglassen wern;
Nach 3 Wochen kommt dReih an ihn und er darfs wagn,
Carl Weber
100
In Demut sein Bitt um ein Dienst vorzutragn
Man hrt ihn in Gnaden und antwortt ihm dann:
Wir wolln sehn, was sich thun lasst, adieu lieber Mann!
Der jubelt jetzt froh: I hab mein Glck gmacht heut!
Na, lass ma ein Jeden sein Freud. (Exit.) (Nestroy, Stcke, 17/II, 12)
101
Zwei Jahre vor der Revolution musste neben den knstlerischen Werten auch
diese Haltung Beifall finden; dass Nestroy bei der Premiere fnfunddreissigmal
hervorgerufen wurde, hatte er gewiss nicht nur ihnen oder seinem Spiel zu
verdanken. (Mautner, 272)
Nestroys portrayal of Span made the play a hit with his Vorstadt
audience, many of whom were of Spans class. They must have perceived
him as a mouthpiece for their many grievances.
Eva Reichmann has argued that Nestroy conceived his
Gesamtwerk with a conservative agenda, bent on preserving the
positive aspects of the disappearing patriarchal feudal system.
(Reichmann, 24) There is, however, no evidence that Nestroy heeded
any specific agenda in his work. He worked as performer and
playwright in a theatrical environment that was metropolitan,
constantly changing, thoroughly commercial and highly competitive.
He certainly had convictions and evidently modified them over the
years. His texts reflect the historic moment in which they were
performed, most of them culled from a wide variety of literary
sources. True, they contain statements that voice conservative
attitudes, but those can easily be attributed to the particular motives of
a character, to the permanent pressure of accommodating the censor,
or an understandable disappointment with the many flaws of the
progressive movement in the Empire. A close reading of his texts,
especially in view to their performative potential, hardly supports the
argument that Nestroy maintained a consistent conservative position.
Nestroy unfolded in his texts a full societal panorama of Imperial
Austria, comparable in scope only to the works of his contemporaries,
Dickens and Balzac.
The social results of a steadily expanding capitalist market
economy were a central topic in Nestroys work, and he exposed their
devastating impact on all aspects of life. But that does hardly imply he
was nostalgic for [ein] an den feudalistischen Grundstzen von
gegenseitiger Treue und Verpflichtung orientierten Gesellschaftssystem
as Reichmann claims (Reichmann, 26). In fact, he had a specific
derogatory term for that feudalist past which is frequently voiced by
the characters he played: Rokoko, his label for all remnants of die
102
Carl Weber
Zeit der Zoepfe, the time of pigtails that were in fashion during the
eighteenth century.
Reichmanns study offers, however, much valuable sociological
information, in particular her analysis of the distribution of parts in
Nestroys plays according to class, gender, and professional status. As
specified by her, we find in the plays 302 Bedienstete of all kinds,
from footmen to secretaries, household staff to gentlemans men, not
to mention the many who appear as extras in crowd scenes
(Reichmann, 1939). From the aristocracy, there are 2 Freiherren, 19
barons, baronesses or counts, and several Chevaliers or Monsieurs
who usually are con men or similar frauds (Reichmann, 124).
Aristocrats are in the main negatively marked, except for some
younger men who gained an academic education and try to make a
living of it, or are involved in progressive activities as, for instance,
Freiherr von Reichthal in Hoellenangst and Frau von Frankenfrey in
Freiheit in Kraehwinkel. There are several English Lords and Ladies,
all presented in a more or less positive light England is frequently
characterised by Nestroy as a country where the liberal and
democratic values prevail that are sorely missing in the Empire. As for
the new business class, Reichmann lists 18 Fabrikanten and owners of
large-scale agricultural enterprises, 12 Kapitalisten, 10 Partikuliers, 8
Reiche Privatmnner, 5 Rentiers, 4 Spekulanten, 3 Millionre. As
we see, the majority of them are living on the income their wealth
provides. Thirty-four Herren and 15 Frauen are titled with von while
their class status is not specified (Reichmann, 123). With very few
exceptions, they represent the bourgeoisie and as such are negatively
marked, their attitudes ranging from shabby pettiness and vapid
stupidity to outright criminal behaviour.
A remarkable aspect is that few complete families are
represented, whereas Reichmann describes many as amputiert, that
is, they consist of single fathers or mothers with children whom they
are desperately trying to sell to the highest bidder on the marriage
market. Nestroy presents 72 single fathers, most of them widowers in
an age when women frequently died in childbirth; they usually try to
arrange marriages for their offspring that would resolve the fathers
financial troubles. There are 33 widows with one or more children,
equally bent on finding them well-to-do matches. Compared to 105 of
103
Works Cited
Costenoble, C.L. Aus dem Burgtheater. 18181837. Tagebuchbltter. Hg. K. Glossy,
J.Zeidler (Wien, Konegen, 1889), Band 2.
Gutzkow, K. Wiener Eindrcke, in Gutzkow, Gesammelte Werke Auswahl in zwlf
Teilen (Berlin, Deutsches Verlaghaus Bong & Co.), Band 11, 223260.
Hebbel, F. Das Versprechen hinterm Heerd im Burgtheater. In Hebbel, Gesammelte
Werke in 3 Baenden ( Berlin, Karl Voegels Verlag. 1928.) Band 3, 340348.
Kraus, K. Nestroy und die Nachwelt. Zum 50.Todestage, in Die Fackel (Wien, 13.
Mai 1912), 349/50, 123.
Macartney, C.A. The Habsburg Empire 17901918 (New York, Macmillan, 1969).
Mautner, F. H. Nestroy (Heidelberg, Stiehm Verlag, 1974).
Nestroy, J. Stcke, in Smtliche Werke. Historisch-kritische Ausgabe, Hg. J. Hein, J.
Httner, W. Obermaier, W.E.Yates (Wien, Mnchen, Jugend und Volk,
Deuticke, 1977).
Reichmann, E. Konservative Inhalte in den Theaterstcken Johann Nestroys
(Wrzburg, Knigshausen und Neumann, 1995).
Schbler, W. Nestroy. Eine Biographie in 30 Szenen (Salzburg, Residenz Verlag,
2001)
Vischer, F.T. Eine Reise. in Kritische Gnge, Hg. R.Vischer (Leipzig, Verlag der
Weien Bcher, 1914) Band 1, 309450.
104
Carl Weber
MALCOLM HUMBLE
106
Malcolm Humble
viable alternative to the status quo from a reading of the novel one is
led to the conclusion that the Second Reich provides all the
conditions, even more than the situation in the Bundesrepublik of the
1960s, for a counter-culture which could take only a politically
subversive, even explosive form.
This conclusion finds support in developments in the early years
of the Reich (the Grnderzeit), which were after all marked by a
wave of politically motivated terrorism (or die Propaganda der Tat,
as the perpetrators called it), for which anarchists were mainly
responsible. While it is true that these acts were part of an
international movement and that anarchism in Germany did not, even
at this time, have a mass following, the Emperor Wilhelm I was the
victim of assassination attempts twice in the same year (1878), in one
of which he was seriously injured. Later, at the consecration of the
Niederwalddenkmal on 28 September 1883, attended by most of the
imperial family as well as Bismarck, Moltke and several Bundesfrsten, an attempt to blow them up was only frustrated by the
incompetence of the would-be assassins. The repercussions of the
events of 1878 were considerable: Bismarck succeeded in tarring the
Social Democrats with the anarchist brush and was thus able to carry
the Sozialistengesetz though the Reichstag in an atmosphere of fear
which, it has been suggested, was partly fostered by agents
provocateurs who infiltrated the anarchist movement and influenced
its publications (see Carlson). Consequently militant political
anarchism was effectively destroyed, to reemerge only later in a
gentler and more constructive form in the writings and activities of
Gustav Landauer, while Social Democracy was forced underground
until the revocation of the Sozialistengesetz in 1890. At all events a
genuine counter-culture was unlikely to emerge from the efforts of
political parties on the left; understandably their priorities lay with the
improvement of the material lot of their constituency. It is therefore to
the Bildungsbrgertum that we must look for evidence of countercultural tendencies at this time, in particular to that section of it in
which monism the view, based on the Darwinist revision of mans
view of nature and his place in it, that there is no division between
body and soul, thus challenging both orthodox Christianity and
materialism was gaining ground. It is therefore by invoking the
107
monist rather than the Marxist paradigm that we are best able to define
Wilhelmine counter-culture.
The conflict between culture and counter-culture in the Second
Reich seems to be epitomised by two events. After the premiere of
Gerhart Hauptmanns Die Weber at the Deutsches Theater on 23
February 1893, Kaiser Wilhelm II cancelled the royal box there, after
attempting to prevent its performance even after the courts had
permitted it. In 1901 in a speech made at the opening of the
Siegesallee, a promenade lined with bombastic statues mainly of his
ancestors in the House of Hohenzollern, he declared:
Wenn nun die Kunst, wie es jetzt vielfach geschieht, weiter nichts tut, als das
Elend noch scheulicher hinzustellen wie es schon ist, dann versndigt sie sich
damit am deutschen Volke. Die Pflege der Ideale ist zugleich die grte
Kulturarbeit, und wenn wir hierin den anderen Vlkern ein Muster sein und
bleiben wollen, so mu das ganze Volk daran mitarbeiten, und soll die Kultur
ihre Aufgabe erfllen, dann mu sie bis in die untersten Schichten des Volkes
hindurchgedrungen sein. Das kann sie nur, wenn die Kunst die Hand dazu
bietet, wenn sie erhebt, statt in den Rinnstein niedersteigt!1
108
Malcolm Humble
To my knowledge only Dieter Kafitz has given this development the emphasis
it deserves, in an article which sets out to consider the semantic implications of
Natur in the term Naturalism. See Kafitz, to which I am indebted for part of
the following.
109
110
Malcolm Humble
111
112
Malcolm Humble
the one hand its core aims can be considered acceptable (if cranky)
within certain parameters; on the other hand they can be and were
often linked, especially in some of the movements later manifestations, via Social Darwinism and eugenics to militant nationalism
and a racist ideology. These later developments need to be borne in
mind in any consideration of Wilhelmine counter-culture, although
careful distinctions have to be made between groups in order to avoid
the conclusion that all are in any way harbingers of National
Socialism.
A number of groups of very different character demonstrate the
variety of responses to the alienation from the conventions of
Wilhelmine society. The first, the Neue Gemeinschaft, can be linked
directly to the ideas and personalities already mentioned. Along with
Wille, Blsche and others, the brothers Hart had already spent some
years in the artists colony at Friedrichshagen when they decided to
create a more formally defined group. The monist foundation of the
ideas which guided the Friedrichshagener is evident first in their
decision to mark the anniversary of the death of Giordano Bruno, who
was burnt at the stake for heresy in Rome on 18 February 1600. The
Giordano-Bruno-Bund was established after a commemoration of
Brunos death on its three hundredth aniversary in the Beethoven-Saal
in Kthener Strae 32, Berlin. The programme gives an idea of the
loyalty of the organisers to traditional cultural ideals of the Bildungsbrgertum: Beethovens Overture to Egmont, played by the
Berliner Sinfonie-Orchester, conducted by Carl Zimmer, was followed
by Julius Harts Prolog (spoken by the actress Louise Dumont), a
Festrede given by Dr Hermann Brunnhofer, a recital of Brunos
poems by Max Laurence, the whole procedings being rounded off by a
performance of Wagners Eintritt der Gtter in Walhall (see
Kauffeldt/Kepl-Kaufmann, 351.) The Bund was the brain-child of
Wille and Blsche. Wille spoke at an early meeting of the Bund on
Materie nie ohne Geist and prefaced the publication of his speech
with a description of the Bunds meeting-place:
Der kleine Saal war mit tiefsinnigen Ideenbildern von Fidus ausgestattet.
Zwischen Lorbeerbschen stand auf einem altarhnlich drapierten Tische das
mchtig wirkende Giordano-Bruno-Bild von Fidus. Davor lagen blhende
Fliederzweige. Dahinter auf ragendem Sockel Brunos Bste, flankiert von den
Bsten Goethes und Spinozas. Am Rednerpulte das Goethebild von Fidus.
113
Links an der Wand Haeckels Portrt. Wagners Vorspiel zu Parzival und ein
Satz von Beethoven gelangten zum Vortrag auf dem Harmonium durch Herrn
Carl Spohr [...]5
114
Malcolm Humble
115
116
Malcolm Humble
Jenes dritte Reich, das Reich der Erfllung, das Reich des Geistes in
entschiedenerer Weise heraufzufhren, als es der Menschheit in ihrer
Allgemeinheit mglich ist, es in engeren Kreisen schon heute vorbildlich zu
verwirklichen, das ist das wesentliche Ziel der Neuen Gemeinschaft. [...] Wer
[...] ein Mensch der Neuen Gemeinschaft ist, nicht nur dem Namen nach, der
ist in dieser Welt [...]
Ein Haloser unter all den Hassenden,
Ein Spendender unter all den Raubenden,
Ein Freier unter all den Verknechteten,
Ein Furchtloser unter all den Gengsteten,
Ein Wunschloser unter all den Gierigen,
Ein Krankheitsloser unter all den Bresthaften,
Ein Wissender unter all den Unwissenden,
Ein Seliger unter all den Bedrckten. (Quoted in Posener, 2712)
In defining the Reich der Erfllung as a Third Reich the Harts were
merely taking up a concept which can be traced back to the Middle
Ages and the eschatological writings of Joachim of Fiore; indeed
usage of this term before 1920 cannot on the whole be construed as in
any way of sinister political significance. What makes the Harts
monism as outlined in the propaganda for the Neue Gemeinschaft
problematic is its concern to dissolve all differences in an allembracing, indeed oceanic or cosmic unity which ignores the
practicalities of earthly existence. It was no doubt this watery idealism
which eventually alienated the more intelligent members of the group
and led to its break-up in 1904. The Giordano-Bruno-Bund proved to
have more staying power and led to the foundation of the Deutscher
Monistenbund in 1906.
Yet the example set by the Neue Gemeinschaft was to be
followed by those who formed other groups in the following years.
These include the Werdandi-Bund, founded in 1907 to encourage a
national renewal in art and architecture, the Sera-Kreis formed by the
publisher Eugen Diederichs to encourage his own version of festive
spirituality amongst the young, the colony established in Ascona in
the Swiss canton Ticino (Tessin) by a group of seven drop-outs, which
became the gathering point of a colourful mixture of anarchists, nature
therapists, unorthodox psychoanalysts and advocates of free dance
between 1900 and 1920, the St. Georgs-Bund initiated by the artist
Fidus (Hugo Hppener) and Gertrud Prellwitz in 1909, and finally the
garden suburb founded by Karl Schmidt and Wolf Dohrn at Hellerau
near Dresden. Hellerau resulted from six years of effort by the
117
118
Malcolm Humble
See Duncan, My Life, chapter 16 and Niehaus, 33 (the latter for the quotations
in German from Haeckel).
119
Works Cited
Bauschinger, S. Else Lasker-Schler: ihr Werk und ihre Zeit (Heidelberg, Lothar
Stiehm Verlag, 1980)
Berlin um 1900: Ausstellung der Berlinischen Galerie in Verbindung mit der
Akademie der Knste zu den Berliner Festwochen 1984. Akademie der Knste
9. September bis 28. Oktober 1984 (Berlin, Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung,
1984).
Carlson, A. Anarchismus und individueller Terror im Deutschen Kaiserreich, 1870
1890, in Wolfgang J. Mommsen, Gerhard Hirschfeld (Hg.), Sozialprotest,
Gewalt, Terror. Gewaltanwendung durch politische und gesellschaftliche
Randgruppen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Verffentlichungen des Deutschen
Historischen Instituts London Band 10) (Stuttgart, Klett-Cotta, 1982), 20736.
Duncan, I. My Life (London, Victor Gollancz, 1996).
120
Malcolm Humble
Hart, J. Der neue Gott. Ein Ausblick auf das neue Jahrhundert (Zukunftsland Band 1)
(Florence/Leipzig, E. Diederichs, 1899).
Kafitz, D. Tendenzen der Naturalismus-Forschung und berlegungen zu einer
Neubestimmung des Naturalsimus-Begriffs, Deutschunterricht, 40, 2 (1988),
1129.
Kauffeldt, R./Kepl-Kaufmann, G. Berlin-Friedrichshagen. Literaturhautpstadt um die
Jahrhundertwende. Der Friedrichshagener Dichterkreis (Munich, Boer, 1994)
Linse, U. (Hg), Zurck O Mensch zur Mutter Erde. Landkommunen in Deutschland
18901933 (Munich, dtv, 1983).
Mosse, G. L. The Crisis of German Ideology. Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich
(New York, Howard Fertig, 1964).
Niehaus, M. Isadora Duncan. Leben. Werk. Wirkung (Wilhelmshaven, Heinrichshofen, 1981).
Posener, J. Berlin auf dem Weg zu einer neuen Architektur. Das Zeitalter Wilhelms II
(Munich, Prestel, 1979).
Sarfert, H. J. Hellerau. Die Gartenstadt und Knstlerkolonie (Dresden, HellerauVerlag, 1993).
DAVID MIDGLEY
122
David Midgley
123
124
David Midgley
125
126
David Midgley
The journals full title was Der Stdtebau. Monatschrift fr die knstlerische
Ausgestaltung der Stdte nach ihren wirtschaftlichen, gesundheitlichen und
sozialen Grundstzen.
127
128
David Midgley
129
130
David Midgley
131
132
David Midgley
133
134
David Midgley
Works Cited
Applegate, C. A Nation of Provincials. The German Idea of Heimat (Berkeley and
Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1990).
Bahrdt, H.-P. Die moderne Grostadt. Soziologische berlegungen zum Stdtebau,
(Opladen, Leske und Budrich, 1998).
Bergmann, K. Agrarromantik und Grostadtfeindschaft (Meisenheim, Hain, 1970).
Boa, E. and Palfreyman, R., Heimat A German Dream: Regional Loyalties and
National Identity in German Culture, 18901990 (Oxford, Oxford University
Press, 2000).
Borrmann, N. Paul Schultze-Naumburg 18691949. Maler, Publizist, Architekt
(Essen, R. Bacht, 1989).
Campbell, J. Der Deutsche Werkbund 19071934 (Munich, dtv, 1989).
Collins, G. R. and Crasemann Collins, C. Camillo Sitte and the Birth of Modern City
Planning (London, Phaidon Press, 1965).
135
136
David Midgley
MARGARETE KOHLENBACH
See also von Dirke (557), McCole (1017) and Hillach (Walter Benjamin,
6489).
Benjamins commitment to the Jugendkulturbewegung is documented in the
editorial commentary in Benjamin, GS, II.3, 82588. See also Brodersen (23
76), McCole (3570), Brcker (1367), DeuberMankowsky (299313) and
Hillach (Ein neu entdecktes Lebensgesetz der Jugend, 87290).
Margarete Kohlenbach
138
would come to represent the geometrical locus and the only existing
realisation of what he called youth culture (Wyneken, Was ist
Jugendkultur?, 11628). Due to the suspicion of the authorities, as
well as to quarrels with parents and colleagues, Wyneken had to leave
the school in 1910 and became the unemployed founder of
Wickersdorf,3 who for much of his life would try to regain control
over his creation. Benjamin identified with the idea of Wickersdorf
almost without reserve. In 1912, he characterised his encounter with
Wyneken as the decisive intellectual event of his youth, calling
himself Wynekens strict and fanatic pupil.4 After Wynekens public
support for World War I, he broke with his mentor in March 1915, yet
while doing so stressed his determination to remain faithful to the
true Wyneken and his idea of youth.5 Finally, in a rather painful
autobiographical note probably dating from as late as 1932, he still
conceived of Haubinda as the place where the seeds for his later life
were sown (Benjamin, Noch einmal, 435). The first part of the
present discussion is devoted to Wynekens idea of youth culture and
the relations it bears to religion, art and politics. The second part
analyses Benjamins work as a writer and activist of the Jugendkulturbewegung between 1910 and 1915.
3
4
5
139
7
8
For what follows, see Wyneken, Was ist Jugendkultur?, 11826, Wyneken,
Schule und Jugendkultur, 1012, 3343, 668, 814, 16381, Wyneken,
Studentenschaft und Schulreform, 18096, esp. 190, and the discussions of
Wynekens concept and rhetoric of revolution in Kupffer (18793, 28291).
On the importance of immanent critique and immanent criticism in
Benjamins mature thought, see for instance McCole (71114), Caygill (3479)
and Kohlenbach (sections 2.3.1 and 2.3.2).
For the distinction between counter-culture and subculture, see Dirke (4).
140
Margarete Kohlenbach
141
142
Margarete Kohlenbach
143
15
See Kupffer (16873) and, for Hans Blhers corresponding report, Fuld (38).
Letter to Wyneken, 9 March 1915, GB I, 264. See also the similar passage in
Letter to Blumenthal, 30 July 1913, GB I, 155. For the wider appreciation of
Wynekens charisma among members of the young generation, see Arnold
Zweigs account in Die Weltbhne of 16 December 1918, quoted in Kupffer
(111). For the continuing affirmation and adoption of a spiritual, person-based
and intellectually inconsistent type of authority in Benjamins mature work, see
ber das Programm der kommenden Philosophie, (159), Ankndigung der
Zeitschrift: Angelus Novus, (242) and Karl Kraus, (243).
For what follows, see Wyneken, Schule und Jugendkultur, 15262.
144
Margarete Kohlenbach
145
146
Margarete Kohlenbach
acceptance in a society and culture which already existed independently of their contributions, but could feel entrusted with a
cultural mission that made them the decisive agents (or the privileged
medium) of the true realisation of societys Geistesbesitz. Given the
religious dimension of Wynekens programme, this may explain
Benjamins characterisation of Wynekens followers as Auserwhlte
in dieser Zeit, the chosen of this time.21
The followers of Wyneken, however, did not form a homogenous
group. What united them was the attempt to create a Gegenffentlichkeit, an alternative sphere of public debate, among students
of secondary and higher education.22 In a number of towns, so-called
Sprechsle were set up, in which students discussed issues of common
interest independently of the (direct) influence of parents, teachers or
adults in general.23 Independent school magazines like the Viennese
Das Classenbuch and the both German and Austro-Hungarian Der
Anfang served the same end and caused considerable political turmoil,
fuelled in part by the fact that many of the young authors, including
Benjamin, published their attacks on schools and the family
anonymously. Themes ranged from the personal experience of sexual
and school life to topics of general cultural and political importance,
21
22
23
147
Letters to Blumenthal (23 June 1913) and Seligson (15 September 1913), GB I,
124 and 175 respectively. According to Kupffer (79), Benjamins spiritual
understanding of youth culture was closer to Wynekens intentions than that
of the political faction. However, Benjamins letter to Ernst Schoen (23 May
1914, GB I, 2301), which Kupffer quotes in support of this assessment, shows
that Benjamin did not feel sufficiently supported by Wyneken in his attempt to
establish an exclusively inward and explicitly apolitical community among
Berlins young intellectuals.
148
Margarete Kohlenbach
25
26
27
149
arise, and it is their culture of expression,28 and not the life of the
masses, that requires a new religious basis (Dialog, 2831).
Moreover, Benjamin discards the slogan lart pour lart in favour of
lart pour nous: art must provide life-values (Lebenswerte). At the
same time, the life-values which art can provide beauty, a sense of
form, Gefhl (feeling) are aesthetic in kind, and Benjamin follows
Wyneken in embracing lart pour lart as the barrier which protects
art, and life, from philistinism (Dialog, 1617). The aesthetes
profound thought (dieses Geistreiche) accordingly counts as both the
herald and the enemy of religion.29 The basic assumptions in
Wynekens cult of Geist explain Benjamins rejection of a political
response to the moral problem which he finds in aestheticism.
Benjamin dismisses as inferior the practical faction of the
Jugendkulturbewegung by ranking all those who find fulfilment
within society or social commitment (im Sozialen) as not the best
and lacking in depth (Dialog, 26). A political response to the
suffering of the proletariat, which undermines the aesthetes moral
integrity, is necessarily devoid of metaphysical gravity (Ernst), for
the loss of traditional religious belief has deprived human suffering of
all spiritual meaning: Man hat das Leid entgttert (Dialog, 19). The
absence of metaphysical grandeur can disqualify social commitment
for Benjamin only because he accepts his mentors imperative Serve
Geist! as the highest principle of all human action.
The importance of Die religise Stellung der neuen Jugend
(1914), the last text which Benjamin published before the outbreak of
World War I, lies in its strong performative dimension. Benjamin no
longer only expresses his desire for, or reflects upon, a new religion,
but through his writing tries to create what he considers the condition
of its possibility:
28
29
150
Margarete Kohlenbach
Eine Generation will wieder am Scheidewege stehen, aber nirgends ist die
Wegscheide. [...] Kein rein und unrein, heilig und verworfen leuchtet ihr
voran, sondern nur Schulmeisterworte erlaubt-verboten. [...] nach nichts
verlangt sie dringender als nach der Wahl, Mglichkeit der Wahl, der heiligen
Entscheidung berhaupt. Die Wahl schafft sich ihre Gegenstnde [...].
(GS II.1, 73)
For more detailed analyses of Dialog and Die religise Stellung in the
context of Benjamins early (and not so early) thought, see Deuber-Mankowsky
(31740), Hillach (Lebensgesetz, 88690) and Kohlenbach (esp. sections
1.3.3 and 2.1).
151
Works Cited
Benjamin, W., Gesammelte Briefe (cited as GB) Hg. Theodor Adorno Archiv, 6
Bnde (Frankfurt/aM., Suhrkamp, 19952000).
152
Margarete Kohlenbach
153
COLIN RIORDAN
Introduction
Although the dates given in the title are are chosen more for their
roundness than for their signalling of defining turning points, they are
not wholly arbitrary. There is a continuity to green ideas, depending
on how they are defined and delimited, which begins years, decades or
centuries before 1900, and neither 1930, 1933 nor 1945 provide any
convenient turning points in this respect. The definition of green ideas
will be explored in more detail below, but the reason that the dates
1900 to 1930 have been chosen is that they encompass a period during
which concerns over the environment begin to coalesce into actual
protest and various forms of activism. More than objections to a
particular development or industrial project, these concerns amounted
to protest which contained recognizable elements of environmental
ideas translated into action. This included, I would argue, attempts to
create an alternative culture underlain by a philosophy which today we
can recognize as environmental or ecological.
Green history is notoriously complex, often giving rise to
metaphors concerning tangled roots or interweaving branches.
Ecological ideas can stem from quite different traditions and
ideologies; as a consequence the green alternatives to which I will be
referring are not easily classifiable and are the product of several
different sources or strands. Anti-modernism is certainly one of the
major actuators, but so is disillusionment with orthodox Marxism and
a positive desire to protect nature and people (as part of the same
continuum) from the ravages of industrial society. However, before
exploring the origins of these counter-cultures it will be helpful to set
out some definitions of green ideas, so that it is clear what a green
alternative would amount to.
Colin Riordan
156
See Dobson, 1438 and passim. The distinction Dobson draws has been
critically evaluated since the first edition of his book (1990); see especially
Hayward, 18799. Blhdorn (203) draws on Goodin to stress the continuity
between the categories of conservationism, environmentalism and ecologism, as
part of an argument to explain a paradigm shift in green politics.
157
158
Colin Riordan
Forms of Protest
If environmental protest in itself were a sufficient criterion for
distinguishing a genuinely radical alternative to early twentieth
century orthodoxy in Germany, then two movements in particular
would have at least to be considered: the Bund Heimatschutz and the
Naturfreunde.
Founded in 1904, the Bund Heimatschutz was an umbrella
organization which embraced 250 affiliated groups by 1916. Nature
conservation was only one of the Bunds preservationist aims, others
including traditional architecture, folk customs and art. The
conventional wisdom has been that the Bunds concerns were hardly
environmental in the modern sense, but mainly conservationist. Arne
Andersen has argued that, in keeping with its reactionary origins and
its romantic idealization of nature, the Bund Heimatschutz judged the
preservationist value of natural features mainly on aesthetic grounds.
Its opposition to the building of a hydro-electric power station at
Laufenburg on the Rhine, for example, took the form of a proposal to
re-site the project somewhere less aesthetically damaging. Failing in
its opposition, the Bund was reduced to hoping that the design of the
power station would be as visually pleasing as possible (Andersen,
150). Andersens view of the Heimatschtzer as an ineffectual
campaigning group is contested by William Rollins, who suggests that
their aesthetic communication contributed directly to popular
environmental consciousness by proclaiming the value of beautiful
and healthy landscape decades before science could prove such value
(Rollins, 14982). While agreeing that the aesthetic aims of the
movement were paramount, Rollins argues that Bund Heimatschutz
policies on the importance of hedging and mixed forest, and their
understanding of the dangers of pollution, for example, do indeed
indicate an understanding of environmental problems and a
determination to take action to solve them which is recognizable in
terms of modern environmentalism. But we are left with a
fundamental problem: Rollins argues that the League was forced to
rely on the aesthetic arguments in the absence of scientific evidence
(Rollins, 154). Yet it is precisely the advent of convincing scientific
159
160
Colin Riordan
161
urban life was rejected, and it was this that led to the burgeoning
settlement movement.
Settlement movements
The first Lebensreform settlement was established in 1887 in the Isar
valley, and by the beginning of the twentieth century, hundreds of
groups existed in Germany practising vegetarianism, nudism and
abstinence of various kinds.2 Indeed, colonies practising the simple
life were set up all over the world. Nietzsches brother-in-law
famously founded a colony in South America, whose descendants still
live there.3 Most of these settlements were short-lived, or were
dissolved and re-established with a change of name and people.
One example, taken from the documents assembled and
published by Ulrich Linse, is EDEN die vegetarische Obstbau
Kolonie. This was founded as a limited company in 1893 by Bruno
Wilhelmy, with the aim of combining a Lebensreform approach with
common ownership of land. It was set up near Oranienburg outside
Berlin. The name was changed several times and the settlement went
through many financial and personnel crises, but survived both the
Nazi years and the division of Germany. It continued its existence as a
collective farm in the GDR, while one of the members founded a
western branch in Bad Soden in 1950, where in 1962 the EdenStiftung was founded, which not only still exists but has its own
website. Its aim, as stated today, is:
die Erhaltung, Frderung und Weiterentwicklung der ideellen, lebensreformerischen
und kologischen Grundlagen, die vor hundert Jahren von der EDEN
Gemeinntzige Obstbausiedlung eGmbH, Oranienburg Eden geschaffen, in
der Praxis erprobt wurden und sich in einer naturnahen Lebenshaltung und
Gesundheitspflege niederschlagen.4
It is clear from the original principles of the colony, however, that this
kind of Lebensreform colony was, in its original form, less overtly
2
3
4
Colin Riordan
162
The intentions are certainly of the best: Die sittliche Grundlage der
Gemeinde soll sein: Gerechtigkeit und gegenseitig bettigtes
Wohlwollen, sowie Milde gegenber dem Tier (Linse, Zurck..., 48).
There is a strong moral tone which might explain why such
settlements tended to lose members and struggle to recruit:
Wir mssen [] unentwegt darauf sehen, da als Mitglieder nur Menschen zu
uns kommen, die ernste Lebensreformer sind. Wenn Alkoholabstinenz und
Vegetarismus auch nicht immer und ohne weiteres genossenschaftlichen Sinn
verbrgern, so bietet ernste Selbstzucht und Meidung der Nervengifte und
schdlichen Reizmittel immerhin noch die beste Gewhr, Reibungen im
genossenschaftlichen Innenleben tunlichsts zu vermeiden. (Linse, Zurck, 42)
163
They include Hesse, D. H. Lawrence, Kafka, Jung, for example: see Green.
Only relatively recently has Kropotkins pioneering work in this area received
the recognition it deserves. The reason for this may be that a socio-political
164
Colin Riordan
165
schneiden mit roher Geradlinigkeit Wald und Bergprofile, sei es hier, sei es in
Indien, gypten, Australien, Amerika; die gleichen grauen vielstckige
Mietskasernen reihen sich einfrmig aneinander, wo immer der Bildungsmensch seine segenbringende Ttigkeit entfaltet; bei uns wie anderswo
werden [] Grben zugeschttet, blhende Hecken rasiert, schilfumstandene
Weiher ausgetrocknet. (10)
166
Colin Riordan
167
168
Colin Riordan
169
settlement policy. But then, if they had had mass support, and made
uncompromising nature protection the orthodoxy, they would not
amount to a counter-culture, and the world would be a very different
place.
Works Cited
Andersen, A. Heimatschutz: Die brgerliche Naturschutzbewegung, in F.-J.
Brggemeier and T. Rommelspacher (Hg.), Besiegte Natur. Geschicht der
Umwelt im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Munich, 1989), 14357.
Blhdorn, I. Campaigning for Nature: Environmental Pressure Groups in Germany
and Generational Change in the Ecology Movement, in I. Blhdorn, F. Krause,
T. Scharf (eds.), The Green Agenda. Environmental Politics and Policy in
Germany (Keele, 1995), 167220.
Dobson, A. Green Political Thought, 2nd edn., (London, 1995)
Goodin, R. E. Green Political Theory (Cambridge, 1992).
Green, M. Mountain of Truth. The Counterculture Begins. Ascona, 19001920
(Hanover (NH), 1986).
Hayward, T. Ecological Thought. An Introduction (Cambridge, 1994).
Hermand, J. Grne Utopien in Deutschland. Zur Geschichte des kologischen
Bewutseins (Frankfurt aM, 1991).
Klages, L. Mensch und Erde: zehn Abhandlungen (Stuttgart: Krner Verlag, 1956).
Kropotkin, P. Mutual Aid. A Factor of Evolution (London, Penguin, 1972).
Linse, U. kopax und Anarchie: Eine Geschichte der kologischen Bewegungen in
Deutschland (Munich, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1986).
Zurck, o Mensch, zur Mutter Erde. Landkommunen in Deutschland, 1890
1933 (Munich, 1983)
Macintyre, B. Forgotten Fatherland : The Search for Elisabeth Nietzsche (London,
1992).
Rollins, W. Bund Heimatschutz: Zur Integration von sthetik und kologie, in J.
Hermand (Hg.), Mit den Bumen sterben die Menschen. Zur Kulturgeschichte
der kologie (Kln, 1993), 14982.
Vandermeer, J. The Evolution of Mutualism, in B. Shorrocks (ed) Evolutionary
Biology (Oxford, Blackwell, 1984), 22130.
Williams, R. W. Community Plants the Forests of Justice: Gustav Landauer,
Ecosocialism and German Expressionism, in C. Riordan (ed) Green Thought in
German Culture. Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 1997), 5573.
SABINE EGGER
It has generally been held that the first unofficial green movement in
the GDR emerged in the 1970s. The East German Protestant Church
provided spaces outside direct party control for discussion groups and
poetry readings, in which the official discourse on armed peace,
rational use of the human environment and the dominant concept of
progress as such were challenged.1 The alternative discourse can be
traced back further, however, to literary and non-literary texts of the
1950s and, to some extent, even as far back as Goethes pantheism,
or ecological arguments developed in the nineteenth century. I would
like to follow Raymond Dominicks argument, however, that
environmentalist discourse in both Germanies changed in two
significant ways after 1945: firstly by adopting a holistic argument,
and secondly by discovering the potential threat to human survival
inherent in scientific and technological progress governed by
instrumental reason (Dominick, 41).2 In my paper I will sketch the
development of both aspects in East German alternative discourse
from the 1950s to the 1990s, focusing in particular on the counter1
2
172
Sabine Egger
173
174
Sabine Egger
See Marx and Engels, Studienausgabe (101), for an example. For an analysis of
the relationship between man and nature in Marx, see Haupt (209).
175
10
See Rddenklau (445), Wensierski and Bscher (1223), and Rink (183) for
an analysis of East German attitudes to consumption.
Due to its rigid monosemic structure, the official GDR culture, unlike Western
commercialised mass culture, was unable to re-integrate counter-cultural, or
even alternative or subcultural discourses. Being no longer able to suppress and
exclude Fortschrittskritik and ecological debate meant the end for the
hegemonic culture itself. The initially counter-cultural environmental
discourse in the FRG, on the other hand, has become part of mainstream
culture, and succeeded in changing it from within even if in a less radical
fashion than had been envisaged in the early days. See von Dirke (15) and
Billington (1820) for definitions of sub- and counter-cultures (15), as well as
an overview of the West German environmental movement (von Dirke, 183
208).
Zugvgel frchten Atombomben, Das Gewissen, 8 (1956), 2, and reprints of
two Japanese publications in Die Vogelwarte, 76 (1955), 36, quoted in
Heukenkamp (806).
Sabine Egger
176
177
The poem bemoans the loss of the primeval harmony of humanity and
the natural world, depicted in the first two stanzas. However, this
ancient world, set in an indefinite, mythical past, is no Arcadian idyll
in the traditional sense. It is harsh and archaic, but the speaker lives in
harmony with the natural world. Synaesthetic effects suggest that man
and environment, but also senses, feelings, thought and language
constitute an as yet undivided unity. As Ursula Heukenkamp points
out in her interpretation, this world is held together by Waineminen,
the mythical bard and hero of the Finnish epic Kalevala
(Heukenkamp, 812). In the present, which is juxtaposed to this ideal in
part II, earth and sky are empty: this is a world without life of any
kind. The atomic explosion responsible for this is conveyed
metaphorically as an act of creation or rather as its negation: a new
sun, leaving behind nothing but an ashen tree. Bobrowskis poem
questions scientific progress from an ethical point of view. Man has
left his place in the cosmic order and put himself in Gods place,
ruling, however, by instrumental reason. The result is the destruction
of all life. Johannes Bobrowskis landscapes are always symbolic
spaces with several related levels of meaning. The darkness,
prevalent in many of them, is ambivalent: on the one hand, it refers to
an otherness of nature which the speaker is unable to comprehend
rationally, but is drawn to instinctively an earth mother from
whom the son has become estranged. On the other hand, it refers to
human history, portrayed negatively as a series of repetitive crimes
against the God-given natural order history as Schattenfabel von
den Verschuldungen (An Klopstock, Gesammelte Werke, Band 1,
161).11 Examples of this in his poems are the violent Christianisation
of Eastern European tribes, who lived in mythic harmony with nature
prior to this, National Socialism, the Second World War, and the
annihilation of life through nuclear weapons. The line Neues hat nie
begonnen, in his programmatic poem Absage aptly summarises his
view of history as being static or cyclical (Bobrowski, Gesammelte
Werke, Band 1, 73). Through human objectivisation and manipulation
11
Sabine Egger
178
12
179
180
Sabine Egger
14
15
181
182
Sabine Egger
183
See Rddenklau (2837) and Becker (2236) for an account of the development
of the GDR peace movement.
Also compare Hoffmann (1668).
184
Sabine Egger
185
186
Sabine Egger
187
Heinze (329), however, finds a similar trend in much West German literary
and non-literary nature writing of the 1980s and 90s.
Here (129) Rink refers to: http//www.ecovillages.org, (accessed 20.03.02).
188
Sabine Egger
189
Works Cited
Bahro, R. Wozu wir diesen Dichter brauchen, Forum, 29 (1966), 17.
Bathrick, D. Die Zerstrung oder der Anfang von Vernunft? Lyrik und
Naturbeherrschung in der DDR, in Grimm, R., Hermand J. (Hg) Natur und
Natrlichkeit: Stationen des Grnen in der deutschen Literatur, (Knigsstein,
Athenum, 1981) 15067.
The Powers of Speech: The Politics of Culture in the GDR (Lincoln and
London, University of Nebraska Press, 1995).
Beck, U. Risikogesellschaft. Auf dem Weg in eine andere Modern, (Frankfurt aM,
Suhrkamp, 1986).
Becker, C. Umweltgruppen in der DDR, in Hille, B., Jaide W. (Hg) DDR-Jugend.
Politisches Bewutsein und Lebensalltag (Opladen, Leske und Budrich, 1990),
21624.
Bergstedt J., Agenda, Expo, Sponsoring Recherchen im Naturschutzfilz (Frankfurt
aM, IKO, 1998), 14951.
Billington, R. et al. Culture and Society: A Sociology of Culture (Basingstoke;
London: Macmillan, 1991).
Bobrowski, J. Mein Thema, in Bobrowski, J. Selbstzeugnisse und Beitrge ber sein
Werk, Hg. G. Rostin, E. Haufe, B. Leistner (Berlin (Ost), Union, 1975), 23.
Johannes Bobrowski: Gesammelte Werke in 6 Bnden, Hg. E. Haufe (Stuttgart,
Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1998) Band 1.
Brand, K.-W. Massendemokratischer Aufbruch im Osten: Eine Herausforderung fr
die NSB-Forschung, Forschungsjournal Neue Soziale Bewegungen, 3, 2
(1990), 916.
Braun, V. Die Vgel und der Test 2, Neue Deutsche Literatur, 2 (1984), 5.
Bruckmeier, K. Vorgeschichte und Enststehung der Brgerbewegungen in der DDR,
in Haufe G., Bruckmeyer K. (Hg) Die Brgerbewegungen in der DDR und in
den ostdeutschen Bundeslndern (Opladen, Westdeutscher Verlag, 1993), 928.
Dominick, R. H. The Environmental Discourse in Germany: Prophets and Pioneers,
18711971 (Bloomington, IND, Indiana University Press, 1992).
Egyptien, J. Die Naturlyrik im Zeichen der Krise. Themen und Formen des
kologischen Gedichts seit 1970, in Goodbody, A. (Hg) Literatur und kologie
(Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998), 1140.
Eppler, E. Konservatismus und kologie in der Bundesrepublik. Thesen, in Hennig,
E., Saage R. (Hg) Konservatismus: eine Gefahr fr die Freiheit? (Mnchen,
Piper, 1983), 25456.
Foucault, M. The Archeology of Knowledge, trans. Sheridan Smith, A.M. (New York,
Pantheon, 1972).
Geden, O. Rechte kologie.Umweltschutz zwischen Emanzipation und Faschismus
(Berlin, Elefanten Press, 1996).
Goodbody, A. Deutsche kolyrik: Comparative Observations on the Emergence and
Expression of Environmental Consciousness in West and East German Poetry,
in Williams, A., Parkes, S., Smith, R. (eds) German Literature at a Time of
190
Sabine Egger
191
Rigby, T. H. Introduction: Political Legitimacy, Weber and Communist Monoorganisational Systems, in Rigby, T. H., Ferencs, F. (eds) Political Legitimisation in Communist States (London and Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1982), 1
25.
Rink, D. Mobilisierungsschwche, Latenz, Transformation oder Auflsung. Bilanz
und Perspektive der Entwicklung (neuer) sozialer Bewegungen in OstDeutschland, in Klein et al (Hg) Neue soziale Bewegungen, 18098.
(with Gerber, S.) Institutionalization in Lieu of Mobilization: The
Environmental Movement in Eastern Germany, in Flam, H. (ed) Pink, Purple,
Green. Womens, Religious, Environmental and Gay/Lesbian Movements in
Central Europe Today (Boulder, CO, East European Monographs, 2001), 120
31.
Rddenklau, W. Strenfried. ddr-opposition 19861989. Mit Texten aus den
Umweltblttern (Berlin, Basisdruck, 1992).
Schenkel, M. Fortschritts- und Modernittskritik in der DDR-Literatur: Prosatexte
der achziger Jahre (Tbingen, Stauffenberg, 1995).
Schmid, K.-P. Ausgerechnet Stahl. Wie das ehemalige DDR-Kombinat EKO Stahl
berlebte, Die Zeit, 17 August 2000, 20.
Stokes, A. M. A Chink in the Wall. German Writers and Literature in the INF-Debate
of the Eighties (Frankfurt aM, Peter Lang, 1995).
von Dirke, S. All Power to the Imagination: The West German Counterculture from
the Student Movement to the Greens, (Lincoln and London, University of
Nebraska Press, 1997).
von Heydebrand, R. Engagierte Esoterik. Die Gedichte Johannes Bobrowskis, in
Heydebrand, R., Just, K. (Hg) Wissenschaft als Dialog. Studien zu Kunst und
Literatur der Jahrhundertwende, (Stuttgart, Metzler, 1969), 389450.
Wensierski, P. The New Politics of Dtente starts at the Bottom. The Unofficial
Peace Movement in the GDR, in Gerber, M. (ed) GDR Culture and Society 4:
Selected Papers from the Ninth New Hampshire Symposium on the German
Democratic Republic (Lanham, MD, University Press of America, 1984), 72
90.
Wensierski, P., Bscher, W. Beton ist Beton: Zivilisationskritik aus der DDR,
(Hattingen, Scandica, 1981).
Wolin, R. The Terms of Cultural Criticism: The Frankfurt School, Existentialism,
Poststructuralism (New York, Columbia University Press, 1992).
Wst, J. Konservatismus und kologiebewegung. Eine Untersuchung im Spannungsfeld von Partei, Bewegung und Ideologie am Beispiel der kologischDemokratischen Partei (DP) (Frankfurt aM, IKO, 1993).
Zima, P. Der Mythos der Monosemie. Parteilichkeit und knstlerischer Standpunkt,
in Schmitt, H.-J. (Hg) Literaturwissenschaft und Sozialwissenschaften:
Einfhrung in die Theorie, Geschichte und Funktion der DDR-Literatur
(Stuttgart, Metzler, 1975), 77108.
STEFAN BUSCH
Die Formel vom Blut und vom Boden ist nicht, wie man gelegentlich
behauptet findet (vgl. Corni, 16), eine nationalsozialistische Erfindung,
sondern wurde in den letzten beiden Jahrzehnten des 19. Jahrhunderts im
Kontext der agrarkonservativen Kampagne entwickelt, mittels welcher
Organisationen wie der Bund der Landwirte obsolete Besitzverhltnisse
gegen die voranschreitende Modernisierung agrarischer Strukturen zu
verteidigen suchten. In dieser ideologischen Konstruktion stand die
praktische konomische Bedeutung der Begriffe im Vordergrund:
Das Blut war eben die buerliche Generationskette, das Gut der
Boden, den diese bearbeitete, und das, was beides aneinanderkettete,
der Besitz (Zimmermann, 92). Doch schon in der agrarkonservativen
und in der Heimatliteratur waren viele Ideologeme enthalten, an
welche die sptere Blut-und-Boden-Literatur anschlieen konnte.
Dazu gehren u.a. eine rigide Stadt/Land-Dichotomie, in der die Stadt
fr alles Bse und Zerstrerische stand, eine weltanschauliche Antimoderne die sthetische Mittel der Moderne nicht grundstzlich ausschlo1 sowie nicht selten auch schon ein mehr oder weniger
aggressiver Antisemitismus. In Wilhelm von Polenz Roman Der
Bttnerbauer (1895) z.B. sind diese Elemente eng verbunden:
Stdtische Kapitalisten, darunter fhrend ein jdischer Getreidehndler,
nutzen die finanziellen Schwierigkeiten der Bauern, um diese mittels
Wucherzinsen von ihren Hfen zu vertreiben und mit dem Boden zu
spekulieren ein Schicksal, das auch den in Finanzdingen naiven
Bttnerbauern ereilt, der sich am Ende erhngt, whrend auf seinem
einst ererbten Boden der Bau einer Fabrik begonnen hat.
194
Stefan Busch
195
Stefan Busch
196
197
empfindet nur da er bei sich selbst unterdrcken mu, was er auf eine hhere
Ebene projizieren darf. So kehrt die Sexualitt als verdrngte Lust am Krper in
den Symbolen des landschaftlich Krperhaften wieder (Kuppeln, Spalten,
Hhlen, glitschiges Moor). (Schweizer, 251)
Stefan Busch
198
war der Austausch mit den Frauen versperrt, hingegen suchten die
Mnner, um deren Texte es hier geht, den krperlichen Kontakt mit
Mutter Erde. Die Liebe zu ihr und ihren Strmen nutzte eine Lcke im
System der Verbote. Das Inzestuse des Vereinigungswunsches blieb
aufgrund der symbolischen Ausdrucksform im Rahmen dessen, was als
Kunst galt. Die Texte machen jedoch fortwhrend deutlich, da die
Sehnschte auf diese Weise keine Erfllung fanden, und diese
unaufgelste Spannung zwischen den Wnschen der Krper und
der Symbolik des Vereinigungsversuchs bewirkte die Tendenz
zum Gewaltttigen und Autodestruktiven, die in den Texten zu
beobachten ist.
Die vorliegenden berlegungen erheben nicht den Anspruch,
mehr als nur erste Vermutungen zu sein. Auch wre ein wesentlich
grerer Korpus von literarischen und autobiographischen Texten von
Blut-und-Boden-Autoren notwendig, um zu verllicheren Aussagen
kommen zu knnen. Auf der Basis dieser vorlufigen Annahmen wird
jedoch das Verhalten, das die mnnlichen Protagonisten der BluboTexte in groer Konstanz aufweisen, in seiner Nhe zu und seiner
Verschiedenheit von jenem der soldatischen Mnner erklrbar.
Fr die um die Volksgesundheit ringenden nationalsozialistischen
Literaturwissenschaftler mute gesund gewesen sein, wer Liebe zu
deutscher Heimat und Natur bewiesen hatte. So galt Gustav Frenssen als
ein Stck ursprnglichen Germanentums, als ein ganz mchtiger Kerl,
ein im Freiland ungehindert und ungeschoren aufgewachsener [...]
Mensch (Braun, 458 u. 455). Doch die Naturliebe dieses angeblich
prototypischen, kraftstrotzenden Nordmannen war das Produkt
pathologisch deformierter Sexualitt. Auch in dieser Hinsicht ging
Frenssen, der mit seinem Heimatroman Jrn Uhl (1901) seinerzeit
hufig ber die Buddenbrooks gestellt wurde, den Vertretern des
Genres voran.5 Seine Romane sind durchzogen von einem
Sauberkeitsfanatismus, und dieser hat deutlich neurotische Zge, die
mit seiner sonderbaren Stellung zum Komplex Liebe, Sexualitt, Frau
zusammenhngen drften (Mecklenburg 121). Seiner Glorifizierung
im NS-Staat widersprach er selbst in seinem Lebensbericht (1940).
Gleich im zweiten Satz bekannte Frenssen dort mit verschmter
5
199
200
Stefan Busch
Breithin und dulden den Pflug.8 Und Hermann Stehr wute, da der
Mensch des Volkes durch Lockerungen seines Innern [...] manchmal
hart an den Rand mancher Ausschreitungen gebracht wird, doch diese
Gefahr durch ein inniges, fast brnstiges Verhltnis zur Scholle zu
meistern versteht. Den Ursprung solcher verqult-verquerer Sexualitt
sah Max Horkheimer in den durch die Moral der brgerlichen
Mnnergesellschaft geprgten Mutter-Sohn-Beziehungen. Aus diesen
habe jedes sinnliche Moment gebannt werden mssen: Sie und die
Schwester haben auf reine Gefhle, unbefleckte Verehrung und
Wertschtzung Anspruch. Dieser widernatrliche Purifizierungsproze
resultiere schlielich in der schwrmerischen, sentimentalen Empfnglichkeit fr alle Symbole dunkler, mtterlicher, erhaltender Mchte
(Horkheimer, 3523). Mutter Natur mu gewhren, was den Mnnern
von den Frauen nicht gewhrt werden kann und nicht gewhrt werden
darf, sollen sie nicht als Hure gelten.
Nach diesem Mechanismus laufen die meisten heroischen
Leidensgeschichten der mnnlichen Protagonisten in der Blut-undBoden-Literatur ab. In den frhen Werken Ernst Wiecherts, der spter
fr seine Zurckweisung der Nazis ins KZ ging, entsprechen sich das
verqulte Verhltnis zu den Frauen und das Glck des einsamen
Jgers in Wald und Moor.9 Frauen werden in dem 1922 erschienenen
Roman Der Wald mit der Peitsche geschlagen, und das Glck des
Helden liegt auf dem Rcken der Erde:
An den Stamm der Tanne gelehnt, blickte Henner in den Regen hinaus. Die
Tropfen fielen in sein Haar und liefen an seinen Wangen hinunter. Der Atem
der Khle durchbebte ihn wie den jungen Baum im ersten Laube. Der Dampf
der Tler durchtrnkte ihn wie mit heiligem Weihrauch. Das Leben der Erde
drngte sich mit warmem Klopfen an sein Herz. Er legte die Kleider ab und
warf sich ins Moos. Seine Hnde streichelten liebkosend ber das feuchte Gras,
das sanft zwischen seinen Fingern hindurchglitt; sein Ohr drngte sich an die
8
9
201
Rinde des Baumes und lauschte auf den Herzschlag des fremden Lebens; seine
Glieder, vom Regen gebadet, schmiegten sich in das weichende Moos, das den
Leib der Erde verhllte. (Wiechert, Der Wald, 119)
hnlich wie Gustav Frenssen sprach Wiechert in seinem Lebensrckblick vom autobiographischen, egozentrischen10 Charakter seiner
frhen Bcher. Er nannte den Roman Der Wald ein krankes Buch,
eine gewaltsame Phantasie, die an die Stelle einer unglcklichen,
unbefriedigenden Wirklichkeit getreten sei, und meinte selbst, da
Psychologen und Psychoanalytiker [...] daraus eine Reihe mehr oder
weniger zuverlssiger Erkenntnisse gewinnen knnten.
Werdegang und schriftstellerische Entwicklung des Mecklenburgers
Friedrich Griese, eines der erfolgreichsten Vertreter der Blut-und-BodenLiteratur,11 knnen in vielem als typisch gelten. Wie auch Ernst
Wiechert berichtete Griese in einer Reihe autobiographischer Texte
von einer glcklichen Kindheit in Dorf und Wald, aber diese Jahre
waren sprbar berschattet von Spannungen im Elternhaus, mit einem
Vater, der zu alkoholischen Exzessen neigte und nchtelang ausblieb,
und mit einer Mutter, die still, aber fr die Kinder deutlich sprbar litt.
Der andeutungshafte Stil der Erinnerungen zeigt die Spannung
zwischen dem Willen zur Aufrichtigkeit und dem Verbot, Schlechtes
ber die Eltern zu sagen. Zweifel am idyllischen Familienglck htten
die Brchigkeit von Grieses Identittskonstruktion auch fr ihn selbst
unbersehbar werden lassen.
Wie Bauernromane nicht von Bauern geschrieben wurden,12 so
stammt Heimat- und Blubo-Literatur hufig von Autoren, die sich
nach Vergangenem als nach einem verlorenen Paradies, das nicht
einmal eines gewesen war, zurcksehnten. Wie Griese waren viele
solcher Autoren Shne des Dorfes, das sie eines Tages in Richtung
Stadt hatten verlassen mssen, um dort ihre Ausbildung, hufig zu
Lehrern,13 zu beginnen. Die Trivialitt ihrer Literatur ist nicht das
Ergebnis konomischer Erwgungen oder Unbildung, sondern
10
11
12
13
Wiechert, Jahre und Zeiten, 120. Die folgenden Zitate ebd., 202 u. 177. Vgl.
auch Wiechert, Wlder und Menschen, 2389 et passim.
Nheres zu Griese bei Busch, 3681.
Zu entsprechenden literatursoziologischen Aspekten vgl. z.B. Sengle,
Zimmermann, 60-66; Vondung, 4465.
Vgl. Vondung, 523; Weil, 378.
Stefan Busch
202
203
14
15
Vgl. Griese, Mein Leben, 336; Griese, Leben in dieser Zeit, 11112. Die Szene
wird in Ur einer Hauptfigur angedichtet.
Griese, Feuer, 401. Im folgenden im laufenden Text zitiert als F.
Stefan Busch
204
Oder ich bin auf den alten schwarzen Bock [...]. Ich krieche auf dem Bauche
durch scharfes Gras, durch gurgelndes Torfwasser, durch Schilf und Rohr; ich
schleiche mich hinter Busch und Baum an, versacke bis ber die Knie im
moorigen Grund, springe von Blten zu Blten, liege minutenlang auf dem
Bauche im Wasser und ruhe nicht eher, bis ich ihn habe. (F, 29)
Die Erde soll ihn heilen, indem sie seine gestauten Krfte und
Krpersfte in sich aufnimmt und ihn so vor den bedrohlichen
Verfhrerinnen bewahrt:
Ich lag auf dem Rcken, alles in mir bebte und flog, und ich lag doch still wie
ein gefllter Baum. Ein Saugen ging von der Erde in meinen Krper; sie versuchte, mir das schwrende Blut aus den Adern zu ziehen, um mich gesund zu
machen. (F, 145)
Mein Blut flo aus mir und flo mit dem Saft der Bume zusammen [...] und
ging wie ein Strom in die Nacht. Wie wohl ward mir. (F, 150)
Doch die Vereinigung gelingt nicht, und so endet, was als Liebe zur
groen Mutter Natur begann, in einer Vergewaltigung:
Jrgen Boye denkt auch wohl einmal an den Winterabend, an dem diese Sucht
nach der Erde bermchtig an ihm ri. Ihm war damals, als [...] msse er Blut
aus dem eigenen Leib stoen, um die harte Erde zu seinem Willen zu zwingen.
Und er htte auch verdammt, er htte! sein Blut in die Erde laufen lassen.
Und dort wre der erste Pfahl eingerammt worden. (Ur, 74)
Nicht nur kehrte die verbotene Lust am Krper als Liebe zu einer
Natur wieder, in der das Krperliche die symbolische Gestalt von
16
205
Stefan Busch
206
Es bleibt nicht bei der sprachlichen Gewaltsamkeit. Wo expressionistisches Pathos und Blubo-Kult sich in dem Wunsch nach
Verstrmen im Leib der groen Mutter trafen, war der metaphysisch
berhhte inzestuse Koitus nicht fern. Der drastischste Beleg findet
sich Hans Francks Drama Klaus Michel (1926). Der Held schneidet
sich auf dem Feld mit der Sense ins eigene Fleisch, doch er will die
Wunde keinesfalls versorgt wissen:
Nein! Nicht hemmen! In den Scho
der Sche mich wie vordem nie
verstrmen: in die Erde! Sie,
gleich Keiner keusch und ohne Scham,
schenkt tausendfltig, was sie nahm.
[...] Ich werde
lebendigen Leibes von der Erde
empfangen. Blut heit hier Samen.
Knie nieder! Bete! Amen ... Amen ...
(Franck, 310)
207
208
Stefan Busch
Differenz. Der Akt des Schreibens nmlich ist der Versuch der
Erfllung ungelebter und unlebbarer Wnsche, gleichzeitig trennen
sich in ihm die Autoren und ihre Geschpfe. Letztere sind durch ihre
Distanz von der Welt des Geistes charakterisiert, ihr tiefes Wissen
stammt aus den Quellen der Natur. Indem die Autoren ihre
Wunschbilder auf Papier entwarfen, schlossen sie sich selbst aus der
Welt des instinkthaften, einfachen Lebens aus. Das Medium, in dem
die Wnsche erfllt werden sollen, vereitelt diese. Erzhltechnisch
schlgt sich dies in einer formalen Schlichtheit nieder, die nicht aus
dem Streben nach Konsumierbarkeit entspringt, sondern den Versuch
darstellt, das Medium zum Verschwinden zu bringen.
Die organologischen Selbsterklrungen der Autoren und das
Ausbleiben eines Verstehensprozesses fhrten dazu, da das
Grundmodell ihrer Erzhlungen ber Jahrzehnte hinweg das gleiche
blieb. Der Blick auf die Rezeptionsseite zeigt, da die regressivindividuellen Blut-und-Boden-Romane fr ein breites Publikum erst
Attraktivitt gewannen, wenn das offen Pathologische zurcktrat und
auf ein akzeptables Ma reduziert wurde. Entsprechend fanden
Grieses Erstlinge Ur und Feuer beim Publikum nur geringen Anklang.
Wirklicher Erfolg stellte sich erst ein, als es dem Autor gelang,
Distanz zu gewinnen von der kaum verhllten Selbstaussprache im
Medium pathologischer Charaktere. Seine folgenden Romane und
Stcke durchzog eine panerotische Atmosphre, so etwa das Drama
Mensch, aus Erde gemacht, das 1933 in einer Inszenierung von Jrgen
Fehling und mit Heinrich George in der Hauptrolle auf die Bhne des
Berliner Schauspielhauses gelangte. Grieses grter Erfolg jedoch
wurde der Roman Winter (1927), fr den er einen Literaturpreis
erhielt. Darin ist die Sexualitt gleichsam objektiviert. Erzhltechnisch
und inhaltlich soll alles in dem Buch seinen natrlichen Gang gehen,
und auch die Sexualitt soll ganz im Einklang mit den Gesetzen der
Natur gelebt werden drfen. Wenn die Gutstochter den geliebten
Knecht nachts in ihr Zimmer lt, so rhrt der Naturbursche wie ein
Hirsch in der Brunftzeit, nur leiser:
Sie fhlte seinen Arm um ihren Leib. Aus seinem Munde kamen Laute, tief,
verhalten, fast unhrbar. Und ihr zuckte noch ein Erinnern daran durch den
209
Sinn, da sie an warmen Dmmermorgen vom Moor herber hnliche Tne gehrt hatte. (Griese, Winter, 27)
Doch der Lauf der Natur vertrgt sich weder mit den Gesetzen der
Agrarwirtschaft noch mit den Moralvorstellungen der Dorfbewohner.
Die Gutstochter mu mit dem Knecht fliehen, und ihre Schwester, die
nach einem Gang in die Felder schwanger wird, entzieht sich den
Repressionen durch den Tod im Moor. Der Widerspruch zwischen
einer vorgeblich freien Sexualitt auf der einen sowie einer christlich
geprgten repressiven und nicht zuletzt konomischer Vernunft
folgenden Sexualmoral auf der anderen Seite durchzieht smtliche
Bauernromane, so neuheidnisch sie sich zunchst auch geben mgen.
Der Schlu liegt nahe, da gerade diese Antagonismen die Romane
zur geeigneten Lektre fr das stdtische Lesepublikum machten. In
ihrer Widersprchlichkeit boten sie sowohl den ngsten wie auch den
unterdrckten Wnschen Anknpfungspunkte: Einerseits erfllten die
Geschichten von der Liebe auf dem Lande einen Wunschtraum im
Wunschraum, andererseits waren die Urzeit-Idyllen unterschwellig
von den kulturellen Repressionen der Gegenwart geprgt. Die Leser
konnten sich also fr die Zeit der Lektre dem Unbehagen in der
Kultur entziehen; gleichzeitig empfanden sie, da nicht etwas ganz
anderes, sondern die eigene Sache verhandelt wurde.
Dies gilt auch fr Ernst Wiecherts sptere Romane, von denen
der Autor schrieb, da ihnen eine Genesung vorausgegangen sei. Sein
erfolgreichstes Werk wurde Das einfache Leben (1939). Doch die
Grundkonstellation darin gleicht in vielem noch der in den frhen
Texten, nur da deren aggressiver Gestus einem rein defensiven
Modell, dem Abkehr des Protagonisten von der unverndert als
negativ gezeichneten Gesellschaft, gewichen ist. (Vgl. Delabar, 146
50.) Am Anfang von Das einfache Leben steht die Trennung des
Protagonisten von der Frau, die in der Stadt der Sucht der leeren Betriebsamkeit und den Drogen verfallen ist. Erst zum Sterben sucht
sie wieder ihren Mann auf, der sich auf eine Insel in einem
masurischen See zurckgezogen hat. Die Liebe zur Natur beseelt auch
diesen Helden, doch ist die angestrebte Vereinigung nicht mehr
krperlicher Art, sondern als ersehnte unio mystica ins Metaphysische
berhht. Gerade die Allgegenwart des Eros in einer dezenteren,
210
Stefan Busch
Zitierte Literatur
Benn, G. Smtliche Werke, Hg. G. Schuster, Bd. 1 (Stuttgart, Klett-Cotta, 1986).
Beste, K. Das heidnische Dorf (Mnchen, Langen-Mller, 1932).
Braun, F. X. Gustav Frenssen in Retrospect, Monatshefte fr deutschen Unterricht,
deutsche Sprache und Literatur, 39 (1947), 44962.
Busch, S. Und gestern, da hrte uns Deutschland. NS-Autoren in der
Bundesrepublik. Kontinuitt und Diskontinuitt bei Friedrich Griese, Werner
Beumelburg, Eberhard Wolfgang Mller und Kurt Ziesel (Wrzburg,
Knigshausen & Neumann, 1998).
Corni, G. Richard Walther Darr Der Blut-und-Boden-Ideologe, in Smelser, R.,
Zitelmann, R. (Hg) Die braune Elite I. 22 biographische Skizzen (Darmstadt,
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 31994), 1527.
Delabar, W. Unheilige Einfalt. Zu den Verhaltenskonzepten in den Romanen Ernst
Wiecherts, in Caemmerer, C., Delabar, W. (Hg) Dichtung im Dritten Reich?
Zur Literatur in Deutschland 19331945 (Opladen, Westdeutscher Verlag,
1996), 135150.
Eckel, W. Benns Entdeckung des Geistes, in H. Steinhagen (Hg.) Gedichte von
Gottfried Benn (Stuttgart, Reclam, 1997).
Franck, H. Klaus Michel. Dramatische Dichtung in fnf Akten (Leipzig, Haessel,
1926).
Frenssen, G. Lebensbericht (Berlin, Grotesche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1940).
Geyer-Ryan, H. Trivialliteratur im Dritten Reich. Beobachtungen zum Groschenroman, in Schnell, R. (Hg) Kunst und Kultur im deutschen Faschismus
(Stuttgart. Metzler, 1978), 21760.
Griese, F. Im Beektal singt es (Eisenach, Erich Rth Verlag, 1938)
Feuer (Wismar, Hinstorff, 1921).
Leben in dieser Zeit 18901968 (Flensburg, Wolff, 1970).
Mein Leben. Von der Kraft der Landschaft (Berlin, Juncker u. Dnnhaupt,
1934).
Ur. Eine deutsche Passion (Mnchen, Delphin, 1922).
Winter (Lbeck, Quitzow, 1928).
Horkheimer, M. Autoritt und Familie, in M. Horkheimer Kritische Theorie. Eine
Dokumentation, Hg. A. Schmidt. Bd. 1 (Frankfurt a.M., Fischer, 1968), 277
360.
Ketelsen, U.-K. Literatur und Drittes Reich (Vierow, SH-Verlag, 1994).
211
STEVE GILES
Introduction
One of the most striking aspects of Thomas Levins recent translation
of Kracauers Weimar essays is its inclusion of photographic material
from the 1920s and early 1930s which typifies the new photography
associated with the neue Sachlichkeit movement.1 Kracauers 1927
essay on photography, published in the Frankfurter Zeitung some four
months after Das Ornament der Masse,2 is accompanied in Levins
edition by a technologically and aesthetically self-reflexive Sasha
Stone photograph, which depicts photographers ostensibly photographing the photographer/viewer (Kracauer, The Mass Ornament,
46). Given Kracauers considerable interest in the mass and popular
visual culture of the Weimar Republic, especially cinema, the reader
of his photography essay might expect to encounter a complex and
subtle disquisition on the new photography comparable to his
previous analysis of the mass ornament.3 This expectation would be
confirmed by the opening paragraph of the photography essay, where
Kracauer not only dissects the image of a film star in a contemporary
1
2
214
Steve Giles
illustrated magazine but also compares her to a Tiller girl. But the
readers expectancy, so seductively aroused, is soon cruelly defeated.
Die Photographie does not present us with a systematic, dialectical
critique of the new photography and its functions in the culture of
distraction. This is particularly disappointing as Die Photographie is
Kracauers sole theoretical engagement with photography during the
Weimar years. Furthermore, Kracauer never reviews or comments on
any of the major publications associated with the new photography,
from Moholy-Nagys pioneering monograph of 1925 through to Franz
Rohs fototek volumes of 1930.4 Yet Kracauers response to the new
photography is disconcerting not only because it reminds us of
Sherlock Holmess dog that failed to bark; we might also wonder why
his analysis of the media image of a film star is framed by a bizarre
and seemingly misplaced quotation from Grimms Kinder- und
Hausmrchen about miraculous events in the land of Cockaigne. One
albeit enigmatic response to that query is suggested by Kracauers
review of Kafkas novel Das Schlo which, like its predecessor Der
Proze, Kracauer characterises as a stencil of a fairytale, die Matrize
eines Mrchens.5 A less esoteric and reprographic response will take
us into the realms of avant-garde aesthetics and recent photography
theory, as we attempt to explicate Kracauers idiosyncratic essay with
reference to its modernist discursive presuppositions. The discussion
that follows will first outline the state of play in photographic
aesthetics prior to the mid-1920s, before going on to analyse key
4
5
215
thematic constellations in Die Photographie. Finally, Die Photographie will be contextualised in terms of modernist aesthetics and
Marxist critiques of photographic representation.
216
Steve Giles
217
Kracauer on Photography
Memory
One way of approaching Kracauers photography essay is to introduce
some seemingly irrelevant quotations from Samuel Becketts essay on
Proust, written in 1931, and juxtapose them with a series of
quotations from Die Photographie, written in 1927:
The man with a good memory does not remember anything because he does not
forget anything. His memory is uniform, a creature of routine, at once a
condition and function of his impeccable habit, an instrument of reference
instead of an instrument of discovery. The paean of his memory: I remember as
well as I remember yesterday is also its epitaph, and gives the precise
expression of its value. He cannot remember yesterday any more than he can
9
10
218
Steve Giles
remember tomorrow. He can contemplate yesterday hung out to dry with the
wettest August bank holiday on record a little further down the clothes-line.
Because his memory is a clothes-line [...]. (Beckett, 2930)
The memory that is not memory, but the application of a concordance to the
Old Testament of the individual, he calls voluntary memory. This is the
uniform memory of intelligence; and it can be relied on to reproduce for our
gratified inspection those impressions of the past that were consciously and
intelligently formed []. It presents the past in monochrome []. Its action
has been compared by Proust to that of turning the leaves of an album of
photographs. (Beckett, 32)
Allusion has been made to his contempt for the literature that describes, for
the realists and naturalists worshipping the offal of experience, prostrate before
the epidermis and the swift epilepsy, and content to transcribe the surface, the
faade, behind which the Idea is prisoner. (Beckett, 789)
Das Gedchtnis bezieht weder die totale Raumerscheinung noch den totalen
zeitlichen Verlauf eines Tatbestandes ein. Im Vergleich mit der Photographie
sind seine Aufzeichnungen lckenhaft. [] Das Gedchtnis achtet der Daten
nicht, es berspringt die Jahre oder dehnt den zeitlichen Abstand. Die Auslese
der von ihm vereinten Zge mu dem Photographen willkrlich dnken.
(P, 856)
Umgekehrt wie die Photographie verhalten sich die Gedchtnisbilder, die sich
zu dem Monogramm des erinnerten Lebens vergrern. Die Photographie ist
der aus dem Monogramm herabgesunkene Bodensatz, und von Jahr zu Jahr
verringert sich ihr Zeichenwert. Der Wahrheitsgehalt des Originals bleibt in
seiner Geschichte zurck; die Photographie fat den Restbestand, den die
Geschichte abgeschieden hat. (P, 90)
Die Totalitt der Photographie ist als das Generalinventar der nicht weiter
reduzierbaren Natur aufzufassen, als der Sammelkatalog smtlicher im Raum
sich darbietenden Erscheinungen, insofern sie nicht von dem Monogramm des
Gegenstandes aus konstruiert sind, sondern aus einer natrlichen Perspektive
sich geben, die das Monogramm nicht trifft. Dem rumlichen Inventar
entspricht das zeitliche des Historismus. (P, 95)
Dem Bewutsein lge also ob, die Vorlufigkeit aller gegebenen Konfigurationen nachzuweisen, wenn gar nicht die Ahnung der richtigen Ordnung des
Naturbestandes zu erwecken. In den Werken Franz Kafkas entledigt sich das
freigesetzte Bewutsein dieser Verpflichtung; es zerschlgt die natrliche
Realitt und verstellt die Bruchstcke gegeneinander. (P, 97)
219
See Beckett, Proust, 314. Barnouw (29) notes that Die Photographie was
influenced by Proust without indicating how, and presumably bases her
comments on Mlders suggestion that Kracauers negative evaluation of
photography is based on Proust (Mlder, 745; Mlder-Bach, 3701). This
viewpoint seems to be influenced by Kracauers own discussion of Prousts
critique of photography in his Theory of Film (1417), written some 30 years
after Die Photographie. However, neither Barnouw nor Mlder relate the
aesthetic presuppositions implicit in Die Photographie to Prousts model of
memory.
220
Steve Giles
221
222
Steve Giles
223
Steve Giles
224
225
226
Steve Giles
that it wishes to tastefully disguise all traces of its technological nature (P,
88).
Thus far, Kracauers account of the photographic turn in
contemporary culture has been unremittingly negative, but given his
decided ambivalence towards that other key exemplar of contemporary
capitalist rationalisation, the mass ornament, it is not altogether
surprising that the final section of the photography essay should
suddenly change direction. He had already indicated that humanity has
reached a point of apocalyptic crisis, as History prepares to go for broke
and conjure up Die entscheidende Auseinandersetzung auf jedem
Gebiet (P, 96). Now he insinuates that even photography may be
redeemable in Artistic and Historical terms. He first reminds us that a
consciousness entrapped in nature is incapable of catching sight of its
own foundation the prerequisite for the emergence of liberated
consciousness. But he then produces the astonishing assertion that it is
the task of photography to display this as yet unexamined natural base:
astonishing because hitherto, photography had been seen as a mere
reflector of surface appearance, whereas now it is suddenly invested
with the power to make visible the as yet unseen. Kracauer justifies this
seemingly preposterous claim preposterous in terms of his
argumentation thus far, at any rate by drawing our attention to a more
spatially ambitious photographic genre:
Sie zeigt die Stdte in Flugbildern, holt die Krabben und Figuren von den
gotischen Kathedralen herunter; alle rumlichen Konfigurationen werden in
ungewohnten berschneidungen, die sie aus der menschlichen Nhe entfernen,
dem Hauptarchiv einverleibt. (P, 96)
This, surely, is the type of photography one associates with the avantgarde or experimental wing of neue Sachlichkeit, or even with
fotomontage after Dada. At the same time, though, photographic
representation is still informed by Kracauers broader sociocultural
agenda. This alternative mode of photography is preferred by Kracauer
because it supposedly enables us to see the world of objects in its
independence from human beings, and because it preserves images of
alienated nature. It is thanks to such images that, Kracauer believes,
human consciousness will be prompted to continue its confrontation
227
See, for example, Kracauer, Schicksalswende der Kunst and Georg von
Lukcs Romantheorie.
228
Steve Giles
229
16
17.
Reproduced in Grey, 242; as the facing page in Grey suggests, the only answer
to White on White is Alexander Rodchenkos Black on Black (Grey, 243). For a
particularly illuminating recent discussion of Suprematism and early Soviet art,
see Clark, 22597.
See Watney, 1546.
On the Futurist antecedents of Formalism, see Erlich, 4657. The Futurist roots
of Shklovskis Formalism are clearly indicated by the fact that the conception
of language deployed in Kunst als Verfahren is first developed in his Futurist
essay of 1914, The Resurrection of the Word, 417.
Steve Giles
230
nennt. Ziel der Kunst ist es, ein Empfinden des Gegenstandes zu vermitteln, als
Sehen, und nicht als Wiedererkennen; das Verfahren der Kunst ist das
Verfahren der Verfremdung der Dinge und das Verfahren der erschwerten
Form, ein Verfahren, das die Schwierigkeit und Lnge der Wahrnehmung
steigert []. (Sklovskij, 15)
Das Verfahren der Verfremdung bei L. Tolstoi besteht darin, da er einen
Gegenstand nicht mit seinem Namen nennt, sondern ihn so beschreibt, als
werde er zum ersten Mal gesehen []. (Sklovskij, 17)
Es kamen die Knstler der neuen Bewegung. []
Sie sahen nicht.
Sie schauten.
Sie photographierten nicht.
Sie hatten Gesichte. (Edschmid, 56)
So wird der ganze Raum des expressionistischen Knstlers Vision. Er sieht
nicht, er schaut. Er schildert nicht, er erlebt. Er gibt nicht wieder, er gestaltet.
Er nimmt nicht, er sucht. Nun gibt es nicht mehr die Kette der Tatsachen:
Fabriken, Huser, Krankheit, Huren, Geschrei und Hunger. Nun gibt es ihre
Vision.
Die Tatsachen haben Bedeutung nur so weit, als, durch sie
hindurchgreifend, die Hand des Knstlers nach dem fat, was hinter ihnen
steht. (Edschmid, 57)
231
18
232
Steve Giles
prozesses sich fgt, um so hermetischer diese als Schleier das Wesen verhllt.
Will der Roman seinem realistischen Erbe treu bleiben und sagen, wie es
wirklich ist, so mu er auf einen Realismus verzichten, der, indem er die
Fassade reproduziert, nur dieser bei ihrem Tuschungsgeschfte hilft.
(Adorno, 64)
233
19
234
Steve Giles
von ihr Erlebbare gibt, gibt sie selbst nicht wieder. Sie ist lngst nicht mehr im
Totalen erlebbar. [] Aber wir reden, so redend, von einer Kunst mit ganz
anderer Funktion im gesellschaftlichen Leben, nmlich der, Wirklichkeit zu
geben []. (Brecht, Der Dreigroschenproze, 469)
20
21
See, for example, this comment by Brecht from ca 1930: Die Fotografie ist die
Mglichkeit einer Wiedergabe, die den Zusammenhang wegschminkt. Der
Marxist Sternberg, in dessen Wertschtzung sie wohl mit mir bereinstimmen,
fhrt aus, da aus der (gewissenhaften) Fotografie einer Fordschen Fabrik
keinerlei Ansicht ber diese Fabrik gewonnen werden kann (Brecht, Durch
Fotografie keine Einsicht, Schriften 1, 4434).
See the following extracts from Sternberg, recording comments which he made in
conversations with Brecht in ca 19289: In der Zeit, als Shakespeare schrieb, []
hatten die Menschen einen bestimmten Standort in der Gesellschaft. [] Die
Gesellschaft war in ihrem soziologischen Charakter deutlich sichtbar. [] Man
konnte mit blossem Auge die soziologische Schichtung im wortwrtlichen Sinne
sehen und brauchte sie nicht erst vorher durch den Verstand zu analysieren. []
Heute, in der modernen Industriegesellschaft, kann man die verschiedenen
sozialen Schichten nicht einfach mit den Augen sehen. Gehen Sie einmal in
eine Fabrik, sehen sie, was die Unternehmer, was die Direktoren, was die
Angestellten, was die Arbeiter tun. Wenn Sie all dies gesehen haben, wissen Sie
gar nichts (1415).
235
22
23
For further discussion, see Giles, Bertolt Brecht and Critical Theory, 1757.
See Brecht, Der Dreigroschenproze, 460; Giles, Bertolt Brecht and Critical
Theory, 74.
236
Steve Giles
nur der Blick auf das Reich gelenkt, sondern, indem er das Reich so deutlich als
Privateigentum behandelt, wirft er einiges Licht auf die Grundlage der feudalen
Familienideologie. (Brecht, Kurze Beschreibung einer neuen Technik der
Schauspielkunst, 653)
24
25
In some quarters this essay is best known for its Brechtian critique (deriving
directly from Der Dreigroschenproze) of the photography of neue Sachlichkeit
(Kleine Geschichte der Photographie, 3834), a critique which also plays a
crucial role in Benjamins theory of the avant-garde in Der Autor als
Produzent (11011). For further discussion of Benjamins indebtedness to
Brecht in this regard, see Giles, Bertolt Brecht and Critical Theory, 1336.
See Benjamin, Kleine Geschichte der Photographie, 3823.
237
and early 1930s consider to be the way forward for a socially critical,
avant-garde aesthetic practice, whose prime exemplar is film.26 It is
far from self-evident, however, that simply adopting filmic modes of
representation can resolve the theoretical dilemmas that confronted
Brecht and Kracauer in particular, and the following crucial questions
remain open. How can the relative merits of two ostensibly
incompatible aesthetic strategies making visible and making strange
be combined in such a way as to take full account of the modernist/
Expressionist critique of nave realism as manifested in Naturalistic
representation, without losing sight of the need to make social realities
perceptible in a way that avoids the pitfalls of Expressionist abstraction
and transcendence? If social realities are to be made perceptible for a
mass audience, how can the new media of photography and film be
harnessed to that project or must they simply be dismissed as
irredeemably mystificatory or ideological? Is there, ultimately, a third way
between Adornos elitist but melancholic modernism and Lukcss fetish
for a pre-modernist realism?
Works Cited
Adorno, T.W. Standort des Erzhlers im zeitgenssischen Roman, in Adorno, T. W.
Noten zur Literatur, I (Frankfurt aM, Suhrkamp, 1971), 6171.
Barnouw, D. Critical Realism. History, Photography, and the Work of Siegfried
Kracauer (Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994).
Beckett, S. Proust, in Beckett, S. Proust. Three Dialogues with Georges Duthuit
(London, Calder and Boyars, 1965), 993.
Benjamin, W. Kleine Geschichte der Photographie, in Benjamin, W. Gesammelte
Schriften, Hg. R. Tiedemann, H. Schweppenhuser (Frankfurt aM, Suhrkamp,
1989-), II 1, 36885.
Der Autor als Produzent, in Benjamin, W. Versuche ber Brecht, Hg. R.
Tiedemann (Frankfurt aM, Suhrkamp, 1978), 10119.
Biermann, A. Sechzig Fotos, Fototek Band. 2, Hg. F. Roh (Berlin, 1930).
26
For further discussion of these issues in relation to Brecht and Benjamin, see
Giles, Bertolt Brecht and Critical Theory, 14058. On complex seeing see
Brecht, Anmerkungen zur Dreigroschenoper, 59.
238
Steve Giles
Bowlt, J.E. (ed) Russian Art of the Avant-Garde. Theory and Criticism (London,
Thames and Hudson, 1991).
Brecht, B. Werke. Groe kommentierte Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe, Hg. W.
Hecht, J. Knopf, W. Mittenzwei, K-D. Mller (Berlin, Aufbau; Frankfurt aM,
Stuttgart, 1988).
Der Dreigroschenproze. Ein soziologisches Experiment, in Brecht, Werke,
Schriften 1. Schriften 19141933, Band 21, 448514.
Anmerkungen zur Dreigroschenoper, in Brecht, Werke, Schriften 4. Texte zu
Stcken, Band 24, 5768.
Durch Fotografie keine Einsicht, in Brecht, Werke, Schriften 1. Schriften 1914
1933, Band 21, 4434.
Kurze Beschreibung einer neuen Technik der Schauspielkunst, die einen
Verfremdungseffekt hervorbringt, in Brecht, Werke, Schriften 2. Schriften
193342, Band 22, 64159.
Brger, P. Theorie der Avantgarde (Frankfurt aM, Suhrkamp, 1982).
Burgin, V. (ed) Thinking Photography (London, Macmillan, 1982).
Introduction, in Burgin (ed), Thinking Photography, 114.
Photographic Practice and Art Theory, in Burgin (ed), Thinking Photography,
3983.
Photography, Phantasy, Function, in Burgin (ed), Thinking Photography, 177
216.
Clark, T. J. Farewell to an Idea. Episodes from a History of Modernism (Yale University Press, 1999).
Eco, U. Critique of the Image, in Burgin (ed), Thinking Photography, 328.
Edschmid, K. ber den dichterischen Expressionismus, in Best, O.F. (Hg), Theorie
des Expressionismus (Stuttgart, Reclam, 1976), 5567.
Erlich, V. Russischer Formalismus (Frankfurt aM, Suhrkamp, 1973).
Frisby, D. Fragments of Modernity. Theories of Modernity in the Work of Simmel,
Kracauer and Benjamin (Cambridge, Polity, 1985).
Giles, S. Bertolt Brecht and Critical Theory. Marxism, Modernity and the
Threepenny Lawsuit (Bern, Peter Lang, 1998).
Cracking the Cultural Code. Methodological Reflections on Kracauers The
Mass Ornament, Radical Philosophy, 99 (2000), 319.
Grey, C. The Russian Experiment in Art 18631922 (London, Thames and Hudson,
1990).
Hansen, M. Decentric Perspectives: Kracauers Early Writings on Film and Mass
Culture, New German Critique, 54 (1991), 4776.
Holz, A. Die Kunst. Ihr Wesen und ihre Gesetze, in Meyer, T. (Hg), Theorie des
Naturalismus (Stuttgart, Reclam, 1974), 16874.
Kracauer, S. Schriften 5.1. Aufstze (19151926), Hg. I. Mlder-Bach (Frankfurt aM,
Suhrkamp, 1990).
Schriften 5.2. Aufstze (19271931), Hg. I. Mlder-Bach (Frankfurt aM,
Suhrkamp, 1990).
Kracauer, S. Das Ornament der Masse, in Kracauer, Schriften 5.2, 5767.
239
JEROME CARROLL
242
Jerome Carroll
243
244
Jerome Carroll
245
everything; aestheticisation [schlgt] in eine gigantische Ansthetisierung um (Welsch, sthetisches Denken, 13), or sthetisierung
[] erfolgt als Ansthetisierung (Welsch, sthetisches Denken, 14).
The excess or overload of aesthetic-sensory experience has the double
effect of a narcotic, which dulls our senses as it stimulates them. As
Welsch remarks, Je mehr sthetik desto mehr Ansthetik (Welsch,
sthetisches Denken, 16). At a significantly different categorical level,
for Welsch, any perception de facto demands non-perception: Das
bedeutet freilich, da dem Wahrnehmen selbst eine Art Ansthetik
eingeschrieben ist. [] Und diese interne Ansthetik ist eine
notwendige Bedingung der externen Effizienz des Wahrnehmens
(Welsch, sthetisches Denken, 34). This motivates Welschs
observation Kein aisthesis ohne anaisthesis (Welsch, sthetisches
Denken, 32). Of course, this idea of more or less complex
preconditions to perception and cognition is not new. The same idea is
at the heart of the dictum attributed to Spinoza; omnis determinatio
est negatio, as well as Friedrich Schlegels Lcke im Dasein, die
selbst unsichtbar dem Sichtbaren seine Bestimmtheit widerfahren
lasse (both in Frank, 47). It also inhabits Hans Georg Gadamers
rehabilitation of the idea of Vorurteil and his related critique of the
idea of interesseloses Anschauen at the heart of Kants Lehre von
der reinen Wahrnehmung (Gadamer, 273, 96).
For Welsch, this mechanism of exclusion by which we perceive
at all also has a cultural version, in which cultural norms, kulturelle
Grundbilder (Welsch, sthetisches Denken, 34), inform our understanding of reality. Examples given by Welsch of this cultural
anaesthetic are the idealised images of man and woman. Of course,
these more complex, inhaltlich aufgeladene (Welsch, sthetisches
Denken, 34) ideals do not belong to the same category of sine qua non
precondition as the non-perception discussed above. Rather they seem
to mark the point at which Welschs theorisation moves from basic
perception to more complex issues of ideology. In what follows I will
argue that this complexity contradicts Welschs revision of the terms
of the aesthetic as sensory, and comes back to haunt Welschs ideas
on art-anaesthetics.
The anaesthetic refers not only to the latent preconditions of
cognitive and cultural perception, but also to those situations in which
sensory perception is specifically arrested. There seem to be two
246
Jerome Carroll
aspects to this. Firstly, there simply are aspects of reality which are
beyond our naked perception, such as Welschs example of cancerinducing radiation (Welsch, sthetisches Denken, 18). Writing in the
1960s, Robert Martin Adams identifies a similar preoccupation with
the imperceptible: Experiments which have captured the imagination
of the time deal with weightlessness, silence, interruption of the sensecontinuum (Adams, 3). It is with these phenomena in mind that
Welsch dismisses our sensory faculties as Agenten des Falschen
(Welsch, sthetisches Denken, 19). The second aspect of the
anaesthetic as imperceptible is the conscious strategy of problematising the possibility of perception in art.
As noted at the beginning, this idea of the anaesthetic in art as
intentional resistance is distinct from the ideas of the anaesthetic as
non-perception which is necessary for cognition and involuntary
shutting off of perception. It may be contextualised by Welschs
conception of two directions in art. On the one hand, there is the
idealistische und romantische Tradition which privileges the
sthetischwerden as Vollendung des Menschen und der Gesellschaft (Welsch, sthetisches Denken, 20). This locates increasingly
aestheticised reality, in the sense of both beautification and sensory
overload, in what Welsch characterizes as a moderner Programm
sthetischer Akkumulation (Welsch, sthetisches Denken, 38) and a
moderne Utopie einer total-sthetischen Kultur (Welsch,
sthetisches Denken, 38). On the other hand, art in twentieth century
has been characterized by a suspicion of the aesthetic, and has so
aimed to defy and cut through this accumulation of the aesthetic:
Am Ende ist eine ansthetische Grundhaltung gegen all die schnen und
etablierten Angebote des sthetischen die Methode der Wahl zur Aufdeckung
der Ansthetik alles sthetischen. Deshalb hat die Kunst dieses Jahrhunderts,
der das sthetische als solches suspekt geworden war und die den sthetischen
Gewohnheiten den alltglichen der Sinne wie den durch Kunsttradition
eingebten mitraute, radikale Schnitte gesetzt. (Welsch, sthetisches
Denken, 37)
247
modes of the anaesthetic. Characterizing the contemporary accumulation of the aesthetic as sensory excess allows Welsch to
conceive of arts oppositional force in terms of an arrest of sensory
perception:
[Knstler] haben unsichtbare Objekte geschaffen, Werke der Unbemchtigbarkeit. Ich denke etwa an Walter de Marias Vertikalen Erdkilometer ein
exemplarisches Werk des Entzugs; oder an Werke der Minimal art an diese
Maxima von Ansthetik bei minimalem sthetischen Aufwand. (Welsch,
sthetisches Denken, 40)
248
Jerome Carroll
rendition of Cages even more extreme Organ 2/ASLSP, a 639-yearlong piece of music for the organ with spans of months and years
between chords, was begun in September 2001 in Halberstadt,
Germany, with the first note only to be heard after 18 months
(Connolly). A more recent silent piece is Ellipsis, by Matt
Rogalsky, in which he has collected the silences removed from radio
after new technology was introduced to strip out the silences between
presenters words, compacting talk time and leaving more space for ad
breaks (Poole). Reminiscent of Heinrich Blls Dr. Murke, the
common ground between this conception of silence as a refuge from
auditory excess and Welschs formulations on the anaesthetic is
apparent.
Secondly, the references to etablierte Angebote des sthetischen (Welsch, sthetisches Denken, 37) and the processes of
Aufdeckung der Ansthetik alles sthetischen (Welsch, sthetisches
Denken, 37) indicate that Welsch is not just talking about an absence
of perception here, nor the surface effects of the sensory. Rather there
is a slippage to an understanding of the aesthetic as being somehow
latent and established. It is this latent cultural accumulation, which
coincides with what I have labelled the cultural anaesthetic above, that
certain examples of twentieth century art are understood to expose or
break open: Am ehesten wohl ber Bilderfahrung und Bildarbeit, die
sich daran macht, diese vorgngigen Prgungen zu exponieren und
ihre Ansthetik zu durchbrechen (Welsch, sthetisches Denken, 35).
I have designated this concept of art the cognitive anaesthetic in view
of its capacity for exposing the hitherto unnoticed and uncognised
elements of perception. In this respect it is notable that John Cage,
whose 4'33" I have mentioned above as an instance of the sublime
anaesthetic, is not interested in silence per se, but precisely the
impossibility of silence; try as we may to make a silence, we cannot
(Cage, 8). Silence is always broken by ambient noise, such as a heart
beat or a cough, on which our attention is focussed (Cage, 223).2
Thus the defamiliarising effect of silence is apparent, as Cage says,
2
249
250
Jerome Carroll
251
occurring in processes of aestheticisation, for example commodification or the fetishization associated with Baudrillards concept
of sign value (Baudrillard, 77). If aestheticisation is what Mike
Featherstone refers to as an intensification of image production
(Featherstone, 65), as Welschs idea of a mediale Bildwelt (Welsch,
sthetisches Denken, 15) suggests, surely this image production is not
reducible to mere image, but must be conceived in more complex
terms of what is being represented and how. For example,
aestheticisation might be seen as manifest in what has in the last few
years been classified as lookism, namely hiring or promoting
someone on the basis of how they look (and the proximity of their
appearance to a preferred ideal), rather than because of their skills. But
art is only in a position to attack this activity if it can expose the
operation of such prejudice.
Of course, Welschs implication is that the silent or invisible
offers a space free from ideological imposition, a moment which
defies consumption. But the slippage from aesthetic questions (those
concerning perception) to epistemological questions (those concerning
truth and fictionality) brings with it its own ideological investment.
Specifically, I would argue that the value-system inherent in Welschs
sublime anaesthetic borrows from the ideology of early German
Romantic aesthetic theory. For the early Romantics, notably Novalis
and Schlegel, ultimate truth is essentially dynamic, its validity
predicated on its indeterminate and unfixable nature.3 I have already
cited Schlegels idea of the Lcke im Dasein which is selbst
unsichtbar, which might indicate that inexplicable and unconditioned
basis of being that F. H. Jacobi had called Grund (as distinct from
the explanatory Ursache).4 The role of art in Romantic theory was
precisely to intimate this unfixable truth or grund: the idea of a simple
correspondence between art and everyday reality is precisely what the
early Romantic notion of truth in art was militating against. This
refusal to (re)present seems also to be at the heart of much art that
could be classified as anaesthetic. In the case of John Cages music,
for example, ambient noise is valorised for its spontaneous and
3
4
252
Jerome Carroll
253
254
Jerome Carroll
Cf. John Cages enigmatic comment: I have nothing to say and I am saying it
and that is poetry (Kostelanetz, John Cage, 1).
Of course, this attempt to relinquish the responsibility of representation gets
caught in a Catch22 situation, insofar as it appears as a meditation on
conventions of representation, a shadow of the order of representation which
abstract art cannot shake off. As Clarke remarks, paintings like Malevichs
suprematist pieces do not signify absolute blankness or emptiness [] they
really are paintings! (Clarke, 268).
255
complexity into this version of the anaesthetic, which I have called the
cognitive anaesthetic, anathematizing the idea of the sublime
anaesthetic as somehow sheerly imperceptible. As such, the cognitive
anaesthetic works in the opposite direction to the sublime anaesthetic.
Whereas in the sublime anaesthetic the anaesthetic is seen as the solution,
art which exposes latent preconditions conceives the anaesthetic as the
problem to be addressed. Similarly, whereas the sublime anaesthetic
suggests a mystifying function for art, by which I mean the function of
obstructing the cognitive processes of perception, the cognitive
anaesthetic suggests a demystifying function, whereby art exposes and
thematises the usually non-thematised elements of perception. That
said, this opposition could be more apparent than real: the obstruction
of perception could conceivably serve as a means to exposing the
latent and unseen. This is certainly how John Cage intends his silent
pieces to function, with silence bringing to the fore the normally
unheard ever present sounds that accompany life. But this raises the
question of precisely what phenomena such art aims to expose. In
spite of some references to art as Machtinszenierung and to feminist
art as an intervention in our psychosozialen Bilderhaushalt (Welsch,
sthetisches Denken, 36), the main object of Welschs breaking open
of cognitive patterns seems to be norms of artistic representation.
Clearly this is at some remove from the everyday effects of
aestheticisation, thereby forgoing an analysis of the unthematised
cultural or ideological assumptions and norms, beyond mere questions
of perception, that I have suggested underlie these phenomena. In
view of this it is particularly problematic that Welschs sublime
anaesthetic suggests a claim to truth without any concept of making
visible. Indeed, aside from the problem of art as distraction from real
possibilities for social change, the pragmatic sublime indicates that it
intends quite the opposite of making visible, namely preparation for
the invisible.
The question arises as to what is lost by annexing anaesthetics to
an aesthetics of defamiliarisation. The cognitive anaesthetic is after all
not conceived specifically with the problem of aestheticisation as
sensory excess in mind. But my point above is that the sublime
anaesthetic, as a meditation on issues of truth and representation, does
not convincingly do this either. The benefit of the cognitive
anaesthetic is that it might allow for a more ideologically capable
256
Jerome Carroll
Works Cited
Adams, R. M. Nil: Episodes in the Literary Conquest of Void during the Nineteenth
Century (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1966).
Baudrillard, J. The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures (London, Sage
Publications, 1998).
Bowie, A. From Romanticism to Critical Theorie: The Philosophy of German
Literary Theory (London, Routledge, 1997).
Brger, P. Theorie der Avantgarde (Frankfurt aM, Suhrkamp, 1974).
Cage, J. Silence: Lectures and Writings by John Cage (Middletown, Connecticut,
Wesleyan University Press, 1961).
Clarke, T. J. Farewell to an Idea: Episodes from a History of Modernism (New
Haven, Yale University Press, 2000).
Connolly, K. 639-year organ piece gets off to quiet start, The Guardian, 5 Sep 2001.
Featherstone, M. Consumer Culture and Postmodernism (London, Sage Publications,
1991).
Frank, M. Das Sagbare und das Unsagbare (Frankfurt aM, Suhrkamp, 1989).
Gadamer, H. G. Wahrheit und Methode: Grundzge einer philosophischen
Hermeneutik (Tbingen, J.C.B. Mohr, 1990).
Innes, C. Avant Garde Theatre 18921992 (London, Routledge, 1993).
Kerr, D. H. Aesthetic Policy, Journal of Aesthetic Education, 2.1, (1978), 522.
Kostelanetz, R. (ed) John Cage (London, Allen Lane, 1971).
(ed) Conversing with Cage (New York, Limelight Editions, 1988).
Leach, N. The Anaesthetics of Architecture (Cambridge MA, MIT Press, 1999).
Marcuse, H. Kultur und Gesellschaft I (Frankfurt aM, Suhrkamp, 1965).
Poole, S. Prick up your ears, The Guardian, 17 Nov. 2001. Review Section, 9.
Revill, D. The Roaring Silence John Cage: A Life (London, Bloomsbury, 1992).
Sassatelli, M. Aestheticised Life, An-aestheticised Art: The Case of Visual Artist
Mona Hatoumi, Arti Visive, Jun. 2000, 13 Feb 2001, http://www.unibo.it/
parol/files/sassatelli.htm.
Sircello, G. Towards a Critique of Contemporary Anaesthetics Philosophical
Exchange, 212 (1991), 3952.
Solomon, L. J. The Sounds of Silence: John Cage and 4'33" , Solomons Music
Theory & Composition Resources, 1998, 2 May 2001,
http://www.azstarnet.com/~solo/4min33se.htm.
257
Steegmuller, F. (ed and trans.) The Selected Letters of Gustav Flaubert (London,
Hamish Hamilton, 1954).
Strau, B. Der Aufstand gegen die sekundre Welt: Bemerkungen zu einer sthetik
der Anwesenheit (Mnchen, Carl Hanser Verlag, 1999).
Welsch, W. sthetisches Denken (Stuttgart, Reclam, 1990).
Grenzgnge der sthetik (Stuttgart, Reclam, 1996).
Vorwort. Welsch, W. and Pries, C. (Hg) sthetik im Widerstreit: Interventionen
zum Werk von Jean-Franois Lyotard. (Berlin, Akademie Verlag, 1991).
CARMEL FINNAN
260
Carmel Finnan
Hohl, 10. Hohl also termed this characteristic Swiss response to internal discord
eingebte Harmonisierung.
See in this context, Gros, Zeugin, Radeff, 28.
261
1980s, providing its youth with the benefits of a stable and prosperous
economy. Its youth, however, claimed that affluent Switzerland was
becoming an increasingly inflexible, consumer-oriented society, run
by the combined power of capitalism and state authority, both of
which increasingly controlled every aspect of life.3 Consequently, the
youth of Switzerland felt very much part of the no future generation
of their European contemporaries, a slogan popularised by the Punk
scene to encapsulate the desperation and cynicism of the younger
generation in the 1980s. In the case of the young people of
Switzerland, their future was blocked by the intransigence, alienating
power structures of a Packeis mentality that defined every aspect of
their lives. As many dissident voices claimed and numerous surveys
documented, many traditional features of modern Switzerland, such as
its high standard of living and low crime rate, actually hid very real
dissatisfaction and frustration beneath an idyllic veneer. The changing
behavioural patterns among young people clearly indicated their
growing discontent, e.g. low turnout at the polls, high rate of suicide,
high level of alcohol and cigarette consumption and the steady
increase in various forms of unconventional protests since the 1970s.
In fact, a survey carried out during the mid-1970s clearly
demonstrates that the level of protest potential among Swiss youth
was in fact well on a par with its European contemporaries.4 It would
seem that Fritz Zorns words before dying of cancer were about to be
transformed into action by the discontented youth of Switzerland in
the early 1980s: [I]ch habe noch nicht verloren, und, was das
Wichtigste ist, ich habe noch nicht kapituliert. Ich erklre mich als im
Zustand des totalen Krieges (Zorn, 225).
Similar to other youth movements across Europe in the early
1980s, Switzerlands youth directed their protests as much against the
dominant national culture as against the counter-culture movements of
3
262
Carmel Finnan
263
from late teens to mid twenties.5 Their protests focused mainly on the
growing accommodation crisis in the main cities, caused primarily by
increasing property speculation. For example, in Zrich the alternative
socio-cultural scene, which had settled in the inner urban districts
during the 1970s, was quickly being replaced by the expanding inner
city business and financial district. The smouldering anger of many
groups was finally transformed into direct confrontational action by
the continued preferential financial assistance afforded by the city of
Zrich to high art at the expense of various alternative cultural
projects.
See Kriese (21217) for an overview of those who joined the movement.
For an overview of the struggle for an autonomous youth centre in Switzerland
since 1968 see Radeff, Gros, Zengin, 30.
264
Carmel Finnan
For a breakdown on how the city of Zrich distributed its cultural grants to
various organisations in the city, see Hnny, 478.
265
In the July issue of its own broadsheet Subito Nr Eins one of the movements
members summarises the symbolic importance the existence of the centre
represents: Mit dem inneren Freiraum meine ich das Gefhl, zu leben
berechtigt zu sein und all meine verschrobenen Ansichten und komischen
Gefhlen [] Ich kann wieder an mich glauben und mich selbst gern haben.
Nieder mit dem Packeis, die Isolation ist gebrochen. Der ussere Freiraum ist
fr mich das AJZ. Euses Hsli ist mir ebenso wichtig wie der eben genannte
innere Freiraum [] Zukunftsaussichten und Hoffnungen habe ich in Bezug
auf diesen Raum. Dass er wachsen mge. Quoted in Kriese, 41.
See Zri brnnt.
266
Carmel Finnan
events, particularly the use of teargas and rubber bullets by the police
to deter demonstrations. The hard-line views of the city authorities
were to be represented by the chief of police and Zrichs town
councillor, a more moderate view by the president of Zrichs Labour
Party, and the young couple Anna and Hans Mller would represent
the views of the movement. However, the Mllers did not provide
the expected balance to the discussion. Dressed in an exaggerated
conventional middle-class manner, they not only caricatured the dress
code of the opposition and those they represented, they also stole their
arguments by taking an extremely right-wing stance. For example,
they criticised the restraint shown by the police, demanding they
replace relatively safe teargas with lethal napalm gas and use bigger
and more destructive rubber bullets instead of the harmless ones they
had been using. The tactic worked at least on that evening. By
parodying the arguments of their critics, the Mllers turned a public
relations exercise in Swiss democracy into an entertaining TV-cabaret.
However, such a blatant undermining of Swiss democracy and the
trite exposure of middle-class social values as essentially fascist did
not amuse the Swiss public or the authorities. In the following weeks
the demands from conservative quarters to close the centre gathered
momentum, and eventually the city council willingly yielded to this
pressure. In the early hours of 4 September 1980 the police raided the
centre, claiming it was a haven for drug dealers and criminals. In fact
they found hardly any incriminating evidence in the raid and later had
to admit this.
The following months were marked by the demands of the
movement for the reopening of the centre and further violent clashes
with the police and the resulting damage to business properties in the
city centre. Once again the violent aspect of the movement achieved
the kind of attention and results that prolonged discussion in the past
had failed to do. Suddenly the worlds media focused their attention
on Zrich.10 The ensuing international debates on the grievances of the
movement questioned the prevalent image of Switzerland as a
peaceful, democratic country. Within Switzerland, media coverage of
the events fell victim to repressive censorship measures. The
10
267
Their own magazine Eisbrecher had sold 20,000 copies by its tenth and final
issue. It was replaced by a series of magazines until June 1991, including
Brchise, Damikaze, Hurrarie. See Kriese, 845.
For his detailed analysis of the demise of the centre, see Kriese, 12135.
268
Carmel Finnan
269
270
Carmel Finnan
271
can say in hindsight, the beginning of the end of the perceived image
of Switzerland as an innocent democracy.
Despite the closure of the centre and the end of the movement,
the events surrounding its existence and its closure have left a lasting
impact on political and cultural issues in Switzerland. Numerous
attempts to establish an Autonomous Youth Centre in other cities in
Switzerland followed during the 1980s. The sudden and violent
eruption of youth issues on the streets of Switzerlands cities forced a
political change of tactic. At cantonal level the Commission for Youth
Issues set about examining the problems at the heart of the
disturbances in Zrich immediately. Since then youth issues are at
least taken seriously in the public political forum. Culturally, most
cities, cantons and businesses have come to realise the importance of
providing some form of resources for alternative cultural events,
ranging from financial assistance to infrastructure. The Rote Fabrik is
today a successful, well-resourced centre in Zrich. The changes in
political tactics and cultural politics were very much in evidence
during the disturbances surrounding the Autonomous Centre set up in
Wohlgroth in 1993. One of the primary reasons why there was no
escalation of violence comparable to that in 1980 was the willingness
of the authorities from the onset to engage in serious dialogue with
representatives of the centre as well as the existence of established
projects to support alternative cultural events.13 The appalling failure
by the Swiss authorities to control the hard drug problem in Zrich,
partly created by the repressive policies it used against alternative
culture, has also been recognised. In a referendum on 12 June 1999
Switzerland voted to introduce one of the most progressive herointreatment policies in Europe.14 One of the more fundamental changes
inaugurated by Zrichs youth movement of the early 1980s, and one
that has had lasting consequences for Switzerlands image inter13
14
272
Carmel Finnan
Bibliography
Bichsel, P. Das Ende der Schweizer Unschuld, in Gruppe Olten (Hg), Die Zrcher
Unruhe 2. Analyse, Reportagen, Berichte, (Zrich, Orte-Verlag, 1983).
Gros, D., Zeugin, P., and Radeff, F. Jugendliche in der Schweiz. Wertvorstellungen
und Verhaltensweisen (Zrich, Pro Helvetia, 1991).
Hnny, R. Zrich, Anfang September (Frankfurt/aM., Suhrkamp, 1981).
Hohl, L. Die Notizen, oder von der Unvoreiligen Vershnung 19441954 (Frankfurt/aM.,
Suhrkamp, 1981).
Kriese, H. Die Zrcher Bewegung. Bilder, Interaktionen, Zusammenhnge (Frankfurt/aM.,
Campus 1984).
Lenzburg, S. (Hg) A Walk on the Wild Side. Jugendszenen der Schweiz von den 30er
Jahren bis heute (Zrich, Chronos, 1997).
Nizon, P. Diskurs in der Enge. Aufstze zur Schweizer Kunst (Bern, Kandelaber, 1970)
Zorn, F. Mars (Mnchen, Kindler 1977).
Zri brnnt. Das Buch zum Film (Zrich, Video Laden, 1981).
MATTHIAS UECKER
274
Matthias Uecker
275
276
Matthias Uecker
277
278
Matthias Uecker
279
280
Matthias Uecker
Der erste offiziell unter dem Namen rororo aktuell firmierende Band erschien
im Februar 1962 (Tempel). In den Buchanzeigen am Ende dieses Bandes
werden die frher publizierten Sammlungen von Walser und Richter dann
ebenfalls der neuen Reihe zugeordnet; dort finden sich auch die Angaben zur
Auflagenhhe beider Bnde.
281
282
Matthias Uecker
Das Mittel des Offenen Briefes setzten kurz darauf auch Hans Werner
Richter in einem Appell an den sowjetischen Parteichef Chrustschow
und erstmals in dieser Form die Autoren der Gruppe 47 in einem
Brief an den UN-Generalsekretr ein, um die Weltffentlichkeit auf
die Berliner Vorgnge aufmerksam zu machen und Lsungen fr die
verfahrene Situation anzuregen.
Neben den wenig berraschenden Rechtfertigungen des Mauerbaus, mit denen eine Reihe der namentlich angesprochenen DDRAutoren auf den Brief von Grass und Schnurre antwortete,
provozierten die Briefe ein kontroverses, aber vorwiegend negatives
Echo in der westdeutschen Presse, wo man ihnen einerseits Naivitt
(Karsch, 105), Weltfremdheit (Jauch, 143) und Vorlautheit
(Sskind, 104), andererseits aber auch mangelndes moralisches
Engagement vorwarf (Ramseger, 1278). Dabei wird rasch deutlich,
da die Kritik nicht allein auf die Reaktionen auf den Mauerbau zielt,
sondern die grundstzliche politische Haltung der Nonkonformisten
meint. Emprte Zurckweisung ernten Grass und Schnurre vor allem
dafr, da sie den von den ostdeutschen Autoren geforderten Protest
vergleichen mit ihrer eigenen ffentlichen Kritik an der westdeutschen
Gesellschaft. Diese Parallelisierung zeige ebenso wie viele Beitrge
des Bandes Die Alternative, da die engagierten Autoren von der
Realitt keine Ahnung htten und von Zerrbildern und Illusionen
zehrten (Siedler, 112 u. 114). Whrend die Intellektuellen sich auf
franzsische und amerikanische Vorbilder berufen, hlt man ihnen in
der FAZ entgegen:
Sie machen sich mit ihren unbedarften Versuchen, die Weltachse zu schmieren,
innerhalb und auerhalb der deutschen Grenzen lcherlich. Etwas anderes wre
es, wenn der eine oder andere von ihnen bei Gelegenheit wieder einmal ein
schnes Buch schriebe. (Maetzke, 128)
283
Schriftsteller haben ihr dieses Verhalten leicht gemacht. [...] Wir sehen bei
ihnen unsere Republik nicht mit den Augen der Kritik, sondern mit denen des
Hasses betrachtet. (Rhle, 1701)
284
Matthias Uecker
285
286
Matthias Uecker
287
Haben solche Passagen ebenso wie die Berufung auf Traditionen und
anerkannte Vorbilder whrend des Wahlkampfs die Funktion, die
Interventionen eines Schriftstellers zu legitimieren, so dominiert im
Rckblick auf die erneut verlorenen Wahlen der Vorwurf an die
Berufskollegen und Feuilleton-Ritter (Grass, ber das Selbstverstndliche, 76), da sie seinem Vorbild nicht gefolgt seien, sondern es
sich weiterhin in der Rolle des kompromilosen Gewissens der
Nation bequem gemacht htten:
4
288
Matthias Uecker
Wer wollte erwarten, da ein Bauer im Westerwald die demokratischen
Grundrechte richtig wahrnimmt, wenn es Professoren, Wissenschaftlern und
Schriftstellern an der Einsicht gebricht, da niemals der unverbindliche und
ber den Parteien schwebende Protest an die Wohlanstndigkeit diesem bel
abhelfen kann? (Grass, ber das Selbstverstndliche, 81)
Als unpolitisch, d.h. beim eigenen Interesse verharrend kritisiert Grass die
Ohne-Mich-Bewegung der fnfziger Jahre, die das gesellschaftliche
Komplement zum Nonkonformismus der Schriftsteller bildete (Grass, ber das
Selbstverstndliche, 111).
289
290
Matthias Uecker
291
gewinnt. Und schlielich luten Enzensbergers publizistische Aktivitten auch das Ende der Sonderstellung ein, die der Rowohlt-Verlag in
den frhen sechziger Jahren fr die gesellschaftskritische Intelligenz
eingenommen hatte. Aus einer neuen Kombination von radikaler
Gesellschaftstheorie, dokumentarischer Literatur und politischer
Publizistik entsteht vielmehr eine zentrale Facette jener SuhrkampKultur, die im kommenden Jahrzehnt das gegenkulturelle Milieu der
BRD reprsentieren sollte.
Damit nehmen die Autoren-Initiativen der frhen sechziger Jahre
einen spezifischen Platz in der Transformation der westdeutschen
Gegenkultur vom Nonkonformismus zum antiautoritren Protest ein.
Aus dem Versuch, Vereinzelung und Isolation durch die bernahme
pragmatischer Argumente und Kommunikationsformen zu berwinden, resultiert schlielich der Anschlu an eine neue auerparlamentarische Gegenkultur, in der eben dieser Pragmatismus eine
widersprchliche Allianz mit radikaler Systemkritik eingeht.
Ermglicht wird dieser bergang einerseits durch die Formierung der
Studentenbewegung, an der zumindest ein Teil der Intellektuellen sich
nach der Bildung der Groen Koalition orientieren. Vielleicht noch
wichtiger aber ist eine ideologische Kontinuitt: die Abgrenzung vom
moralisch begrndeten Protest der fnfziger Jahre und das Mitrauen
der literarischen Intelligenz gegenber den eigenen, literarischen
Kommunikationsformen.
Zitierte Werk
Becker, J. Modell eines mglichen Politikers, in Richter (Hg), Die Mauer, 1215.
Beheim-Schwarzbach, M. Lieber Freund, in Weyrauch (Hg), Ich lebe in der
Bundesrepublik, 98100.
Eggebrecht, A., Soll die ra der Heuchelei andauern?, in Walser (Hg), Die
Alternative, 2535.
Eich, G. Fnfzehn Hrspiele (Frankfurt aM, Suhrkamp, 1975).
Enzensberger, H. M. Einzelheiten II (Frankfurt aM, Suhrkamp, 1964).
Ich wnsche nicht gefhrlich zu leben, in: Walser (Hg) Die Alternative, 616.
Palaver. Politische berlegungen (19671973) (Frankfurt aM, Suhrkamp,
1974).
292
Matthias Uecker
Fichte, H. Gewitztheit oder moralischer Mut in Richter (Hg) Pldoyer fr eine neue
Regierung, 11220.
Gaitanides, J. Von der Ohnmacht unserer Literatur, in Weyrauch (Hg) Ich lebe in
der Bundesrepublik, 1021.
Grass, G. Schnurre, W. Offener Brief an die Mitglieder des Deutschen Schriftstellerverbandes in Ost-Berlin, in Richter (Hg) Die Mauer, 656.
Grass, G. Wer wir dieses Bndchen kaufen?, in Walser (Hg) Die Alternative, 7680.
ber das Selbstverstndliche. Politische Schriften (Mnchen, DTV, 1969).
Hager, K. Intelligenz und Arbeiter-und-Bauern-Macht, in Richter (Hg) Die Mauer,
14555.
Jauch, E. A. Bloch und Schnurre, in Richter (Hg) Die Mauer, 1435.
Jens, W. Vorwort, in Nedelmann, C, Schfer, G. (Hg) Politik ohne Vernunft, 711.
Karsch, W. Der 13. August und die deutschen Intellektuellen, in Richter (Hg) Die
Mauer, 1059.
Krueger, M. C. Authors and the Opposition: West German Writers and the Social
Democratic Party from 1945 to 1969 (Stuttgart, Akademischer Verlag HansDieter Heinz, 1982).
Lenz, S. Die Politik der Entmutigung, in Walser (Hg), Die Alternative, 1317.
Maetzke, E. O. berraschung fr Mongi Slim, in Richter (Hg), Die Mauer, 128.
Nedelmann, C. Schfer, G. (Hg) Politik ohne Vernunft oder Die Folgen sind
absehbar. Zehn streitbare Thesen (Reinbek, Rowohlt, 1965).
Ramseger, G. 300.000 Mark, in Richter (Hg), Die Mauer, 1268.
Richter, H. W. Die Alternative im Wechsel der Personen, in Richter (Hg.), Pldoyer
fr eine neue Regierung, 914.
(Hg), Die Mauer oder Der 13. August (Reinbek, Rowohlt, 1961).
Nachwort, in Richter (Hg) Die Mauer, 181184.
(Hg), Pldoyer fr eine neue Regierung oder Keine Alternative (Reinbek,
Rowohlt, 1965).
Zu spt?, in Weyrauch (Hg) Ich lebe in der Bundesrepublik, 606.
Rhle, G. Viele Briefe gingen kreuz und quer, in Richter (Hg) Die Mauer, 16873.
Rhmkorf, P. Passionseinheit, in Walser (Hg) Die Alternative, 4450.
Schallck, P. Zwlf Fragen, in Weyrauch (Hg) Ich lebe in der Bundesrepublik,
1019.
Schnurre, W. Von der Mitverantwortlichkeit des Schriftstellers, in Richter (Hg) Die
Mauer, 11619.
Siedler, W. J. Die Linke stirbt, doch sie ergibt sich nicht, in Richter (Hg) Die Mauer,
11015.
Sskind, W. E. [ohne Titel], in Richter (Hg) Die Mauer, 1045.
Tempel, G. Deutschland? Aber wo liegt es? Wiederbegegnung mit einem Vaterland
(Reinbek, Rowohlt, 1962).
Trommler, F. Die nachgeholte Resistance. Politik und Gruppenethos im historischen
Zusammenhang, in Fetscher, J. Lmmert, E. Schutte. J. (Hg) Die Gruppe 47 in
der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik (Wrzburg, Knigshausen & Neumann,
1991), 922.
Wagenbach, K. Stephan, W. Krger, M. (Hg) Vaterland, Muttersprache. Deutsche
Schriftsteller und ihr Staat von 1945 bis heute (Berlin, Wagenbach, 1979).
293
Walser, M. (Hg.) Die Alternative oder Brauchen wir eine neue Regierung? (Reinbek,
Rowohlt, 1961).
Halbzeit (Frankfurt aM, Suhrkamp, 1960).
Skizze zu einem Vorwurf, in Weyrauch, W. (Hg.), Ich lebe in der
Bundesrepublik, 11014.
Vorwort, in Walser, (Hg) Die Alternative, 56.
Weyrauch, W. (Hg) Ich lebe in der Bundesrepublik. Fnfzehn Deutsche ber
Deutschland (Mnchen, List, 1961).
INGO CORNILS
1968, the period of global cultural revolution, came into focus once
more at the beginning of 2001. The German Foreign Secretary,
Joschka Fischer, openly declared his previous incarnation as a militant
Sponti, and gave the new Germany tantalising glimpses of an
idealistic world-view almost incomprehensible to anyone below the
age of forty. The conservative opposition, predictably, homed in on
the strange relationship between the political and the personal, which
Fischer and his comrade Daniel Cohn-Bendit had the audacity to
maintain still existed. The attack culminated in demands by the leader
of the Conservative Party, Angela Merkel, that the 68ers should once
and for all renounce their revolutionary past and swear allegiance to
the materialistic, opportunistic and expediency-driven present.
Predictably, too, the media uproar caused by the revelations
about the violent sixties gave us little insight into what exactly the
German Student Movement was about. The political, social and
cultural context in which todays pillars of society committed their
Jugendsnden remained open to dramatisation and imagination, but,
without any agreement in the media on what this past really was, this
dritte Vergangenheitsbewltigung petered out unsatisfactorily. Not
that we are short of accounts or documentary evidence of this countercultural movement: Flaschenposten und kein Ende des Endes is the
heartfelt title of one of dozens of books that have attempted to shed
light on the era, assess its significance, and, unsuccessfully so far, put
it to rest.
The literature that has reflected, romanticised and glorified the
German Student Movement has undoubtedly played a part in keeping
the experience (if not the ideas) of the revolt alive, yet, paradoxically,
Ingo Cornils
296
From this historians point of view, the question of the narrators role
and stance is vital. Much depends on whether the narrator is able to
convey the events he describes in a convincing way,1 but this is
exactly the problem for the literary representation of the German
Student Movement: in the brief period between 1967 and 1969, we
1
Beim Thema 1968 wird, wie bei jedem anderen historischen Ereignis auch,
die Frage nach der Erzhlerrolle, ihrer Angemessenheit oder auch Unangemessenheit, aufgeworfen. Geschichte schreiben heit, ungeachtet aller legitimen
Kritik an der blo narrativ ausgerichteten Optik vieler Historiker, vor allem zu
erzhlen. Insofern besteht die vorentscheidende Frage darin, welche Rolle ein
Autor als Erzhler einnimmt und welche Qualitt ihr im Hinblick auf die
Erzhlkunst beigemessen werden kann (Kraushaar, 12).
297
have a myriad of causes and events that vie for attention, determine
each other and are at the same time ephemeral or highly individual.
Hans Magnus Enzensberger noted that in such a situation remembering 1968 could only take on one form: that of a collage.
(Enzensberger, 6)
The impertinent grasp of historicisation is real and concrete. It
draws the lifeblood out of the movement, makes it, literally, a
Chiffre that may stand for everything and nothing. The body of texts
reflecting the German Student Movement attempts to counter this
danger, to keep alive what was important about the moment. It is part
of an ongoing memory project that has exercised German writers over
the last three decades, contributing to a cultural memory battling
against a relegation of the movement to the scrap heap of history.
Moreover, the texts depicting the German Student Movement are
part of an ongoing political discourse: the literary arm of the
movement can be interpreted as continuing the debate the students
started in seminars and on the streets thirty-five years ago. In a
relatively mild polemic, the German sociologist Jrgen Habermas
recently summed up the model of a society that he believes we are
moving towards, a move imposed on us by the forces of the global
economy. This society is determined by four elements: by the
anthropological image of man as a rationally acting entrepreneur who
exploits his own labour; by the social and moral image of a postegalitarian society that has accepted marginalisation and exclusion; by
the economic image of a democracy that reduces citizens to the status
of members of a market society, and redefines the state as a service
provider for clients and customers; and finally by the notion that there
is no better form of politics than one that does away with itself.
Apart from the specific issues of the day (e.g. the Vietnam war,
the emergency laws), these are the very developments that the
students were talking about, and that continue to be addressed in the
literary representation of the German Student Movement!
Ingo Cornils
298
Taking Stock
The family of texts that has grown up around the German Student
Movement covers three decades, and can boast some illustrious
names: Peter Schneider, Uwe Timm, F. C. Delius and many others
have used their aesthetic sensibility to show how the Movement
influenced our lives and altered our perceptions. All in all, there are
more than forty books that are set in these tumultuous times (see
below). Yet it isnt merely as a historical background that the events
and experiences of the Movement serve the Movement itself has
become the centre of literary effort, as a protagonist in its own right,
in reflection and fictionalisation.
Even though the German Student Movement only lasted for two
years, it holds a lifetime of magic moments for the individuals who
were part of it. It is portrayed as an era imbued with a unique hope and
a common counter-cultural agenda: the dream of what might be
possible if a whole generation were to refuse to accept traditions and
refuse to replicate their parents values. Holding individual experiences and ephemeral events together are a set of nexus points,
either formative events or collective experiences of the period. In no
particular order, we are likely to encounter many of the following in
the literary representations of the Movement:
the interrelation between the private and the political (evoked, for
example, in the play Eine Linke Geschichte by the Grips Theater,
and perhaps best explored in the figures of Viktor and Lena in
Schfers Ein Frhling irrer Hoffnung);
an alienating university experience (memorably described in
Timms Heier Sommer when his protagonist Ulrich Krause is
unable to produce his term paper on Hlderlin because of his
intimidating professor);
the feeling that democratic freedom is not a political reality in the
Federal Republic of the late 1960s (an almost generic point, but
made most emphatically in the books published by the
AutorenEdition, e.g. Fuchs Beringer und die lange Wut or
Geisslers Das Brot mit der Feile);
299
300
Ingo Cornils
301
302
Ingo Cornils
Interpretations
Critics have, as a rule, had little time for the literary representation of
the German Student Movement. Admittedly, it is a complex terrain,
particularly when political and literary interpretations intertwine. But,
given that the historical and sociological aspects of the Movement
have attracted many researchers in the last ten years, it is surprising
that there have not been any full-length studies of this family of texts,
as attempted for the corresponding French literature by Ingrid
Eichelberg in Germany and Margaret Atack in the UK. Atacks book
is of particular interest, focussing as it does on the importance of the
interplay of real and imaginary in the text(s) and the emphasis placed
upon the problematic of writing and interpretation (Atack, 2).
303
304
Ingo Cornils
Die Erfahrung, da nichts mehr war wie vorher, stellte sich erst allmhlich ein:
Da eine neue, kologisch orientierte Moderne eingesetzt hatte, da alte
Groprojekte durch kleine, berschaubare ersetzt wurden, da der private
Bereich einen gnzlich anderen Stellenwert gewann, breitet sich nur langsam in
den Kpfen gerade der traditionell fortschrittlich Gesinnten aus. (Gerlach, 13)
305
believes we should have nothing but pity for treuherzige Historienmalereien: die Epope des roten Jahrzehnts lt sich [...] nur
aus einer Position der Anteil nehmenden Ironie noch erzhlen
(Koenen, 500).
Problems of Representation
In their recent book on representation in literature and history, Mary
Fulbrook and Martin Swales rightly point out that representation as a
concept was itself changed by the student unrest in the 60s, with the
post-war, modern approach of New Criticism yielding to a
dialectical approach. This means that our perception of the texts
discussed in this article is twice refracted: the process of copying the
extra-literary world, and making an aesthetic artefact from it, no
longer suffices. Instead, the novelists of the German Student
Movement approach representation by integrating the changing
interpretation of the events and our receding memories into their texts
(see my discussion of Timms Rot below). The question whether it is
therefore pointless to discuss whether a historical account is false or
not may have become irrelevant (compare Scholzs programmatic
statement in Rosenfest). Fulbrook and Swales argue, though, that even
without historical truth, such texts can still create meaning:
communication can lead to significant changes in perception, new insights and
understandings. It may not, in principle, be possible to know the past as it
really was, in all its lost entirety; but it is entirely possible to engage in
genuinely meaningful, intersubjective communication about what is really
significant in the past in the present and to do this without abandoning some
notion of at least good faith or commitment to honesty, if not, perhaps, a more
elusive, indefinable and absolute notion of historical truth. (Fulbrook/Swales,
16)
I would add that what is created is not only a representation but also a
re-invention: a re-invention of the past in order to make it
understandable, meaningful for the present and useful for the future.
In doing so, the literary representation of the German Student
306
Ingo Cornils
307
Function(s)
Twenty-five years ago, Hermann Peter Piwitt, himself an active
participant within the wider extra-parliamentary opposition of the late
1960s, asked the question: Was leisten Romanciers der Studentenbewegung, wenn sie sich damit begngen, den Veteranen von einst
das Gemeinsame, nmlich die vorentschiedene Realitt im Kopf, zu
kostmieren? (Piwitt, 37). The question is still valid today: what is
the motivation behind these novels, what do they hope to achieve?
What can these texts offer that we havent already heard, that we
arent already agreed on? What is the point of writing ever more
accounts?
I would argue that the increasing distance to the German Student
Movement obliges writers to re-create a sense of collectively
experienced past, a sense of shared identity that has been under attack
from the very start. Ten years after the revolt, perceptive former
activists had already realised that without remembrance, hard-won
advances are doomed to oblivion:
Da die Revolte vorbei sei, ist eine Zwecklge und zugleich real; verleugnet
lebt sie in lcherlichen Latzhosen totalitren Zuschnitts, obskuren Heilslehren,
Trdel, in schbigen Kneipen mit betubender Musik. Zwecklge: sie macht
uns zu Rckwrtsgewandten, die am Vergangenen festhalten wollten, vernichtet
fortwhrende Gltigkeit und akute Not eines modernen Freiheitskampfes, der
ohne ein wrdiges Gedchtnis nicht leben kann, schlielich macht sie blind
gegen die Schwchen und die Gre der weltweiten Rebellion vor zehn Jahren.
(Wolff/Windaus; my emphasis)
The fact that the impact and historical achievement of the German
Student Movement is still hotly debated in Germany2 indicates that
there is by no means a vorentschiedene Realitt for everyone, that
reality is created backwards by historians and writers to allow readers
to enter this world, to recognize themselves and their desires. This
2
308
Ingo Cornils
process, which cultural theorists like Jan and Aleida Assmann and
Harald Welzer would situate halfway between communicative memory
and cultural memory, is multi-dimensional and highly complex. Whilst
the political merits and the impact of the Movement are still under
debate, while the media develops a shorthand language which is
employed when anniversaries and unexpected scandals require an
immediate response, whilst historians create and then explore vast
archives of the revolt and sociologists attempt to fit the Movement
into a general theory of counter-cultural social movements, only the
writers of the revolution seem to hold on to the essence of what the
Movement was really about.
Further complications arise, though, when one considers the fact
that these writers, if they were part of the Movement, may themselves
have axes to grind, or put forward their particular political viewpoint
and version of events. Curiously, those who were witnesses of the
time but held dissenting views have as much to say about the
Movement as its eulogizers. Even professional and much celebrated
writers like Gnter Grass can have a blind spot when it comes to the
68ers: his detached portrayals in rtlich betubt and Aus dem
Tagebuch einer Schnecke, and the devastating verdict in Mein
Jahrhundert, cannot detract from the fact that for him the Movement,
for better or worse, was the significant phenomenon of the era.
Finally, younger writers may be attracted to the topic simply because
the demand is there and an increasingly geriatric reading public with
spending power is only too happy to have its illusions upheld.3
However, with time passing, all these considerations have
become irrelevant bar one: the question as to whether the literary
representation has sufficient quality to allow the reader to enter that
world. It is here that recently published books have the advantage over
older accounts, which were literally written in anger. The books that
came out in 2001 still build on the experience of the confrontation
with the system, but they also rely on emphatic imagination and a
mellowing that allows the writer to question motives and look at
himself as part of the equation. The gulf of time creates a sense of
honesty and intimacy, which was perhaps lacking in earlier attempts.
3
The plethora of coffee-table picture books, novels, and stories about die kalte
Heimat Ostpreuen springs to mind.
309
310
Ingo Cornils
Es ist auch schwer, dagegen zu argumentieren, wenn man einmal eine
Gesellschaftsordnung zerlegen wollte, um eine neue, bessere wieder aufzubauen. Die bestehende Gesellschaft ist nicht die beste, die ihr entgegengesetzte
auch nicht, und die gute zuknftige hat sich nie beweisen mssen. (Timm,
Rot, 333)
The 68ers are getting old, their narratives are now pervaded by the
memory of dreams unfulfilled, of hope denied: Das kann doch nicht
alles sein! Any current events that smack of their golden age, for
example the anti-globalisation protests in Genoa, are eagerly
embraced as signs that their Maulwurfsarbeit has borne fruit, but the
voices supporting such notions are fewer and fewer. What matters to
the 68ers now, and this is born out by the recent publications, is to
be honest with themselves, to ensure that their legacy is not
completely forgotten, and to make contact with a new generation.
Following the old slogan Geschlagen gehen wir nach Haus, die Enkel
fechtens besser aus, recent novels about 1968 attempt to establish a
dialogue with the younger generation, to preserve the identity and the
dreams of a generation in a cultural memory project that in contrast
to the failed political project of a Red and Green coalition has a
chance of succeeding.
Judging from the tenacity with which the era has been revisited in
recent years, one could argue that the ultimate novel about 68 has
become the Holy Grail of German literature. If that is the case, we might
even be able to speak of this family of texts as a distinct genre. I believe
that Schfers Ein Frhling irrer Hoffnung and Timms Rot should enter
the shortlist for recognition as new representative novel of the
German Student Movement, taking over from the two contenders
from the 1970s, Peter Schneiders Lenz and Timms Heier Sommer.
Both Schfer and Timm have risen to the challenge, to describe not
only the experience, but also the utopian dream, without making it
sound trite. They present us with a powerful literary account of their
dreams, and what has become of them. They know they are beaten,
but, true to the words of their former leader Rudi Dutschke, they
believe that the struggle goes on.
While Schfer offers Zeitgeschichte in its own light, Timm
connects a bygone era with our present world. He confronts the reader
with the utopian dream of the German Student Movement and yet
311
Kme es heute zur Revolution, die Leute wrden denken, es sei eine
Werbeveranstaltung (Timm, Rot, 310).
312
Ingo Cornils
313
Delius, F. C. Amerikahaus und der Tanz um die Frauen (Reinbek, Rowohlt, 1997).
zdamar, E. S. Die Brcke vom Goldenen Horn (Kln, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1998).
Henle, I. Lebensansichten eines alten APO-Katers (Mnster, Principal, 1998).
Grass, G. Mein Jahrhundert (Gttingen, Steidl, 1999).
Scholz, L. Rosenfest (Mnchen, Hanser, 2001).
Schfer, E. Ein Frhling irrer Hoffnung. Die Kinder des Sisyfos (Kln, Dittrich,
2001).
Timm, U. Rot (Kln, K&W, 2001).
Works Cited
Assmann, A. Erinnerungsrume. Formen und Wandlungen des kulturellen
Gedchtnisses (Mnchen, Beck, 1999).
Assmann, J. Das kulturelle Gedchtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identitt in
frhen Hochkulturen (Mnchen, Beck, 2000).
Atack, M. May 68 in French Fiction and Film. Rethinking Society, Rethinking
Representation (Oxford, OUP, 1999).
Basker, D. (ed) Uwe Timm (Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 1999).
Briegleb, K. 1968. Literatur in der antiautoritren Bewegung (Frankfurt, Suhrkamp,
1993).
Bullivant, K. Realism Today (Oxford, Berg, 1987).
Cornils, I. Romantic Relapse? The Literary Representation of the German Student
Movement, in C. Hall/D. Rock (eds), German Studies Towards the Millenium
(Bern, Peter Lang, 2000), 10723.
Eichelberg, I. Mai 68 in der Literatur. Die Suche nach menschlichem Glck in einer
besseren Gesellschaft (Marburg, Hitzeroth, 1987).
Enzensberger, H. M. Erinnerungen an einen Tumult Zu einem Tagebuch aus dem
Jahre 1968, Text und Kritik (March 1985), 68.
Fulbrook, M./Swales, M. (eds) Representing the German Nation. History and Identity
in Twentieth-Century Germany (Manchester, MUP, 2000).
Gerlach, I. Abschied von der Revolte. Studien zur deutschsprachigen Literatur der
siebziger Jahre (Wrzburg, K&N, 1994).
Habermas, J. Warum braucht Europa eine Verfassung?, in Die Zeit, 27/2001,
http://www.zeit.de/2001/27/Politik/200127_verfassung_lang.html
Klinger, C. Flucht, Trost, Revolte. Die Moderne und ihre sthetischen Gegenwelten
(Mnchen, Hanser, 1995).
Koenen, G. Das rote Jahrzehnt. Unsere kleine deutsche Kulturrevolution 19671977
(Kln, K&W, 2001).
Komfort-Hein, S. Flaschenposten und kein Ende des Endes. 1968: Kritische
Korrespondenzen um den Nullpunkt von Geschichte und Literatur (Freiburg im
Breisgau, Rombach, 2001).
314
Ingo Cornils
Kraushaar, W. 1968 als Mythos, Chiffre und Zsur (Hamburg, Hamburger Edition,
2000).
Lwenthal, R. Der romantische Rckfall (Stuttgart, Kohlhammer, 1970).
Ldke, W. M. (Hg) Literatur und Studentenbewegung. Eine Zwischenbilanz
(Opladen, Westdeutscher Verlag, 1977).
Piwitt, H. P. Rckblick auf heie Tage. Die Studentenrevolte in der Literatur, in H.
C. Buch, (Hg), Literaturmagazin 4: Die Literatur nach dem Tod der Literatur.
Bilanz der Politisierung (Reinbeck, Rowohlt, 1975), 3546.
Plowman, A. The Radical Subject. Social Change and the Self in Recent German
Autobiography (Bern, Lang, 1998).
Riordan, C. (ed) Peter Schneider (Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 1995).
Schmidt, T. E. Abschied von Rot-Grn. Ein Nachruf, in Die Zeit, 48/2001,
http://www.zeit.de/2001/48/Kultur/200148_rotgruen.html
Schnell, R., Geschichte der deutschsprachigen Literatur seit 1945 (Stuttgart, Metzler,
1993).
Welzer, H. (Hg) Das soziale Gedchtnis. Geschichte, Erinnerung, Tradierung
(Hamburg, Hamburger Edition, 2001).
Wolff, F./Windaus, E. Was ist von der Studentenbewegung noch briggeblieben?,
in: Frankfurter Rundschau, 22. Januar 1977.
JAMIE TRNKA
316
Jamie Trnka
317
The concern for specifically Latin American figures and organizations in this
mobilization is by no means self-evident; much research has yet to be done as
to why Latin America figures so prominently in the radical student movement
and in the Third World Movement in Germany more generally. Unfortunately, I
am not able to address the widespread East German concern with Latin
America here.
For a general history of the Third World Movement in West Germany, see
Balsen and Rssel.
318
Jamie Trnka
foreign policy toward Cuba for the formation of a student New Left
can hardly be overstated, particularly given the tendency to focus on
protests against US activity in Vietnam to the exclusion of other
international catalysts in the movement. Assigned utopian status in
segments of the student movement, Cuba served as a space for the
imagination of radical social change, shifting the focus of revolutionary
activity to the creation of subjective conditions for revolution and the
creation of Ches new man as revolutionary agent. As Juchler puts it:
[D]ie junge Revolution in dem Drittenweltland Kuba [diente] den westlichen
Studenten wie Intellektuellen dazu, ihre eigenen gesellschaftspolitischen
Vorstellungen und Wnsche auf das fremde, von der eigenen Lebens- und
Erfahrungswelt weit entfernte Land zu projizieren (Juchler 46; see also 203,
205).3
The rejection of the dominant social orders in both the socialist East
and capitalist West in favor of the Cuban model and a Third World,
anti-imperialist perspective shaped much of the theoretical and
practical development that was to follow (see Juchler, 79).
Even those committees established in solidarity with groups
outside Latin America remained connected to it in key ways. Press
statements released at the SDS-organized Vietnam conference in
Frankfurt in May 1966 suggested that Vietnam could serve as an
example for Latin American and other Third World struggles. Many
of West Germanys Black Panther solidarity committees also actively
discussed Latin American texts and politics, influenced by the
Panthers own strong connections to Cuba. As a focal point of
internationalism and host to a series of significant international
cultural and political events, Cuba was an important locus of the West
German Lefts interest in Latin America.4 With German translations
3
319
5
6
320
Jamie Trnka
321
The relation of the 1968 movement to fascism has been explored in a number of
popular and academic accounts. For a particularly interesting example, see
Wirth.
322
Jamie Trnka
323
324
Jamie Trnka
the Middle East. The group concluded that a true anti-fascism could
only consist in solidarity with Palestine: Unsere Solidaritt wird sich
nicht mehr mit verbal-abstrakten Aufklrungsmethoden a l Vietnam
zufriedengeben, sondern die enge Verflechtung des zionistischen
Israel mit der faschistischen BRD durch konkrete Aktionen schonungslos
bekmpfen (reprinted in Baumann, 77). Not surprisingly, the attack met
with strong criticism from across the political spectrum. The group
wished to move away from what they designate as the verbal/abstract,
to the concrete/active. They assert their wahren Antifaschismus as
Tupamaros intervening physically in the political context of
Germany to effect change in the Middle East conflict. This confused
overlaying of diverse international situations and ideological
affiliations expressed in Schalom und Napalm is common among the
early armed groups that emerged out of the Berlin subculture. The
practical intervention of the group is predicated on both an active
identification with the Tupamaros as well as a political analogy to the
Middle East: their disidentification with fascist Germans proceeds
through their self-positioning in opposition to legacies of imperialism
and fascism as Tupamaros. In their violent intervention into the
Middle East conflict, they suggest that the Tupamaros West Berlin are
to Germany what Palestinian terrorists are to Israel, and their position
as Tupamaros is reinforced by their physical participation in armed
struggle, as already suggested above.
Interestingly, it was over a year after this event that the
Tupamaros West Berlin achieved the height of their publicity,
launching the first of many public debates on the role of the press in
covering terrorist activities. Monitor, a WDR television program,
broadcast what was supposedly an interview with a core member of
the Tupamaros West Berlin, who claimed responsibility for the failed
bombing in addition to several bank robberies. The press condemned
Monitor,12 and commentary on the Tupamaros West Berlin was
confined for the most part to moments of pseudo-righteous concern
for the authentic Tupamaros in Uruguay, apparently launched more
in the interest of obscuring the agenda however problematic of the
West Berlin underground than in any genuine solidarity with their
12
325
14
The discovery was first publicized by the Berliner Extradienst, an extraparliamentary oppositional paper. For the popular media, the Tupamaros
remained nothing more than criminals, psychopaths, whose political
perversion had no place in public discourse.
Organizationally, the RAFs more traditional Leninist model with a
conspiratorial underground diverged significantly from Marighellas model, and
they tended to isolate themselves from other radical groups rather than moving
fluidly in and out of the underground as did the Tupamaros West Berlin or even
the Bewegung 2. Juni, both of which had a much more direct connection to
Latin America at least in terms of their organizational structures. On this
organizational difference, see Juchler, 376. Stefan Wisniewski, a former RAF
member, reflects: Ein Konsens gab es innerhalb der Bewegung, dem, was von
68 briggeblieben war: da eine Revolution, soweit sie hier stattfinden kann,
einen antiimperialistischen Charakter haben mu. Da sie auch hier nur eine
Chance hat zu bestehen, wenn sie die Bewegungen in der Dritten Welt
bercksichtigt. Ohne Vietnam, ohne die Entwicklung in der Dritten Welt, wre
die RAF nicht geworden, was sie dann geworden ist. Unsere Hoffnungstrger
waren die Tupamaros und die Black Panther (Wisniewski, 21).
326
Jamie Trnka
Il Manifesto was an Italian Leftist group that was shut out of the Italian
Communist Party in 1969. The RAF drew extensively on their 200 Theses,
published in 1971.
327
328
Jamie Trnka
17
One example of this simplification given by the RAF was the comparison of
mass distribution of Bild Zeitung to bombings in Vietnam. (RAF, Konzept,
34.)
329
Their later position paper Dem Volk dienen rejects criticisms that
urban guerrilla formations have no place in the metropoles, writing:
Das Argument, die Bundesrepublik sei nicht Lateinamerika,
verschleiert die hiesigen Verhltnisse mehr, als da es sie aufdeckt
(RAF, Dem Volk, 128). Elsewhere they explain: BZ Mai 1970:
Berlin ist nicht Sdamerika. Berlin ist ein Vorposten des amerikanischen Imperialismus. Unser Feind und der Feind Sdamerikas.18
The Bild Zeitung headline to which the RAF responds here recalls
the kind of rhetoric employed earlier in the wake of the Monitor
scandal; the RAF response operates around a more subtle structure of
political analogy to Latin America, recognizing and rejecting media
efforts to dismiss their message as purely affective identification. The
question of Berlin in particular proves interesting in light of its
symbolic and geopolitical significance: one need only recall
Khrushchevs statement to the US following their invasion of Cuba
that if you take Cuba, well take Berlin (Fritzsch and Reinders, 157).
One might also suggest that certain Latin American figures in fact
invited precisely this form of political analogy: Guevara rhetorically
valorized struggle in the metropoles, stating that the struggle of
students there in the belly of the beast was the most important
struggle of all.
By inserting themselves into the narrative of Third World
resistance, the RAF and other urban guerrilla groups participated in
broader West German moves to construct an emancipatory German
18
Die Rote Armee aufbauen! Agit 883, 2. Curiously, this passage does not
appear in the anthologized version of the text.
330
Jamie Trnka
What stands out perhaps more than anything else in the RAFs invocations of
the Third World is a sense of urgency that is much more pronounced than that
expressed in their analysis of West German examples. The firm conviction that
a turn away from urban guerrilla struggle wre der Selbstmord aus Angst vor
dem Tode, and the recurrence of phrases such as Es bleibt uns nur noch wenig
Zeit! and Einen anderen Weg gibt es nicht (the latter is a Che Guevara
slogan) clearly reflect what Karl Heinz Roth has identified as an eschatological
mood in the RAFs textual production, which both emerged out of and
contributed to the broader social mood of the time. Roth has noted that in this
sense the accessibility of RAF concepts was located not strictly in their written
formulations of revolutionary theory, but in their practical deployment of those
concepts. Referring to the appeal of the moral integrity of the RAF as a group
that practiced the struggle it advocated, he explains that their insistence upon
victory or death was in fact particularly salient for marginalized groups in West
Germany. (See Roth, 1913.)
331
about the social constitution of West Germany is, in this sense, a much
more far-reaching question than popular representations of the period
would suggest.
For the RAF, the Third World was recognized as a space of
active theoretical production and innovation in its own right, but this
recognition was incomplete and ultimately undermined by the
identificatory politics of the RAF as guerillas. This is important not
only to understanding the RAF, but implicates the West German New
Left more broadly as paradoxically participating in the limiting
epistemologies they are at such pains to critique. Engaging seriously
with the challenges posed by armed groups in West Germany in order
better to understand their political motivations, we might hope to
sharpen our own, working toward a politics not of identity or
authenticity but of social location. Such a politics would leave space
open for the self-definition of Third World and other oppositional
movements without precluding the informed articulation of interests
and ideals in alliances and coalitions among various social and
political groups in both the Third and First Worlds.
Works Cited
Adelson, L. Review of East, West, and Others: The Third World in Postwar German
Literature, by Arlene Teraoka. Journal of English and Germanic Philology
(October 1999), 60810.
Balsen, W. and Rssel, K. Hoch die internationale Solidatitt. Zur Geschichte der
Dritte Welt-Bewegung in der Bundesrepublik (Kln, Klner Volksblatt Verlag,
1986).
Baumann, B. Wie alles anfing. 1991 (Berlin, Rotbuch Verlag, 1994).
Becker, J. Hitlers Children. The Story of the Baader-Meinhof Terrorist Gang
(Philadelphia and New York, J.B. Lippencott, 1977).
Buck-Morss, S. Hegel and Haiti, Critical Inquiry, 26, 4 (Summer 2000), 82165.
Debray, R. Revolution in the Revolution? Armed Struggle and Political Struggle in
Latin America. Trans. Bobby Ortiz. (New York, Grove Press, 1967).
Fritzsch, R. and Reinders, R. Die Bewegung 2. Juni. Gesprche ber Haschrebellen,
Lorenz-Entfhrung, Knast (Berlin, ID Archiv, 1995).
Juchler, I. Die Studentenbewegungen in den Vereinigten Staaten und der
Bundesrepublik Deutschland der sechziger Jahre. Eine Untersuchung hinsicht-
332
Jamie Trnka
GERRIT-JAN BERENDSE
Aesthetics of (Self-)Destruction:
Melvilles Moby Dick,
Brechts The Measures Taken
and the Red Army Faction*
What place had literature in the world of left-wing terrorism, the most
radical West German counter-culture in the 1970s? And who was
afraid of literature? Certainly, the German government was, since
officials were convinced that the terrorists were capable of
transforming the contents of books into lethal weapons. The concern
that aesthetic radicalism transported by fictional narratives could be
directly translated into violent events seems to be based on an
irrational concept of primeval fear. Nevertheless, this concept has
been taken very seriously, and became a legal issue as early as 1967
when the infamous leaflet Burn Warehouse Burn by the Berlinbased Kommune I was taken to court. Most of the testimonies in
favour of the accused emphasised the satirical subtext of the printed
matter, and argued the pamphlet is a piece of art, i.e. a product of
surrealism. Yet, the state considered its contents an act of terrorism.1
In the 1980s, some academics tackled the complex matter of the
relationship between terror and the arts from a different perspective,
and recycled the idea that fiction must have had a negative effect on
Germanys young people, since the writings of so-called sympathisers
undoubtedly nurtured new waves of counter-cultural upheaval.2 The
*
1
2
I would like to thank the British Academy for awarding a grant that generously
met my travel costs for attending the Counter-Cultures conference at the
University of Nottingham.
On the legal dispute regarding the link between the fun-guerrilla of the
Kommune I and political violence, see Briegleb (6271), Koenen (15461),
and Kraushaar (6670).
Two examples of this condemnation effort are Holthusen and Ulsamer.
334
Gerrit-Jan Berendse
3
4
Aesthetics of (Self-)Destruction
335
336
Gerrit-Jan Berendse
Aesthetics of (Self-)Destruction
337
The performances were repeated during the trials against the arsonists in
November 1968. A text was written by Shnlein (then leader of the legendary
action-theatre group in Munich), read out aloud and performed by the accused
and sympathisers who were present in the courtroom. The text was published
by the former fiance of Gudrun Ensslin, the writer Bernward Vesper, in his
series Voltaire Flugschrift 27 (1968). The trial in Stammheim (19757) can also
be interpreted as staged. This time it was a play about visibility and
invisibility since those who stood trial made a habit out of provoking the West
German juridical system by appearing in and disappearing from the courtroom.
Gerrit-Jan Berendse
338
6
7
8
Aesthetics of (Self-)Destruction
339
This image of the cool killer has become a major obstacle for those who
sympathised with the terrorists goals, i.e. to establish an anti-fascist, antiimperialist and, therefore, civilised Germany.
340
Gerrit-Jan Berendse
Physical pain does not simply resist language but actively destroys it, bringing
about an immediate reversion to a state anterior to language, to the sounds and
cries a human being makes before language is learned. (Scarry, 4)
The individual bodies were to speak for themselves, that is with one
voice. Therefore all inmates were forced into a collective bond. Only
as the newly established collective corporeal self did the terrorists feel
capable to strike back. Or, as Gudrun Ensslin interpreted the executive
decision of the Stammheim prisoners: the body, the sole weapon, is
the collective, is unity, nothing else (Bakker-Schut, 169; see also
Berendse, 3203).
Supposedly, the outside world, including those who did not
support or sympathise with the ideology of the RAF, would be able
relate to the visualisation of the sorrows of the young inmates.
However, the purpose of representing the new corporeal imagery went
beyond seeking to elicit sympathy: the physical appearance of the
isolated body, reflecting human suffering, was intended to set an
example for those inside and outside the prison walls. The new bodily
imagery, displaying an isolated Super-Body (ber-Leib), was
designed also to encourage aggressive impulses among terrorists and
their sympathisers; the viewer should feel motivated to fight back
against the perpetrators of the visualised distress. The fomenting of
fighting instincts would strengthen the collective bond of the RAF
(Bilz, 15778). For this anthropologic strategy, which set about
upgrading the terrorists politics of the body, the two texts by Brecht
and Melville played a major role, that is as basis for the newly
designed concept of revolution.
The imprisoned terrorists obsession with their physical appearances took a variety of forms, from meticulous descriptions of
starvation during their numerous hunger strikes to photo-sessions in
Stammheim (Adelmann/Nohr, 7783). The photographs of the terrorists
faces before, during and after their arrests provide a condensed visual
narrative of West Germanys decade of political violence. Before their
imprisonment, the terrorists were stigmatised as common criminals,
their images displayed to the public on wanted posters issued by the
police. To make the public aware that the urban guerrilla was more
than the glamorised image of the loveable outsider Bonnie and
Clyde figures at odds with the ordinary world of contemporary West
Aesthetics of (Self-)Destruction
341
A similar obsession with physical appearance was found among members of the
Japanese Red Army Faction. See also Steinhoff (83045).
342
Gerrit-Jan Berendse
Aesthetics of (Self-)Destruction
343
It has been argued that Ulrike Meinhof committed suicide to avoid further
bullying, especially by Gudrun Ensslin. See Aust (2617).
344
Gerrit-Jan Berendse
They were one man, not thirty. For as the one ship that held them all; though it
was put together of all contrasting things oak, and maple, and pine wood;
iron, and pitch, and hemp yet all these ran into each other in the one concrete
hull, which shot on its way, both balanced and directed by the long central keel;
even so, all the individuals of the crew, this mans valor, that mans fear; guilt
and guiltiness, all varieties were welded into oneness, and were all directed to
that fatal goal which Ahab their one Lord and keel did point to. (MD, 564)
Aesthetics of (Self-)Destruction
345
Gerrit-Jan Berendse
346
Also mssen wir ihn erschieen und in die Kalkgrube werfen, denn
Der Kalk verbrennt ihn.
DER KONTROLLCHOR: Fandet ihr keinen Ausweg?
DIE VIER AGITATOREN:
Bei der Krze der Zeit fanden wir keinen Ausweg.
Wie das Tier dem Tiere hilft
Wnschten auch wir uns, ihm zu helfen, der
Mit uns gekmpft fr unsere Sache.
[]
Also beschlossen wir: jetzt
Abzuschneiden den eigenen Fu vom Krper
Furchtbar ist es, zu tten. (Brecht, Die Manahme, 7981)
See Lethen, 30020, and Ngele, 315: Das [] beschriebene Blatt wird
ausgelscht mit den andern, damit sie leere Bltter werden, auf welche die
Revolution ihre Anweisungen schreibt.
Aesthetics of (Self-)Destruction
347
See Dirke (67103). The British punk movement displayed similar examples of
havoc and self-mutilation in its cultural products of the late 1970s.
The extreme corporeal sensation as an alternative cultural discourse in the
1970s, with special attention to Nitschs so-called OMT, is discussed in
McEvilley (6583).
348
Gerrit-Jan Berendse
15
16
This term was used in the article Suicide Action in Der Spiegel 50 (1990), 62
6. On the controversy surrounding the deaths in Stammheim, see, for example,
Nagel and Ensslin.
Koenen observes the irony of a counter-culture such as the RAF that
dogmatically declared war against everything related to Nazi-Germany but
seems to copy its leaders Koenen points out the gruesome similarities between
both suicides in Stammheim in October 1977 and the Berlin bunker in April
1945 after both terror organisations faced the fiasco of their Endsieg.
(Koenen, 390).
Aesthetics of (Self-)Destruction
349
Works Cited
Adelmann, R. and Nohr, R. F. Man versucht, sich zu ffnen. Video und RAF
eine abgeschlossene Geschichte, sthetik und Kommunikation, 108 (2000),
7783.
Aust, S. Der Baader Meinhof Komplex (Mnchen, Goldmann, 1998).
Baader, A., Ensslin, G., Proll, T. and Shnlein, H. Vor einer solchen Justiz verteidigen
wir uns nicht. Schluwort im Kaufhausbrandproze (Frankfurt aM, Edition
Voltaire, 1968).
Bakker-Schut, P. (Hg) das info. Briefe von Gefangenen aus der RAF 19731977.
Dokumente (Kln, Malik, 1987).
Baudrillard, J. Our Theater of Cruelty, in Baudrillard, In the Shadows of the Silent
Majorities, or, The End of the Social and Other Essays (New York,
Semiotext(e), 1983) 11323.
Berendse, G.-J. Schreiben als Krperverletzung: Zur Anthropologie des Terrors in
Bernward Vespers Die Reise, Monatshefte, 3 (2001), 31834.
and Williams, M. (eds) Terror and Text. Representing Political Violence in
Literature and the Visual Arts (Bielefeld, Aisthesis Verlag, 2002).
Blumenberg, H. Shipwreck with Spectator. Paradigm of a Metaphor for Existence
(Cambridge, Mass.; MIT Press, 1997).
Boock, P.-J. and Schneider, P. Ratte tot. Ein Briefwechsel (Neuwied, Luchterhand,
1985).
Brecht, B. Die Manahme (Fassung 1931), in Brecht, Die Manahme. Zwei
Fassungen. Anmerkungen (Frankfurt aM, Suhrkamp, 1998).
The Measures Taken, in Brecht, The Measures Taken and other Lehrstcke
(London, Methuen, 1989).
Briegleb, K. 1968. Literatur in der antiautoritren Bewegung (Frankfurt aM,
Suhrkamp, 1993).
Dirke, S. von. All Power to the Imagination! The West German Counterculture from
the Student Movement to the Greens (Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press,
1997).
Ensslin, C. Die Todesnacht im 7. Stock in Stammheim, taz-Journal: die RAF, der
Staat und die Linke. 20 Jahre Deutscher Herbst, 1 (1997), 1416.
Enzenberger, H. M. Die Leere im Zentrum des Terrors, in Enzenberger, Mittelma
und Wahn. Gesammelte Zerstreuungen (Frankfurt aM, Suhrkamp, 1986),
2459.
Die Wiederkehr des Menschenopfers, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,
18.9.2001.
Foucault, M. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York,
Vintage/Random House, 1979).
Friedman, M. Captain Ahab: Modern Promethean, in Bloom, H. (ed) Problematic
Rebel. An Image of Modern Man (New York, Random House, 1963), 178211.
Holthusen, H. E. Sartre in Stammheim. Zwei Themen aus den Jahren der groen
Turbulenz (Stuttgart, Klett-Cotta, 1982).
350
Gerrit-Jan Berendse
Aesthetics of (Self-)Destruction
351
UWE SCHTTE
354
Uwe Schtte
355
reuther/Maida). Mit ihrem musikalisch wie intellektuell berzeugenden Deutungsversuch setzen Ammer & Einheit den Mastab,
an dem popkulturelle Reflektionen der RAF bis heute zu messen
sind.
Auch durch die Mode geistert das RAF-Gespenst. Das
Designer-Label Professor Head benutzt das Foto der Pistole von
Andreas Baader fr eine Werbekampagne und die Illustrierte Tussi
Deluxe druckte Fotos, in denen Kleidungsstcke mit nachgestellten
Szenen aus der Geschichte der RAF beworben werden.3
Die Idee des bewaffneten Kampfes, so Rupert Weinzierl, wird als letztmgliche
groe berschreitung, als letztmglicher Tabubruch, letztmgliche sthetische
Sensation & letztmgliches Dissidenz-Reservoir gefeiert. [] Diese Verkultung des
Stadtguerilla-Pathos erscheint im Feld Pop umso kurioser, als die RAF als Gruppe
dogmatischer MarxistInnen-LeninIstinnen mit Popkultur nichts zu tun haben
wollte. (Weinzierl, 58)
Vgl. dazu Mohr. Wer sich die durch radical chic veredelte Mode nicht leisten
kann, bekommt auf Londoner Straenmrkten billige T-Shirts mit dem
Aufdruck des RAF-Logos.
Vgl. auch die Interviewuerungen von Inga Humpe (D F/2-Raum-Wohnung):
Die einzigen, die fr mich so einen Popstarappeal hatten, das waren die Leute
von der RAF. Da war ich Fan. Fr mich waren das Helden. Das waren die
einzigen, denen ich zugetraut habe, da sie wirklich etwas ndern wollen (in
Teipel, 69), aber auch Gabi Delgado (DAF): Ich hatte immer eine Affinitt zu
Menschen, die gewaltbereit sind. Mir haben auch die Uniformen der Polizisten
besser gefallen als die der Demonstranten. Vom Styling her haben mir die
Bullen imponiert. [] Ich fand es viel besser, denen, die da sitzen, auf den
Kopf zu hauen. Nur so von der sthetik her (Teipel, 74).
356
Uwe Schtte
Was hat das mit der Literatur zu tun? Texte, die sich mit der RAF
beschftigen, sind vor diesem Hintergrund darauf zu befragen, wie sie
sich zu dem Kooptierungsbestreben der Kulturindustrie verhalten.
Sind sie, wie etwa der Roman von Scholz, Teil der surrogathaften
Inszenierung von Revolution? Einer konsequenzlos bleibenden Feier
des Widerstndischen, die politische Vernderungsvorstellungen in
sthetisches Wohlgefallen transformiert? Oder enthalten die Texte zur
RAF Momente, die sich dem Neutralisierungsprojekt widersetzen? Ist
es in der Literatur vielleicht sogar mglich, einen autonomen Raum zu
Tom Holert und Mark Terkessidis argumentieren, Pop sei mittlerweile die
reprsentative Lge einer Gesellschaft, die in ihrer scheinbaren Diversifizierung
die ungeheuerlichste Kapitalkonzentration erlebt, und die in ihrer scheinbaren
Freiheit die scheulichsten Formen von Ausbeutung und Ausschlu einfhrt.
Die einzelnen Pop-Produkte dienen ebenso wie Architektur, Kunst etc.
der sthetischen Selbstdefinition der Kontrollgesellschaft (Holert/Terkessidis,
1718).
357
Den eigentlichen Wendepunkt wird dabei das Jahr 1987, also gleichsam der 10.
Jahrestag des Deutschen Herbstes bilden. Es gehrt zu den Charakteristika der
kulturellen Auseinandersetzung mit der RAF im weitesten Sinne, da diese sich
um die Jubilen 1987 und 1997 intensivieren.
Sie schreiben ber ein Kollektiv, da lngst zu einem Phantom geworden war,
nachdem durch den Zusammenbruch der DDR fast die gesamte Zweite
Generation der RAF in Haft geriet. Zwar setzte sich die Geschichte der RAF in
Form der sogenannten Dritten Generation bis in die neunziger Jahre nominell fort,
doch sind Zweifel angebracht, inwieweit man angesichts geheimdienstlicher
Infiltrierung des linksterroristischen Umfelds ab Mitte der achtziger Jahre
berhaupt noch von einer RAF sprechen kann. Vgl. dazu Wiesnewski et al.
Die darin vorgetragenen Thesen sind zum Teil heftig angegriffen worden und
bedrfen in der Tat gewisser Vorsicht, was Details betrifft, die generelle
Richtigkeit ihres Arguments ist angesichts der groen Zahl von Indizien kaum
von der Hand zu weisen. In Kellmann, Der Staat lt morden wird anhand
faktischer Beweise die Involvierung des CIA in die Brigate Rosse und seine
Rolle bei der Ermordung von Aldo Moro demonstriert.
358
Uwe Schtte
Gerhard Richters Zyklus 18. Oktober 1977 wird von Theweleit als
Beispiel fr solch einen pseudoradikalen Umgang mit der RAF
angefhrt:
Die Angst [] mit der eigenen Produktion in Belanglosigkeiten zu verfallen
nimmt sich einen Komplex wie die RAF zum Sujet nicht wegen einer
bereinstimmung mit ihren Zielen oder Ideen, sondern aus einer abstrakten
Identifikation mit deren exzeptioneller Lage. (Theweleit, 68)
Als ein anderes Motiv fr die Anrufung der RAF sieht Theweleit das
Bedrfnis der Abgrenzung, sich nicht gemein zu machen mit der
staatlichen Verfolgung und dem herrschenden hetzenden Kleingeist
(Theweleit, 71).9 Um eine Form von Identifikation also, die ihren
eigentlichen Kern nicht in einer tatschlichen Solidaritt mit den
8
9
359
Steht Schpps fr den intellektuellen, sich in abstrakten, neoleninistischen Gedankenspielen verlierenden Zugang zur RAF, so
360
Uwe Schtte
361
362
Uwe Schtte
Das provokative Potential des Romans resultiert aus der Bezugnahme nicht auf das Symbolreservoir der RAF, sondern des
Christentums. Delius erweist sich als einer der wenigen Autoren, die
den messianischen Aspekt der RAF erkannt haben. Der Opfertod macht
die Terroristen zu Katalysatoren eines geradezu heilsgeschichtlichen
Prozesses. Die Grablegung der Toten wird zum Auferstehungstag der
BRD als einer in jeder Hinsicht geluterten, lebendigen Demokratie.
Delius schafft dergestalt ein aus komplex verschachtelten Ironien
bestehendes Szenario, denn der Suizid der Terroristen lste in der Tat
eine beachtliche Folgereaktion aus, wenngleich es kaum der von den
Stammheimern intendierte revolutionre Volksaufstand war. Die BRD
wiederum zeigt am Ende des Guerillakampfes nicht ihr wahrhaft
faschistisches Gesicht, wie von den Terroristen erhofft, sondern
entpuppt sich vielmehr als die von freiheitlichen Idealen geprgte
Staatsform einer wahrhaft gerechten Gesellschaft, fr die die BaaderMeinhof-Gruppe einst selbst in den Kampf zog und von der in
feierlichen Bundestagsansprachen gerne die Rede ist.
Es gehrt jedoch zu den Qualitten des Romans von Delius, da
das hier kurz skizzierte Bild von anderen Erzhlebenen wieder
relativiert wird. Neben dem vom redseligen Geist Baaders dominierten Erzhlstrang lt Delius in Form eines Tonbandprotokolls
auch eine aussteigebereite Terroristin zu Wort kommen, die in einem
Versteck in Luxemburg ihre Verhaftung erwartet. Ihr Monolog
entblt die autoritren Strukturen innerhalb der Gruppe und
dokumentiert den unbarmherzigen Rigorismus im Denken der
Stadtguerilla. Dieser deutlichen Kritik der RAF an die Seite stellt
Delius zwei weitere Erzhlebenen, die zeigen wie ein auslndisches
Mitglied der Untersuchungskommission zum Tod von Gudrun Ensslin
von den deutschen Behrden gezielt behindert wird, sowie einen
Strang, der anhand der Person des obersten Terroristenverfolgers
vorfhrt, da die Trauerfeierlichkeiten in Wirklichkeit nur ein
geschickt inszeniertes staatliches Tuschungsmanver sind, um bisher
ungefate Terroristen anzulocken und verhaften zu knnen.
Delius Roman beeindruckt nicht nur durch seine komplexe
Struktur und die Polyphonie unterschiedlicher Sprachebenen, sondern
vornehmlich durch den aufklrerischen Gestus des Autors, der als
Intellektueller versucht, den autonomen Spielraum der Literatur als
Experimentierfeld zur Unterminierung des gesellschaftlichen Kon-
363
senses zu nutzen. Operativ fr dieses Unterfangen ist bezeichnenderweise die Figur des italienischen Literaturwissenschaftlers Serratta.
Neben seiner (behrdlich vereitelten) Ttigkeit als Sachverstndiger
der Ensslin-Untersuchungskommission, arbeitet er an einer Fragment
bleibenden Skizze, die den Titel trgt: Verbrecher, die gegen
Verbrecher kmpfen. In deren Zentrum steht die Schleyer-Entfhrung
als emblematisches Ereignis fr die widerstreitende, ein eindeutiges
Urteil verunmglichende Konstellation der Auseinandersetzung zwischen der RAF und ihren Gegnern: Die einen, die, wie man zu ihren
Gunsten annehmen darf, in bester Absicht kriminelle Nazis wurden,
treffen auf Gegner, die vor allem kriminell wurden, weil sie, wie man
zu ihren Gunsten annehmen darf, in bester Absicht keine Nazis
werden wollen (Delius, 578).
Vermittelt durch die Figur des italienischen Germanisten gibt
Delius etwa zu bedenken, da Jrgen Ponto zwei Tage nach seiner
Ermordung einen Antrittsbesuch bei der grten kriminellen
Vereinigung der siebziger Jahre, der Regierung Chiles, machen
wollte, die das Tausendfache an Morden und Verbrechen begangen
hat wie die kleine Rebellenarmee (Delius, 5812). Schleyer, der im
Roman Bttinger heit, wird wiederholt als Verbrecher apostrophiert,
wie auch dem Krisenstab um Helmut Schmidt attestiert wird nicht
gegen die Nazis gekmpft [zu haben], einige waren als Soldaten an
soldatischen Morden und anderen Verbrechen beteiligt (Delius, 580).
Serratta deutet die harte Linie der Regierung daher als eine Form des
Exorzismus von historischer Last:
Gerade indem [die Regierung] das ehemalige Mitglied der alten kriminellen
Vereinigung den Mitgliedern der neuen Vereinigung [...] berlt, macht sie die
Propaganda der Entfhrer lcherlich. Eine bessere Gelegenheit, einige der
faschistischen Wurzeln des Staates und ebenso das schlechte Gewissen ber
dieses Erbe loszuwerden, gibt es nicht. So wird unter Berufung auf die
Prinzipien des Rechtsstaates, der Staat zum Komplizen. (Delius, 581)
364
Uwe Schtte
Vgl. die Darstellung der fast durchweg negativen Rezeption in der Tageskritik
in: Polt-Heinzle (44).
365
Insofern stellt sich Jelinek natrlich selbst in gewisser Weise in die idealistische
Tradition.
366
Uwe Schtte
Wolken. Heim. von der RAF her zu lesen, macht nicht zuletzt auch
deshalb Sinn, weil sie chronologisch der Gegenwart am nchsten
steht. Die Terroristen haben im Suizid das Scheitern ihres Kampfes
erfahren und blicken gleich dem im Text kurz aufgerufenen
Benjaminschen Engel der Geschichte auf die, in diesem Fall,
geistesgeschichtliche Katastrophe der Deutschen zurck. Doch der
vernichterische Sturm der Historie blst auch fr die irrlichternden
RAF-Toten unaufhrlich weiter: Auf der Erde kommen wir nicht zur
Ruh, noch als Begrabene bleiben wir gegenwrtig, und wir kommen
wieder, wir kommen wieder! Der Boden ist unser bergang, hinber
ans Ende der Zeiten. Das Ende der Geschichte ist uns milungen
(Jelinek, 24). Dieses Scheitern lt sich primr verstehen als
Milingen der Zielsetzungen der RAF, nicht zuletzt aber auch als
Absage an das optimistische Geschichtsprojekt des deutschen
Idealismus.
Gegen den allgemein als unvermeidbar akzeptierten oder
politisch verbrmten Destruktionsproze der Geschichte, der auf den
Ersten Weltkrieg den Zweiten Weltkrieg folgen lie, und auf diese die
Kriege in Korea und Vietnam, und so weiter, wollte sich die RAF in
einem Akt individueller Selbstbehauptung zur Wehr setzen, denn, mit
Kleist: Nicht jeden Schlag ertragen soll der Mensch, und welchen
Gott fat, denk ich, der darf sinken (Jelinek, 26). Kmpfen, fr ein
367
368
Uwe Schtte
369
370
Uwe Schtte
ber die RAF bestimmten (und im Zeitalter des Kriegs gegen den
Terrorismus wieder in machtstrategischer Manier global aufleben),
entwirft der Roman von Goetz ein verstndniserweiterndes Netz der
verbrecherischen Verkettungen von Staat und Guerilla, versteht sich aber
deswegen zugleich als Aufforderung, den politischen Mythologisierungen, medialen Verflschungen und ideologischen Selbsttuschungen ber das Vorhaben eines emanzipierenden Kampfes
individualistisch entgegenzutreten. Wie Kontrolliert sowohl diskutiert als
auch am eigenen Beispiel vorfhrt, hat das Scheitern des
revolutionren Programms der RAF das extremistische Vorhaben
einer Reformierung des status quo mit allen mglichen Mitteln
durchaus nicht desavouiert. Vielmehr lt sich feststellen, da sich das
Projekt Gegenkultur hnlich wie die Aufklrung der ihm inhrenten
Dialektik bewut werden mu, wenn es sein utopisches Ziel erreichen
will.
Goetz Roman macht dazu ansatzweise Lsungsmglichkeiten
sichtbar. In Anlehnung an Walter Benjamin verweist er auf den
Bereich der populren Massenkultur als ein Feld, in dem Strategien
zur Infragestellung des gesellschaftlichen Konsenses ausgebildet und
erprobt werden knnen. Es gilt eine alle subversive Gegenkultur zu
entwickeln, die nicht wie die RAF den Weg der offenen Konfrontation
whlt, sondern die Kulturindustrie gleich einem Bazillus infiziert und
in ihrem Dissidenz neutralisierenden Potential schwcht. Nicht zuletzt
da die Verlagslandschaft in allen Lndern mittlerweile weitgehend in
den Griff multinationaler Unterhaltungskonzerne geraten ist, knnte
die Literatur dabei an der Vorfront stehen. In seiner Rede Der Autor
als Produzent hat Benjamin am Beispiel Brechts dargelegt, da der
gesellschaftliche Nutzen (und damit die Berechtigung) von Literatur
in der Solidaritt mit der Gruppe liegt, die frher das Proletariat
hie. An der Lage der sozial Benachteiligten aber, wie Benjamin
konzediert, ndert gutgemeinte Tendenzliteratur wenig, da der
brgerliche Produktions- und Publikationsapparat erstaunliche Mengen
von revolutionren Themen assimilieren, ja propagieren, ohne damit
seinen eigenen Bestand und den Bestand der ihn besitzenden Klasse
ernstlich in Frage zu stellen (Benjamin, 109). Tatschlichen sozialen
Fortschritt vermag nur solche Literatur zu erzeugen, die ihre Tendenz
in erster Linie auf den Bereich der Literatur und nicht der Politik
richtet:
371
Ein Autor, der die Schriftsteller nichts lehrt, lehrt niemanden. Also ist
magebend der Modellcharakter der Produktion, der andere Produzenten
erstens durch Produktion anzuleiten, zweitens einen verbesserten Apparat ihnen
zur Verfgung zu stellen vermag. Und zwar ist dieser Apparat umso besser, je
mehr er Konsumenten der Produktion zufhrt, kurz aus Lesern oder Zuschauern
Mitwirkende zu machen imstande ist. (Benjamin, 114)
Bibliografie
Benjamin, W. Der Antor als Prodzeut, in Benjamin, Versuche ber Brecht
(Frankfurt aM., Suhrkamp, 1978), 10119.
Braunersreuther, C., Maida, M. Vom Sein oder Nichtsein deutscher Macht und Ehre.
ber das Hrspiel Deutsche Krieger in Bsser, M. (Hg.) Testcard 9 (Mainz,
Ventil, 2000), 907.
Burdorf, D. Wohl gehn wir tglich, doch bleiben wir hier. Zur Funktion von
Hlderlin-Zitaten in Texten Elfriede Jelineks, Sprache und Literatur in
Wissenschaft und Unterricht 21 (1990), 29-36.
Delius, F. C. Deutscher Herbst. Drei Romane (Reinbek, Rowohlt, 1977).
Dombrowa, B., Knebel, M. (Hg.) GeRAFtes. Analysen zur Darstellung der RAF und
des Linksterrorismus in der deutschen Literatur (Bamberg, Edition Isele, 1994).
Futterknecht, F. Die Inszenierung des Politischen. Delius Romane zum Deutschen
Herbst, in Durzak, M./Seinecke, H. (Hg) F.C. Delius. Studien ber sein
literarisches Werk (Tbingen, Stauffenberg, 1997), 77103.
Gillen, E. (Hg) Deutschlandbilder. Kunst aus einem geteilten Land (Kln, DuMont,
1997).
Goetz, R. Kontrolliert (Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1988).
Holert, T., Terkessidis, M. Einfhrung in den Mainstream der Minderheiten, in
Holert, T., Terkessidis, M. (Hg) Mainstream der Minderheiten. Pop in der
Kontrollgesellschaft (Berlin, ID, 1996, 1718).
372
Uwe Schtte
MORAY MCGOWAN
374
Moray McGowan
Medien, usw. Dramen ber den Terrorismus sind also unter anderem
auch Dramen ber Reprsentationsprozesse. Das wird an der Figur der
Ulrike Meinhof besonders deutlich. Gewisse Motive treten dabei
wiederholt auf, werden aber sehr unterschiedlich dargestellt und
gedeutet: ihr rigoroser Moralismus; die analytische Qualitt und
Prsenz ihrer geschriebenen und gesprochenen Stimme in den Medien
der sechziger Jahre; damit auch die Fallhhe ihrer Entscheidung, diese
etablierte Position aufzugeben und in den Untergrund zu gehen; ihr
Leiden im Gefngnis; die auch und gerade in linken Kreisen
verbreitete Tendenz, sie von den anderen fhrenden Figuren der ersten
RAF-Generation abzusondern also den Terrorismus und die
Terroristen zu verdammen, Meinhof dabei aber zu verklren.
Hier werden drei Bhnenwerke der 1990er Jahre betrachtet, die
Meinhof-Figuren auf die Bhne brachten: Johann Kresniks
Tanztheaterstck Ulrike Meinhof (1990), und zwei Sprechtheaterstcke, Dea Lohers Leviathan (1993), und John von Dffels
Rinderwahnsinn (1999). An den dramaturgischen Bildern und Figuren
lassen sich Verwandlungen in den kollektivpsychologischen Deutungen der Roten Armee Fraktion und der Ulrike Meinhof-Figur
beobachten. Ulrike Meinhof wurde als ein in Wut und Frustration
entstandener, verzweifelt zu plakativen Mitteln greifender Gegenentwurf zum 1990 scheinbar historisch siegenden Modell Deutschland2
inszeniert. Leviathan dagegen nimmt keinen direkten Bezug auf die
neunziger Jahre, sondern erprobt in einem Entscheidungsdrama um
Ulrike Meinhofs Schritt in den Untergrund eine Rckbesinnung auf
das Trauerspiel fehlgeleiteter moralischer und politischer Prinzipien.
Bis zur Urauffhrung von Rinderwahnsinn 1999 schlielich haben die
Verwandlungsprozesse in der neuen Bundesrepublik, vor denen die
Mauer bis zu ihrem Fall tatschlich auch das westdeutsche Bewutsein teilweise geschtzt zu haben scheint, viele bislang konservierte
Positionen in einen schnellen Verfallsproze gestrzt. Eine breite
Anzahl von Themen, vom linken moralischen Rigorismus bis hin zu
den deutsch-deutschen Befindlichkeiten, sind bei von Dffel nur noch
leere Grotesken. Aber sein Stck erschpft sich nicht in Kalauer2
Wahlslogan der SPD 1976. Die staats- und regierungsfestigende Wirkung des
Deutschen Herbstes lt sich durchaus als Bewhrung des Modells
Deutschland auch und gerade gegen seine Kritiker von links verstehen.
375
Als Tanzwerk liegt Ulrike Meinhof nicht gedruckt vor. Die folgende Analyse
bezieht sich auf die am 14.7.1991 im 1. Programm (ARD) ausgestrahlte
Fernsehaufnahme dieser Inszenierung.
Ein hnliches Motiv findet sich in Volker Brauns Simplex Deutsch (1978/9).
Als Kragler, der fett und selbstzufrieden gewordene Kleinbrger aus Brechts
Trommeln in der Nacht, Fernsehbilder ber US-Bombenangriffen in Vietnam
betrachtet und dabei Leber it, bergibt sich seine Tochter Ulrike und greift
nach seinem Maschinengewehr.
376
Moray McGowan
Kresniks Betonung der Opferrolle ist die zentrale Kritik von Wildenhain
(Braun, 21112).
377
Zum groen Teil zunchst zwischen 1959 und 1969 in der Zeitschrift konkret
erschienen und in Meinhof, Die Wrde des Menschen und Meinhof,
Deutschland nachgedruckt.
Ab 1964 etwa schreibt sie nicht nur fr konkret, sondern verfat auch
Rundfunkreportagen und dreht einige Filmbeitrge fr die Fernsehserie
Panorama; vgl. Brckner, 204.
378
Moray McGowan
379
380
Moray McGowan
Buchfassung zitiert: Der groe Leviathan (so nennen wir den Staat)
ist ein Kunstwerk oder ein knstlicher Mensch obgleich an Umfang
und Kraft weit grer als der natrliche Mensch, welcher dadurch
geschtzt und glcklich gemacht werden soll (Loher, 145). Bei
Hobbes hat der Mensch nur eine Alternative: zwischen dem
atavistischen Urzustand und der restlosen Unterwerfung unter die
staatliche Ordnung. In Lohers Leviathan treten Figuren oder Organe
des Staates zwar nicht auf, aber gerade im Kampf gegen den
Leviathan BRD-Staat wird von den RAF-Mitgliedern eine
bedingungslose Unterwerfung unter die Gruppenbedingungen
verlangt: Lohers Terroristenfiguren bevorzugen in der RAF beliebte
Absolutheiten wie Schwein oder Mensch oder ein Teil des
Problems oder ein Teil der Lsung (Loher, 224, 225). Im Kampf
gegen das vermeintliche Monstrum Staat wird die RAF selbst zum
Monstrum.
Lohers Titel bezieht sich aber auch auf einen anderen
literarischen Text ber eine Gestalt gewordene kollektive Obsession:
Hobbes Leviathan wird auch von Hermann Melville in Moby Dick
(1851) als Sinnbild fr den weien Wal, das Monster, das von der
Besatzung des Pequod bis zu ihrer Selbstzerstrung gejagt wird,
zitiert. Karl, die Andreas-Baader-Figur in Lohers Stck, zielt auf den
bundesdeutschen Staat: Ja/Wir werden ihn jagen/herausfordern/nicht
mde werden/ihm so viele Widerhaken ins Fleisch treiben/bis er sich
an ihnen verblutet (Loher, 210). Melvilles Moby Dick war eine
beliebte Gefngnislektre der Gudrun Ensslin, die ihre Mitgefangenen
mit Namen aus dem Roman versah: Baader etwa war Kapitn Ahab,
Holger Meins wurde Starbuck genannt (Aust, 2747, Conradt, 261). 9
Das Stck zeigt jedoch nicht die RAF beim obsessiven Kreuzund-Quer-Segeln durch den Staatsozean, nicht die Zeit der Illegalitt
und des bewaffneten Kampfes. Es bietet stattdessen ein psychologisches Entscheidungsdrama ber Meinhofs Aufgabe ihrer
diskursiven Einfluposition als Journalistin zugunsten des bewaffneten Kampfs und des Aufgehens der individuellen Stimme im
9
Zu der Bedeutung von Melvilles Moby Dick und Brechts Manahme fr die
historische RAF vgl. den Beitrag von Gerrit-Jan Berendse in diesem Band, vor
allem Berendses material- und aufschlureiche Untersuchung der Symbolik der
(Nicht)Farbe Wei und der Vorstellungen der RAF-Gefangenen zum
kollektivierten Krper.
381
Moray McGowan
382
Der Zweck heiligt nicht nur die Mittel, er fordert geradezu Mittel
heraus, die dem Zweck widersprechen und seine Verwirklichung
immer ferner rcken lassen. Lohers Leviathan konstruiert damit fr
seine Meinhof-Figur Marie eine tragische Fallhhe, die zu Kresniks
Grundthese von Meinhofs geraubter Wrde gehren knnte, aber in
seinem Stck nicht zur Sprache, auch kaum zur getanzten Sprache,
kommt.
Das dritte in diesem Kapitel betrachtete Werk lt Figuren und
Motive aus der RAF-Welt fern jeder Tragdie nur noch als Elemente
383
Zit. nach Krieger, Murx dem Marx. Von Dffels Monolog Born in the RAF
kehrt diese Erfahrung satirisch um: Aus Protest gegen die anarchistische
Laxheit seiner Terroristen-Eltern entwickelt der Erzhler deutsche Tugenden
wie Ordnungssinn und Effizienz.
384
Moray McGowan
12
13
Zu finden auf der CD Slap, 1990; cf. Brian Eno und Snatch, RAF, 1978; Luke
Haines, Baader-Meinhof, 1996. FM-Einheits sthetisch und inhaltlich ambitionierte Suite Deutsche Krieger (1997), die authentische Texte von Wilhelm
II., Hitler und Meinhof zu einem Panorama des 20. Jahrhunderts mischt,
verdiente eine eingehende Analyse.
vgl. http://www.peppermind.de/baader/fr_eingang.html
Vgl. Khl, Die Coffeemaschine. Unmittelbar neben diesem Starbucks-Bericht
in der Lifestyle-Sektion der Zeit (Leben) steht eine Kolumne von John von
Dffel; die Ironie wird diesem zeitgeistsensiblen Autor nicht entgangen sein.
385
386
Moray McGowan
387
388
Moray McGowan
In Eduard Knneckes Operette Der Vetter aus Dingsda (1921) geht es ebenfalls
um die Verwechslung eines ahnungslos Ankommenden mit einem Erwarteten.
Ich danke Carl Weber fr diesen Hinweis.
Zum Inszenierten des Terrorismus, vgl. Orr und Klaic. Zum Zusammenhang
zwischen RAF-Terrorismus und Performance-Kunst, vgl. Pedersen, RAF auf
der Bhne.
389
390
Moray McGowan
16
17
391
Works Cited
Ackermann, I. (ed) Johann Kresnik und sein choreographisches Theater (Berlin,
Henschel, 1999).
Aust, S. Der Baader Meinhof Complex (Hamburg, Hoffmann und Campe, 1988).
Biller, M. Kommando Ulrike Meinhof, in Biller, M. Deutschbuch (Munich: dtv,
2001), 17981.
18
Ein Werk wie Wolfgang Kraushaars 1968 als Mythos, Chiffre und Zsur, die
dem Phantomschmerz RAF nur knappe 8 Seiten aus 350 widmet, bildet hier
eine relativ seltene Ausnahme.
392
Moray McGowan
393
Notes on Contributors
396
Notes on Contributors
Notes on Contributors
397